How AI Texts Turn Old Patients Into New Appointments

Your next wave of appointments might already be sitting in your spreadsheet. We’re joined by Dan from Flexxable.com to talk about the most overlooked lever in marketing: reactivating the patients and customers you already paid to acquire. If you’re in chiropractic, dentistry, med spas, or any appointment-based business, you’ve probably felt it, people come in once, vanish, and the team goes right back to chasing cold traffic. 

Dan shares a simple, practical system built for how people actually behave in 2026: stop blasting deals and start with a question. We walk through his two-text SMS framework that can generate shockingly high reply rates, then hand the conversation to conversational AI that books the appointment quickly. The emphasis is on short, clean interactions that get to the calendar fast, because long back-and-forth texting is where leads die. We also get into the operational side: uploading a CSV, using HighLevel, and why this can be live in under 24 hours for many businesses. 

Then we zoom out to what’s next in AI automation. Dan explains why the best use cases aren’t always “more leads,” but solving the most painful bottlenecks inside a business, like aftercare support, repetitive front-desk questions, and voice AI receptionists that never miss a call. We also touch on privacy realities in healthcare and why transparency matters as voice AI gets eerily smooth. 

If you want more predictable revenue without doubling your ad budget, hit play, take notes, and share this with a business owner who’s sitting on a dormant list. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what would you automate first in your practice?

Get Dan's book here: The Flexxable Book

And check Dan out on the web:

Skool: https://www.skool.com/ai-automation-agency 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danwardrope  

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheOfficialDanWardrope 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dan_wardrope 

Instagram: https://instagram.com/danwardrope    

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Transcript

Welcome And The Real Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Marketing 101. I've got a special guest this week, all the way from the UK, Mr. Dan from Flexible.com. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Thank you, Enrica. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Yeah, I was really interested in what you have to offer. You are solving a major issue for many businesses, all businesses, but when it comes to healthcare, uh, we help all these people. They go into our system and they disappear. And we're always chasing the new patients and we forget about all of our old patients. But you have a few different solutions, I think, that are absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Yeah. Let's talk about that. I mean, AI is everything right now. It's such a useful tool. I mean, thousands of tools in AI. And you guys are staying on top of it when it comes to not only recalls, but patient acquisition, patient reacquisition, uh, especially in the healthcare fields.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Yeah. And this works just to just to be clear, this works in any industry, in any vertical, in any niche. And it's the it's the kind of biggest um secret. Like the worst, the worst secret in the whole industry is because people are constantly spending on advertising and trying to chase new businesses

The Hidden Value In Old Patients

SPEAKER_01 1:10

when most of the time there's a pot of gold right under their nose and they they they just don't know how to market to that, and they ignore it because they think you know they might have to hire a salesperson to call these people, or they might have to write special emails or whatever to you to be able to get them back in. Um and it's just never done. It's not done well. And what we've figured out is how to across all industries, including healthcare and chiropractors and dentists, is how to go back out to these old customers or unconverted customers and turn them back into appointments and bums on seats. Um, you know, eventually.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, I've been harping for 10 years about um building and nurturing your list and how important a list was. Because 10 years ago, people didn't even save emails. They'd run these businesses and they wouldn't even save the email. I'm like, can you please just save the emails, the names, the phone numbers in a database? You're gonna thank me later. Uh, there's many different ways. Then we got into email marketing when people were actually opening their emails, SMS marketing when people weren't getting 400 spam texts per day. And now uh now we have other systems that you've developed that are savvy that work for people to actually help recall them. So you do the talking from here. Explain how this works and where we are in 2026 when it comes to uh not marketing in general, just the psychology. How do we reach people? I find that's the hardest part right now. We're almost being ghosted and ignored no matter what we try.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, exactly. Um so where do I start with this? So let's say let's say you have a you're you have a um let's say you've got a chiropractor with like maybe a thousand old

