For private clinics in India
Appointment reminders for clinics, sent on WhatsApp
A confirmation when you accept the booking. A reminder the day before. Another two hours before the visit. Nobody at your front desk sends any of them.
14 days free. No card. Cancel from your dashboard.
In one paragraph
What is an appointment reminder system?
An appointment reminder is an automatic message sent to a patient before their visit so they either turn up or tell you in time that they cannot. FormAlert sends three messages off every booking, on WhatsApp. The confirmation goes out the moment you accept the appointment. A reminder follows 24 hours before the visit, while there is still time for the patient to move it. A second reminder goes 2 hours before, as a last nudge. Nobody at the front desk types any of them, and nothing depends on someone remembering. The 24-hour and 2-hour reminders are on the Business plan at ₹1,999 a month, which also gives the clinic its own WhatsApp Business number so the messages arrive under the clinic's name rather than a shared one. Booking confirmations are included on every plan, including the free trial.
The sequence
When does each message go out?
Four messages come off one appointment. You accept the booking and mark the visit complete; everything between those two actions happens on its own.
The moment you accept the booking — confirmation
The patient gets a WhatsApp message with the doctor, the date, the time and where to come. This is the message that makes the appointment feel real: a booking nobody acknowledged is one the patient half-assumes did not go through. Included on every plan, including the free trial.
24 hours before — the reminder that can still change something
Far enough out that a patient who has a conflict can reply and move the slot, which turns a no-show into an opening you can give to someone else. This is the reminder that does the real work. Business plan.
2 hours before — the last nudge
Short, and aimed at the patient who meant to come and lost track of the day. Too late to reschedule, early enough to leave the house. Business plan.
After the visit — the review request
You mark the appointment complete and the Google review request goes out on the same WhatsApp thread, while the visit is still fresh. Included on every plan.
Why it is built this way
Why WhatsApp, and why two reminders?
Why WhatsApp and not SMS?
In India, transactional SMS is routinely filtered, blocked by DLT registration problems, or simply never opened. WhatsApp is where patients already read messages. We do not sell an SMS add-on, and we will not — if SMS reminders are a hard requirement for you, FormAlert is the wrong product and we would rather say so now.
- Messages arrive in the same thread as the booking confirmation
- The patient can reply to reschedule instead of calling during clinic hours
- On Business, replies land in one inbox your whole front desk can see
Why two reminders instead of one?
They do different jobs. The 24-hour message exists so a patient who cannot make it says so while the slot is still sellable. The 2-hour message exists for the patient who fully intended to come. One reminder has to be either useful for rescheduling or useful for prompting, and it cannot be both.
- 24 hours: recovers the slot
- 2 hours: recovers the patient
- Both are editable from settings — wording, and how far ahead they go
Plans
Which plan includes reminders?
Said plainly here so it is not a surprise in week two: the timed reminders before the visit are a Business plan feature. The confirmation after booking is on every plan.
Starter
₹999/month — booking confirmation to the patient, an alert to you on every booking, and the Google review request after the visit. No 24-hour or 2-hour reminders.
Business
₹1,999/month — everything in Starter, plus reminders 24 hours and 2 hours before every appointment, sent from your clinic's own WhatsApp Business number.
Honest limits
What this does not do
What this doesn't do
It does not chase patients who ignore the reminders — there is no escalating sequence and no phone call. It does not send SMS. It cannot remind a patient about an appointment that is not in FormAlert, so it does not work as an add-on to a calendar you keep somewhere else. And it is not a chatbot: if a patient replies with a real question, a person on your team answers it.
Common questions
Questions clinics ask about reminders
Reminders are scheduled off the appointment itself, not sent by a person. When you accept a booking, FormAlert immediately queues a WhatsApp confirmation, a reminder for 24 hours before the appointment time, and a second reminder for 2 hours before. If the appointment is rescheduled, the queued reminders move with it. If it is cancelled, they are dropped. Nothing sits on a list waiting for someone at the front desk to work through it.
The 24-hour and 2-hour reminders are on the Business plan, ₹1,999 a month. Starter, at ₹999 a month, includes the booking confirmation to the patient, an alert to you on every new booking, and the Google review request after the visit — but not the timed reminders before it. The free trial matches Starter. If reminders are the reason you are here, Business is the plan you want.
Yes. Every message template is editable from your settings — your clinic's name, preparation instructions, where to park, what to bring. If you would rather start from something written, there is a free library of confirmation, reminder and reschedule templates in English and Hindi you can copy.
Yes, within what WhatsApp allows. Most clinics leave them at 24 hours and 2 hours because those are the two moments that do different jobs, but the timing is a setting rather than something hard-coded.
Nothing is required of them — a reminder is not a confirmation request, and a patient who reads it and turns up has done what it was for. If a patient does reply, the message lands in your dashboard as a normal WhatsApp conversation, and on the Business plan your front desk answers it from one shared inbox. Silence is not treated as a cancellation, and the slot stays booked.
Yes. They reply to the thread and your staff offers another slot, which is the whole point of sending the first reminder 24 hours ahead rather than an hour before. On Starter the reminders are not sent, but patients can still reply to the confirmation message the same way.
We will not give you a number, because we do not have one we can source. What we can tell you is what the system does: one message 24 hours before, while there is still time to change the appointment, and one 2 hours before. You know what an empty slot costs your clinic and roughly how many you lose in a month. Count them for a month before you change anything and count them again after — your own before-and-after is worth more than anyone's published average, including ours.
Email yes, SMS no. In India, SMS is filtered or ignored too often for us to charge you for it. WhatsApp is the channel patients actually read, and it is the one the whole system is built around.
Yes, as long as the appointment is in FormAlert. Your staff types in a phone or walk-in booking and it gets the same confirmation and the same reminders as one a patient made online. The reminders come off the appointment, not off how it was created.
Yes — the timed reminders are a Business plan feature and Business gives your clinic its own WhatsApp Business API number. Meta has to verify that number, so we set it up with you rather than it being self-serve. It is usually live within about a week.
Not really. Reminders are scheduled off appointments that live in FormAlert, so it works as your booking system rather than as a reminder tool bolted onto a different calendar. Setup takes about 20 minutes on Starter.
Related
The rest of the system
Reminders are the middle of three jobs. Patients have to get booked in first, and the visit has to turn into something afterwards.
Try it on your own patients for 14 days
Start on Starter and see the confirmations and review requests going out today. If it is the reminders you want, book a demo and we will set up your clinic's own WhatsApp number with you.
14 days free. No card. Cancel from your dashboard.
In short
FormAlert is an appointment booking system for private clinics in India that combines online, QR code and WhatsApp booking, automated reminders and Google review requests in one tool. Patients book from a web page, by scanning a QR code at the clinic, or by messaging the clinic on WhatsApp. FormAlert confirms the appointment, reminds the patient before the visit, and asks for a Google review afterwards, without anyone at the clinic typing a message. Starter is ₹999/month and includes appointment confirmations, doctor alerts and Google review requests, with WhatsApp messages at ₹1 each against an included ₹500 monthly wallet. Business is ₹1,999/month and adds 24-hour and 2-hour reminders plus the clinic's own WhatsApp Business API number and templates, which FormAlert sets up. Both plans include a 14-day free trial with no card.