[ACEsthetics] New Post/Thread Notification: The Business of Dentistry

Hello,

drmikemaroon has just posted in the The Business of Dentistry forum of ACE Dental World under the title of Are you a non-answerer?.

This thread is located at http://www.acedentalforum.com/forum/threads/1528-Are-you-a-non-answerer

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
The Madow Bros had a good reminder email sent out today...

*Are you a non-answerer? *

Here is a simple quick tip that will help you in your practice more than you will ever believe. When your office phone rings, a live person actually needs to…

answer it!

This may sound elementary, but did you know that a very large percentage of dental practices miss answering the phone during business hours?

You may be guilty of this if you ever left this message on your answering machine: "You have reached the office of Dr. Drucker. Sorry but we are at lunch now so please leave a message and we will get back to you as soon as possible."

*Translation: Our lunch is more important than you are.*

How about this one? "You have reached the office of Dr. Allen. We are very busy treating patients, so please leave a message and we'll return your call when we aren't so busy."

*Translation: We are overworked and understaffed, so if you are considering coming here as a new patient, beware!*

Your patients (and prospective patients) expect to speak to an actual live person and not an answering machine when they call you. It is a terrible turn-off when this does not happen during business hours. Just make the decision today that you will ALWAYS answer the phone during the workday no matter what and you will be making a tremendous improvement in your practice.

Now of course what your team says on the phone and how they handle all of the questions they are asked separates the successful offices from the not-so-successful ones. Do you know that the way a question is answered oftentimes means the difference between a caller appointing as a new patient or not appointing? True.

Are you doing all of this as best as you can? Are YOU the ones getting all of the new patient calls in your area? And are YOU handling the calls so well that most are appointing and your schedule is full?
***************

--