I phoned a dental practice this week and went straight through to their voice message service.
I phoned during regular working hours. No human being picked up the phone
Now, before I continue about THIS particular dental office, let me tell you something….
Some of the dental practice voice messages out there that I’ve had to listen to over the past month are TRULY CRINGEWORTHY.
Seriously.
Some of these dental practices need to listen to their voice messages from the perspective of a first-time caller phoning their practice.
Because the messages on their services are WAY OFF TARGET.
A lot of these dental practice voice messages are missing the mark BIG TIME.
Anyway, in this instance this week, I phoned this particular dental office at 4:30pm only to be put straight through to this message:
“Thank you for calling XYZ Dental. Our office hours are 8am to 8pm on Mondays to Fridays, and 8am to 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays.”
Well that was incongruous.
The website for XYZ Dental told me that they were a two-location practice, and there was somewhere close to ten dentists’ profiles listed on their website.
Are you getting what’s wrong with this picture here?
If XYZ Dental has lots of dentists available to see patients some seventy-six hours each week, why do they NOT HAVE enough people available to make sure that no incoming phone call to their dental office ever goes unanswered?
A voice-mail service is not a safety net.
A voice mail service is not a safety net that catches all phone calls to your dental practice that go unanswered.
These days, more and more new patients calling a dental office where their call is not answered by a living and breathing person simply hang up, and call the next office on their list.
Failing to have someone answering your dental office phone leaves a nasty indelible impression for first time callers to your practice.
Period.
Especially when your website, and your message, imply that your dental practice is a big business.
Sadly in the case of XYZ Dental, their dental practice gave the impression that they were too big to care.
Let’s do the numbers.
What if XYZ Dental missed answering [and scheduling] just one new patient each hour, or just each business hour?
Just one?
That’s eight new patients each day.
Multiplied by five days each week.
That’s forty new patients each week?
At $500.00 for each new patient?
That’s $20,000.00 of future revenue lost each week….
Or $1,000,000.00 of future revenue lost each year.
Just by missing one call per hour.
Do you think that employing one extra person on the phones might help catch those eight phone calls each day?
Do you think that employing one extra person on the phones might help catch those eight phone calls each day?
How much in wages would one extra person cost your dental office each day?
$25.00 per hour multiplied by eight hours?
$200.00?
Would you spend $200.00 per day to make an extra $4000.00 in future earnings?
But it’s worse than that….
Every person who phones XYZ Dental and gets a voice message service [that’s really an oxymoron] will actually in theory EACH go and tell eleven other people about their lousy experience…
That’s not good marketing.
You only get one chance to make a good first impression.
When you have a big dental practice like XYZ Dental, $25.00 per hour is not a big expense to ensure against making a lousy first impression.
But if you have a small or smaller dental practice, is $25.00 per hour a small expense to ensure against your practice making a lousy first impression with first time callers to your practice?
Remember, if you say that you’ll put on extra staff when your dental practice gets busier, what you might actually be doing is PREVENTING your dental practice from getting busier by not employing the extra staff members in the correct places in the first instance?
Is this food for thought?
With change being such a constant in life, as well as in business, are you putting yourself in a position to be able to anticipate change, or is your business just hoping to react to change?
Because knee-jerk reacting, is not a good way to be operating your dental business…
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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