What Should Your Dental Clinic's Auto Reply Say? (Philippines)

It's 10:40pm. A mother holds an ice pack to her son's cheek and types to your page with her free hand: "Hi po, open po ba kayo bukas? Magkano po ang bunot?" Your page replies in a second. "Thank you for your message. We will get back to you as soon as possible." She reads it, then sends the same question to the next clinic on the map. Your auto reply did its job. It just couldn't answer her.

What an auto reply can do, and where it stops

Facebook lets your page send an instant reply to someone's first message, and an away message while your page is set to away. You write each one once, and it goes out on its own after that. Keep yours. A patient who hears nothing all night assumes nobody's there, and a clear reply at least tells her when to expect you.

The catch is that an auto reply sends the same words to everyone. The mother asking about an extraction gets them. So does the student asking whether you take her HMO, and the regular who needs to move Thursday's cleaning. Each of them gets a delay. None of them gets an answer.

So write yours as a holding message with one job: keep the patient from messaging the next clinic while she waits for you.

What a good auto reply says

Read your current auto reply as if you were that mother at 10:40pm. Then hold it up against this list.

• When a person will reply. "As soon as possible" tells her nothing. "We'll reply by 9am" tells her whether to wait. Pick a time you can keep on your busiest day, because a broken promise reads worse than none.
• The answers most patients want first. Your hours, where you are, and how to book. If you publish starting prices or the HMOs you accept, put them in too. Every question the message answers is one less reason to ask another clinic.
• One thing she can do right now. A booking link lets a waiting patient become a booked one. If she chose to message, telling her to call means starting over.
• The way your patients write. If they message in Taglish with plenty of "po," a stiff English paragraph reads like a form letter. Match them. Our guide to replying in Taglish covers how.
• Short enough for a lock screen. Three or four lines. If she has to scroll, she won't read it.
• Nothing clinical. An auto reply shouldn't tell anyone what to do about pain or swelling. If you want an emergency line in it, have your dentist write that line.

Auto reply templates you can copy

Swap the words in brackets for your own details. Each template comes in English and in Taglish, so use whichever sounds like your patients.

Instant reply, during clinic hours

This goes out when a new message arrives while your team is with patients.

Away message, after hours and on closed days

Use this one for the hours your clinic is closed. It's the message that mother should have received.

Holiday closure

Change your away message before every long break. One that says you open Monday, on a holiday Monday, sends patients to a locked door.

Prices are the one thing a fixed message handles badly, because the honest answer depends on the procedure and on what the dentist sees. Our guide to handling price questions covers what to say instead.

The auto reply nobody updates

Someone writes the auto reply once, and after that nobody owns it. Your hours change, a dentist goes on leave, Undas comes around, and the message keeps giving patients last year's answers. Put a reminder in your calendar to reread it every time something at the clinic changes. It's the cheapest fix on this page.

Aria doesn't need the reminder. She reads your clinic's hours, services and listed prices from HeyDenta each time a patient writes, so when you change them, her next answer changes too. HeyDenta also marks Philippine public holidays on your calendar. Turn on one switch and each holiday counts as a closed day: patients can't book it on your booking page, and Aria won't book or move anyone into it on your website chat, Messenger or Instagram. Appointments already sitting on a holiday stay where they are, and the calendar flags them so your team can contact those patients and rebook them.

Auto reply or Aria: what the patient gets

Here's that same 10:40pm message, handled two ways.

Your staff can do everything in that right column when the phone is in their hand, and they do it with a human voice. None of this is a knock on them. The gap is every hour the phone isn't in their hand: with a patient, at the counter, or home for the night.

Isn't an auto reply enough for a small clinic?

For patients who already know you, often it is. A regular who has seen your dentist for years will wait until morning, and a good auto reply tells her what time you open.

The patient it fails is the one who doesn't know you yet. She found a few clinics on the map, she's messaging at night because that's when the tooth hurts, and she owes none of you her patience. The first clinic to answer her question and offer a time has the best shot at her.

If you're worried about losing the personal touch, you won't. Anyone on your team can take over a Messenger or Instagram chat from the HeyDenta Inbox, and Aria stops replying in that conversation until you hand it back. Your team keeps the conversations that need a person. Aria takes the 10:40pm questions that only need an answer.

What it costs

Aria on Messenger, Instagram and your website chat comes inside HeyDenta, which starts at ₱750/month, with a 14-day free trial and no card to start. Pay yearly and get two months free.

Weigh that against one new patient a month who books with you instead of with the clinic that answered first. Use your own fees for the math. Built in the Philippines, and Aria answers in English, Tagalog and Taglish, the way your patients type.

Common questions