CLINIC HQ

18. Communications

There are several ways to communicate with your clients through HQ:

This includes take-home paperwork, text/email/call reminders, and the animal’s medical record. Information will be pulled from the animal’s record and pre-set communications in HQ, making this process easy for you.

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. Only VCP consent reminders are customizable.
  • Text for Pickup – the notification that goes out once a patient is marked as Done, informing public clients to pick up their animal. Only available if Call & Text Add-On is set up.

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. Make sure the email is spelled correct by going to Clients > Communication Log and double check the correspondence.
  2. Check the client’s profile and make sure they haven’t ticked any boxes to opt out of communication.
  3. Call the client and ask them to check their spam folder. If the email is there, the client can mark the email as not spam to receive future emails in their regular inbox.

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.

Volume Clients

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.

You can set up a consent form reminder for VCP clients to prompt them to sign their consent forms.

For individual volume clients you can turn off the specific reminders altogether. This may be helpful for feral cat groups who will not sign the consent forms until the morning of the clinic. This is done on the client’s profile under Communication Settings. Untick the corresponding reminder checkbox to discontinue messages for that client.