You’re a dentist.
You’re a competent dentist.
Here are the numbers… let me know if you like this scenario?
For every five fillings that you do….
Across the board, in your dental practice, for every five fillings that you do, here is what happens:
- Two fillings fall out
- Two fillings break
- One filling survives
Would this be good enough?
Would you be proud of this level of competency in your dental practice that only one filling in five that you did was successful?
And would you be proud to tell your friends and colleagues that four out of every five fillings that you do fails at some early point?
And would you like your patients telling their friends and family about the fillings that you did that did not go the distance?
Those numbers really aren’t good enough.
Those numbers really aren’t good enough for a clinician.
No clinician of any substance would be happy having four of every five fillings fail.
Yet, dental practice owners, on the whole, are accepting a four out of five failure rate in other parts of their dental practices.
Are you for real David?
Yes. I am.
In dental practices across the English-speaking western world, only one in five phone calls to a dental practice [people who phone that dental practice] actually ends up in a made appointment.
Yes that’s right.
Only twenty percent of callers to a dental practice finish their phone call with an appointment being scheduled for them.
Which is a really bad number.
Because each and every one of those callers has already decided that they want that dentist to be their dentist, before they have picked up the phone.
Each and every one of those callers has researched the dental practice, looked at the website, and read the Google reviews.
And then phoned to make an appointment.
And the only reason they do not make an appointment is because of the failure of the dental practice to answer the phone correctly and provide a solution for the caller.
Let’s look at those numbers
Our research shows that 38% of all incoming phone calls to a dental practice go unanswered.
Yes. 38% of incoming calls go through to voice mails, answering machines, or worse still, go straight to an on-hold recorded message of some sort.
And the majority of those that are new patient enquiries do not leave a message.
They hang up.
Most new patients calling a dental practice for the first time and not having their call answered by a person, are less than impressed and move on to call another dental practice.
Most of these people believe that if the practice cannot provide a sufficient level of service to be having their phones answered promptly by a live person, then that could be indicative of a lower standard of care purveying through the whole practice.
First impressions count.
And you only have one chance at making a good first impression.
Let’s look at the 62% of phone calls that do get answered…
For those 62% of phone calls that are actually answered “live” only one third of those actually end up making an appointment.
42 of the 62 do not make an appointment because the conversation that they have when their call is answered does not provide a solution to their problem, or does not inspire confidence in that practice as being the dental practice that this caller is looking for.
Putting it simply, two out of five calls fail to get answered, and two out of five calls fail to go to the next step.
That’s a 20% success rate for incoming dental practice phone calls.
And we know because we measure and listen….
The reason we know this is because we listen to our clients’ phones and we measure the results they are getting.
And we work with our clients to improve this number from 20% to up to 79% on average.
Which is a nearly 300% increase in new patients making appointments, without spending one more penny on marketing.
The potential is there in every dental practice to increase their new patient appointment numbers simply by adjusting how their phones are managed, and how their phones are being answered.
The problem is….
Every dentist knows that their phone needs to be answered better.
But nobody is recording their incoming calls.
And nobody at the practice is listening to the recordings.
And nobody at the practice has the time to listen to those calls and to then take time to teach and nurture the dental team on better ways to answer the phones….
And so the phones remain the same.
Same. Same.
Apathy in the practice dramatically affects the opportunity for the practice to improve its performances.
Fixing the phones is simple.
But you cannot do it well without professional help.
If you want to play better piano, you need professional help.
If you want to play better tennis, you need professional help.
And if you want the most important piece of equipment in the dental office being utilised in the best possible manner, [that’s the phone, by the way], you need professional help to get the best results.
How hard can it be to answer the phones properly?
“Can I grab your name?”
“Who do you normally see?”
These are just two of the many things we hear being said on dental practice phones that can be replaced with much better, service-oriented language.
Using better language gives us better results.
What we say on the phones, and how we say it, dramatically affects the results we achieve on those phones.
*****
Online Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
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 unique online ZOOM workshop Saturday March 20, 2021
*****
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.
*****
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
*****
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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