A quick check-in, timed to prompt the next booking
The follow-up SMS is the text-message version of the follow-up email — it fires at the same point, once an appointment is marked completed, but arrives as a quick, low-friction check-in rather than a fuller message. Of the four automated appointment texts, this is the only one sent after the fact, which gives it a different job: not setting expectations or preventing a no-show, but closing the loop and, ideally, opening the door to the next visit.
A text is arguably the better format for this particular moment — a patient who just left your clinic is far more likely to tap a rebooking link from a text a few minutes or hours later than to open and act on an email. If your clinic only has the bandwidth to make one of these two follow-up templates genuinely good, this is usually the one worth the extra attention.
- What marks an appointment "completed" and triggers this send
- Writing a short check-in that also prompts rebooking
- How Generate with AI drafts the message text, and what to check before you save
- Where a sent follow-up text shows up afterward for a given patient
What actually triggers the send
Like the email, this fires once an appointment is marked completed — the only one of the four templates tied to a visit that already happened rather than one that's upcoming. An appointment that's cancelled or never marked completed won't trigger this message, so if a follow-up text doesn't seem to have gone out, checking the appointment's status is the first thing to verify.
Writing a check-in that also does some work
The editor is the familiar single message-text field, placeholder toolbar, and live character count. Because this text arrives when the patient is likely still thinking about the visit, a short thank-you plus a direct rebooking link tends to outperform a plain thank-you alone — you're catching the patient at the moment they're most likely to act, not weeks later when they've moved on. Keep it brief: a completed-visit reference, a thank-you, and a link, is usually enough.
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Message text | The SMS body, with inline placeholders for the completed visit's details. |
| Placeholder toolbar | Inserts patient name, the completed appointment's date, and practitioner. |
| Character count | Live count to catch a message before it spills into a second billed SMS segment. |
| Generate with AI | Drafts a short, rebooking-oriented message for you to review, described below. |
Generate with AI on this page
See "Generate with AI" for Messages for where else this button appears across ClinyPal, and AI in ClinyPal: Overview for the fail-soft design philosophy behind it.
Open the follow-up SMS template
Go to <strong>Settings > Follow-up SMS Template</strong>.
Draft with AI or write it yourself
Click <strong>Generate with AI</strong> for a starting point, or write the message directly.
Check for a rebooking prompt
Add a link to your online booking page if your clinic wants this message to drive return visits.
Save your changes
Click <strong>Save</strong>. The wording applies to follow-ups sent from that point forward.
Its email counterpart
The email follow-up has room for a fuller message — care instructions, a longer thank-you, more context — while this SMS is built to be quick and immediately actionable. Many clinics send both: the text as the fast nudge, the email as the more considered version that arrives slightly later.