.svg)
Share.svg)
Tweet.svg)
Post.svg)
MailNote: This article describes a previous version of Patient Prism. You can read about the latest version of Patient Prism, V3, here.
February 2020--As the Patient Experience Manager at Dental Associates, I am dedicated to constantly improving the patient experience at all our locations. When we decided to focus on converting more of the new patients who call us and move our % scheduled way above the national average of 50%, we turned to Patient Prism’s software platform. Patient Prism has made it possible for us to achieve our goal and continue improving our conversion rate with significant ROI.
If you don’t track what is happening on the phone, you don’t know what to improve.
New patients go online and do research. They try to learn if we are the right dental practice for them, and then they call us. We absolutely must deliver on why we are a place they want to be, or they will hang up and call the next dental practice on the list. Or they might schedule an appointment and then fail to show because they’ve called other practices and found one that made a better first impression.
From the new dental patient’s perspective, a call to schedule a dental appointment is not just a simple transaction. They expect it to be easy, but they also expect someone to truly listen to them and genuinely want to help them and answer their questions and concerns. They are frustrated when someone answers who doesn’t pay focused attention on them and doesn’t sound as if they are glad the patient called.
In dental practices, we’re great about solving problems. We say, “Okay, you want an appointment. I can schedule you here.” We forget about all the warm and fuzzies that our dental patients want. This is especially true of potential new patients who are seeking a new dental home. We must be careful about this, or we give the wrong message that we don’t care… that we don’t value the patient as a person.
There are other factors that make unsatisfactory impressions, for example,
- Our phone lines are busy when they call so they are relayed to voicemail.
- Our receptionists are mid-call, so they put one caller on hold, pick up the second call and put that caller on hold. Patients don’t like being on hold. If it is more than a few seconds, they are gone.
- We don’t inquire about their primary concerns, so we don’t address what is most important to them.
- We allow dead space to occur in a conversation so there is no purposeful momentum. The patient doesn’t know what to ask or say next.
- We use technical terms they don’t understand.
- We don’t have information they seek and do not offer a work around that will comfortably address this, such as a complimentary consultation for replacement of missing teeth.
- We don’t have an appointment time they need.
Getting an understanding of what is happening on your phones is important. Once you identify your problems, you can solve them.
How Patient Prism Helps
The information we get on the Patient Prism dashboards tells us the reasons why calls are failing:
- Is it because we don’t offer a specific service?
- Is it because of insurance issues?
- Is it because of our conversational behavior?
We get to dive into the data from Patient Prism to get a big picture of why patients have not scheduled with us. Real-time data shows:
- Call conversions,
- Revenue opportunities,
- Call volume by day and hour,
- Voicemails,
- Hang ups,
- Reasons not booked, and
- How patients are finding us.
Patient Prism does more than enable us to efficiently track our new patient calls so we can improve our performance. It helps us solve our problems.
For example, one of the great features of Patient Prism is its RELO alerts that tell us when a high-value patient has not booked. The alert takes us to the recorded call where there are feedback notes from Patient Prism’s call coaches. Because we receive RELOs within 30 minutes, we are reconnecting fast, and with the coaches’ feedback we are better prepared to help new patients get the appointment they need. When callbacks are made within an hour of the original patient call, conversions occur at a high rate.
Another great solution is Patient Prism Academy, containing short training videos for just about every dental call situation. We encourage our team members who answer phones to view the video tutorials for self-development. They learn from the featured, well known call coaches and experts in patient behavior how to optimize dental patient calls and why this is so important.
More Patient Prism Resources
The Patient Prism blog and the Patient Prism Academy video library feature hundreds of dental industry experts presenting recommendations and examples for leading and growing your dental practice, multi-practice group, or DSO. We have many videos from practice management coaches that provide advice for improving patient communication, converting new patients, and scheduling. We invite you to schedule a Patient Prism demo at a date and time that is convenient for you.
Free Checklist to schedule more patients!
