Your patients ask many questions prior to their appointment, but they call you a day or two before their appointment and start asking you these questions:
- When is my appointment?
- How long does my appointment go for?
- What is the appointment for?
- Who will I be seeing?
- How much will it cost?
So why are your patients asking these questions before their appointment?
These are questions, they should already know the answers to.
When your patients ask these questions, it means they are confused, unclear and in the dark!
This is not the mindset you want your patients to have before they come in for their appointment.
Your patient should be:
- ready
- clear about the treatment and care they are having.
- focused
- informed
When your patient is unclear about their next step, they lose focus which means their urgent and important treatment and care becomes unimportant, and your patient calls to cancel their appointment.
All because your patient was unclear.
Our duty of care is to always check every patient is clear about their treatment before they leave the practice, or after a New Patient makes their first appointment over the phone.
I know from time to time your patients do forget their appointment times or forget to write it down somewhere or lose their appointment card.
This seems to happen very often with patients who schedule their preventive care appointment 6 months prior. Contact patients two weeks prior to their appointment just to give them a gentle, “Hi, your appointments coming up, we are looking forward to seeing you.” message.
It is important that each patient knows the length of their appointment. You know the duration of the scheduled treatment so why not let your patient know this as well, after all their time is just as valuable as yours.
I am shocked when patients are confused what their appointment is for.
When you schedule an appointment for a patient always mention what the appointment is for and give your patients an idea of what to expect at their appointment.
This is also a great opportunity to ask your patient if they are unsure about anything and any questions they may have. Best to get any confusion sorted out, while the patient is in front of you or immediately after they have scheduled their appointment over the phone.
Now question #4 “Who will I be seeing?” is a question that makes me a little sad, especially if it is an existing patient. Your patients should know the name of their dentist.
Try this little exercise when you are next, out and about, chatting to people.
Ask people who their dentist is.
You will be surprised at how many people do not know the name of their dentist and even the dental practice name.
Why is this?
When you schedule the appointment for your patient go over the time and day, the type of treatment they will be having and the duration, as well as the name of the dentist they will be seeing.
Make it a habit and do this every time you schedule an appointment. Write the name of the dentist on the appointment card for all New Patients or any message you send prior to their appointment.
This starts to personalise the interaction with the dentist.
Now you never want a patient calling you before their appointment asking you about how much it will all cost.
You must always inform your patient about their treatment and the fees before their appointment. The last thing you want is a surprised patient at the practice.
When your patient knows the fee for treatment, they are ready and you can have a discussion prior to the appointment in case they need a payment plan to help them manage the payment and more importantly help them go ahead with the treatment.
Keeping your patient in the dark and avoiding the payment discussion is fraught with danger and no one wins!
If you have to inform a patient about the fee, a day or two before their appointment this can help your patient decide to cancel their appointment.
Discussion about money and payments is best done while you have the patient in front of you so you can offer solutions ahead of time.
It is so much better if your patients are not calling your office every day with these questions.
You will now have more time to talk with your New Patients when they call, and more time with your existing patients when they arrive for their appointment.
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T H E D E N T A L P H O N E E X C E L L E N C E O N L I N E M A S T E R C L A S S I S H E R E !
www.dentalphoneexcellencemasterclass.com
I LISTENED TO YOU and finally my Master Class is here ONLINE just for YOU!
Your team do not need a day off work to attend this Master Class. YOUR TEAM can complete the Dental Phone Excellence Master Class right there in your practice at their own pace. The BEST part of my Master Class is that you have it FOREVER once you purchase the Master Class.
It’s time to say GOODBYE to New Patients calling your office and NO APPOINTMENT ever being made, people calling your office about the price and never making an appointment and your patients continually calling to cancel their appointment!
There are 7 Learning Modules in this Master Class
• Module 1: How to Effectively Communicate with Your Patients
• Module 2: The 8 Steps to the New Patient Call
• Module 3: How to Answer the Questions Callers Ask
• Module 4: Correct and Easy Appointment Scheduling
• Module 5: How to Prevent and Handle Cancellations
• Module 6: How to Follow Up Your Patients
• Module 7: Giving the Very Best Patient Experience
www.dentalphoneexcellencemasterclass.com
There are a total of 42 Learning Videos and my Checklists, Templates, Scripts and Flowcharts to help support your team’s learning.
This program has been designed to teach dental teams how to communicate more effectively with their patients and get better results.
This Master Class is easy to understand, easy to work through and you can go through the program at your own pace.
This is the Master Class that guarantees your success when you start using the strategies and skills we go through together.
To secure you LIFETIME access to my Master Class click the link below. It is that fast and easy to get!
www.dentalphoneexcellencemasterclass.com
I look forward to seeing you all get the RESULTS you deserve and MORE!
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Call Tracking Excellence
Click this link to find out how to get started. It’s that easy! http://www.calltrackingexcellence.com/
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If you want to know about the Dental Phone Excellence System I developed over many years working in my own Dental Practice and the same System I now share with many Dental Teams, then give me a call or send me a quick email.
The teams I have worked with all say how much easier it is using the Dental Phone Excellence System, when they answer calls and how many more kept appointments they make and confirm for their patients.
1300 378 044 or jayne@thedpe.com.
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Dental Phone Excellence is a simple to implement complete Phone Answering system I developed that helped me to build an extraordinary dental practice in the heart of working class western Sydney.
If you’d like to know more, download my sixteen page FREE special report “How I Quickly and Easily Went From 35% to 77% New Patient Telephone Conversions, and Doubled The Size of my Dental Practice Along the Way” and discover some of the many costly mistakes being made on your phone…..
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