I call a Dental Office and they are very busy and this is what I hear:
“Thank you for calling Green Dental. Do you mind If I put you on hold.” (I am placed on hold before I even get to say a word!)
Now I either get to listen to awful flute music or maybe a radio station I don’t even listen to normally or better still piano music. If I am very lucky I listen to some information about how wonderful the practice is. I know it is difficult to determine what every caller wants to listen to while they are on hold.
You may be wondering what is wrong with that.
Here is the problem.
No one even bothered to ask who I was, acknowledged me or even waited for my response.
I am super busy like a lot of people calling your office and right now I am feeling rejected, you are too busy to listen to me and I am unimportant.
You know how your patients feel because it is exactly the same way you feel when you call a business and they place you on hold very quickly without even speaking with you.
The question I get asked so often is, “How do I answer the phone when another line comes in?”
I let Dental Teams know that a great front office coordinator can answer three calls at any one time and that is still taking in consideration there is a patient in front of them and a patient is arriving for their appointment.
It is never ideal when this happens and it doesn’t happen too often but it still happens and yes you need the skill to be able to cope in this situation.
The reason most teams don’t know what to do in this situation is that no one has shown them how.
It is not good enough to pray another person on the team will answer the call or it will just go to a message bank.
When your team know how to do anything that their role requires they will be able to do it over and over again successfully with great results.
If they never know how they they will never do it.
Simple as that.
The most important bit of advice I give dental offices when they ask me how to answer more than one call at a time is, you need to know the art of placing a caller on hold successfully.
Placing someone on hold is easy once you know how to do it.
This is when it is crucial to record a callers name and some details in case you need to place them on hold during the call. It is also important to note which line they are calling on.
When a person calls your office it doesn’t matter what you are doing and whom you are with, you MUST say your normal phone greeting ” Thank you for calling Green Dental. This is Jayne how may I help you. You then immediately ask the caller their name and then explain the situation.
“Hi Jenny. I am with a patient at the moment/I am on another call at the moment, do you mind if I caller straight back/ place you on hold?”
Now wait briefly for the response which is usually YES. You have now been given permission from the caller that they are okay to be placed on hold or called back.
When you don’t ask permission, the person on hold will start to get annoyed and may even hang up on you.
This takes seconds and should NEVER be left out.
You need to ask very single person that calls your office, their name and say their name back.
It is so important to get this right.
Please don’t ever presume your team know how to place a caller on hold.
As I said before this is the one question I get asked over and over again.
This is telling me that many teams are struggling with this. This could even your team.
Why would you ever want to be losing patients who call your office because your team are struggling with multiple calls and placing callers on hold.
This is crazy!
It is one of those small skills that make a HUGE difference when you get it right.
So find out how your team are going. Provide them with the right training and help.
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Dental Practice Management Extravaganza Raising Money For NSW Victims of Bushfires
This event is a special event organised to raise money for those in the NSW South Coast affected by bushfires.
We are working in close conjunction with local dentist and friend Dr Craig Newman to coordinate this event.
100% of the money raised from ticket sales will be donated to those who have been affected.
The purpose of this Dental Practice Management Extravaganza in Merimbula is to help bring economic stimulus back to the town that has suffered significant economic losses as a result of the fires.
All speakers have donated their time unconditionally.
Agenda: The event begins on Friday afternoon with tourism activities and then welcome drinks and dinner on Friday night.
Saturday is our day of education, with a Grande Finale dinner on the Saturday night.
Education and a tourism expedition is organised for the Sunday morning.
For best accommodation options please check Trip Advisor.
https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Hotels-g528992-Merimbula_New_South_Wales-Hotels.html
Speakers include
Jayne Bandy
Julie Parker-Kovess
Dr Toni Surace
Dr Harry Marget
Dr Linhlan Nguyen
Angus Pryor
Frankie J Holden (MC)
Dr Jason Pang
Dr Jesse Green
Dr Howard Farran
Chris Barrow
Dr Derek Mahony
Dr Kristina Cain
Dr David Moffet
*Ticket fee is for education only. Social functions to be charged separately.
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ACAS2020
I have the honour of speaking at ACAS2020 in Sydney February 21-22.
Find out how your team can convert more Phone Enquiries into kept Appointments.
If your team don’t know what to say on the phone and are not ready to book in appointments for Clear Aligners, then you will be missing out on a lot of patients.
I will be giving you tips and ideas on how to convert calls to kept appointments.
Get your tickets now. Don’t miss out!
https://acas2020.com/
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Call Tracking Excellence
With Call Tracking Excellence your team will learn the SAME exact processes Jayne used to:
1. Dramatically improve new patient call-in conversions to booked appointments..
2. Retain existing patient appointments and…
3. Prevent ongoing losses from appointment cancellations.
For those of you, who are ready to get started call me on 1300 378 044 or email jayne@thedpe.com
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Thank you to all the fabulous dental teams who have attended my Master Classes over the last four years.
2020 will be the start of a brand new, NEVER done before 2 Day Event. As soon as I have all the information you will be the first to know!
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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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Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! 🙂