February 2020--The Patient Experience Manager of Dental Associates, Christina Villarreal, says they monitor the Patient Prism dashboards that report call data and use that data to better manage the staffing of their phones.
Patient Prism dashboards report call data such as the number of calls at certain hours of the day, the number of missed calls that went to voicemail, the number of calls that dropped on hold, and number of calls from new patients that failed to book an appointment. We watch all of that with interest.
The dashboards help us understand what affects our conversion numbers.
We’ve identified that at a few of our clinics, the phone is ringing three or four times before someone answers it. People don’t want to wait that long. And if they are calling to make an appointment and not getting through, what are they going to do when they have an emergency?
From the Patient Prism data, we know in which hours this happens. So, now we can evaluate if we need to make more people available to focus on answering calls during certain peak hours or throughout the day. We also see trends in data that might be indicative of some team members becoming complacent. We can take a closer look at these team members’ on-phone behaviors and work with them to become re-energized.
By monitoring the conversion numbers of employees, we also learn who are better at conversion, who will benefit from coaching, and who might not be the best fit for this role.
One of the great features of Patient Prism is Patient Prism Academy. The Academy has short training videos for just about every situation. This on-demand training can occur right at the employee’s workstation when they are not on the phone, so we encourage our team members to use it. They learn from the featured, well known call coaches and experts in patient behavior how to optimize patient calls and why this is so important.
As the Patient Experience Manager at Dental Associates, I am dedicated to constantly improving the patient experience at all our locations. Patient Prism is an essential platform for driving high performance in call conversion and lowering the cost of new patient acquisition, but it is more. It has improved the patient experience overall.
That’s because the first phone call is where first impressions are made, value is sold, and trust can begin. It’s the little things like using the caller’s name, asking questions, expressing empathy, sincerely offering to help, and being enthusiastic about the dentist and entire care team that wins the appointment. I am happy to say, more patients are scheduling the care they need and arriving for their first visit looking forward to the exceptional care we will give them. This fosters comfortable appointments and leads to faster treatment acceptance.
The Patient Prism blog and the Patient Prism Academy video library feature hundreds of dental industry experts presenting recommendations and examples for leading and growing your dental practice, multi-practice group, or DSO. We have many videos from practice management coaches that provide advice for improving patient communication, converting new patients, and scheduling. We invite you to schedule a Patient Prism demo at a date and time that is convenient for you.