Marham: Connecting doctors and patients in Pakistan with Voice and SMS

Challenge

To combat the dwindling state of healthcare in Pakistan and doctor to patient ratio, healthcare app Marham had a challenge of their own to solve.

Marham was using SMS to schedule appointments and send reminders. However, with issues regarding messages from alphanumeric senders not being delivered to people subscribed to the DND (do not disturb) list and lack of delivery reports, they had a high customer complaint rate.

In addition to that, they faced issues with SMS delivery to ported numbers or patients who changed their service provider and found it difficult to send bulk promotional messages to their users.

With 15,000 bookings per month and 500,000 visits to their website, the digital healthcare pioneer in the country had to find a more reliable channel of communication to notify their patients and improve their delivery rates.

Solution

Understanding the gravity of the situation, Infobip provided Marham with an integrated omnichannel approach that included Voice and SMS.

The first thing Infobip did was verify Marham’s communication channel to solve the problem faced regarding messages from alpha numeric senders. This ensured patients that they were receiving messages from a trusted sender.

A flow mechanism was created to ensure messages were sent to both doctors and patients when an appointment was requested, confirmed, cancelled, or rescheduled. Patients were also sent appointment reminders and review request messages.

The biggest gamechanger was the addition of Voice as a failover for SMS messages and giving patients the choice to book appointments and receive reminders through calls.

Voice and SMS, along with Infobip’s real-time reporting, gave Marham the insight and transparency to monitor the delivery rates of messages and a better understanding of the reasons why some of them were not delivered.

In addition to this, Infobip’s web interface allowed Marham to send bulk SMS promotions as well.

Result

After implementing Voice and SMS through Infobip, Marham’s brand recognition and trust increased. Since patients could now receive information and reminders through calls, the number of appointments doubled.

Additionally, receiving necessary appointment information on time due to the failover system led Marham to experience a 40-50% decrease in the number of complaints they received from patients and doctors.

This had a direct impact on revenue since the number of people showing up to their scheduled appointments increased from 52% to 55%.

Now, using Infobip’s platform, Marham is able to address their ever-changing communication requirements.

Due to the visible results and surge in patient trust and appointments, Marham is now looking to integrate Infobip’s WhatsApp Business Platform and Number Masking API soon.