10
Questions to Ask When Evaluating an Appointment Reminder System
Implementing the right appointment reminder system provides increased efficiency and increased
revenue for business. Sending automated reminder messages reduces missed appointments and staff
workload. The following 10 questions will assist you in evaluating appointment reminder systems:
1. Which would better suit our needs, a hosted solution or a solution implemented onsite?
Both a solution implemented onsite and a hosted solution offer unique advantages. To assist in the
decision process, it is important to establish what advantages are more important to you.
Advantages of solution installed and implemented onsite
Maintaining maximum control to customize the system to meet your requirements
Customer data remains secure in your control on your premises
Excess bandwidth can be utilized to send additional messages at virtually no cost
Return on Investment (ROI) is usually obtained in a matter of weeks
Advantages of a Hosted Solution or SaaS (Software as a Service)
Reduced implementation time and effort
Immediate access to the latest innovations and features
Significantly reduced initial capital investment
Significantly reduced infrastructure requirements
Built‐in redundancy
2. How will a message be personalized for each customer?
There are situations where you may want to send one standard message to many customers. In most
situations, however, an automated call is more likely to receive a positive customer response when it
includes information that is personalized to that customer. A personalized message often includes the
customer name as well as the day, time, location and reason for the appointment. Custom information
3. How will our customers receive our messages?
Appointment reminder systems should support the delivery platforms that your customers expect. The
three most important channels are telephone, email, and SMS text messaging. Less important are fax
and pager.
4. Where will we get our appointment data?
An automated appointment reminder system is dependent upon its source of appointment and
customer data. Healthcare providers, for example, utilize practice management or EMR (Electronic
Medical Record) systems to schedule appointments. Appointment reminder systems often include a
basic appointment scheduler.
Software programs will usually have an export or print‐to‐file function that will create a data file in a
format that can be imported into an appointment reminder system. Alternatively, most appointment
reminder systems can retrieve data from an ODBC database. Appointment data is combined with pre‐
recorded phrases to produce a personalized call. Here is an example:
“This is Dr. Taylor’s office calling to remind Jennifer of an appointment
at our Lakeside office on Tuesday, May 16 at 2:30pm. Be sure to bring
your insurance card and picture ID. Thank you. Goodbye.”
Automating the process of importing appointment data upfront pays dividends everyday in time saved.
5. Should we send messages in languages other than English?
Based upon the needs of your customers, you may want to provide them with the option of receiving
messages in other languages. If so, you will need to investigate what languages the system supports.
Also, you will need a way for the customer to select another language. (“Para Español, oprime dos.”)
6. What will our call volume be?
It is important to determine the number of messages that need to be delivered each day and if the
system has sufficient capacity to handle that call volume. Hosted or SaaS systems can often deliver
thousands of calls per hour, or more. Simultaneous calls for onsite systems are limited by the number of
telephone lines the system supports. Our experience shows that, on average, an appointment reminder
system can deliver 45 automated telephone messages per line (channel) per hour. In that scenario, a
four‐line system could make about 180 calls in an hour (one hour X 45 calls per hour X 4 lines).
7. What Calling Rules do we need?
Calling rules determine what actions the system should take in certain situations. Here are some
examples of important calling rules:
Calling Hours. Who are your customers and
when are they most likely to take your call live?
Do you need to make all calls between 5:00 pm
and 8:00 pm, or would your customers prefer to
receive calls during the day?
Placing calls in advance. How far in advance of
an appointment do you wish to contact your customers? Do you want to send more than one
reminder for an appointment?
Detecting Voicemail/Answering Machines. When an appointment reminder call is answered,
the system attempts to determine if it has reached a live caller or voicemail. The system should
have the flexibility to provide one message for a live caller and a different message for
voicemail.
Alternate Phone numbers. Will the system dial a second or third number to reach a customer?
Family Member Check. How does the system handle multiple appointments to the same phone
number?
Do Not Call. Does the system have a way to block calls to a given number if requested by your
customer?
An appointment reminder system should offer you the flexibility you require to meet your customers’
Calling rules are highly
customizable
and determine
what actions the system should
take
8. In addition to appointment reminders, what other types of messages do we want to send?
Appointment reminders are the most common message sent by a messaging system, however, there are
many others. Here are some examples:
Emergency notification
Announcement of new services
“Elder check” calls
Inclement weather announcements
Past‐due notifications
Last‐minute event changes
Prescription refill reminders
Recall reminders to schedule an appointment
Safety alerts
The flexibility of your appointment reminder system to handle multiple kinds of messages will greatly
increase its value to your business.
9. Do we need Interactive Voice Response (IVR) capabilities?
A system with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) capabilities is able to recognize touchtone (DTMF)
signals . Such a system could conduct an automated poll or survey by calling a customer, asking
questions and then recording the customer’s touchtone responses.
In additional to allowing a customer to respond to an appointment reminder call by pressing “1” to
confirm or “2” to cancel, some solutions include the ability for the customer to press a number within
the appointment reminder call and leave a recorded reply. Even if you have no requirement for polls or
surveys, this ability to record customer responses can provide you interactive contact with your
customers.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
capabilities provide
interactive contact
with
your customers
10. What information do we want in our reports?
Here is some of the information you will want to know regarding each day’s reminder calls:
Messages attempted
Messages completed
Messages delivered to live callers
Messages delivered to answering machines or voicemail
Calls with No Answer or Busy Signal
Calls with an Operator Intercept (“The number you have dialed has been disconnected.”)
Automated survey responses
An appointment reminder system can allow you to see at a glance who did not receive a reminder call,
whose phone numbers are no longer valid, and who needs to reschedule. Some systems will allow you
to subscribe to a report and have that report emailed to you at the end of each day.
S
ummary
An appointment reminder system is much more than simply a delivery vehicle for a static message. As
you evaluate appointment reminder solutions, carefully consider the questions above and evaluate your
current needs and your needs for the future. The right appointment reminder system can become a
complete messaging platform for quickly and efficiently distributing information to your customers as
well as gathering valuable feedback from them.
Inphonite, LLC
6601 East Grant Road
Suite 201
Tucson, AZ 85715
800‐350‐7693 (toll‐free)
520‐797‐1844 (general)
