Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
This idea came from the recent users meeting. It will require the successful funding and development of the SMS Project - The First Steps, before it can be realised.
The idea was to have the same "SMS Customer" button that is proposed for the Customer summary on appointments. The schedule for a future day could be opened and a user send SMS's to each customer giving them a courtesy message about the apppointment. The body of the courtesy message could be stored in a text macro but it would need to reference the appointment details it was attached to.
eg. "This is a courtesy SMS from Happy Valley Vet Clinic to remind you of Fluffy's appointment at 9am on the 25th of March. Please call the clinic on XXX-XXXX if you need to reschedule. This phone will self destruct in 10 seconds..." or something similiar.
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
Cheers Chris,
Will send you a list of pledges off list.
Matt C
On Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:48:28 +1000, wrote:
Courtesy SMS appointment reminders
Hi Chris,
How did you mean a Lookup list for macros?
Cheers,
Matt C
Re: New or updated comment for General User's Discussion Forum t
Some other way of getting maco's other than out of my head (getting
old remember). Need some way of recalling them from the system
Chris
Sent from my iPhone
On 24/07/2010, at 12:18 PM, vetmpcosta wrote:
Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
From recent meeting
o Part 1 – SMS Beginnings has absorbed quite a bit of the scope of this feature. A user will be able to be SMS’d from the Customer summary when Part 1 is delivered. Standardised SMS messages could be achieved by using Macros (eg. Reminders etc)
o Therefore the discussion led to this being redefined as sending a batch set of appointment reminders for a particular day.
o There was little support for this feature and it was slated for being Cancelled.
o However there was strong support from one user so it has been kept alive with this new definition.
o Please indicate your support for this one in order for it to go to Devoper Review or make suggestions if this is not what you had in mind.
o This project remains Under Discussion.
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
Could I suggest a slightly different approach. To have sms's automatically sent to individual customers (if a customer has an sms number) at a certain time (eg 2 hours) prior to their appointment. This would essentially be a reminder that they have an appointment at X time.
I would support this feature either as a daily batch or using this method as I would prefer to have the ability to reschedule prior to the appointment rather than having time and resources wasted when the appointment is missed.
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
We really like the above sugggestion and are happy to pledge 10% (on top of what we have already pledged to the SMS project)
So many businesses are using SMS reminders in this way now we feel it is a really important tool to help the business run efficiently and reduce time wastage from missed appointments.
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
Hi Kathy,
Thanks for that support.
What do you think about the following queries?
1.
If we take Matts suggestion about automatically having the SMS messages sent a defined period prior to an appoint, how would you see yourself designating whether an appointment will have a SMS reminder or not? A tick box in the New appointment dialog?
2.
I suggest we might need to make this configurable as follows;
- At a practice level (Turn SMS reminders Off/Manual/Automatic)
In regards to the Automatic option and given you guys are the main ones providing feedback about this option, would you still want a Manual option which just sends a batch for a specified date range?
Cheers,
Matt
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
Hi Matt
You would have to have a tick box on the appointments page as to who you wanted to send reminders to. It would look a little silly to send someone a reminder if they just made an appointment 1/2 hour ago. Also if you had a double appointment for 2 animals you don't want to send 2 reminders. Alternatively you could have a button that ticked all on the page.
I see this especially as being a really useful tool for those appointments that are booked a long time in advance - like vaccinations and speys. These are the ones most likley to be forgotten.
I do think you need a manual option if you are going to manually go through the appointments and tick the boxes. Otherwise you run the risk of it not being done in time.
Does that make sense?
Kathy
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
Hey guys,
If we take Matts suggestion about automatically having the SMS messages sent a defined period prior to an appoint,
How would you see yourself designating whether an appointment will have a SMS reminder or not?
A tick box in the New appointment dialog?
I suggest we might need to make this configurable as follows;
- At a practice level (Turn SMS reminders Off/Manual/Automatic)
In regards to the Automatic option and given you guys are the main ones providing feedback about this option, would you still want a Manual option which just sends a batch for a specified date range?
Cheers,
Matt
PS> I will take pledges once we have it all defined out and properly costed but thanks for the encouragement!
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
I would say a button like the check-in button. That way, an appointment would be Pending in the morning, could be SMS'ed later( and show up as such on the schedule), then checked -in etc when they arrive. You would just have to be able to check in from the status of either pending or sms'ed(you would probably call it something nice like 'reminded'!)
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
I think a button like the check in button sounds like a really good idea - and quite simple to do?
Kathy
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
SMS appointment reminders:
Ok so the specification as contributed by;
kvc, garry edgar and Matt Young
is;
1. Automatic SMS reminders
Sms are sent automatically to individual customers (if a customer has an sms number) at a certain time (eg 2 hours) prior to their appointment (Practice Level setting).
The text would be " This is a reminder that you have an appointment with Fluffy at X time, X date."
