More Dental New Patients When We Free Phone Lines
More dental new patients means you must free up your phones! Seriously!! How many new patient calls do you miss each day? You may not have any idea! But chances are.. you are!! Especially during those busy times. And that’s when it happens. When every phone line in the office rings. And patients check-in and others check-out.
Denial is not going to help you here! Take a good look at your office phones! Is there always someone available to answer each and every call? Or is your dental front office team helping in the back too? Maybe the phones are rolling over to voicemail. It could be lunch time. But that is also your lost new patient’s lunch time too! And what about those insurance calls?
Free up phones and watch what happens! Really! It could be that you are missing as many or even more calls as you receive each day! If you think you should be seeing more new patients in the schedule, let’s make a couple of changes. And see if anything happens. Try this for one month and track your new patient numbers. Just be sure you’ve got time set aside in your schedule too!
Someone Must Be Available To Answer The Phones
The phones must always be attended. Always! This is not negotiable. No voicemail during business hours. No sharing the front office with the back office. If anything, it would be in reverse. Share the back office with the front. Especially during your busy times. Whatever that looks like. And if you need someone part-time to support the front and/or back office, do that too! Just be sure it’s covered.
Stagger lunch hour breaks. It’s fun when everyone can have lunch together. I get it! But many businesses take lunch at the same time of day. So, it makes sense to have someone on your phones during lunch time. And maybe this is when you want to have an additional part-time person to help. I have found that the hours of 10 – 2 to be busiest with phones and desk activity. My recommendation is to put extra coverage at the desk during those hours. Even if it comes from within the office team.
More Dental New Patients When We Remove Tasks From The Front Office
If you want to make new patients the priority, make this the priority. And be serious about it. That’s going to require some action steps. This is how we make a change. We make a change by implementing change. And we show commitment to something by making a commitment.
Take some tasks off the front office. Tasks like insurance phone calls! Calling on unpaid insurance claims is very time consuming. And hard to do with all of the interruptions at the front desk in any dental practice. What if you are missing new patient calls because of insurance claim calls? That’s just craziness!
Automate Insurance Verification
Maybe someone else can make those follow-up calls! Someone who isn’t answering incoming calls! That could be a second front office person. Or a part-time person. You could also out-source those calls. I can even provide assistance for you here! Whatever you decide, just take these calls off your dental front office team. And you’ll see improvements both to your schedule and your collections.
More Dental New Patients With Phone Training
Phone training is absolutely necessary! Remember.. we are talking about making a change here. And making a commitment! So, whether you are a practice owner, manager, or dental team member, it can begin with you! Good habits and practices in our professional lives is contagious. Take the time to learn the art of the telephone. You’ll be so glad you did!
Train The Entire Team!
Want to train your entire team? And get them plugged into the course materials? This is a very affordable way to get the whole team trained. And allow them to work through course units and read e-books as they can. Even schedule team meetings around these materials! Get the team talking about the phones. Do some new patient call tracking! A little focus and commitment will change everything!
Automate Confirmations & Open Appointment Times
How many confirmation calls to you make and receive each day? Are you spending time on the phone filling open appointment times? Or reminding patients they are due for hygiene visits? Looking for patients with unscheduled treatment for your restorative schedule? You can totally automate those task! Think about how much time that would free up on your dental office phones!
Take the time to schedule a FREE demo today! See if you can free up just a little more time on your dental office phones. And see more dental new patients scheduled.
