Chat booking for Cliniko clinics: book, move and cancel under your own online booking rules

A patient emails at 7 am to move Thursday. At 10 pm a new patient asks in the website chat about Saturday, and another cancels tomorrow's visit on WhatsApp. All 3 wait for the front desk.

A chat can handle them under the online booking rules you already set in Cliniko. You get the settings to check, the requests to keep with a person and what never to ask patients.

The same desk takes every request

A physio group in Sydney with 5 clinics advertised for a receptionist to manage the Cliniko appointment list for 10 clinicians (job ad on Healthcare Link). The job also covers onsite and offsite bookings and phone calls.

The ad does not mention written requests like the 3 above. They land on the same desk anyway.

You already wrote the rules

Letting a chat handle those messages sounds risky until you notice that the rules exist. Your Cliniko online bookings decide which practitioners, locations and appointment types patients can pick, how much notice you need and how late a patient may cancel.

A chat that books by those rules works like your booking page with a conversation in front of it. A chat with its own rules is a second front desk that nobody trained.

The advice here works for any chat tool. Where Deskwoot does something specific, we say so, and its setup steps are in the launch post Fynn now books appointments in Cliniko.

Start with the settings Cliniko already has

Cliniko keeps most of its online booking options under Settings > Online bookings (Cliniko: set up online bookings). The cancellation notice sits under Settings > General settings (Cliniko: restrict when a patient can cancel).

Each setting answers a question a chat would otherwise answer by guessing.

Check them as if a stranger books at 11 pm

In a chat you often cannot tell who is booking, so read each setting with a stranger in mind. Three things to check:

• Does the cancellation notice in Cliniko match the policy on your website? If the policy says 24 hours and Cliniko says no restriction, any tool that follows Cliniko will let patients cancel an hour before.
• Are the appointment type names clear to a patient? "Standard Consult 30" reads fine in the diary and confuses everyone in a chat. The name appears in every offer and every confirmation.
• Should every type you show online really be bookable without a call? Long blocks and appointments your team plans with the patient first belong off the booking page.

What a chat can do on its own

Three actions cover most messages: offer free times and book one, move an appointment, cancel it. Each has a safe version.

Offer and book

The chat should offer only times your online bookings show, never times it works out from the diary. Then your notice, how far ahead patients may book and your daily maximum apply in the chat too.

Show a few times at once, in the time zone of the location. Choose which practitioners and appointment types the chat may offer before it books anything.

Fynn, our AI agent in Deskwoot, works this way. He offers at most 3 times at once and books nothing until an admin has saved that choice once.

Move

Moving Tuesday's follow up with the same physio to Thursday is admin. Moving it to another practitioner or another type changes who treats the patient and how long the slot is, and your front desk should decide that.

Fynn's moves keep the practitioner, the location and the appointment type.

Cancel

Outside your cancellation notice, a cancellation in chat is the same as a click on the cancellation link in your reminder.

Inside the notice, the chat should leave the appointment alone. It should tell the patient the practice will get back to them and hand the conversation to your team.

Fynn reads the minimum notice for cancellations from Cliniko and does exactly that closer to the appointment, for moves as well as cancellations.

Who says the final yes

Your team can confirm each booking, move and cancellation, or the chat can do them on its own after the patient agrees. We would read a couple of weeks of real requests before letting the chat decide alone.

In Deskwoot your team confirms each one from Fynn with 1 tap in the conversation by default. You can let Fynn do any of the 3 on his own.

Requests to keep with a person

This list is worth printing for the front desk, whatever tool you use:

• Changes inside the cancellation notice. Whether a late cancellation costs a fee, or gets waived because a child is sick, is a judgement your policy leaves to people.
• Group classes. Pilates, hydrotherapy and exercise classes have several attendees and a class size to manage. Fynn never books a type with more than 1 attendee.
• Types that need a deposit or full payment. Money and refunds need a person and Cliniko's own payment flow. Cliniko also blocks its cancellation link for patients who paid in full online. Fynn never books a type that requires an online deposit or payment.
• A different practitioner, location or type. That changes who treats the patient, so your front desk decides it.
• Invoices, receipts, health fund or insurance claims, treatment notes, letters, referrals and forms. These go to your team. Fynn cannot see or send any of them.
• Anything about pain, symptoms or treatment. A booking chat should pass these to your team and never assess them. Medical questions go to your clinicians.
• Bookings for someone else, like a parent booking for a child, and patients whose identity the chat cannot prove. More on that below.
• New patients, if you prefer. Requests from people Cliniko does not know then go to your team. In Deskwoot the switch "New patients can book in chat" decides this.

