Or as they used to say in the pre-digital days:
“How Effective Is Your Dental Practice Phone Answering Machine Message?
I’m talking about what happens when someone phones your dental practice and the call is not answered by a real live human being.
For whatever reason….
What does your practice’s message say to your caller?
And what does your practice’s recorded message say ABOUT YOUR PRACTICE to your caller?
Does your recorded message say this:
“We really value your call…”
Or does it say:
“Thank you for your call. We appreciate your call….”
Or does it say something stupid like this:
“If you are hearing this message you have either called us outside our normal business hours, or we are unable to answer the phone because we are busy with another patient…”
When I hear this last message….
I immediately know that I have called DURING business hours [because that’s what I do], and the message often prattles off the office hours, which means the practice doesn’t even re-record a “during the day” message to play. They just use their after-hours message as a ONE SIZE FITS ALL message 24/7.
Which is really poor form.
When I hear that ONE SIZE FITS ALL message during business hours it really is telling me that either the practice is under-equipped for answering multiple calls at one time, or the practice is under-manned for answering multiple calls at one time.
Either way, when this happens when a caller goes through to a message or a server, it sends a message subliminally to the caller that says:
“We do not value your call much at all, otherwise we’d have a real live person here to answer your call, or have a real live person here who is trained to answer your call.”
In the words of Judge Judy:
“Don’t …. tell me it’s raining”
…when really something else is happening.
There are people out there in other businesses who are skilled at answering all incoming calls to their businesses and making all of their callers feel important and valued.
It is a SKILL to be able to juggle multiple calls, and the beauty of a skill is that it is LEARNABLE and therefore it can be taught and learned, and it can be MASTERED.
And…
“If it has been done, it can be done.”
If something has been done, guess what?
It can be done again.
And done again. And done again….
The thing about recorded messages….
The thing about recorded messages in businesses is that most times, the business owner or the person making the recording think that their message is the BEE’S KNEES and is the answer, the one and only ALL TIME BEST SOLUTION EVER to the problem of receiving multiple phone calls at the one time.
When most of the time all that message does is cause the caller to NOT LEAVE A MESSAGE, and to hang up, and to go call another competitor’s dental practice, because the recorded message takes the caller’s loyalty for granted.
And customer loyalty needs to be EARNED.
And not be expected.
Our research shows…
Our research has shown that 38% of calls to a dental practice go unanswered, and with a large number of those callers just hanging up, not leaving a message, and letting their “fingers do the walking” and calling another dental practice, you don’t need to be Einstein to realise that there’s a significant amount of wasted opportunity that is lost by those dental practices that fail to employ sufficient skilled and trained staff to dramatically reduce this number of missed and unanswered calls.
Just do the math…
If your practice could just answer two missed calls more each day, and if those calls were new patients to your practice, that scheduled and attended and then booked and completed their treatment, that would mean that your practice could easily add around 500 New Patients per year to your dental schedule.
And if each new patient was worth [on average] two thousand dollars of treatment to your practice, then potentially those two extra bookings per day would add another one million dollars to your annual dental practice production.
Just two extra calls answered per day….
“Little hinges swing big doors”
Indeed they do.
A small shift in thinking at the beginning can unpack a dramatically different result 365 days later….
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday November 25, 2021 in Sydney, NSW.
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Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Convert more calls into appointments…Click the link: http://www.calltrackingexcellence.com
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.com for more details.
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Have you read my book , How To Build The Dental Practice of Your Dreams [Without Killing Yourself!] In Less Than Sixty Days.
You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order
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The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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