How Answering The Phone Can Make A Massive Difference To The Overall Success Of The Business

This week on Marketing Monday, Angus Pryor the Practice Growth Specialist will share with you a recent interview with Ekwa Marketing on how answering the phone can make a massive difference to the overall success of the business on a daily and annual basis. Watch the interview below to find out more.

The way that dental practice answer their phone can have such a massive difference to the overall success of the business on a daily and annual basis. Most dental practices that I deal with, the median spend per client is around the $500 mark per year.

Now, for a practice that’s receiving 10 calls a week from new clients, the difference between converting 50% of those inquiries into appointments versus, say 70% of those inquiries into appointments can be at the end of the year, that converted 70%, that can be an extra 104 clients or around $52,000 in income on the basis of this median spend of $500.

If a practice were able to convert calls into appointments at 90% instead of 50%, that would be an extra 208 clients across a year and extra $104,000 in income. Having someone really skilled and well-trained to be able to answer their calls and convert inquiries into appointments is absolutely critical to the success of the business.

The main thing I’d say is that for dental practices, there can be a risk that they go, “Oh, Jenny’s new. Let’s get her to answer the phone,” and that is a big, big, big mistake. The people who are answering the phone need to be very well-trained, well-practiced and importantly well-resourced.

Dental practice can’t afford to treat the phone as an irritant or an inconvenience or interruption.

In terms of the training for the staff, I think it’s important to measure the outcomes. What percentage of calls are being turned into appointments? It’s really important for the staff handling the phone to have specific strategies in place.

For example, handling price shoppers, when people call up to say, “Well, what do you charge for this service?” And importantly in that regard, people answering the phone should not answer that price question straight away.

You’ve got a really limited window to build rapport, use the client’s name, focus on their medical need and talk up the ability of the practice to treat that need and to engage with the practice in a lifelong or at least extended health partnership.