Allied Eye is the one stop shop for all your eye care needs. We aim to address the root of the issues patients experience, rather than simply place a broad solution on top of an issue. Managing appointments to ensure this happens is a never ending cycle.
We already knew from playing phone tag all day that our clients don’t like answering our calls. People have anxiety about making their appointments, and they don’t want to take time out of their already busy day to schedule them over the phone. We needed a way to nail down our own process, so we looked into scheduling appointments through text messaging instead.
It’s not good for us or the patient if they miss their appointment. The sooner they can understand what's going on, and get a solution, the better. That's why we also use Text Request to notify some patients of last minute openings—so we can serve them as soon as possible. We send texts to every patient before and after their appointments. Text Request makes this easy by allowing us to schedule these messages in advance and all at once through Mass Texting.
Text reminders do more than just help us keep appointments, they also give us a chance to eliminate a new client’s fear of the unknown. New patients are always way more likely to come to their appointment once they know what to expect, which is why we include that information in our reminder texts. This ensures clients are comfortable and shows them we care. It’s the perfect way to make a great first impression.
We used to call every patient individually to remind them about their appointments before we had Text Request—but that left us playing phone tag with around 30 people a day. Now we just send out a single Mass Text, and we no longer need one person dedicated to calling each patient. The time we spend on contacting patients has exponentially decreased, and we get to use it to tackle other tasks.
Texting is a much more private and faster way to communicate than phone calls. It’s the number one way patients prefer to reach us, plus it’s easier for our team to manage.
