Here’s one of the easiest things to do to keep your appointment schedule full.
For your hygiene department, or for those dentists still doing their own hygiene, all you need to do at the start of each morning is this:
Look at the schedule of hygiene appointments for this day, and then take that schedule and go to the same day of the week in 28 weeks’ time [six months and two weeks] and enter those patients in on that future day at exactly the same times.
Then, as today progresses, all that your hygienist or dentist needs to do is say to the patient at the appropriate time during their appointment:
“I’m scheduling you in again in six months’ time…looks like this time and day of the week works for you?”
And BAM!
The appointment is already there in the schedule anyway.
In all cases, the hygienist or the dentist have already pre-empted the reason for the next visit for this patient, saying:
“I want to check on that early onset recession in the top left molars”
Or
“I want to be remeasuring and checking on those pocket depths”
Or
“I want to review the amount of bone loss we’re seeing, and make sure that we’re doing the right things for you…”
For 95% of patients this will be OK, and we’ll have avoided the playing of “appointment tennis” in trying to schedule their next necessary hygiene visit.
That presumptive advance pre-scheduling of the next hygiene visit in the treatment room saves your front office team a lot of time that can then be used by those astute team members to spend “visiting and schmoozing” with the departing patient.
Also, it’s a proven fact that the scheduling of the patient’s next hygiene visit by the practitioner who has just completed that treatment results in a greater personal commitment from the patient to attend their next hygiene appointment.
And it’s a measurably far greater commitment than when the next hygiene appointment is scheduled at the front desk during departure.
Follow this simple improvement to skyrocket your patient acceptance rates.
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Dr. David Moffet BDS FPFA CSP is a certified CX Experience coach. David works with his wife Jayne Bandy to help SME businesses improve their Customer Service Systems to create memorable World Class experiences for their valued clients and customers. Click here to find out how David and Jayne can help your business