Training New Dental Front Office on Phones
Training new dental front office team members in your dental practice can be a fun, exciting, and rewarding experience for everyone! More established team members get a chance to shine and share what they know. In addition, existing dental patients just love meeting and getting to know new members of the “family”.
Training is Success
Telephone training for any new team member is critical. Even for someone taking on a position change from the back office to the front office, telephone training is very important. Or if your dental office has dental assistants filling both back and front roles, they too need telephone training.
Training is Support
The telephone has sure changed in the last 10 years! So has how we use our phones! Although we have texting and email features on our phones today, phone calls are still the number one way our dental patients communicate with us in the office. So, it definitely helps everyone in the practice to give every new dental administrator the support they need with great phone training!
How Much Time?
The training process is a time investment. As a general rule of thumb, it takes about 90 days for a new team member to be a truly productive part of the family.
A year is typically the time to expect before the new team member truly settles into their role well. Of course it varies from person to person, the training provided, and the role and practice itself. But we can make progress quite swiftly with the right tools.
How to Begin
If you have a brand-new team member in the dental practice that is going to be answering phones, you want them to really just observe for a few days. Even a new team member with dental experience should watch and listen at first. Provide all new team members with this invaluable opportunity.
During those first couple of days, be sure to introduce the new team member to each and every patient that comes into the office! This is a great way to help them feel comfortable and at home in their new surroundings.
Training New Dental Front Office Phone Guide
Training New Dental Front Office Telephone Guide
The Greeting:
Provide the new team member with a basic script printed on your office letterhead of how you would like the phones answered. For example, “Hello! Thank you for calling Dr. Jones’ dental office! This is Maggie. How can I help you?”. Yes, write it down, and put it on company letterhead.
This is information your new team member can look back on when they need it. The office address, telephone number, the doctor’s full name, or some other important information they might not remember with everything else spinning around in their head!
Communicate Phone Policy for "Please Hold"
What About That “Hold” Button?
How do you want to manage the “hold” feature on your telephone? It isn’t the best greeting we can offer our patients and potential patients. And that’s what we want to communicate to all our new team mates.
Always answer with a warm greeting! “Hello” is still the proper way to answer the telephone. No matter how busy we are. It is a good idea to ask your caller if they would prefer to hold or a call back. They might just have a 3 second message like “I’m just calling to let you know I’m due there with Dr. Jones in 3 minutes, but I’m 10 minutes out still, due to a flat tire. But I’m on my way!”
Training New Dental Front Office?
Set up for success! With phone training tools and so much more. Access all course materials, video downloads, and slide presentations to guide your new dental front office team today.
