Looking for new ways to communicate with you about your eyes
Many of you reading this e-newsletter/ blog have already received an e-mail or text message from our office via Demandforce, a customer communication company that provides us with tools to connect electronically with our patients. Since we added this service a couple of months ago we are finding a number of benefits:
- E-mail appointment reminders instead of paper and postage
- Text messaging of appointment reminders instead of phone calls
- Reconnecting with patients who have moved
- Ability for patients to send us an e-mail at any time requesting an appointment
Since we began utilizing this method of communication we have received a number of very positive comments from our patients, although others have requested that we not contact them through the electronic media. We, of course immediately attempt to honor this request. Please know that we will not ask you to do anything over the Internet we wouldn’t do ourselves.
For those patients who appreciate the time saving features of communicating with e-mail and texting we plan on shortly offering electronic notification when your new glasses are completed or contact lens orders are in.
Interestingly there was a recent article in the business section of the New York Times titled “Just Give Me the Right to Be Forgotten.” It tells of the author’s desire to not be contacted by his dentist electronically, who coincidentally was using the our same electronic communication partner.
We were pleased to see that Demandforce was immediately responsive to the author’s desire not to be contacted electronically.
“My dentist said his office started using updated, automated communications to keep up with increasingly mobile patients who enjoy social networking but often change their contact information. (since I didn’t wish to be contacted by this method) he immediately agreed to delete some of my details from the system. Demandforce, the customer communications company, was equally responsive.
Rick Berry, its president, told me that the firm didn’t send out unsolicited e-mails; it merely acts like a communications representative of a small business, transmitting digital reminders where a dentist’s office might once have mailed postcards. He adds that the firm encrypts user data and adheres to health privacy regulations.”
To read the New York Times article on-line just follow the link below.
