How to Count Your Clinic's Chat Volume Before Choosing a Plan

The first question any chat-automation provider will ask is “How many people message you a month?” Most clinics answer “Quite a lot,” which isn't enough to choose a plan. Here is a method that takes about half an hour and gives you a number you can actually use in a pricing conversation.

Counting first isn't only about avoiding overpaying. The number also tells you whether your clinic should buy a system yet at all. If only a few dozen people message you a month, the same money is better spent on getting more people to message you first (covered in How much should a clinic chat system cost to be worth it).

Count people, not messages

Most chat-automation plans, including AIB Clinic's, are billed by conversation: one patient messaging within one day. However many messages go back and forth, it counts as one. If the same person messages again the next day, that's a new one.

Message counts are therefore misleading. One patient can send ten one-line messages in two minutes. A clinic that says “we get two hundred messages a day” may really have only twenty people writing in.

Where to get the numbers

The LINE OA and Facebook Page insights screens show figures that come close, but their definitions don't always match “people who wrote in that day,” and most clinics never open them anyway. Counting straight from your inboxes is more accurate and takes about the same time.

1. Pick the last 7 days, covering both weekdays and weekends (aesthetic clinics often get more messages on weekends than on weekdays).
2. Go through each inbox, channel by channel: LINE, Facebook Page, Instagram and your website. Count the number of “threads” with a new incoming message that day. A thread that continues from yesterday counts again, because it's a different day.
3. Record two columns: messages during opening hours, and messages from closing time until you open again.
4. Add up the 7 days and multiply by 4.3 to get a rough monthly figure.

A worked example (made-up numbers to illustrate the method, not an average for typical clinics):

Pay special attention to the after-hours column. Nobody answers these people right away today, and they're the first group a chat system will help with. If that column is zero all week, go back and check your count: a clinic running ads almost never gets zero late-night messages (more in Patients message your clinic late at night and nobody answers).

Allow for months when you run ads

A 7-day count only reflects a normal month. Most clinics have months with heavy ad spend or a big promotion, when messages can double. The simplest way to allow for this: ask which month had the most messages last year, and count 7 days from that month as a second set. You end up with two figures, a normal month and a peak month.

The plan you choose should cover a normal month comfortably, and it's fine to go over in peak months. That beats buying a plan sized for the peak and paying for the headroom every month, as long as the provider doesn't stop replying mid-month when you exceed the quota. Get a clear answer on that before you sign.

How to compare with the plans

AIB Clinic has three tiers: 2,000 / 4,000 / 8,000 conversations a month. If you go over, the bot keeps replying, and extra usage is billed at 900 THB per 500 conversations (details on the pricing page). The example above, at about 550 a month, sits well inside the smallest plan, and even a peak month at twice that wouldn't reach the ceiling.

For most clinics, then, what really separates the plans isn't the quota but the number of channels. If patients also message you on Facebook and Instagram, not just LINE, that decides the plan before the conversation count does. Your count simply confirms you don't need to move up because of the quota.

Signs you've counted wrong

• Counting your own automated messages: welcome messages or auto-replies sent by your current setup aren't people writing in.
• Counting broadcast replies as new enquiries: if you sent a broadcast that month, replies will spike on a single day. Separate them out, or pick a week with no broadcast.
• Counting LINE only: clinics that advertise on Facebook often get more Page messages than they think, and those are answered slowest because admins aren't watching that app.
• Forgetting branches: if you have several branches with separate OAs, add up every account, because chat systems usually bill per clinic, not per account.

Three numbers to have before you talk to a provider

1. People messaging per month in a normal month, split into opening hours and after hours
2. People messaging per month in last year's peak month
3. The channels people actually use, from most to least

With these three, pricing conversations end much faster. Instead of arguing over which plan “should be enough,” both sides look at the same numbers and choose. If you'd like our team to look at your numbers and tell you plainly which plan to start on, or that you shouldn't start yet, book a half-hour call and bring them along.