The Two-Text SMS Rebooking Method

SPEAKER_01 2:55

patients. Okay. Um the worst thing that they want to be hit with over and over again is a random broadcast message every month that tries to sell them on the latest deal or offer or whatever that might be that the um practice is pushing at that time. So, what we've figured out how to do is reach out to customers um using what I call uh it's like a two-line SMS, if that makes sense. So the first SMS says something along the lines of, hi, it's Enrico here from XYZ Chiropractor. Is this the same George that came in a few months ago for um treatment? Question mark. Okay, so we need to um we we don't want to start with an offer, we want to start with a question where where there's gonna be a high response rate. Okay, so once that message goes out, it's almost always a yes, especially if they're a previous customer. So you're gonna get between uh uh a 60% and 90% response rate with that single single message, okay? And after they say back yes, then what we want to do is um get back with the second part of the message, which is my manager asked me to call, but I don't like calling and spamming people. Are you looking for more help? Or you know, whatever the version of that message might be. So again, that individual is on their back, is not on their back foot. They're understanding that they're not being sold and spammed. And then after that, they respond and say, Yeah, actually, I might be, or no, I'm not. But if they say yes, then we can use AI to be able to go back and forth with that lead and book them into an appointment for their specific problem, whatever that, whatever that might be. Um, so if you're looking at a thousand old customers and you're getting a you know, six or seven hundred replies over a month, then it could be that you're booking 60 or 70 appointments back into your uh practice without any advertising spend, some some SMS costs, and and and

AI Follow-Up That Books Appointments

SPEAKER_01 5:10

that's about it. Okay, so back in the day you would have to hire someone to call those leads, or you would have to rely on some kind of email marketing to be able to get them back in. Whereas now you can you can message people and you can use AI to do all the heavy lifting and the booking in, um, which means it's incredibly cheap to run and incredibly profitable, especially for businesses that are struggling to make their cold traffic work, or spending on advertising, but they don't seem to be getting an an ROI. And the beauty of this is it doesn't have to be done once. You can do it over and over again for different offers during the year. Um, you know, you can have a Valentine's Day deal, you can have a Christmas deal, a New Year deal, you know, whatever might be applicable to that time of the year for that business. So it's just a uh it's a really practical, easy, and the AI behind it's incredibly simple as well. Just a very easy way to get new customers or patients with very little legwork and and and time and effort. It's just very easy.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, it's just you keep saying easy. I mean, it's it is uh such a simple way to market. I mean, because you already have the database. So you're not the most expensive thing is acquisition of new customers. So um when you're sitting on this and frustrated about you know the the old school, and that's typically what most chiropractors are doing. They're sending a monthly email newsletter uh on tips and the new offer, and that's about it, or maybe a spam SMS uh through their third-party software that they use to say um happy summer or something like that, or here's our summer deal, which of course has low response rates on that, and may even get some DNSs on that as well. So, what have you been finding with AI? I mean, obviously it's being optimized all the time and getting better. The conversational bots are getting smarter through the whole thing. And what's the onboarding process for you? It's obviously customized to that business, and there's a little bit of a learning curve at the beginning, but you guys do all that, right? You program that.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, it's again, this

Setup, Tools, And Best Practices

SPEAKER_01 7:15

is why I love what we do, is because it's always going to be a valuable offer to businesses, and the AI behind it's not difficult at all. So all we would need, um we use high level to be able to do this, right? But all we would need is a CSV file of the old leads. We load them up into high level. We have the two-line SMS that I explained about. Um, and that just goes back and forth and books the appointment and straight into the the chiropractor calendar or whatever business that is. So it can be set up and running in in less than 24 hours. It's a very simple, very simple build. Um, but as far as how clever the conversational AI is becoming, I mean it's it's off the charts now, it's really um impressive. But what we've learned as well is that you don't want to have really long conversations via SMS. You want to um get the response from the first SMS and immediately book them into the appointment so the receptionist or the salesperson can do the qualification closing. Because if you imagine having a conversation that goes on for you know many back and forths via SMS, life gets in the way, you know, the kid it starts crying or you know, whatever, and it just uh it just fizzles out. So you want to go in for the kill quickly and book the appointment and worry about the qualification there.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Right. Yeah, sure and sweet, uh to the point, and close them as quickly as possible. And then the rest is all automated, low friction to transaction. They can click a link, book an appointment, it's in there, and then your system does the confirmation stuff, whether it's in person or again automated through your clinic. Sounds simple. Now you have you've written a book on this mainly for agencies, but the teachings are behind there in the book on um how automation actually works and how AI is doing this and how you're doing this, right? And how to use it in your business. Um instant AI agency, right? How do people download that or get it or or learn from it?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Well, it's an Amazon bestseller. Um, so you can get it on Amazon, the hard copy. Um, so what I'll do is give you a link to where that is on Amazon after this call, but also we've got a digital copy of the book, which I think I think on Amazon it's $37 and the digital copy is $14.40. So if you want instant access, you can just get the book through um through the link that I'll send you afterwards. Uh but yeah, that's that's that's how you get your hands on it.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