2. Appointments will be able to be manually set to have an SMS sent or not
Within the Appointment editor, there will be a tick box that says "Send SMS Reminder" or not. Newly created appointments will have that box ticked according to the rules below.
3. Newly created appointments
a) SMS reminders On/Off
At a Practice Level SMS reminders can be set to on or off.
If Off, no tick boxes appear in appointment editors.
b) If the appointment is created within a certain number of hours of the scheduled appointment (Practice Level setting), it would not have a SMS sent.
eg. Appointments created for a time within 24 hours are not set to have a SMS reminder.
c) If SMS reminders are On and the appointment time is greater then the hours specified in rule b), the appointment is set to have a SMS reminder.
4. Sending SMSs manually
If SMS reminders are On, a new button would be added to the Appointment scheduler where New, Delete etc are located. It would appear if an Appointment is selected.
Clicking it would send a SMS reminder immediately to the Customer.
This button would not have a keyobard shortcut (we have run out in this screen!)
5. Sending a SMS related to an appointment would change it's Appointment Status to "Reminded".
This status would function the same as Pending in regards to Check In etc.
This is a pretty involved set of features!
Could the 3 contributors (and any one else interested) comment on the above points referring to their point number please. Clearly costing will need to be revised :)
Cheers,
Matt C
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
steps 1 to 3 seem to confuse me a bit.
I like steps 4 and 5.
I would imagine we would only ever do it manually. I would have my front of house people hit the SMS button for surgery/hospital appointments as part of their morning start up, and do the same for grooming appointments the afternoon before as part of our nightly shutdown.
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
Hi everyone,
I'm finding this discussion about SMS appointment reminders is floundering a bit, so let me summarise;
There are THREE current projects regarding SMS functionality:
Project 1. SMS Project - The First steps (Jira 902)
This project is funded and under development. We will be able to send SMS messages from the Customer Summary area provided they have a mobile number.
Project 2. SMS Project - SMS Reminders (Jira 951)
This project will allow us to have SMS as a reminder delivery method. This is currently being discussed by the Developers as the requirements for merged data (eg. Patient or Reminder type details) are best handled within the limited character limit (160 chars) of an SMS.
Project 3. SMS Project - Appointment Reminders (Jira 957)
This would allow clinics to send Appointment reminders from the scheduler.
Broadly two proposals have been made:
Part a) Appointment Reminders (Automatic) (Jira 1097)
An automated system that automatically sends SMS's based on rules related to the time of appointments etc.
Part b) Appointment Reminders (Manual) (Jira 1098)
A manual system which would allow users to manually send SMS reminders from the Scheduler one by one.
The two sets of requirements for 3 a) and 3 b) are so different that I will create two seperate projects, get them costed and then leave it up to the user community to see if they want to fund them.
Will let you know what they get costed at.
Cheers,
Matt C
Re: Courtesy SMS Reminders for future appointments
I noticed a couple of questions from Tim in the Jira.
1. Regarding multiple reminders from 1 appointment.
I think that the ability to manually send more than 1 reminder for an appointment is important, possible with a few failsafe checkbox's. Also any changes to an appointments time, ie rescheduling should clear any "marked as sent". The automatic system should only ever send 1 predefined message, in my opinion, (but again perhaps that should be user configurable as well)
The new forms of communication our PMS's use are open to abuse, and should be monitored carefully from the point of view of the Practice Manager. We currently SMS all the following days appointments the day before to remind them of the appointments (Grooming and Surgery)
With regard to logging, I think that almost all client communication should be logged in 1 format or another. I can't begin to count the number of times I have had to cross check our mailserver logs when a staff member or client has complained to the point of distraction regarding not receiving some vital piece of information, (READ receipts for email is a joke implementation...Delivery receipts are pretty poor as well in my opinion and not supported all that well either) But I can cross check my mail server logs and get a Status 2.0.0 from the recipients mail server and ensure that we did all we could. I think I am covered. ( I am still frustrated by the lack of simple phone (voice) logging software)
So yes I think the time and date that and SMS is sent is important. Not so much for the user , but certainly for the manager. It should be logged in my opinion somewhere. Also I have used Clickatell's gateway for 2 years or more now, its important that people understand that clickatells' gateway can have up to a 2 hour window, also clickatells gateway does email back a sender receipt code but the reciept code doesnt confirm the sms was ever recieved by the recipient.
This brings me to a final point, and that is the concept of 2 way communication via SMS. Currently in practice the only simple way of doing this is to register a "In Clinic Mobile" with your preferred service and make sure the service uses that number as the sender, any replies will be sent to that phone. Not ideal but the only practical solution currently to our type of system. The user could then manually update the appointment to confirmed or otherwise,
Future implementations could look at the concept of an 2way gateway API, which allows a simple "CONFIRMED" reply sms to update the appointment status to confirmed or some other applicable status. Other commercial VPMS's currently do this utilizing proprietary coded 2 way gateways, ie the PMS's software owners server updates your system when a reply is received to general gateway