Blog  Events  |  Sign In

Request a Demo
Patient Communications

7 Reasons Dental Practices Should Be Texting Patients

According to Statista, roughly half of worldwide website traffic comes from mobile devices. Moreover, smartphone users worldwide are projected to grow by several hundred million in the next few years. So, in addition to making sure your dental practice has a mobile website designed for dentists, incorporating a mobile-first strategy into all parts of your practice can set you up for immediate success, and text messaging is a key part of this success.

Important Dental Office Text Messaging Stats

Not convinced?

Here are 7 surprising statistics about dentist office text messaging:

  1. 55% of patients (including dental patients) prefer text communications by healthcare providers. Moreover, 63% of people of people would switch to a company offering text messaging as a communication channel.
  2. Texting appeals to a wide demographic of patients. Though a recent study by Twilio shows Millennials and Gen X prefer text messaging over every other channel, the same study showed 24% of people over age 55 chose text messaging as their preferred customer service channel.
  3. Texting saves dental practices time. As noted by DentistryIQ: Where the average phone call takes 90 seconds, the average text takes only 13 seconds to send.
  4. Texting helps reduce no-shows. Comparing email appointment reminders versus text messaging, studies by The Angle Orthodontist found text messaging had the lowest no-show rate of 1.9%.
  5. People want the kind of two-way texting provided by ProSites. According to Twilio, 85% of people want to not only receive text messages by businesses but also answer a message. In other words, the same communication channel you may have used as part of pandemic protocols is the same technology many patients want to remain in place.
  6. Texting helps keep production schedules full. Where many patients are open to filling open appointment spots from last-minute cancellations by other patients, 78% of people surveyed by Text Magic said text messaging was the fastest way to reach them for important updates.
  7. Texts have high visibility. No-shows often happen when patients forget an appointment and don’t notice a reminder sent by email, whereas texts are noticed and read far more. According to Flowroute, 85% of text messages are read within 5 minutes, but people only open 1 in 4 emails they receive.

The list of statistics is long, but you can likely see why more dental practices now use text messaging as part of a complete patient communication system that includes automated messaging to further reduce no-shows while saving dental teams time.

Decrease no-shows and boost profitability

To help you make this decision, download our free whitepaper, designed to help you with three things:

  • What to look for when choosing an automated patient communications provider.
  • How to calculate lost practice income from inactive patients.
  • How to maximize overall practice profitability.

>> Download your free whitepaper here

Patient CommunicationPatient Reminder

Xris Bland

Xristopher Bland has been helping B2B and B2C businesses measurably grow for 35+ years. As copywriter and content writer for ProSites, Xris believes a good writer is a good listener, and effective writing results from asking why before determining the how. When not writing, Xris enjoys creating freelance album artwork for musicians, meaning you may have seen some of his work.