And then it's and then everything's in there. You took the time to do that uh uh for agencies to to utilize these tools, but as business owners, knowing the information is useful for us because then we know who to delegate that work to, people like you at flexible.com or people that are knowledgeable in that stream of automation and AI, right? Because a lot of claims are out there that they can do all your marketing for you, and then you hire them, they get on board, and they're missing all these simple things. And where are we you know, how are we nurturing these leads? How are we reconnecting with these leads? Why are we always acquiring leads? These leads are a pain in the butt, and uh we never reach back to them after 30 days. And these are all business problems that I think I deal with as I coach a lot of healthcare providers on this is the same thing. Why are we chasing all these leads when we only convert about 28%? And out of the 28%, 50 show 50 show up. So they know their conversions, they know the numbers of marketing, and uh because that's where the money is being siphoned, but on the back end, you're sitting on an entire gold mine. So I'm really uh appreciative of what you've designed there. Um, yeah, where do you think this is all going? I mean, it's moving so fast. I feel every month, not only is it getting better, but is it gonna switch again very quickly and have a new tool that's even better or faster, or where do you see this going?

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Well, I think I mean if I if I look at what I'm seeing with my own clients, and I teach this a lot to students as well, is that every business, yeah, yes, there's gonna be some templated solutions, but every business has different pain points. For example,

Beyond Marketing: Solving Business Pain

SPEAKER_01 11:25

my the best man in my wedding back um in Australia um is a plastic surgeon. Okay, so I got on a call with him and I explained the system, the database reactivation stuff with with SMS, and he's like, Dan, I'm like I'm book solid, right? That's not my problem now. And then and then he was like, Well, and I was like, Well, what is your problem? Well, where are you struggling? What is the most painful part of your business? And he said, without a doubt, aftercare. Okay, so after someone's had surgery, then they're constantly calling in, um, taking up the nurses' times, and just it's just extremely painful and expensive for him as a business owner. And I said, So do you have like procedures written out for for all of this stuff, the SOPs? He's like, Yeah, of course. I mean, that's what the nurses work off, right? I'm like, brilliant. Well, what we can do is um download that knowledge database, build um you can you can build a chat bot that people can um on a landing page that they can just ask that can be sent to them as a link. Um, or you can now you can start using voice AI. So you build that knowledge database. You have Amy the the practice nurse that is actually AI. It's trained on everything the nurses have been using over the past 10 years, and it just answers every question perfectly, and there's no need for the um the nurses anymore. Well, the nurses can do other stuff, right? Which is not not so not so time consuming and boring for them. So it's a win-win because he gets more efficient workers inside his business. Um, the staff are much happier because they're sick of answering the same questions over and over again, and he now has an AI solution which um is much more valuable to him than new customers. So my point is where are things heading? It depends on where the pain points are inside the business owner, business owner's business. So um, and that usually comes from that individual. So I would have to be talking to the people in your audience and find out you know where that pain point is, and then you can go and design an AI solution off the back of that that helps that helps the business. For example, we have um one of my students came in and he um was working with mortgage brokers, okay, and he figured out that a lot of the times a decision in principle was sent out for mortgage brokers, um, but the the individual took a long time to sign that documentation and get it back. So he bought he he um built what was called a document collection AI solution. So every time the decision in principle and the document was sent out, he had to they had to scan their passports and have proof of address and utility bills and all whatever that is to be able to send it back in. He can now totally automate that and get and go for somewhere like 50% back, packs back, to you know, almost 100% because he's using AI to um to solve that problem. So what I see is if there's got a lot of smart people on this planet, they're gonna start solving all of these problems, and businesses are gonna be like your audience are gonna become vastly more profitable because they're making more from what they've already got. Um they're able to have staff efficiencies and and cost efficiencies, which means they're gonna become more profitable. Um, and from what I see happening from there, I don't know because then it might start being a bit of a race to the bottom because people's margins are suddenly becoming much higher, and maybe people start charging less and things get cheaper. That's what I suspect is going to happen. Um yeah, I'm not sure I could be wrong, but I think there's gonna be a lot of people that perhaps are out of jobs and moving on to universal credit or whatever that might be, which means they haven't got as much money, which means things are gonna have to get cheaper anyway. So yeah, who knows? I'm not smart enough to predict what's gonna happen. But from what I seen working with business, we take we we've seen them just make so much more money so quickly that it's a real goal rush at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Yeah, I mean, in our profession, uh we're on the phone a lot. That's a pain point. It's just a lot of phone calls for a lot of the same repetitive questions all the time. Can I get my receipts? Can I make an appointment? Can I, you know, get my ledger for the year for insurance? Those are very common questions. If you could put that into an SOP and download it into an AI chatbot to do this all for you so that you get a notification in your email and your CA, all she has to do is just hit the button and send it off for them. Um because there's some technical things I don't think HIPAA compliance will allow you to automatically send information to people through an AI chatbot. So we'll we'll get there. And I think you're absolutely right about the race to the bottom, not right now, but uh Deep Seek already just said we're gonna slash the costs of uh user memberships by 80% and uh to outcompete everyone else. So it has begun. You're absolutely right, and that happens in every industry, so I think you're smart for seeing that. Uh great stuff, man. I'll I'll lead people to your book because that's the best uh way for a lot of us to learn a little bit more and be more knowledgeable. I'm a I'm a big fan of people like you coming onto the show, doing this, because as a business owner, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance costs you a lot of money. And if you know how just the simple 101 works on AI chatbots, then you can hire someone like Dan and be confident that he's gonna do a great job because you gave him the two things to do. But when you get all these people that say, I can do it all for you, I'll fill your workshops, I'll fill you with patients, I'll get you all the auto forms filled. You're like, no, you can't do all that great. So, and a lot of things you have to do yourself, you have to take responsibility for some of this stuff too. There's something you can't do. Great stuff. Any more insight? Anything else we should do?

