CLINIC HQ

17. Communications

VIDEO ON THIS TOPIC

Understanding the types of *automated communication:

  • Appointment Confirmations – the notification that is sent out immediately after creating/confirming an appointment.
  • Appointment Reminders – the notifications that go out based on a sending schedule reminding clients of upcoming appointments.
  • Item Reminders – the notifications that go out after a visit reminding the client their animal is due for services again.
  • Consent Reminders – the notification that goes out on a sending schedule when a client has not signed their e-consent form yet.

There are three communication methods.

  1. E-Mail
  2. Text
  3. Phone Calls (robocalls)

We use a whitelisted IP address to send HQ emails. We have a 95.1% delivery rate, with 3.1% bounces and 0.01% spam complaints. The remaining emails are suppressed if the user previously marked the email as spam or if they opted out of receiving emails. If you’re concerned an email is not going through, please check Clients > Communication Logs. This is your best source of information about the deliverability of emails. If someone does not get an email that is sent you can do the following to troubleshoot it:

  1. Call the user and ask them to check their spam folder. If the email is there, please open a help ticket with the details of the email (who it was to) and we can research on our end.
  2. Check the client’s profile and make sure they haven’t ticked any boxes to opt out of communication.
  3. Make sure the email is spelled correct by going to Clients > Communication Log and double check the correspondence here.

Public Clients

You should create both a confirmation and a reminder.

The client will receive a confirmation and e-consent form when the appointment is created.

If the public client has not signed their consent form, a reminder is sent every two days until the consent form is signed. This email is not customizable. It looks like this:

Consent reminder

The appointment reminder is the customized message(email or text) that reminds them of the who, what, when, where, etc., and is sent based on a sending schedule you create.

Appointment reminder sending schedule

Volume Clients

The Volume Client confirmations/reminders can be further defined as to whether or not the VC uses the portal.

Creating a reminder

You can set up an appointment confirmation email for volume clients, which alerts them when you release appointments to their volume client portal. In HQ, all you have to do is set up the appointments as you normally would, and then these appointments appear in that volume client’s portal for them to enter data and sign consents. Setting up an appointment confirmation will send them an email or text that they have appointment slots now waiting. By including the placeholder “animal number,” this tells them how many appointments they have available.

Creating an appointment confirmation

You can have different reminders go to those volume clients that are using the volume client portal versus any volume clients that may still be using a paper-based system to sign consent forms.

The concept is you can set up a consent form reminder for VCP clients saying hey, sign your forms. And then, you can set up a different reminder for any volume clients that are not currently using the volume client portal.

Volume client reminders

_As a side note related to this feature, for individual volume clients you can turn off the reminders altogether. This may be helpful for feral cat groups who will not sign the consent forms until the morning of the clinic.

Open the VC’s details in search. Under the Profile and Communication Settings: untick the box to disable the reminders._

Communication settings for an individual client