The success of your dental practice, and your success as a dentist, is at the mercy of your staff. If you’ve got a great team that delivers amazing customer service, you will be able to build a very successful and profitable dental practice.

However, if you’ve got a team that is average, or below average, you’re going to be under a tremendous amount of financial and emotional stress as you have to constantly run around putting out fires in your business.

In this article, we talk about why you need to implement a strong accountability system to monitor and improve the performance of your team.

When we first began working with dentists, we would build them a great website, do their SEO, rank them high on Google, and create a great presence on social media– but we were surprised to find that in a lot of cases, none of this made a big improvement in their new patient count.

Sure, the numbers did go up and those clients did generate a return on investment– but nowhere near the amount that we expected to see. When we doubled or tripled the number of new patient calls, we expected to see double or triple the amount of new patients booked… but this wasn’t happening.

We were really curious to understand what was going on. So, we started to listen to every single call coming in, and… let’s just say that what we found was shocking.

Across nearly every dentist we worked with, customer service and the new patient experience were lacking. We found hundreds of instances of staff being rude or dismissive to patients, not taking the time to engage with them or answer their questions, and often talking to patients with a demeanor that said “I don’t really care”

Let’s take a look at some examples.

From the tens of thousands of dental calls we listen to each month, what we often find is that, at best, customer service is lacking. Dentists believe it’s their marketing that is holding them back but in 90% of cases we find that dentists have enough new calls coming in they could easily double the patient flow without doing anything different, or spending more, when it comes to marketing.

Take a look at what our clients had to say when we started to share our findings with them. We’ve removed the names to keep things confidential and not identify any particular practice, but this is pretty much the reaction every one of the dentists had.

Here’s one of our clients that operates a large cosmetic practice in Toronto that focuses on dental implants. He had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last 10 years on marketing his practice and on training his staff and was under the impression that they were delivering world-class customer service. Here’s what he had to say when we shared with him a dozen call recordings showing him the experience new patients were getting when speaking with his staff.

Hi Nick. I’m absolutely appalled by this. I can’t believe this is my staff! I have so many questions…

Here’s another quote from a large established office. Again, this dentist had spent thousands of dollars on marketing, consultants, and training. We shared with them a handful of examples of how new patient inquiries are being handled by their staff.

OMG! This is absolutely not the way I want my business handled. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will address it ASAP.

We got this reaction from virtually every dentist we worked with. One office manager said:

Hi guys,

Wow, that call was very difficult to listen to. That was probably the worst customer service call I’ve heard on her part in the 2 years she’s worked here.

Notice that she writes, “…the worst customer service call I’ve heard…” But nobody was recording or listening to any of the calls coming in before we came along– so how many times did it happen in the past two years? This is like catching someone stealing and thinking “well they only did this once, so I’ll forgive them” but the truth is this is just the first time you caught it, not the first time it’s happened.

In many cases, the problem is that receptionists don’t really know what to say and they give patients the wrong information.

In one example, we had a patient call one of our clients to book a consultation for Invisalign. A new receptionist who had only been working there for 4 months told the patient: “Ohh… I don’t think we do Invisalign” 

The patient was confused because he was looking at an Invisalign page on the client’s website. He thought maybe he called the wrong practice so he asks the receptionist if she knows anyone in the area that does it. The receptionist proceeded to give the patient directions to one of our client’s competitors down the street.

Now, this may sound like we’re bashing dental receptionists, but the truth is we were really shocked to discover this. We were just trying to figure out why new patients weren’t booking and we never expected to find what we found.