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Um, voice AI, voice I receptionists is going to be a big thing in your industry as well. Um, so you chiropractors and the receptionists are busy talking to someone else, or they're busy, busy practicing, especially the smaller practices. Um, then having a voice AI assessment assistant to never miss a call 24-7

Voice AI Receptionists And What’s Next

SPEAKER_01 17:39

and book uh appointments in and all of that stuff is um you probably already know this, but that's going to be a game changer as well for your industry.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Yeah, I mean, we were talking about this four months ago, and we still a little glitchy with the voice stuff. People know they're talking to an AI, but I just listened to one last week and I'm like, I don't I don't know if that's human or AI. I can't even tell. They were so quick to respond. We're close. I think we're close to people getting the answers they need from an AI conversational bot.

unknown 18:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, well, Google um Google Gemini voice has just been launched about three or four weeks ago. Um, and we've actually integrated that into our builds now, and it sounds I mean, it's perfect. It's perfect. So you can say you can actually say to it that you want um a female that has uh an accent from someone from Florida, and it'll uh it'll immediately kind of build that out, or a Texas Texas, Texas draw or something like that that will um and it'll it'll just change perfectly to be able to match their voice. And there's no delay, there's no there's no nothing, it's absolute, it's absolutely perfect. But I I would still say it's it's AI. Um, I wouldn't try and dupe people. I think that's not the point.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

I think people No, no, no, that's not the point. But if it's if it's seamless and flawless, people will finish the conversation with them. That's the issue. Once people know it's AI and it's glitchy and delayed, they stop responding. So that's where we were probably six months ago. But now uh I'm convinced that we need to implement it for sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Yeah, I mean, most people are you like over here drives me crazy when I call the banks and they're they're they're like press one if you want to do this, press two if you want to do that, press three if you want to do that. And you can never actually speak to someone. And these are huge companies and the all of the banks, but they're so slow moving. So there's a real opportunity for the smaller business world to kind of catch up and dominate some of these behemoths, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it. No worries, Enrico. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

I really appreciate it, bro. No problem.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Thank you.