Which patient record? The part that goes wrong quietly

A wrong time is visible. A booking in the wrong patient record is not, until someone opens the file.

Cliniko's own booking page matches patients to an existing record from the details they enter, or creates a new one (Cliniko: overview of online bookings).

Its guide to merging duplicates asks you to check that 2 records really are duplicates "and not two different patients who just happen to have the same name", using date of birth and mobile number. It also warns that merging cannot be undone (Cliniko: merge duplicate patients).

Why chat makes it harder

Anyone can type an email address, and families share one. A mother writes "I need to move my appointment" from the address that is also on her daughter's record.

One rule for the right record

Let the chat book on its own only into the record your team linked to the contact, or into the single record with a verified email address and the same first and last name as the booking.

When the address is unproven, when 2 records match, or when the name differs, the booking waits. Your team picks the record, with the date of birth in view so they can tell namesakes apart.

Deskwoot follows this rule, and one way it verifies an address is a link sent to it. Your team picks the record on the card in the conversation.

It searches Cliniko patients by email and name only, so a WhatsApp number alone does not find a record either.

Say nothing about who is a patient

A chat should never say whether someone is a patient at your clinic or whether a name or email is in your records. Only a verified patient should hear about their own upcoming appointments. Fynn keeps to both.

Ask for less than your phone script does

On the phone, "Date of birth?" and "What is it for?" take 5 seconds. In a chat, both answers end up in writing, and the second one is about someone's health.

What to ask for

To book, ask for the first and last name, plus an email address in the website chat. Leave out the date of birth, the address, a Medicare, NHS or insurance number, symptoms and the reason for the visit.

That is all Fynn asks for. On the Cliniko side, Deskwoot only needs the Scheduler role, which cannot see treatment notes, forms or invoices.

What privacy law says

The UK regulator explains why this matters for allied health. Appointment details can be health data, and its own example is that "you could reasonably infer health data from an individual's list of appointments at an osteopath clinic" (ICO guidance on special category data).

The rules differ by country, but they point the same way:

The US row has a direct consequence. Deskwoot does not sign business associate agreements, so Cliniko accounts set up for HIPAA compliance cannot connect.

This section is general information, not legal advice. Your privacy officer or adviser knows your clinic's obligations.

Before you switch chat booking on

1. Check the Cliniko settings in the table above, especially the cancellation notice and the types shown online.
2. Choose the practitioners and appointment types the chat may offer. Start small, for example follow up appointments with 2 or 3 practitioners.
3. Decide who confirms bookings, moves and cancellations: your team with 1 tap, or the chat on its own.
4. Decide whether new patients may book in chat.
5. In Deskwoot, leave Fynn's access to contacts on under Settings > Bots > Data Access. Without it he books nothing in Cliniko.
6. Make sure patients can see they are talking to an AI. Deskwoot marks Fynn's replies as coming from your AI assistant on every channel (how customers see that Fynn is an AI).
7. Read the first 2 weeks of booking chats with the person who runs your front desk, and adjust the list of what stays human.

Trying it in Deskwoot

If you let new patients book in chat, the person asking at 10 pm gets up to 3 free times from your own online bookings that evening. In the morning your team confirms the one they picked with 1 tap.

Fynn takes the booking rules from Cliniko, so you keep them in one place. You can compare every time he offers with your own booking page.

• Connecting Cliniko works on every plan, the free Hacker plan included, at no extra cost.
• Fynn's booking, moving and cancelling comes with every paid plan, starting with Startup at $4 per agent per month, or $3.20 billed yearly (pricing).

For a first test, start the 7 day trial, connect Cliniko with a Scheduler user and let Fynn offer 1 appointment type while your team confirms every booking.

The trial runs on the Enterprise plan, includes booking and needs no card, for up to 30 seats including yours. When it ends, choose a plan or stay on the free Hacker plan.

More on how Deskwoot works for clinics is on the page for medical practices.