practice | MANAGEMENT
How many people call your office and do not schedule an appointment? By Jayne Bandy
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veryone who calls your dental office has already partly chosen you as their dentist. Something influenced the caller to call you in the first place. It was either your fabulous website and SEO or a friend referred them after telling them how wonderful you are, or they’ve decided you were so convenient to their home or work. Whatever the reason was, they chose you. The next step is for the caller to finally choose to schedule an appointment with you.
It seems so straight forward, so why are so many dental offices failing to make those appointments? o you know how many people call your office every day and fail to make an appointment? I am sure if I asked you what your new patients numbers are, you would know this number straight away. It’s so easy to bring a New Patient Report up on your dental software program. But a lot of dentists have no idea how many actual calls come into their practice each day. The good news it is easy to work out. I know you’re probably wondering why you should know the number of calls received each day. Once you know the number of New Patient calls you received each day you
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92 Australasian Dental Practice
can soon work out how many calls did not make appointments. Yes, the number of callers who did not make an appointment. The number of non-converted calls. You can now compare the new patient calls received to the number of new patient appointments you made. Why do you need to know the number of people who called your office and did not make appointments?
“Everyone who calls your office are potential patients who have a dental problem and/or concern that needs solving. And so, you need to keep an eye on the callers who are not making appointments and get to the bottom of why...” Because this is what you have missed out on. This is how many people you have missed out on who did not become your patient.
So why do people call your office and some make appointments and some do not make an appointments? oesn’t everyone who calls your office have a dental problem or concern? Yes!
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Everyone who calls your office, other than your labs, dental supply companies and the like, are potential patients who have a dental problem and/or concern that needs solving. And so, you need to keep an eye on the callers who are not making appointments and get to the bottom of why.
The only way to know for sure how many callers are not making appointments, is to track the calls and analyse what is being said on each of the calls his is how you get to the bottom of your missed opportunities when it comes to unconverted callers. You may have no idea that your team are struggling to make appointments with the calls coming in because you don’t track this number. Your team could be struggling to make new patient appointments and they have no idea this is happening. I have seen a huge turn around in practice production and growth once calls are analysed and something is done to fix the problems. Once you analyse the calls, you know for sure what is happening and why you are not converting calls to appointments. You now have an opportunity to change what is being said on the phone, so more calls are converted to appointments. The problem I see happening for many dentists and business owners who finally find out they have a big problem with
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March/April 2022
