Reaching back out to patients who called you while you were out of the office can be time-consuming. Thankfully, Aloha can help give you that time back by taking incoming calls while you're out so the patient can still receive that personal touch. We'll even be able to give patients different messages depending on if they're an existing patient or a new one!
The goal with the call forwarding is to give patients/leads action items to schedule their next appointment and reduce phone call follow-ups for you. If you're already using our online/mobile app scheduling this is the perfect scheduling assistant.
Find your Aloha Number
First, we need to locate your assigned Aloha number.
Go to the Gear Icon >PHONE and on this page, you will see your Office Phone Number as well as your Aloha Phone Number. (Write this number down and put it next to your main office phone. You will need this number each night before you leave.)
How To Connect the Answering Service
Depending on your phone provider's features, there are a few ways to forward your phone.
If your phone provider has a dashboard or an online portal to access, there may be settings where you can set up the call forwarding to automatically enable/disable off your desired schedule.
An alternative way is to dial in manually from your phone:
Dial star-seven-two (*72) from your landline phone
Listen for three beeps followed by dial tone
Dial the 10 digit phone number to which your calls are to be forwarded. If you typically have to dial a 1 and the area code to reach the number, do so here as well.
Listen for a confirmation tone. When the tone is sounded, the forward is active.
STOP CALL FORWARDING
When you get into the office in the morning you will need to stop call forwarding so that you can answer incoming calls!
When you want to stop forwarding your calls, simply dial star-seven-three (*73) from your landline telephone.
If *72 and *73 do not work, you will need to contract your Phone Provider on the forwarding process.
This process is easy to do and you can enter the numbers on the dial pad in less than a minute & be on your way. The caller will NOT know the difference. The phone doesn’t tell the caller that it’s forwarding the caller to a different number!
If you'd like to test out the call forwarding message and settings further, you can test the feature by dialing into your assigned Aloha number directly.
If you don't have access to this feature, reach out to our team to learn more about it!