90 percent of people looking for a dentist begin their search online. Of those, the overwhelming majority still use their phones to book an appointment. Your phone answerers are the last, vital link between appointing a new patient and wasting the marketing dollars you spent to attract that prospect.
Based on SmartBox’s experience, the vast majority of dentists firmly believe that their phone answerers do a great job appointing new patients. Our data, gathered from an entire quarter of phone calls to our Elite level dentists, tell a very different story.
We provide our exclusive Zetetics® phone tracking service for those dentists. Every marketing vehicle is assigned a unique phone number that automatically forwards to the practice’s phones. When a call comes in, the source of the call, and the call itself once answered, are stored in an easy-to-access database. Our dedicated team of Call Quality Analysts reviews every call to every dentist every month.
The results of the quarter’s review was disheartening to say the least.
The sheer number of new patient phone calls not answered during business hours represents tens of thousands of dollars – at least – in lost revenue to those practices. Over and above that, many new callers simply weren’t appointed because the phone answerers placed them on hold for too long, or failed to take control of the call and “close the deal.” Others were lost because of poor phone technique.
And yet, these dentists swore that their phone answerers were doing a great job!
The Problem Is That You’re Busy
You’ve probably been in the front office and heard your phone answerers dealing with new patients. But that’s certainly the exception rather than the rule. You are and should be spending the vast majority of your time in one of your operatories, not hanging out and monitoring your staff.
So how do you know what kind of job your phone answerers are doing most of the time? You don’t; you take it on faith like almost all dentists. Your faith may be justified, but consider this: given your average case value, how much money are you losing if your phone answerers miss just 10 percent of appointable patients? And that’s probably a best-case scenario.
Take Action
There are any number of companies offering phone training, but virtually none that offer training specifically designed for dental practices. Appointing new dental patients requires the ability to understand the unspoken objections that lead to refusal, to reframe the conversation, and to move to the close.
Don’t waste your money on a generic phone skills training program.
Call SmartBox Web Marketing at 888.741.1413 and ask to speak to one of our Digital Practice Consultants. We offer several levels of phone training services that also include Zetetics® phone tracking. We’ll not only train and certify your phone answerers, we’ll monitor your practice’s calls to detect and address any difficulties.
Don’t let paying patients slip through your fingers at the crucial point of contact. You can significantly increase your revenues and realize a much greater return on your marketing investment.