Guest Post by Jayne Bandy, Founder of Dental Phone Excellence
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I was online reading a post on a Dental Front Office social media page.
The dilemma was the patient who cannot make their mind up when they are given an appointment time.
My answer is if this is happening then *you* are making it happen and not your patient.
Do you take control of your Appointment Book?
Is your Appointment Book working for your business and your patients at the same time?
If you answered no to both these questions, then it is time to change this.
When you make patient appointments, you need to stay in control and keep it simple and easy for the caller/patient to make that appointment.
We all know that in life we are often time poor, and the biggest turn off when you are doing business with a person on the phone is to appear as if you are wasting their time.
Take control of your appointment book but still give your patients choices.
It can be done.
Once you find this happy medium you will have a well-oiled Appointment Book where both you and your patients are happy with their appointment times.
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Your appointment book should be organised and templated so that you:
- reach your business production (staying in business is always a good idea)
- give your patients choices
- create a smooth flow of patient appointment times so that no one is waiting
- allow enough time for specific treatment and care
- have a team who are managing the day and able to give your patients World Class Patient Service
Take control of your appointment book today.
The easiest way to do this is by removing the following phrases:
- “When would you like to come in?”
- “What is a suitable time for you?”
- “Is there a specific time you are looking for?”
- “Would you like this appointment time……, or this…., or this time?”
- “Would you like an appointment?”
If you ask these questions then you end up now needing to ask another question that will allow you to look for a time that is available in your Appointment Book.
We often make the mistake of asking our patients what time they want and we then don’t have it available when they tell us.
This just does not make sense!
I once heard a patient give ten preferred appointment times before an available appointment time was found.
Don’t do this to your patients.
They might think you are busy, busy but they will hate the process and feel that you are not helping them.
It can become a game that no one wants to play, least of all you!
The easiest way to make a patient’s appointment is to just ask:
“Would you like morning or afternoon?”
Then offer one or two appointment times.
You start to narrow down the patient’s appointment time preference in a much more logical way.
A front office coordinator once said to me:
“Is it really that easy?”
She then started asking this one question and she could not believe the difference to her day, to her Appointment Book and to the patient feeling that they had the appointment they wanted and needed.
Often the simple things in our business can make the biggest difference.”
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Dental Phone Excellence is a simple to implement complete Phone Answering system developed by Jayne Bandy that helped her to build an extraordinary dental practice in the heart of working class western Sydney.
Grab her Free Report titled “How I Quickly And Easily Went From 35% To 77% New Patient Telephone Conversions…. And Doubled The Size Of My Dental Practice Along The Way” by clicking here now.
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