Should I Send Employee Engagements From My Patient Console?

Should I Send Employee Engagements From My Patient Console?

Great question! If your team has an existing console with Dialog Health that you are using exclusively for patient communications, you may be missing out on the opportunity to send text messages to your employees. Let's dive into some pros and cons of using your patient console or getting a separate console for employee communication.

Combining patient and employee engagement in 1 console:

  1. You can only have 1 set of System Keywords per console. This means that every person that is opted-in, opted out, and receives the unknown reply will be receiving the same set of text messages whether or not they are a patient or an employee.
  2. If an employee responds to a text message sent from your patient console, that message will be displayed in your triage whereby the staff that monitors patient replies will see and clear messages from employees.
  3. AnalyticsPRO consists of all messages sent and received from this console regardless of it being a patient or employee engagement.
  4. When looking at your opt-in/out rates as well as the number of SMS sent, these stats will consist of employee and patient engagement as a whole.


How to setup employee engagement in your patient console:

You must have administrative access to Dialog Health in order to set up employee texting.

Step 1: Create a new opt-in group. Generating a new opt-in group just for your employees will enable your team to direct your communications to either employees only or patients only.
  1. Navigate to the Setup Tab > Groups
  1. Select + Add Group



  1. A new window, Create Group, will open to enable you to customize your new opt-in group


  1. Name: Select what you'd like to call this opt-in group. The name of your opt-in group will only be visible to team members accessing your DH console, the subscriber will not be able to access it.
    1. Recommendations: Employee Opt-in Group, Staff Opt-in Group, Leadership Opt-in Group
  1. Join Keyword: Select a unique custom keyword that will be associated with your opt-in group. This keyword can be added to your opt-out message to enable subscribers who may have opted out by mistake to opt themselves back in for texting without your team's assistance. To opt themselves back in, the subscriber must text the Join Keyword to the phone number associated with your Dialog Health console. To find out what your team's phone number is, select the drop-down menu containing your console name.
    1. Recommendations: Try to make your code unique! We do not recommend choosing a phrase such as "Yes". Use your console code! Your console code is also located in the drop-down menu containing your console name. (i.e., SAMBRA5076).



  1. Group Description: A description is not required, but is often helpful when your team has more than 1 opt-in group. (i.e., Opt-in group for employees only).
  2. Once completed, select Update to add your new opt-in group. Your opt-in group will be displayed within the Groups tab and will be enabled to be customized or deleted in the future if your team needs to make changes.



How to add your employee census to Dialog Health

Step 2: Add your employee census to Dialog Health.
    Do you have an employee census that is larger than 10 people? If so, we recommend adding your census in bulk. To add the census to your console, you must properly format it before importing it to Dialog Health. Click HERE to learn more about the 17-Columned CSV file requirements. Click HERE to learn how to import your census. 

    Does your employee census contain less than 10 people? It may be easier for you to add your employees manually instead of formatting your census to match the 17-Columned CSV file format. Click HERE to learn more about manually creating employee profiles. 

    It is important to make sure that patients are not mistakenly being opted-in to your employee opt-in group to avoid sending them employee communications. You can pull the list of people who are opted-in to your employee opt-in group by navigating to the Patients Tab. In the top left-hand corner, click select next to All Groups. 



    Select your employee opt-in group from the menu, then click Select.



    The Patient's Tab will now show a report of everyone who opted-in to your employee opt-in group. To export the list, select Export in the bottom left-hand corner to download as a CSV file. If you have employees who were ineligible to be opted-in for text messaging, or opted-out of text messaging, they will not be included in this list. 



    If you find a patient that has been mistakenly added to your employee opt-in group, click HERE to learn how to opt them out of your employee opt-in group.

    Make sure you are only sending text messages to your employees and not your patients

    Step 3: Text your employee audience. Below are a few different ways you can make sure that your text message intended to be sent to your staff, only reaches your employees and not your patient audience.

    Send an Ad-Hoc to your staff

    To learn more about sending Ad-Hoc Broadcasts, click HERE! The main difference between setting up an ad-hoc to send to your patients versus your staff is making sure that you only select the opt-in group that you chose to opt your employee census into. If you select all groups, you will make the ad-hoc eligible to send everyone opted-in to your console. Even though your audience is technical "Employees", the Audience selection should stay Patient. 






    Send an Ad-Hoc to your employees from a file

    Completely skip the step of having to import your employee census via the Patients Tab, and send your ad-hoc broadcast directly to your employee census. Click HERE to learn more about File Based Messaging.

    Send a direct text message to a staff member

    Have 1-1 conversations with your team members by using direct text. To learn more about how to send a direct text, click HERE.

    Using a separate console for employee engagement:

    1. You can customize your System Keywords just for your employees. 
    2. Responses from employees will be contained to this console allowing you to have more control over who can access incoming and outgoing text messages to your employees.
    3. When reviewing your messaging stats in AnalyticsPRO, you will only be analyzing employee engagement
    4. If you have a small group of employees, using the same console might work for you. However, teams with a larger employee census are best maintained in a different console from your patients. 

    Is texting your employee audience from a different console a better fit for your team? Reach out to info@dialoghealth.com to learn more about an additional console to your Dialog Health dashboard just for employee texting. 

    Read our eBook today on How Healthcare HR Leaders Are Leveraging Our Text Messaging Solutions to Drastically Improve Employee Engagement 

    Questions? Please reach out to: support@dialoghealth.com or 877.666.1132
    Our support line is monitored Monday through Friday from 8:00 am – 6:00 pm CST

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