Manual Linking of Manual Recall Emails

Hi ​@Drea, thanks for your question! There is an easy solution for this - you can actually send manual emails from within the ‘Recalls’ report - it’s still manual, but it will then be logged as a recall contact so will be counted in the way you’re describing.

Instead of using the correspondence tab, open the ‘Recalls’ report, select the patient you wish to contact, and then click ‘Email’ at the top. It will allow you to send a manual email which will be logged as a recall communication.

This should solve your issue! Any questions or if this doesn’t work, please let us know 😊

[Comment edited for clarity]

How? It only says create new template and I don’t want to create a new template?

Hi ​@Drea, 

I’m part of our customer success team and wanted to clear a few bits up. Sadly, you are not able to customise the emails sent from the recall report; it only allows you to send additional templates you’ve created. What I would say, though, is your team must be spending a lot of time doing these types of messages, which I’m sure could be spent on more skill-centric jobs like chasing up unbooked treatment or last week's cancellations.  

In terms of recalls, what we’d recommend is firstly, always aim to pre-book. The best practice is to pre-book at least 70% of your patients before they leave, to maintain high patient retention and keep recall message dependency as low as possible. Following this, have a 2-year automation series of mixed recall messages from email, SMS and letters so patients are contacted in a timely manner. 

Sending patients available appointment times can be fully automated with the use of our Online Booking feature, which will give them the ability to book directly in as well, with no need to phone the site, seeing all appointment times you’ve made available with 1 click. 

My colleague Tom did a webinar on recalls earlier this year, and it’s certainly worth giving it a watch. I’ve listed the link below. 
https://www.dentally.com/en-gb/dentally-webinars

If you need any further information on the Online Booking feature, please contact our support team through chat, and they can arrange a demo if you don’t already have it. 

Thanks,
David 

Hi David,

Yes, our practice is well aware of the benefits of pre-booking. We always aim to pre-book. However, the bulk of our patients don’t want to pre-book. Even the mild “strong arm” of “I’ll put an appt in the diary for you 6 months from now so you don’t fall behind in your preventative care and we send reminders 4 weeks before.” We also have the Online Booking as well. It’s a changing market where patients have a fear of commitment; we can try our best to following our SOPs of pre-booking but in the end, we cannot force patients to attend appts or pre-book. Secondly, the automation can seem impersonal, which is why we also make calls and want to send personalized emails and texts but it also be recorded as a recall contact in the recall manager. 

Hi ​@Drea Thanks for coming back. It's great to hear you're using the Online Booking feature already.

I know pre booking patients can be a challenge and it's something all Rec teams need to continuously work on alongside the practitioners. What I often find is that when you know your Rec team is asking each patient to book their next appointment and not achieving the average 70% success rate, it's often down to them asking patients 'when they would like to book in'. The 'When' part is important here, as soon as we give patients a choice, their brain goes to 'Well, I don't know what I'm doing in 6 months' and they don't book in. Instead, get your Rec team to focus on asking an assumptive close question, similar to below.

'Thanks for coming in today. I can see that your dentist has recommended you come back in 6 months to keep on top of your dental wellbeing. The next slot we have is on the 5th of May. Let's get that booked in now for you to secure the appointment.'

If this is still getting knocked back, then we need to look deeper and see what the dentist is saying chair-side, are they educating the patients on why they need to come in for a regular appointment? There are some great stats and studies showing that seeing the dentist regularly isn't just for your Oral health but for your overall well-being with links to stroke reduction and many more areas. Some sites find it beneficial when the dentist walks the patient to the front desk and hands the patient over to the Rec team and states in front of the patient that they need to book in XX amount of time.

I hope the above helps in terms of increasing your pre booking, if you want to change your recall template wording, the support team can point you where this is under the settings area.