Lots of folks get all excited about sending clients appointment reminders. I’ll be honest, this is not a big thing for me, largely, I think, because my private practice is private pay (no insurance), so no-shows aren’t a big deal, because I’m allowed to charge them.
But maybe you want to send reminders anyway because you’re nicer than I am, or maybe you do take insurance or other kinds of payers and it’s beneficial for you to send reminders. Totally get it.
Here are the options you have for sending reminders. I don’t want to claim this is a comprehensive list, because as I said, I haven’t had call for such functionality, but it may well be at this point.
Option 1 – Leave it to the client
If you invite clients to your Google calendar event, then they can add that to their calendar (assuming they have one), and set up their own reminders. Perhaps you’d want to include a note about doing so in a confirmation email or something.
The obvious drawback of this is that you’re relying on them to do that, and that is subject to the same weakness as asking them to remember the appointment in the first place.
Note also that if you invite a client to an appointment that has Google Meet integrated into it, the client can pop into the meeting without you needing to admit them. I do not like that at all. You get caught in all kinds of awkward situations that way (like mid-blowing-of-nose or something).
Option 2: GReminders
GReminders is a paid service that links up with Workspace and sends out reminders for you. (Heads up, that's an affiliate link.)
It’s reasonably priced – $27/month for a HIPAA compliant package – and I hear it works pretty well. (Testing it out is on my list of things to do, but to be fair it’s not all that high up on said list.) I imagine that once you set it up it works pretty seamlessly. But it is another monthly expense.
(It also comes with an online scheduling system, which typically is its own cost, so if you're using both features, you may well be saving money over other scheduling systems anyway!)
Option 3: Use our app!
We've launched the autoReminders app (it's not really an app like the kind that goes on your phone, it's actually a little dashboard you'll access in your Google Drive) which can send out automatic email reminders for you with nothing more than what you already have in your Google Workspace account - for a one-time fee of $39!
There are a few important things to note here:
The way this works is that you have to enter the email address of the client into the calendar event, or include them as guests to the event. (I do not really recommend the latter approach, because then they can enter your meeting without you needing to admit them. This is a small problem if you happen to be picking your nose right when they enter, but a HUGE problem if you use the same Google Meet link for more than one client and someone accidentally steps in on someone else's session.)
It is possible to automate things even further by drawing email addresses from your system so that you would not need to include them in the calendar events, but since that depends on how your particular system is set up, you would need a customized solution for that. (Contact us if you're interested in that!)
This only works for emails, not texts. (Google Voice is not designed for automated/mass texting, so that's not a viable option.) It is possible to send an email as a text to a phone number; you would need to know the client's mobile carrier in order to do that. So for example, if your client has Verizon, you could email to 1235555555@vtext.com and they would receive your email as a text.
Currently the app only works for one calendar, i.e., solo providers. You can customize it further for a group practice, but again this is a custom solution that depends on your setup.
It's still a pretty sweet deal.
Head over to https://www.workspaceehr.com/purchase-automations to get your copy today!