Dental Front Desk Tips To Boost Patient Conversions Over the Phone 

Your front desk team can attract or repel new patient callers. What good is spending money on marketing expenses or encouraging people to get in touch with you if your front desk team could care less about picking up the phone?

Truthfully, a significant proportion of people you market to will choose to contact your dental practice over the phone. Therefore, it’s crucial that you ensure your dental front desk team knows how to convert patients over the phone.

In this blog, we’ll focus on 5 ways your front desk team can improve patient conversion over the phone. 

5 Proven Ways Your Front Desk Team Can Improve Conversions Over the Phone

1. Answer the phone with a can-do attitude 

A smile goes a long way, and research now proves it! One of the most powerful and contagious gestures, a smiling face attracts more people than a frowning face (even over the phone). When your team answers the phone with a smile and can-do attitude, potential patients are more inclined to consider your practice. Think about it this way: no one wants to spend money at a business where they feel unwelcome and ignored. 

2. Take detailed notes when patients have multiple requests

As part of your standard operating procedure, your dental front desk team should always take notes when attending to patients over the phone. This way, they will have the patient’s name, questions, and concerns in writing – without worrying about forgetting. Being attentive over the phone helps build trust and rapport with the caller and enables your team to give customized responses.

3. Answer all patient questions 

Your dental front desk team should focus on helping the caller. This demonstrates to callers that your team is interested in knowing more about patients in order to provide the right solution. The staff member who takes the call should ask specific questions that reveal the nature of the patient’s problem. And, when answers are provided, your staff should not be judgmental but empathetic instead. 

4. Ask to schedule an appointment 

The primary purpose of a phone call must be to encourage new patient callers to schedule a visit. Remember, a dental practice cannot function as a business without patients. Therefore, getting the patient to visit the office should be your team’s first priority. As a result, calls should not end with the usual goodbye, but with an invitation to meet one of the dental practitioners at your practice.

5. Funnel patients to your dental website or get their email to stay in touch 

There are several tactics that your dental front desk team can use to ensure new patient callers get an appointment. However, there are times when that isn’t the case. When prospective patients don’t want to schedule an appointment, your team should funnel them to your dental website (which hopefully has online scheduling capabilities) and ask for their email address to send information about new treatments and practice specials. 

How To Train and Hire the Best Dental Team

Of all the strategies used to market dental practices, one of the most overlooked is the power of answering a phone call. 

Imagine, with just one call, a prospective patient makes the decision to book an appointment at your dental practice…or not!

It’s imperative to make sure your dental front desk team is trained to engage callers over the phone. Don’t assume they know how to handle phone calls just because they’ve worked at a dental practice before. 

To that point, you must train them on phone etiquette or get them the training they need. In addition to that, you should also hire the best team from day one.

Since many practicing dentists are past “day one,” it’s crucial to periodically analyze employee performance. If your dental practice can’t ensure patient conversions over the phone, then you need to reconsider who will be in charge of the phones.

Keep in mind that underproductive and inefficient employees create more problems for businesses and impact the team’s productivity. Not only will you be losing out on revenue, you’ll be paying someone who doesn’t fulfill the role they were hired for. 

To learn more about dental front desk training courses and how to hire the right team, visit www.dentalwhale.com/education.