How to build a WhatsApp chatbot for your clinic

Start from what customers actually send. Patients ask which doctor is available, clinic timings, consultation fees, whether reports are ready, and how to reschedule.

Then look at what goes wrong today:

• Staff on phone all day booking appointments. Your receptionist spends 3 hours daily taking appointment calls — time that could go to actual patient care.
• 20-30% of patients don't show up. An empty consultation slot at 11 AM — the patient forgot, no one reminded them. Doctor's time wasted.
• Post-visit follow-up never happens. Patient visited for high BP check. Nobody followed up in 2 weeks. They went to a different clinic next time.

Each of these is a conversation with a predictable shape — a question, a lookup, a confirmation. That shape is what a chatbot handles well.

1. Which doctor or speciality? A list message — General physician, Paediatrics, Gynaecology, Orthopaedics — or the doctor's name for returning patients.
2. New or follow-up visit? They may need different slot lengths.
3. When? That doctor's open slots over the next few days.
4. Patient details — name, age, and whether the booking is for someone else (a child, a parent). Returning patients skip this.
5. Confirm with the doctor, time, fee, what to bring, and the address.

Notice what the business side does: it answers with the specific detail (time, reference, next step), it asks for one thing at a time, and it gives the customer a one-word way to reply. Those three habits matter more than how clever the bot is.

A chatbot must never diagnose, reassure or advise about symptoms. When a message describes a symptom — "fever for three days", "chest pain", "my child has a rash" — the bot sends one fixed reply: if this is an emergency, call emergency services or go to the nearest emergency department now; otherwise, a member of the clinical team will reply, and here is the earliest appointment. The chat goes to clinical staff. Write this reply once, have a doctor approve it, and never let the bot improvise around it.

Reputoo supports both, and most clinics end up using both:

• Keyword flows — a fixed menu or trigger word ("MENU", "BOOK", "STATUS") leads down a set path. Predictable, easy to audit, right for anything with a fixed answer.
• AI chatbot — reads the customer's own words and answers from your knowledge base (website, price list, policies). Right for the long tail of questions nobody wrote a menu item for.

A sensible start for a clinic: keyword flows for the top two or three tasks, AI for everything else, and a person behind both.

• Clinic timings, each doctor's days and hours, holidays.
• Consultation fees, and which insurance or TPA arrangements you accept.
• Directions, parking, which floor.
• What to bring — previous reports, prescriptions, insurance card, fasting instructions for particular tests if your doctors have written them.
• "Are my reports ready?" — if report status is kept in the system.

Many bookings are made by one person for another — a parent for a child, an adult for an elderly parent. The bot should ask whose appointment it is, record the patient's name and age separately from the person messaging, and send the confirmation to the number that booked while keeping the patient record correct. Consent for sharing reports with a family member should be recorded, not assumed.

• Complaints, refunds and anything where the customer is upset.
• Anything involving money the bot cannot see — a disputed bill, a custom quote.
• Health, safety or legal questions — for clinics this is most of the clinical or advisory detail.
• Any customer who asks for a human. Do not make them ask twice.

For clinics specifically: symptoms, medication questions and anything urgent must reach clinical staff — and the automated reply should say so plainly.

Handover on Reputoo moves the chat into the shared inbox with the conversation so far, so staff never ask the customer to repeat themselves.

1. Connect your WhatsApp number to Reputoo (official API; takes minutes).
2. Add your website and documents to the knowledge base so the AI answers in your clinic's own terms.
3. Build keyword flows for the top tasks above. What to connect: A clinic or hospital management system with doctor schedules; bookings made on WhatsApp need to land there.
4. Choose who gets handed-over chats, and during which hours.
5. Test from a personal phone, then share the number or a QR code with customers.

From the reminder, patients can confirm, reschedule or cancel in two taps. Rescheduling offers the same doctor's next open slots of the same length. A cancelled slot can be offered to patients waiting for an earlier appointment with that doctor. Frequent late cancellations can be flagged to reception, but the bot should never lecture a patient about them.

Patients write in the language they are most comfortable in, especially when they are worried. Keyword flows need the local words for common requests; the AI chatbot understands the rest and replies in the patient's language. The fixed symptom reply should exist in every language your patients use, each version checked by someone fluent.

Clinical handovers should reach a nurse or doctor, not general reception, with the patient's name, age, the message in their own words, and any photos they sent. The bot tells the patient roughly when someone will reply — and repeats the emergency instruction if the message sounds urgent. Reception handovers (billing, directions, complaints) go to a different queue.

• Book with each doctor, as a new and a returning patient.
• Book for a child and for an elderly parent.
• Type several symptom messages, including urgent-sounding ones, and check the fixed reply and the routing each time.
• Reschedule from the reminder and check the slot is released.
• Ask for fees, timings and directions in each language your patients use.

Clinics that run walk-in hours can let patients take a token by WhatsApp before leaving home: the bot issues a number, shows roughly how many patients are ahead, and messages when their turn is close. Patients wait at home instead of in a crowded room, and reception stops shouting names. It works only if staff update the queue as patients are seen.

Many clinics run a lab or partner with one. The bot can book a test, share the preparation instructions your doctors have written (fasting, timing, what to avoid), and, where you offer it, book a home sample collection with an address and time window. The "reports ready" message closes the loop. Test interpretation stays with the doctor.

At night the bot still books appointments for the coming days and answers administrative questions. Any symptom message gets the fixed reply with the emergency instruction first, and is queued for clinical staff in the morning with a note of when it arrived. The patient is told plainly when someone will read it, so nobody waits for a reply that will not come overnight.

Older patients, and family members booking for them, benefit from short messages, large obvious buttons and a way to reach a person quickly. Keep lists short, avoid long menus, and offer "Call me" as a button that puts a callback on reception's list. Voice notes from patients should reach a person, since some find typing difficult.

Watch bookings made without reception, reschedules made from reminders instead of no-shows, and the morning phone queue. Read handovers weekly: administrative questions the bot passes on point to missing information; clinical handovers should be routed correctly every time, and any that were not are fixed that day.

"How much is a consultation?" and "do you take my insurance?" are asked constantly. The bot answers from the fee list and the insurer list, tells patients what to bring for a cashless or reimbursement claim, and sends receipts on WhatsApp after payment. Specific coverage questions go to the billing desk, because only the insurer can confirm them.

A short administrative check the day after a procedure — "Do you have everything you need — prescription, next appointment, reports?" with [All set] [I need help] — catches missing paperwork before the patient calls. "I need help" goes to reception. It must not ask how the patient feels medically; clinical follow-up is the doctor's.

When a doctor is away, the bot should stop offering their slots before patients try to book them, and patients already booked should get a message offering another doctor of the same speciality or the first date after the leave, with buttons to choose. Update leave in the scheduling system once and the bot, the reminders and reception all follow it.