Call or text? Choosing the right reminder channel

Text reminders are cheap, fast and easy to ignore. A phone call is harder to skip and, for the patients who miss most, far more effective — older patients who won’t act on a text will still pick up the phone and talk it through.

The honest answer is that the channel should follow the patient, not the vendor’s convenience. A message suits patients who live on their phones and just need a quick confirmation. A call suits anyone hard to reach, anyone who actually needs to reschedule, and anything where a one-tap “yes” isn’t enough. Used together — a call, with a message when no one answers — you reach more patients than either channel alone.

Sequencing beats picking a winner. Lead with the channel most likely to work for that patient, fall back to the other, and log every attempt so nothing silently drops. A patient who ignored a message at 9am might happily confirm a call at 6pm.

Vera runs one agent across phone, WhatsApp and the web with the same script, so you don’t maintain separate flows. Each practice sets its own sequence — call first, then a message, or the other way round — how long to wait between steps, and the hours patients may be contacted. (Vera’s messages go out on WhatsApp; it doesn’t send SMS yet.)