So how can you tell if this is happening in your practice? And, if it is, how do you fix it? Well, it turns out the reason this happens is that nearly all dental offices lack a strong system of accountability. This is what we started to implement into each dental practice. We did a few things:

• We tracked, recorded, and listened to every single call coming in. Our team found out how many calls were coming in each month, how many were new patients or existing patients, and how those patients found the practice (Google, Facebook, Referrals, Flyers, etc). We also tracked which receptionist they spoke with and whether they were booked for an appointment. If they weren’t, why not?
• We looked at how each staff member was performing. We found many instances where if a new patient spoke with Receptionist A, there was a 60% chance to get an appointment, but if that person spoke to Receptionist B, only 25% of calls turned into appointments. 
• We tracked each new appointment request that came in from the website and followed up with the staff to see what happened. As we started to do this, it became clear that a lot of patients who requested appointments weren’t even being contacted And if they were, it was often days later after they had already decided to call and book with a different practice because nobody had reached out to them. Once we started to hold the staff accountable for those appointments and follow up with them, we found that patient booking rates more than doubled.

Take a look at an email one of our dentists sent us:

The truth is, we didn’t actually do anything different on Google. All we did was implement a system of accountability and followed up with the staff about each patient and… things improved. 

So if you’re not happy with the number of new patients you’re getting, ask yourself: “What am I measuring?”

You may be measuring how many new patients come in but are you also measuring things like:

• How many people contact you to inquire about different dental services?
• How are those people finding you?
• Who is speaking with these patients?
• What is your staff saying to these patients? 
• What is the result of that conversation? Do they book an appointment?
• When a patient requests an appointment from your website, how quickly does the staff contact the patient back? Is it a few hours later or a few days later? 
• When your staff can’t reach a patient, do they try to follow up multiple times or do they just give up after the first attempt? 

If you don’t have answers to these questions then it’s likely that you’re missing a strong system of accountability in your office, and this is critical to building a successful and profitable dental practice.

If you own a dental office and you want your staff to book more new patient appointments, then they must master the use of a transition statement.

A transition statement is a powerful tool that will allow your staff to take control of the conversation, build trust with prospective patients, and ultimately secure them as new patients.

But what exactly is a transition statement, and how do we use it? Keep reading to find out!

A transition statement is a single sentence that can change the entire course of a call. This one simple sentence allows receptionists to take control of the conversation so that the call goes smoothly and is much more engaging.

Without the use of a transition statement, a call will often end up being led by the patient and the conversation doesn’t go where it needs to, resulting in the patient ending the call without booking an appointment.

Often, when a new prospective patient calls your office, the conversation might go something like this:

Patient: “Hi, do you guys do dental implants?”

Receptionist: “Yes we do.”

Patient: “Ok… how much do you guys charge for implants?”

At which point, most dental receptionists will assume that the patient is a price shopper calling around to find the cheapest dentist in their area. They’re not alone. We used to think this too– until we learned better from our friends at All-Star Dental Academy.

According to All-Star, when a patient calls asking for the price, they’re not asking because they’re comparing costs to other practices, but because they simply don’t know what else to ask!

In other words, they don’t know how to begin the conversation. But neither do the dental receptionists. We have listened to thousands of dental calls and when a patient asks about the price, as in the above exchange, most receptionists respond with something like this:

“Oh well… I’m not sure…it really depends… everyone is different… you’d have to come in for a consultation”. 

Not only do responses like this fail to lead the conversation anywhere, but they also risk making patients feel like you are not being upfront with them. They might suspect that you just want to get them in the door, and they won’t book as a result.

This might lead us to believe that the best course of action is to be upfront about the cost… but this doesn’t work either.

Let’s say the receptionist answers with a firm amount, like:

“At our office, dental implants start at $3,000 per tooth.”

At this point, the patient’s question has been answered, leaving them with no choice but to say something like:

“Oh… okay… thanks,” and hang up.

When this happens, not only are we left without the patient’s name or their phone number for a follow-up, we don’t know anything about their issues, whether they were missing one tooth or multiple teeth, whether they were calling for themselves or someone else– we don’t know anything at all and the conversation ultimately went nowhere.

A transition statement allows us to take control of the conversation and steer prospective patients toward booking an appointment. The following is a great example of a standard transition statement:

“I’d be happy to help you with that today. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions so I can better assist you?”

A sentence like this can make all the difference in how well a call goes. Let’s take a look at how the previous exchange might play out with the use of a transition statement:

Patient: “Hi, do you guys do dental implants?”

