What exactly is included in appointment booking automation?+
A complete scheduling system, not just a widget. We deploy a self-serve booking engine across every channel patients use — an embedded widget and standalone booking page for your website, the 'Book' button on your Google Business Profile, an Instagram entry point, and a WhatsApp booking flow. Behind it sits two-way sync with Google Calendar or your practice-management system, with doctor-wise rules encoded: consult versus procedure durations, buffers, OPD windows, leave days and holidays. On top run the slot-defence layers — automated T-24h and T-2h reminders with one-tap confirm/reschedule, no-show recovery sequences, and waitlist auto-fill that offers cancelled slots to waiting patients. Your front desk gets a unified dashboard and a training session, and you get a monthly report covering bookings by source, no-show rate, recovery rate and slot utilisation. We configure, monitor and tune all of it continuously — this is a managed service, not software handed over with a login.
How long does setup take before patients can book themselves?+
Two to three weeks for a typical clinic. Week one is rules mapping — the step most booking tools skip and the reason they fail. We sit with your front desk and document how scheduling actually works: which doctor takes which procedures, real durations, buffer needs, OT days, walk-in windows and how emergencies are absorbed. Week two is configuration and integration: encoding those rules, connecting your calendar or practice-management system two-way, embedding booking entry points on your website, GBP, Instagram and WhatsApp, and drafting reminder copy for your approval. We then soft-launch with front-desk override controls and monitor daily for a week, deliberately hunting for edge cases — a leave day that didn't sync, a buffer violated, a duration that runs long in practice. Multi-doctor and multi-location setups run three to five weeks because rules multiply. You'll know the go-live date in the first week, and we've never needed to rebuild after launch because the mapping was done properly first.
How does pricing work, and are there per-booking fees?+
Flat monthly retainers, no per-booking fees. Core is ₹10,000/month for self-serve booking across your channels with calendar sync and smart reminders. Growth is ₹18,000/month and adds the slot-defence layer — no-show recovery sequences, waitlist auto-fill, Instagram capture and bookings-by-source attribution — which is where most of the recovered revenue lives. Multi-location clinics and hospitals are custom-quoted based on departments, integration complexity and volume. If reminders run on WhatsApp, Meta's per-conversation API fees (typically ₹300–₹1,500/month for a single clinic) are passed through at cost; SMS reminders are billed similarly at operator rates. Setup and training are included in the first month — no separate onboarding fee. Billing is monthly in advance with a 90-day initial commitment, because no-show and utilisation numbers need one full optimisation cycle to stabilise. Most Growth-plan clinics recover the retainer several times over from prevented no-shows alone: at an average ₹800–₹1,500 consult value, preventing 25 no-shows a month pays for the system.
How is this different from your WhatsApp automation service?+
Booking automation is scheduling infrastructure; WhatsApp automation is a conversation engine. This service owns the calendar: slot logic, doctor rules, PMS sync, reminders, no-show recovery and waitlists — and it works across every channel, including for patients who book from your website or Google without ever opening a chat. WhatsApp automation owns the conversation: instant replies to enquiries, FAQ auto-answers, report-ready alerts, review requests and broadcast campaigns — of which in-chat booking is one flow. The practical way to choose: if your OPD has empty slots, phone-tag booking and 20% no-shows, start here. If your enquiries sit unanswered for hours and your review profile is silent, start with WhatsApp automation. They compose cleanly — the booking engine supplies live slots to WhatsApp conversations, and WhatsApp supplies the reminder channel with the 98% open rate — so clinics that run both get a combined-retainer discount and one integrated monthly report instead of two.
We're outside India, or our patients don't use WhatsApp. Does this work over SMS?+
Yes — the scheduling engine is channel-agnostic; only the reminder transport changes. For clinics in India, the UAE, the UK and Southeast Asia, reminders and waitlist offers run on WhatsApp because that's where patients actually read messages — we run exactly this stack for practices in Dubai, Singapore and London. For US practices, we deliver the identical logic over SMS/text: text-back booking links, T-24h and T-2h text reminders with confirm/reschedule, and no-show recovery texts, all sent from A2P 10DLC-registered numbers, which is the compliant route for US business texting under TCPA. Email runs alongside as a secondary channel for confirmations and calendar attachments in every region. Timezone handling, local-language templates (Arabic in the Gulf, Tagalog in Manila) and local phone formats are part of setup, not an afterthought. International clients are quoted in USD, AED, GBP or their local currency — the rupee prices on this page convert to roughly USD 120–220 per month for the standard tiers.
