Setting Automated Replies for Patient Chats

Automated Replies allow your practice to send an instant response when patients start a new chat or when a conversation has gone unanswered for a period of time. This helps reassure patients that their message has been received while they wait for a response from your team.

Accessing Automated Replies

1. Go to Practice Settings > Communication.
2. Click Edit replies in the Automated Replies section.

From this page, you can manage default replies, create custom replies, and control how automated messages are sent to patients.

Default Automated Replies

Every practice includes two built-in automated replies:

• Default business hours
• Default after hours

Both replies are active by default and can be customized to fit your practice's communication needs.

You can edit the message content of these replies or set them as inactive, but they cannot be deleted or have their criteria changed.

Note: We strongly recommend not setting them as inactive, as they can serve as fallback responses whenever no custom reply matches the patient's chat.

Creating a Custom Reply

Custom replies allow you to send different automated messages based on specific conditions, such as membership plans, locations, chat types, or business hours.

To create a new reply:

1. Open the Automated Replies page.
2. Click + Reply.
3. Configure the reply settings.
4. Click Save.

Reply Settings

Each reply includes the following options:

• Name
• Status
  • Active
  • Inactive
• Priority
  • Normal chat
  • Urgent chat
  • Both
• Availability
  • Business hours
  • After hours
  • All hours
• Chat Type
  • You can select one or more chat categories, or leave the setting as All chat types
• Location
  • Select one or more practice locations or choose All locations.
• Membership Plan
  • Select one or more membership plans or choose All membership plans.
• Response
  • Enter the message that patients will receive.
  • Response messages support:
  • Up to 1,000 characters
  • Basic formatting
  • Variables as $patientPreferredName

When Automated Replies Are Sent

Automated replies are triggered in two situations:

• New Chat: When a patient starts a new chat, an automated reply is sent immediately.
• Ongoing Chat: If a patient sends a new message in an existing conversation and at least 60 minutes have passed since the last message in that chat, an automated reply is sent again.

How Automated Replies are Sent

A patient's chat may match multiple automated replies. When this happens, the most specific matching reply is sent. Specificity is determined by the number of criteria that are configured with something other than All.

The following criteria each add one specificity point:

• Availability
• Chat Type
• Priority
• Location
• Membership Plan

The reply with the highest score is selected and sent to the patient.

Example

For an after-hours billing chat, the following replies may all match:

In this case, Reply B is sent because it has the highest specificity score.

Managing Existing Replies

From the Automated Replies table, you can manage any custom reply using the available actions.

Manage Reply: You can edit any of the reply settings. The Save button becomes available once changes are made and all required fields are completed.

Duplicate Reply: Create a copy of an existing reply with all settings pre-filled. As duplicate criteria are not allowed, you'll need to modify at least one criterion before saving.

Delete Reply: Permanently remove a custom automated reply. Deleted replies cannot be recovered.

Splitting a Message into Multiple Replies

If you want an automated response to appear as multiple chat messages instead of a single message, you can use the Split message button to insert a split marker (\n\n) where you want the message to break.

Note: his marker can only be inserted by clicking the button — typing \n\n manually in the Response field will not work.

When the automated reply is sent, each section separated by a split marker will appear as an individual chat message to the patient.

Important

• Each reply must have a unique combination of criteria, if a reply with the same criteria already exists, the reply cannot be saved.