Does your Front Office always seem to be calling patients because they have cancelled their appointments, or they never made an appointment?

Accepting cancellations over the phone and not making ongoing appointments for these patient is a nightmare for the Dental Office.

Factoring in the time for Patient Follow Up Calls is so time consuming especially while other calls are coming in.

Ensuring your patients make their next appointments before they leave will save a lot of time organizing a new appointment over the phone later on.

The Follow up call is always a challenge. It’s even more of a challenge the longer it has been since the appointment was cancelled or not made.

Try to get onto the follow up call as soon as you can.

There can be a number of reasons a patient does not make an appointment over the phone but more than often we have not increased their concern or created enough urgency in their minds.

Making an appointment on the phone is easy with the right language.

1. Go over where the patient is up to in their understanding of their treatment needed.
2. Ask questions to build concern and urgency

“What would happen if…”

“Are you concerned that…”

“Have you noticed…”

Get the patient thinking about what they have not thought about or may have forgotten.

The patient needs to be concerned about what *will* happen if they don’t make an appointment…

You want to reduce the first three reasons from happening in the first place.

There are four main reasons why a patient cancels their appointment or leaves the Dental Office without their next appointment.

1. Not enough urgency and concern was given to the patient before they left the Dental Office or over the phone.
2. We didn’t find out if there was anything standing in the way of them getting started with their treatment. For example:  fear, money, time, trust.
3. They didn’t understand their Treatment.
4. We did not build enough trust and belief in their treatment

There are some great questions we can ask patients to check how ready they are to start their Dental Treatment and avoid cancellations down the track or no appointment being made in the first place.

 

This blog will feature simple practical ideas that are easy to implement tomorrow in your Dental Office, impacting immediately on your Patients’ Dental  Phone Experiences, and ultimately, improving your practice profitability.

At present I have availability for two new private clients. For more information on how I can improve your Dental Office’s Phone Numbers contact me, Jayne Bandy at  jayne@theDPE.com