Receptionist: “Absolutely. We’ve got a very talented dentist in our office who has done hundreds of implants, he’s an artist when it comes to that type of thing. Are you looking for some information on implants?”

Patient: “Uh… yeah. How much do you guys charge for implants?”

Receptionist: “I’d be happy to help you with that today. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions so I can better assist you?”

Patient: “Sure, okay”

Receptionist: “Great! Well, my name is Andrea, who do I have the pleasure of speaking with today, and would you mind giving me your phone number in case we get disconnected?”

This one simple sentence has shifted the power away from the patient and into the hands of the receptionist, allowing them to assume the role of the expert. The transition statement signals to the patient that the receptionist has done this before and that there is a process in place for the service they are looking for.

Because the receptionist now has the power on this call, they can ask investigative questions that will build trust and rapport with the patient. The following are a few examples of good investigative questions:

• “How did you find out about us?”

• “Are you looking for implants for yourself or someone else?”

• “Are you missing one tooth or multiple teeth?”

• “Is it top or bottom? Left or right?”

• “Is it causing you any pain? Are you having any trouble eating?”

You can see how these questions can lead to a much more engaging and meaningful conversation with a patient. Even if they do call a dozen other offices, it’s going to work in your favor because you will have been the only office to make a great impression.

A transition statement creates trust and people buy from people they trust. Make sure your staff knows how to use it, and that they use it on every call because it’s going to make a huge difference in the quality of conversations they are having with patients, and ultimately in the number of appointments you book.

While marketing can get the phone to ring with new patients, it’s important to remember that how well your staff does on the phone plays a big role in how many patients actually come through your door.

You could get ten new patients calling this week, but if your staff are not well trained and have no idea what to say to patients to maximize their chance of booking, then those ten new patient leads may only result in two to three new appointments. Meanwhile, there could be another dental practice in your area that is spending just as much on marketing while also securing ten new patient leads. However, if their staff is well trained in how to talk to new patients, those ten new patient leads could result in 7-8 new appointments for that practice.

Your dental patients don’t really care about all of the fancy equipment in your practice. The reason why a lot of dental websites don’t perform very well is that they show pictures and talk about things that do nothing but stroke the dentist’s ego, not things patients actually want to see or are interested in reading about.

In this video, we’re going to break down what types of content and photos on your dental website will ACTUALLY help you attract new patients.

A common request we get from our dental clients is to feature all of the fancy equipment they’ve purchased at their office. They want to show off their CERC machine, or their CBCT scanner, or their dental laser. They want to make sure everyone knows that their office is not like everyone else, they’re “state of the art”

Now I get it. You’ve spent a lot of money to equip your practice with the best equipment. It’s natural to want to make sure this is front and center on your website so everyone knows it. However, here are two main reasons why this doesn’t actually work.

The first reason is that in 99% of cases you don’t actually have anything that’s really all that special. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve spoken with dentists who are showing off their fancy new laser or intraoral camera or whatever fancy gadget they bought, and they feel that this will help them really stand out, they feel like they are one of only a few dentists that have this type of equipment (because that’s what the sales rep told them), and they feel they need to REALLY promote this (because again, that’s what the sales rep told them to) and then I go on Google and find 20 or 30 dentists in their area that all have the exact same equipment.

This is something that happens ALL THE TIME, and you have to remember that dental supply companies have some of the most talented sales people on the planet. They are absolute experts at getting dentists to buy a bunch of fancy gadgets by making them feel that this will really help them stand out from other dentists… and unfortunately… in 99.9% of cases this is just not true.

Now it’s important to have up to date equipment, to do better dental work, to do it faster, to do it more efficiently, but if you think some piece of equipment is going to help you stand out or give you a big edge over other dentists in your area you are sadly mistaken.

The second reason why talking about your equipment on your website doesn’t work is… patients don’t really care. A patient has a very limited attention span when they visit your website and you don’t want to squander that time by talking about things they have little-to-no interest in.

