Serenity Dental Increases New-Patient Bookings
By 90% In 2 Months
Serenity Dental's Journey
The Client
The professional staff of Serenity Dental consists of the two Patel brothers— Nilash and Nitash—an associate dentist and two hygienists. Total staff currently numbers 15.
The practice operates three offices in the Tampa-St. Petersburg metro area, with a total of 16 operatories. The practice opened in 2004.
Serenity Dental provides a full range of services, including orthodontics, periodontics, family dentistry, emergency dentistry, Invisalign, oral surgery, pediatric dentistry, restorative dentistry, root canals, extractions, dentures, crowns, fillings, implants, whitening, and veneers.
The Challenge
$50,000 a month in new-patient revenue
Within a year, new-patient revenue grew by $600,000.
Why change a winning formula?
Two brothers, Nilash and Nitash Patel, own three offices in the Tampa metro area. All three offices have done well. The area enjoys fast population growth.
Since Serenity Dental opened its doors in 2004, the Patels have consistently invested in marketing. At first they relied heavily on the Yellow Pages and direct mail. Both were expensive. They found that billboards near their offices were their most effective advertising tactic. As digital marketing became more prevalent, the brothers hired Dentist Profit Systems as their agency to manage their website and online advertising.
Could they grow faster in fewer offices?
“In our area, our practice was always growing at a rate toward the top end of the scale,” says Nilash Patel. “So I thought, ‘I don’t see how much better we can get.’” But the Patels wanted to grow faster because they found it hard to manage three offices. They couldn’t be as involved with all three as they wanted. They wondered how to keep growing at the same rate in just two locations.
Insight spurs surprising new growth
The brothers saw their opportunity after a trusted advisor shared an insight. In just two months after acting on the insight, they added an average of $50,000 a month in new-patient revenue. They increased their growth rate by 90%. Within a year, new-patient revenue grew by $600,000.
What was the insight?
The Solution
Serenity Dental starts paying close attention to call volumes and conversion rates.
The Patels’ growth acceleration began with a critical conversation between Nilash and the head of their marketing agency, Amol Nirgudkar.
Nirgudkar is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) who has worked with hundreds of dental practices. He shared something he’d noticed in how most practices run their business.
No matter how much they may spend on marketing, Nirgudkar told the Patels, they waste money when their front office fails to convert phone callers into new patients.
Nirgudkar said he had developed software to solve the problem of conversions. He had started a new company called Patient Prism, and he encouraged the Patels to try it.
“We were doing almost nothing to manage how we handled incoming calls,” Dr. Patel says.
The Patels decided they had little to lose and possibly much to gain by going with Patient Prism. They trusted Nirgudkar, and the cost of implementing and licensing the cloud-based software was reasonable.
The system automates or eliminates time-consuming tasks
Serenity Dental now uses Patient Prism to record and manage incoming calls from potential new patients. Unlike another system the Patels had tried and abandoned, Patient Prism doesn’t require them to listen to every call to see how their front office is doing.
Within an hour after a call, Patient Prism provides coaching tips and a visual summary of what went well or badly. The Patels can quickly scan the visual summary for notations of problems.
In addition, Dr. Patel now receives text messages whenever his front office has missed booking an appointment with a high-value new patient.
The message also tells how much potential revenue the practice has lost for each caller who doesn’t book. Then Patient Prism recommends that the office call the person back to try to win an appointment.
It even suggests what to say next time. Now Dr. Patel monitors how many calls each office receives and how many inquiries they convert to first appointments.
He can see which of his front-office staff are most and least effective. With that insight, he can praise them, reward them, or suggest coaching and training as needed.
Staff scheduling improves conversions and customer service
Patient Prism monitors when phone calls come in, so Dr. Patel can schedule plenty of staff during high-volume hours. How have front-office staff responded to the changed work hours and the closer supervision of their performance? Dr. Patel said they like the feedback, and Serenity Dental provides financial incentives for them to book more new patients.
A full-time supervisor now works the system
The Patient Prism system worked so well that Serenity Dental hired a full-time person to manage it. Her primary job is to ensure that someone from Serenity Dental re-engages with callers who didn’t book the first appointment.
The goal is to encourage them to do so. Her presence enables the Patels to focus on dentistry. The supervisor brings in enough added revenue to more than cover the cost of her compensation.
The Results
Now, one office alone sees about 120 to 130 new patients a month
New emphasis:
Get more potential patients through the front door
“Now our front desk sees what to say and how to say it so we can get more patients in the door,” Dr. Patel says. “It doesn’t matter whether our staff is sure that we perform some procedure a caller may ask about.
Sometimes a patient may think they need something. Then it turns out they really don’t. “Or maybe they need something completely different than what they ask about on the phone. We must get each patient in through our door before we know.”
Front office delivers more patients for comprehensive care
Dr. Patel says that one office alone now sees about 120 to 130 new patients a month.
With more consultations and limited-care patients coming in, the practice converts many more patients to comprehensive care.
“That’s where our growth comes from. It’s something we never did before.” As the practice continues to grow, they’ve shifted patients from their third office to the two they plan to keep open.
Now they can close their third location because they’ve found a reliable way to grow much faster, even with fewer offices. “More locations don’t necessarily mean more profits,” says Patel.
“Using Patient Prism, we can laser focus on the metrics that matter most and optimize operations in real-time.”
“We increased our new patient acquisition rate by 90% and added $600,000 in new patient revenue in one year.”
Practice Owner
Nilash Patel DMD
Serenity Dental Practice Owner
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