SMS

Features & Requirements

SMS is used by roughly 90% of EXACT practices and those of you using it will know how beneficial it can be; but are you getting the most out of your SMS?

Why use SMS instead of Email?

While it may seem tempting to use emails as the primary method of communication with your patients as it’s free, don’t be so sure that it’s in the best interests of your business. With emails, many small businesses report that only 30% of the emails they send are actually read by their recipients. With SMS however, 98% of SMS are read by the recipient, with 90% being opened within 3 minutes of being received. As such, whether you’re reminding your patients of their appointments, offering them a short notice cancellation or asking them to book their recall, SMS should be the contact method you rely upon to get results.

Remind Patients Automatically

One of the biggest benefits of the SMS package is being able to automatically remind your patients of their appointments and to book recall appointments. EXACT can automatically send a text message to remind patients to book a recall appointment and to remind them of their appointment 2 hours, 3 days, 1 week, etc before. This allows your reception team to concentrate on picking up incoming calls and giving their full attention to your patients to provide a high level of service. SMS Reminders have been proven time and again to drastically reduce the FTA rate for a practice.

For SMS setup help see: https://soeidental.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PHS/pages/1053394750/Email+Parameters#%5BhardBreak%5DSMS-Messages

SMS Replies

Even though you may be able to see the SMS Replies icon in your EXACT system, you may need to speak to your account manager before this feature can be enabled for you. Once you have text messaging replies enabled, this opens up a number of new features for you.

See https://soeidental.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PHS/pages/302187021 for more details.