Let me give you a good example here. Imagine you are trying to sell tickets to a cruise vacation. Instead of talking about how they’re going to discover the world, they’re going to dance the night away in beautiful cities, they’re going to enjoy the sun and the warmth… no,no,no… you instead run an advertisement talking about the diesel engines that power the cruise ship, how big they are, how much horsepower they produce. You talk about how your cruise ship is equipped with the LATEST and the BEST navigation system. We’re not like other cruise ships, we connect with much better GPS satellites for our navigation, we’re state of the art. Instead of our position being accurate on the map to 5 meters, our navigation system is accurate to 2 meters. Order your tickets today!

How successful do you think this would be? This is why so many dental websites produce little-to-no results. They are built to impress the dentist and stroke their ego rather than actually impress patients. You have to remember that when you’re trying to sell someone on Invisalign for example, that person is considering whether they should do Invisalign or if they should go with their friends on a cruise. And the cruise companies do a much better job of marketing their services than dentists do.

So what should you talk about on your website and what pictures should you show? Well when it comes to content you want to focus mostly on what a patient can expect from coming in. If someone is looking for Invisalign for example, you don’t want to spend a lot of time explaining what Invisalign is like most dental websites do, because nobody is going to land on your Invisalign page not knowing what Invisalign is and read your content and say “ohh.. that’s what that Invisalign is. I never knew. I don’t need Invisalign, but I was curious to find out what it was.”

You want to have a bit of that content explaining the service more for SEO reasons to help Google understand that you actually do provide this service. The vast majority of your content though should be around things like:

• How is this treatment carried out?
• How long does it take?
• Does it hurt?
• Do I need to take time off work?
• What can I expect to happen when I come in to YOUR office.
• How do YOU do this procedure?
• Why do YOU do it that way? Why is that better?

You want to talk about what makes you different from other practices. This is where you can sort of touch upon your equipment, but make sure it’s not the main focus, or you’ll lose people’s attention. For example, if you have a CEREC machine, you can say that “Our office is equipped to do same-day crowns.” You would focus the content on the benefit your equipment provides not what that equipment is, because again patients don’t care.

You can also focus a bit of content on the dentist who provides the treatment. For bigger cases like implants or ortho, people will want to know that the dentist who’s doing the work is an expert. While you can’t necessarily state that you’re an expert because this may go against the advertising guidelines of your governing body, you usually can say something like “Dr. so and so has been practicing dentistry for 30 years and has performed over 2,000 implant cases.” or “Dr. so and so has been doing implants for 15 years and regularly teaches at the local university.”

Again you want to review the advertising guidelines for your state or province and make sure you don’t break any rules, but you can have usually have a nice section on a page talking a little about the dentist from the angle of “this is how their experience is going to benefit you as a patient” much like you do when it comes to dental equipment. You don’t want this section to talk about how “Dr. So and so has 4 kids and he enjoys hiking and fishing on the weekends” because… nobody cares. It has to revolve around the patient and their needs.

Now when it comes to photos, you want to follow the same examples you see with vacation advertising. Pictures of happy patients, pictures of your staff in the practice, smiling, having fun, pictures of kids coming in for their first checkup, pictures of staff events, etc.

What you DONT want is pictures of an empty office. You don’t want pictures of an empty operatory showing your equipment, or pictures of your sterilization area or your CBCT scanner. Nobody is going to look at a picture of an empty dental chair with a bunch of sharp and pointy instruments on a table beside it and think “wow that looks fun!”

We see this all the time and I can tell you it is going to tank the conversion rate of your website.

Again, think of it like the cruise vacation. You want to show pictures of guests having a blast on the ship, having a wonderful vacation, you don’t want to show pictures of the engine or pictures of empty rooms on the ship or random equipment.

What your photos need to convey is that you have a nice and modern office, you have warm and friendly staff, and patients seem to be having fun and are happy to come to your office.

Things like photos and content usually seem trivial to most dentists but the reality is they can either make or break your business. The success of a cruise ship is not based on how state-of-the-art their ship systems are or how many certifications the captain holds. It’s largely based on the marketing that attracts passengers and the experience those passengers have once they are on the ship.

