When I ask dental practice owners this question, they rarely can give me an accurate answer.
The reason they don’t know the answer is that they aren’t looking at missed call data that’s being provided by their phone company.
And if they aren’t looking at that data, there’s a very good chance that they aren’t acting on that data either.
I phone a lot of dental practices.
And I’m surprised at how many times, during business hours, that my phone call is not answered.
When the call is not answered:
- The call may simply ring out
- The call may go through to a recorded message that asks me to leave my details [amongst other things].
I never leave my details.
In both cases, I want to see whether or not the practice acts upon a register of missed calls.
How many calls to a dental practice do not get answered?
Our research over the past twelve years has showed us that 38% of phone calls to a dental practice do not get answered.
That’s roughly two calls out of every five incoming calls.
And our research shows that in most instances, those callers whose calls are missed, rarely leave a message with details of who they are.
Which means that most missed calls to a dental office either decide to ring back at another time, or they decide to phone another dental office…
But if we don’t check a list of missed call phone numbers against the phone numbers of people and patients who are actually in our data base, how do we know anything about anything?
If we were to check the phone numbers…
If we were to check the missed call phone numbers and see whether those people were in our data base, or did have an appointment, then we could also see how many calls to our office were missed where the caller was a potential new patient with a genuine concern?
[Well actually every potential new patient has a genuine concern, because nobody out there phones a dental practice for fun… there are better things to do for fun… everyone who calls a dental practice has a dental problem, and has decided that they want that dental practice to help them with their problem.]
The trouble is, most dental practices are not checking this data.
Lastly, I’ll mention this…
Of the 62% of phone calls to a dental practice that actually get answered, only one third of those actually make an appointment.
Which means that in reality, two out of three phone calls answered at a dental practice do not go ahead and schedule.
Which really means that for every five calls to a dental practice, only one in five actually makes an appointment.
Imagine this…
Imagine if your dental practice could answer more incoming phone calls, and could also convert more incoming phone calls into made and kept appointments?
You’d have more bookings in your dental appointment schedule, which would mean an increase in dental production for your dental practice.
And the thing is, the phone is already ringing anyway.
So there’s no extra spend for the practice to get more new patients in.
Converting the ringing phone into more made and kept appointments is actually free money for every dental practice.
And it helps more people receive our exceptional dental services…
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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