Chapter 07
Talking to the people you see
The messages a practice sends most often are the ones nobody has read carefully since the day they were written.
07.1The standing messages
Every practice has a small set of messages it sends constantly: the booking confirmation, the reminder, the instruction about what to bring or how to prepare, the note that follows a visit. Together they are the majority of the practice's written communication, and they were usually drafted quickly, once, some years ago.
Reading them aloud is a useful annual exercise. Wording that seemed clear on screen frequently turns out to contain a step nobody can follow, or a sentence that reliably produces a phone call.
07.2Say the thing to do
An administrative message should contain the action, the time and the place, near the top, in plain words. Everything else is context. The common failure is a message that leads with the practice's name and reference number and puts the actual instruction in the fourth paragraph.
The test is whether someone reading only the first two lines would do the right thing. If not, the message is arranged for the sender's convenience.
07.3Choosing a channel and staying in it
A practice that confirms by one channel, reminds by another and follows up by a third has made itself hard to keep track of. People look for the last message in the place the last message came from.
Consistency is worth more than optimisation here. Pick the channel most of the people you see actually use, use it for the whole sequence, and keep a second route for the minority who need it rather than mixing both for everyone.
07.4Tone in a reminder
Reminder wording drifts towards the defensive over time, usually after a bad month. Language about missed appointments and consequences gets added, and it is then sent to everyone, including the large majority who have never missed anything.
A neutral, factual reminder that makes cancelling easy performs better than a stern one, and it does not cost the goodwill of everyone who reads it. Where a practice has a position on repeated absences, the place to state it is at booking, once, not in every message.
07.5Closing the loop
The last administrative act of an appointment is telling the person what happens next and when: whether anything is expected of them, whether they will hear from the practice, and by when. It takes a sentence.
Practices that skip it generate a steady stream of calls that begin with the words 'I was just wondering'. That stream is the single cheapest thing on the front desk's list to eliminate, and it is eliminated at the end of the appointment rather than at the desk.