The same happens with dentistry. Your success as a dentist is much more dependent on your ability to attract patients and the experience those patients have when they come into your office,  than it is on your clinical skills. This isn’t to say that quality dental care isn’t important, it is, but dentists often neglect many other areas of their practice which leads to poor results over the long term.

At Revup Dental, we meet a lot of dentists eager to try anything to increase patient flow: new websites, SEO, Google AdWords, social media… the list goes on. However, the funny thing is that most of the results we get for our dentists have nothing to do with marketing.

More often than not, we can increase patient flow by simply finding and fixing internal issues in the office. 

How do we do that? In this article, we talk about what data we track for our clients, how we use that data, and how we improve results for dentists without spending a single penny more on marketing.

To drive more new patients to your practice, it’s necessary to understand how your office is communicating with patients. To this end, our team at RevUp Dental has created a system called the Scorecard. This streamlined and organized approach gives us the full picture of what’s going on with patient communication in the practice day-to-day. 

By using the data from this scorecard, we can increase patient flow by 20%, 30%, or even 40% in a single year– all without spending any more money on marketing. In fact, we’re often able to help our dentists spend even LESS money!

The following is a screenshot of an actual Scorecard report we conducted with a past client:

Notice that we’ve blacked out all personal information in accordance with HIPPA. We want to show you a real example, not some made-up demo data like many other marketing companies use.

Google reviews are the most trusted reviews on the internet. Most people looking for a new dentist are just going to Google “dentist” in their area and go to whoever has the most and best reviews. Wouldn’t you? That’s why we always start our Scorecard report by tracking how many Google reviews a practice has. 

In the past, we would explain the importance of Google reviews to our dentists and their staff, and they would agree with us… but then nothing would change. It seemed like they were making no effort to increase their reviews. We kept hearing the same excuse from the staff at the practices– that they were asking for reviews, but patients just weren’t bothering to write them. 

It wasn’t until we started looking at this practice’s system that we understood what was happening. The staff hadn’t logged into the system in months! They weren’t sending review requests at all. It’s understandable. A dental practice is a fast-paced environment and seemingly non-essential tasks often fall through the cracks. 

Our solution was to create a system of accountability by keeping track of how many review requests were actually being sent out each month. Things improved. And now this dentist is the highest ranking dentist in their area, has won numerous awards like Readers Choice award, and Three Best Rated award, and has seen a big uptick in new patients.

We’re frankly shocked at how many dentists we meet who have no clue what their marketing to acquire new patients actually costs. Too many dentists throw money at all sorts of marketing activities– SEO, social media, flyers, promotions, etc. But when we ask them “what is the ROI on this?” “How many patients is this bringing in?” “How much money is this making you?” they have no idea.

The best data they have to show is usually a report their marketing company sent them on how many “clicks” they got to their website, or how many Facebook likes they have. These metrics have about as much value as Monopoly money. 

If you’re spending money on marketing, it’s important to know how many new patients your marketing strategies are bringing in. You also need to validate that these patients are coming in as a direct result of the marketing, not because they were referred by someone or they walked by your practice and saw your sign. 

The problem is that many dentists don’t operate based on data, they operate based on “feelings”. If they notice a few new patients coming, they “feel” that their marketing is working. But in reality, they have no idea how those patients found the practice or even if they had come as a direct result of the marketing. If they have a bad week and there are some holes in the schedule, they “feel” like things aren’t working and that they need to try something different. This management by feeling is why a lot of dentists never achieve more than “average” results.

In our system, we track how much money the dentist gives us for marketing. This includes a website, SEO, AdWords management, content, photos– the whole shebang. In the case pictured above, we only spent a little over $30 on Google AdWords because we simply didn’t need to. 

The practice’s SEO and Google Reviews were so strong that they didn’t have to put more money into marketing. As a result, we were able to generate 39 new patient leads! 

Over the phone or through a Request an Appointment form, these 39 patients told us that they had found the practice on Google by doing a search for a dentist in the area. That means these 39 new patient leads came in as a direct result of the marketing investment. So, in the end, we spent an average of $39.03 to get a new patient who found us on Google to call the practice.