How do you handle patient data consent and DPDP compliance?+
Booking data is personal health-adjacent data, and we treat it that way. Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, every booking form we deploy states plainly what data is collected and why, links a privacy notice, and separates service communication (confirmations, reminders — necessary to deliver the appointment the patient requested) from marketing communication, which requires its own unbundled opt-in checkbox. Consent records are logged with source and timestamp, opt-outs work with one tap and are honoured permanently, and data is hosted on India-region infrastructure for Indian clinics with deletion requests supported end to end. Reminders are deliberately written to be minimally disclosive — they confirm that an appointment exists, not what it's for — which matters if a family member sees the phone, and matters more in sensitive specialties. For international deployments we map the same architecture onto local law: UK GDPR for London practices, PDPA for Singapore, and TCPA consent standards for the US SMS variant.
Will patients actually use self-serve booking, or do Indian patients prefer to call?+
Both happen, and the system is built for both. The data across our partner panel is unambiguous: once a working booking link exists, 55–65% of new bookings shift to self-serve within two months, and the majority of those arrive outside front-desk hours — demand that phone-only clinics never see. Age skews matter less than expected; the strongest adopters are working professionals of all ages who can't make calls during their own office hours. But we never remove the phone path. The front desk keeps full booking and override ability on the same calendar, walk-ins are absorbed through reserved windows, and patients who call are simply booked into the same engine — so reminders and no-show defence protect phone bookings too. The honest way to think about it: self-serve doesn't replace your receptionist; it removes the 8 minutes of phone tag per booking so your receptionist can look after the patient standing at the desk.
Can it handle multiple doctors, procedures with different durations, and our practice-management software?+
Yes — this is precisely where generic booking tools break and where we spend most of our setup effort. Each doctor gets their own rule set: which appointment types they take, real durations per procedure (a new orthopaedic consult is not a suture removal), buffers between appointments, OPD windows versus OT days, and personal leave. The engine only ever offers slots that satisfy every rule, which is why our partner clinics run at zero double-bookings. On integrations: we sync two-way with Google Calendar out of the box and integrate with the practice-management and HIS systems common in Indian clinics — if your PMS exposes an API or calendar feed, we connect it; where a legacy system doesn't, we establish a clean one-way protocol with front-desk reconciliation so the booking engine remains the source of truth. During the audit week we test your specific stack and tell you exactly what the integration will look like before you commit.
What results should we expect, and how fast?+
Three numbers move, on a predictable timeline. First, booking volume: clinics typically see a 20–45% lift within 90 days, driven almost entirely by after-hours capture — patients who would never have called can suddenly book at 10 PM. Second, no-show rate: automated T-24h and T-2h reminders with reschedule buttons cut no-shows 30–45% within the first full month, because most no-shows aren't rudeness, they're forgetfulness plus the awkwardness of cancelling by phone. Third, utilisation: with no-show recovery and waitlist auto-fill live (Growth plan), slot utilisation typically climbs to 88–94%. Front-desk time saved — usually 8–12 hours a week — shows up immediately. We baseline all four metrics during the audit week so improvement is measured against your reality, not an industry average, and the monthly report tracks them without vanity padding. If a number isn't moving by month two, the report says so, along with what we're changing — that honesty is why partner clinics stay.
Do international clients get billed in rupees?+
No — international clients are quoted and billed in their own currency. UAE clinics receive AED pricing, US and Singapore practices are quoted in USD, UK practices in GBP, and other Southeast Asian markets typically in USD. The rupee plans on this page translate to roughly USD 120 for Core and USD 215 for Growth per month, with identical deliverables and reporting calls scheduled in your timezone. Payment is by international card, wire or Wise, with tax documentation appropriate to your jurisdiction. Region-specific compliance is handled as part of setup: A2P 10DLC registration and TCPA-compliant consent for the US SMS variant, UK GDPR data-processing terms for London practices, PDPA alignment for Singapore, and UAE telecom rules for Gulf clinics. We currently run booking automation for healthcare providers in Dubai, Singapore and Delhi-NCR alike, and for clinics serving international medical-tourism patients — IVF, dental and cosmetic practices in India — we configure multi-timezone reminders and country-code-aware flows so a patient flying in from Nairobi or Manchester gets reminders that make sense for their journey.