Whatsapp Reminders, The New Competitive Advantage For Your Clinic?

Gone are the days when you have to call every patient to confirm their appointments at your clinic. 

Now with messaging apps and digital tools, you can automate reminder messages to send any information to your patients. 

In this blog post, we make the case that WhatsApp reminders are the best way to reduce no-shows and improve revenue, and how to use them in your clinic.

Why you should care about WhatsApp reminders?

Whatsapp has 2 billion users. It is the most used text messaging app in the world. If you are looking to communicate with your patients it should be with the most used app.

Why not SMS? SMS has a great open rate (open message/ message sent) of 90-98% depending on the industry but it costs more especially at scale. Whatsapp is a cheap alternative with an open rate of 99% and with 80% of WhatsApp messages being seen within five minutes.

Compared to email which is only an average of 21.72%, text messages are a way to communicate where you’re sure your patients will see your reminders. And WhatsApp is the cheapest and most accessible option.

Who are the most concerned about WhatsApp reminders?

As you can see in this map Whatsapp is the most used in the world. For countries in blue, you should definitely choose WhatsApp as your main communication channel. 

For countries where Facebook messenger is the most used, SMS seems to be better with a better open rate of 98% vs 80% for Facebook. But that comes at a higher cost. A hybrid strategy could work where you employ both.

If you are unsure that WhatsApp or any other messaging app is the best for your specific context. A good way is to see what your patients are mostly using, and it will be clear which channel you should use.

Why even use reminders?

The main benefits are the following:

1-Cost effective

Losing appointments because patients forget is one of the most expensive things that is happening in your clinic. Only 10 lost appointments in a month could cost your clinic an average of 2000$ to 10000$ depending on your clinic size and specialty.

As discussed above the cheapest way to reduce no-shows is WhatsApp as simple reminders will make your patients less likely to forget the appointment.

2-Automated and save time 

Imagine having to call every day single patients to make sure to remind them of their sessions. With WhatsApp reminders, you can automate and with just one click, remind all the patients you want and as many times as you need. 

3-With WhatsApp you are sure they will read it

As discussed above 99% of people open their messages on WhatsApp. You are sure that they will read the text you sent. There is no other messaging app or communication channel that guarantees that high of an open rate. 

How to begin using WhatsApp reminders easily?

There are two main ways:

1-The more complicated way:

Registering your business directly with Meta, using the Whatsapp Business platform here.

You will need a developer and to be honest, the process is slow and confusing. For our platform, it took a month of back and forth with the WhatsApp support team to make it work.

Important note: The above is different than the WhatsApp business app you can find on the apple store and google play store. The app allows you to automate some messages but you can not send reminders the way we describe it above.

2-The easier way:

Using a third-party vendor. Ideally, the vendor offers WhatsApp reminders as a service with a number of other features.

So you pay a small fee to get everything you need to manage your clinic.

If you are looking for a platform that offers WhatsApp reminders and lots of other features that will help manage every aspect of your clinic, you can check us out here.