Of these 39 patients, the staff secured 22 patients with BOOKED appointments.

When we look at the total this dentist invested into both RevUp Dental and Google AdWords, we see that, on average, we were able to acquire new patients. 

On average, we’ve found that most dentists in North America are spending around $400-500 to acquire one new patient. When we began working with this practice, it was costing them around $200 to $300 per new patient.

Our Booking Rate section provides a detailed breakdown of what happens with different types of calls and communications.

In this case, the practice was able to funnel 56% of new patient leads into appointments– which is great, considering that when we first started with them, the average was around 25-35% each month.

Before hiring us, the practice was booking 1 appointment on average for every 3-4 new patient calls. Now, out of 2 calls, they secure 1 appointment on average. Once you start tracking the right data, the numbers improve.

Out of 40 existing patients who reached out for an appointment, 31 were successfully booked.  We had 30 patients call to cancel their appointment and 10 were successfully rebooked. This number is usually higher but we are in a pandemic right now.

Out of 208 total phone calls, 20 went to voicemail and 38 calls were not answered. 

Of all of the appointment calls coming in this month, both new and existing patients, the staff were able to secure 76% into appointments. And of all the people filling out appointment request forms on the website, only 40% were booked.

Nobody contacted the business through the general form on the contact page to ask a question this month, and out of 229 total patient communications, both through email and phone in December, we found 20 where there was an opportunity to book an appointment but it was left in limbo. 

Limbo occurs when a patient says something like, “I’m not sure if I can do Wednesday, let me check my schedule and call you back,” but they forget to call back, and the staff never bothers to follow up.

We highlight this so that we can work can encourage the staff to be more proactive about reaching back to patients to secure the appointment.

This information becomes very powerful when we look at average trends for other dental practices across North America. 

In this case, the 40% conversion rate on the Request an Appointment forms immediately caught our attention.

Based on data from dozens of other clients, the conversion rate on these forms is around 75-90%. A patient would have to answer about 20-30 questions to request that appointment. So, if someone is spending 5 minutes filling out that form, they are pretty serious about coming in. 

We investigated this discrepancy and found it was taking the staff 3-5 days to get back to these requests. By that point, many patients had grown tired of waiting and had booked appointments at other practices. We brought this to the attention of the staff and they started to respond to the requests right away. The conversion rate quickly doubled as a result.

We look at what people are actually calling about and what dental services are popular in the area. We look at when calls are coming in, to make sure there is enough staff to handle the volume. But the true bread and butter of our system is listening to make sense of every single communication coming in.

We look at: 

• Who calls
• When they call
• What their name is
• What they’re looking for
• If they’re a new patient or an existing patient
• Which staff member spoke to them
• What was said on the call and what the end results were 
• Were we able to secure that appointment or not? And if not.. what went wrong and how can we improve moving forward?  

It’s a monumental amount of work but it is critical to help us find the bottlenecks in the practice.

Here’s a situation where we had a patient complaint. This patient called on December 8 at 3:59 pm. She was frustrated that she had not been informed that they were other options for sedation either than nitrous. She mentioned the receptionist she spoke with was rude on the phone and hung up on her.

The office manager in this case did a great job of listening to the patient and building rapport. She calmly explained all of the different sedation options the practice offered and sold the sizzle of the practice by explaining the amazing dentist they had at the office. In the end, she managed to secure an appointment with the patient.

A lot happens from day to day in a dental office. No matter how amazing your team is, they cannot possibly catch every little problem on their own. This is where RevUp Dental can help to make sure your practice continues to operate at a high level of customer service. 

We go through every communication to analyze how calls are handled, and where the problems are. Then, we work with the team to fix them. Sometimes this includes a bit of coaching in customer service or how to deal with common objections that come up in a call. Most improvements are made by simply catching issues before they get lost in the shuffle.

We hope you found this article helpful! If you need help managing your dental marketing, feel free to get in touch with RevUp Dental at revupdental.com today!