What's included in SMS reminders
As outlined in this lesson, Embodia can send up to 3 SMS notifications for a consult. The content of each SMS is summarized below.
What's included in SMS reminders
24-hour reminder for a consult
Hello <Patient's first name>, This is friendly reminder that your <consult duration>-minute consult with <Practitioner's full name> is scheduled for tomorrow, <consult date>, at <consult start time>.
2-hour reminder for a consult
Hello <Patient's first name>, This is friendly reminder that your <consult duration>-minute consult with <Practitioner's full name> will start soon. It is scheduled for <consult date> at <consult start time>.
Custom reminder for a consult
Hello <Patient's first name>, This is friendly reminder that your <consult duration>-minute consult with <Practitioner's full name> is scheduled for <consult date> at <consult start time>.
Adding a signature to every SMS sent
If you would like to include additional information in the SMS, you can provide a generic signature that will be included in every SMS sent by Embodia on your behalf. To do so, click on the Settings tab in the top nav bar, and then on SMS under the Communication & branding section. Under the Signature section, click on the Edit icon, and provide your signature.
SMS cost considerations
Twilio is pay-as-you-go and you can find the pricing for Twilio SMS here. There are 2 costs for Twilio:
- A fixed monthly cost for the phone number, highlighted under the "Phone number pricing" table.
- A variable cost based on how many SMS you send per month and the length of those SMS highlighted under the "SMS/MMS Pricing" table. Twilio charges "per segment" (more on segments below). The fee per segment is dependent on your location, but for this example, let's assume it is $0.01. So if the SMS sent takes only 1 segment, the cost will be $0.01per SMS, if it takes 2, it will be $0.02
A Twilio SMS Segment is 153 characters. The default SMS sent by Embodia has the following format:
Hello {patient_first_name}. This is a friendly reminder that your {duration}-minute consult with {practitioner_full_name} is scheduled for {date} at {time}.
- {duration} is usually 1 to 3 characters, but most of the cases 2 characters (such as "60")
- {date} has the following format: {day_of_the_week} {month} {date}, {year}. So the longest this can be is for a Wednesday (the day of the week that has the most characters) in September (the month of the year that has the most characters) which 28 characters
- {time}: is usually 13 characters (including the time zone)
So the default SMS sent can have up to 132 characters + the number of characters in the practitioner's full name + the number of characters in the patient's first name. If the practitioner's full name and the patient's first name is less than 21 characters, then the default SMS on Embodia will only take up one segment on Twilio. If you add a signature to the SMS (as outlined above), then you need to add the number of characters in the signature to determine the number of segments.