Sending Text Messages as the Office's Main Number
- Cory Hoover
When NextPatient assigns a number to your office for text messaging purposes, we attempt to assign a number known to your local region so it is familiar to your clients when they receive a message, however, some regions are so condensed, that we have no local numbers available to choose from and have to expand to any number in the same area code. Unfortunately, there are times where a number in the same area code is not always available leaving some offices to request to have their own number used as the assigned texting, or SMS, number.
Most people do not realize but most telephone numbers are capable of having two registrations, one for phone services like calling and a second for SMS, but in the case of landline and some VOIP services, the SMS registration is rarely completed by the service provider because they do not offer such services. It is also possible to have two different companies manage these registrations; for example, your phone company can handle your typical phone services on your landline while NextPatient registers your SMS service for use with our system.
How to use your office number?
Notify your NextPatient Account Manager; we will validate the number for SMS registration. If validation is successful, we will initiate the registration process.
To finalize the process, we would have a conference call between you, the registration service, and NextPatient to provide permission to the number.
Depending on availability, most porting requests can be completed in 24-48 hours.
We are unable to assign a single SMS number to multiple locations. Each location in NextPatient must have its own unique number. While offices sometimes only promote one number, often times individual offices may have tracking DIDs for each location that may be suitable for SMS purposes.
What if another company has already registered your number for similar services?
We often have clients who come to us from other companies providing similar services and they would like to have their number reregistered with us and the process to resolve this is quite simple. After notifying your account manager in the process above, contact the former service provider and have them “release” the number. This may be different from simple disabling or deactivating services so it is important to speak to the account manager or support department to specifically request for their process to “release the number for SMS registration with another provider”.