Dentist “fills” my need for technology

Today's post is a guest post from a good friend of mine, Nate Hines. Nate had a pretty interesting experience with his dentist taking advantage of new technology and asked me if my readers might enjoy hearing his story. If you still think texting is just for teenagers and twenty-somethings, read on.

On my way to lunch the other day, I received a text message from my dentist's office, Hiple Family Dentistry, that read something like this:

Dr. Hiple offers free text reminders for your appointments. To subscribe to this free service, reply with 'Y' or 'N'.

I'll admit, I was pretty surprised by the message, and since I typically schedule my next dentist appointments at the conclusion of each appointment, it's usually difficult to keep track of the date six months in advance. Plus I almost always lose the little reminder card they give you. A text message reminder service is definitely a good fit for me, so I replied with a 'Y' and received a message shortly afterwards confirming that I had been enrolled in the service.

A good sign

A month or two later I received a text message reminding me that my next scheduled appointment was in two weeks. As usual, I'd lost the reminder card and didn't realize I had an appointment approaching, so the text reminder was very helpful. And it was much more convenient than receiving a phone call from the receptionist. I received another message a couple of days before the appointment along these lines:

You have an appointment with Dr. Hiple on Dec 15 @ 9:15 a.m. Reply with 'Y' to confirm.

Once again this was more convenient than the typical receptionist call, but I began to wonder if Dr. Hiple's office had fully adopted this technology. Would sending a text message with the letter 'Y' really be enough to confirm my appointment? Or would I still receive a phone call from the receptionist asking me to confirm as well?

A close call

The day before my appointment "Dr. Hiple's Office" displayed on my cell phone as it rang, and I was immediately disappointed. I thought for sure this was the receptionist calling to confirm my appointment. Reluctantly I took the call and was relieved to hear that they were calling only to ask me if I could take an earlier appointment due to some scheduling conflicts. I was happy to take the earlier appointment and ever happier that they were not calling to re-confirm my appointment.

As a software engineer and Internet entrepreneur, I'm always paying close attention to new uses of technology. I must say I was thoroughly impressed with Dr. Hiple's office. Perhaps even more enjoyable then the text message confirmation service, was the fact that I got to watch an entire episode of The Office on Hulu while they cleaned and examined my teeth. I'm just glad it was an episode I had already seen or I would have been laughing 'til it hurt!

Mr Noobie says: If your dentist office doesn't use text message reminders, set up one up yourself using PingMe, a free Internet service.