Running a dental practice is a very full on job! We understand, as we currently work with over 400 dental practice owners. Managing staff, trying to get new patients, and making sure your policies and procedures are in place for CQC – we know, it’s a lot of work. We have spotted that frequently one of the most critical factors to the success of a dental practice gets neglected – it’s communication. If you look at any successful organisation that is miles ahead of the competition, you’ll notice they’re great communicators in one way or another. To guarantee the long-term success of your Dental Practice, it’s important you make great communication a priority. You’ll be glad to hear that the Yo Telecom Dental Practice Phone System will help make your communication great and as a result will help you increase the success of your Dental Practice!
01. See All Missed Calls and Call Them Back – Increasing Bookings and Revenue
Dental Practices miss an average of 7 calls per day. This happens from being busy on the phone, closed, or just busy helping patients. Unanswered or missed calls and engaged tones don’t leave the best impressions in a patient’s mind – to say the least – and a lot of people get frustrated and upset by engaged tones.
To make the matter worse for your Dental Practice – with the internet one touch away – it’s easier than ever for patients to find an alternative, a simple Google search for “Dental Practices near me” will instantly put your patient (or potential future patient) in touch with your competition. And if you lose just one patient from a missed call, it can equate to potentially thousands of pounds lost over the patient’s lifetime.
However, there is hope. There is a way to see all of your missed calls the instant they happen! Enabling you to call them back. Returning missed calls shows your patients such a high level of service, that not only will they be impressed, but they’re also very likely to book an appointment with you! The feature that does this is called Call Logging. It logs and displays the phone number (and/or names of patients) along with the time and date they’ve called you. It works exactly like the Call Log on your mobile phone, alerting you of the missed call, so you can take action and turn a potential missed opportunity into a booking.
02. Improve The Communication Skills of Your Reception Team
Once you get a new enquiry into your Dental Practice, you need to ensure that the quality of your staff’s communication is very high.
“High quality communication implies a high level of service.” – Journal of Services Marketing.
“70% of people are willing to spend more with a business they believe offers excellent service.” – Survey conducted by American Express.
Imagine a patient is calling to find out about a smile makeover. The patient will likely be expecting to have his questions answered in a friendly and professional manner and if he likes what he hears and your receptionist is in control of the call, the result should be a booking of a consultation. If your staff’s communication does not meet or exceed the expectation of the patient, (eg. questions not answered correctly, lots of “umming and erring”, or saying “the person you need to speak to isn’t here, can you call back?”) he or she will likely form an unhelpful or not good enough impression of your dental practice and your potential new patient will likely call one of your competitors instead.
This is where call recording becomes extremely valuable.
It enables you to review any communication your staff have had, and then you can use the recordings to guide your team to better communicate about your products & services and help them become better at getting you new patients. This is a simple, but effective way of staff training.
In business it’s very important to be aware of your strengths & weaknesses and Call Recording helps with that, putting you in control of your success.
Without Call Recording, you likely have little awareness of your communication strengths and weaknesses and therefore might have a hard time improving your communications.
03. Save Time When Existing Patients Phone you With Patient Name Display™
You probably use a Dental Practice Software like Software of Excellence, iSmile, Carestream R4, or Dentaly. And in your software you have names and numbers of all your patients. The Yo Telecom Practice Phone System has the ability of instantly matching your patient’s phone number to their record in your software which will display their name before you pick up the phone. This saves loads of time asking for spellings over the phone. Plus it means you can greet your existing patients by their name which shows them an excellent level of service which they will appreciate.
04. Get More Emergency Bookings with Professional Out-of-Hours Voicemail
A great way to increase your revenue is to start offering emergency appointments to your patients. Patients are willing to spend up to 6 times the normal price for emergency work (Source: Debt.org.) But often with traditional Phone Systems you won’t find out until it’s too late and your patient has found somewhere else. According to Gov.uk, there were over 3.2 million dental emergencies in 2016, with 914,285 emergencies happening over the weekend. This is a huge opportunity for dental practices that are geared up to offer emergency out-of-hours appointments.
With our Professional Out-of-Hours Voicemail, you can;
1. Instantly get all your voicemail messages emailed to you – enabling you to take action right away (if you want to).
2. You can give patients the option to press a button to be connected to the practice owner, manager or dentist for emergency help. The message would look like:
“Thanks for calling YOUR DENTAL PRACTICE, we’re now closed. Our regular opening hours are … If you’re in need of an emergency appointment, please press one now, alternatively leave a message after the tone.”
Overall, this keeps patients happy, and helps you service more patients!
05. Promote Services to Patients While They’re on Hold
From time to time you’ll need to put patients on hold. We recommend that you try to keep these waiting times to a minimum, but when patients are on hold, you should ensure that they don’t hear silence or tedious music. Over 85% of callers prefer on hold messages over silence. – Cellular Marketing Magazine Hold times are great opportunities to build the trust of your patients and inform and educate them on your products and services. People are more likely to decide to show interest in a product or service if they know about it and it’s benefits. Yo Telecom’s On Hold Marketing messages are tailored to the goals of your Dental Practice and they’re expertly scripted to “hit the spot” and get interested patients to enquire further.
06. Say Goodbye to the Dreaded Engaged Tone Once and for all
Traditional analogue lines can only make or receive one call at any given time. So when you’re busy on the phone, your line will be engaged, and patients will be abruptly cut off by an engaged tone. Leaving them with a poor impression of your Dental Practice. It’s frustrating for both the patient, who often will be calling to make a booking, it’s frustrating for the Owners, Managers, Dentists and everyone else involved with the practice who obviously don’t want to be throwing opportunities in the bin.
With the Yo Telecom Dental Practice phone system you can choose the right amount of inbound lines available on your main phone number. For smaller practices this might be two, but for larger practices it could be as many as 6+. And then instead of your patients hearing engaged tones while you’re busy, they’ll hear a professional message letting them know you’re busy on all your phones and will be with them soon! You can even give patients the option to press one and leave a message if they’d prefer.
Summary: Investing in Great Communications Leads to Greater Success and Happier Patients!
The combined improvements that are a result of just these 6 points can add hundreds of thousands of pounds to the yearly revenue of a dental practice. Plus, result in patients that are happier due to simple and helpful communication.
Enquire now on 02382 146115
