Have you ever been on the phone or even at a party and finally realised the person you are talking to has not had a chance to get a word in?
Good.
I am not glad that you have done this but I am so glad that you realised.
When I visit businesses who use the phone as their daily business (like everyone does!) I will often stop and listen to how much talk is coming from the person on the phone.
What I have noticed is the employee on the phone usually talks the whole time. Usually they only offer a handful of questions, which means the person on the other end only gets a couple of opportunities to speak.
Why does this happen?
What do we believe is the outcome of a call where the person on the other end of the phone gets hardly no opportunity to speak?
Someone once said to me that there is a reason we have two ears and only one mouth.
We should be listening twice as much as we are speaking.
And it’s the same in our business.
When you are on a call in your Dental Office do you talk more than you listen?
Are you really able to find out what you need to know about the caller when you do all the talking?
The answer is NO!
Too much talking or over explaining will lead to less appointments being made. That is not good for your business!
The person at a party doing all the listening is regarded as the more interesting and engaging person. Why do people think this? After all they probably didn’t really find out much about the other person yet believe them to be very interesting.
Taking this vital piece of information back to your Dental Office is gold.
Most Dental Offices will give a generic spiel over the phone all about their practice and what the caller needs rather than actually asking what they need.
Is this happening in your Dental Office?
I mean specific, individual, meaningful questions the caller believes you would only ask them on this specific call.
It does take some practice to master this art of conversation over the phone. Not everyone can automatically do this but once you know what to ask and say on the phone it makes a huge difference in the number of appointments made and the number of appointments kept!
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
