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MailNote: This article describes a previous version of Patient Prism. You can read about the latest version of Patient Prism, V3, here.
May 2022--If you’re driving yourself and your staff crazy trying to figure out how to grow your dental practice, it’s time to focus on how many new patient calls your dental marketing efforts are generating and how many calls lead to booked appointments.
Good dental call tracking software provides actionable data so you can make smart business decisions.
The best call tracking companies give you the data in real-time. They notify you when a potential patient did not book. And they give your team the information they need to call back the patient and recapture the lost opportunity.
How do you know which call tracking provider is the right one for you?
Here are 5 questions to ask to help make your decision.
1. What does the software measure?
Not all dental call tracking systems measure the same things. You want to know how potential patients are finding your dental practice so you can judge the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
You want to know why people are calling and what services they need.
You also need to know how many calls lead to booked appointments. And if they didn’t book, why not?
Before you commit to a call tracking company, be sure it will provide the following data in real time:
- Total number of incoming calls
- Number of calls from new patients
- Number of calls from your existing patients
- Number of calls that lead to booked appointments
- The date and time of each booked appointment
- Which services each caller wanted
- The marketing driver for each phone call. Was it your website, a Google business listing, digital advertising, print advertising, radio advertising, television advertising, billboard, direct mail, etc.?
It’s even more important to understand which calls from potential new patients did not lead to a booked appointment.
You should be able to see at a glance:
- Number of new patient calls that did not lead to an appointment
- The reason why a new patient call did not result in a booked appointment
- The lost revenue associated with the non-booked call or missed opportunity
- Whether the missed opportunity was followed up by somebody in your office so the caller’s concerns could be addressed and whether that follow-up call resulted in an appointment
The best call tracking software for dental offices gives you to information you need to recoup missed opportunities and re-engage the caller. By converting more callers into booked appointments, you increase your revenue.
"The best call tracking software for dental offices gives you to information you need to recoup missed opportunities and re-engage the caller."
2. How will the call tracking system help improve the call conversion skills of your team?
A patient’s first phone call to your office is likely to be their first impression of your professionalism. The best call tracking companies give dentists and practice managers the data they need to evaluate team members and phone systems.
As you’re researching call tracking companies, ask if they provide this information:
- The name of the team member who answered the call
- Where that team member works – in the office or a call center
- The team member’s success in building rapport with the caller
- The team member’s call conversion rate. How many calls resulted in appointments?
- Just-in-time learning videos to give coaching tips to employees who missed an opportunity to book an appointment
- Information on calls that don’t connect with a live person. For example, how many calls went to voicemail and did the caller leave a message?
If you have a lot of calls that are going to voicemail, you may want to adjust schedules so you have better phone coverage. Or it may help to add more phone lines.
Most call tracking companies provide basic data for each call. The best ones also include coaching videos and tips from top dental consultants. The coaching gives team members positive reinforcement and information they need to improve their phone skills and conversion rates.
In turn, that increases the number of new patient appointments your dental office books. It also helps more people in your community receive the dental care they need. And it can help boost morale in your practice. Everyone likes to feel like they are contributing to the office’s success.
3. How is the data presented?
You and your team are busy. You need the information you get from your service provider to be quickly accessible and easy to understand.
Ask the company about these criteria:
- How quickly will the office receive call data? Is it within the hour? Is it by end of day?
- Will team members get an alert via email or text message when an opportunity arises to follow up with a missed opportunity?
- How is the call data displayed for a single dental practice?
- How is the call data displayed for multiple dental practices? What does the enterprise dashboard look like? Can you segment by region, brand, call center, and employee?
- Can you create custom reports?
- Can you export the data as a PDF or an Excel spreadsheet?
Here’s a big question to ask: do you need to listen to each call to learn what happened? Or does the software give you a visual representation of the call, showing why the call did not convert, and annotated so you can see important caller data such as services desired?
Here’s a big question to ask: do you need to listen to each call to learn what happened?
4. How accurate is the data?
Some call tracking services promise the moon. But when you start digging into the calls, you might find they were mis-classified or they cited incorrect data. In some cases, the mistakes were made because the company is outsourcing the review process or is using flawed artificial intelligence algorithms.
Ask the service provider these key questions:
- What is the accuracy rate of the company’s call tracking?
- Are the company’s call coaches native English speakers?
- Does the company provide call coaches fluent in other languages, such as Spanish?
- Do the call coaches have prior dental experience?
- Where is the company’s call center located?
- Does the call tracking company audit its own call coaches to ensure accuracy?
- Is the call center HIPAA compliant?
5. What measures are in place to ensure the call tracking software performs at its optimal level?
It’s important to ask if the company has triple redundancy. Will they confirm that you will have access anytime you want it? You don’t want the system to crash.
Make sure to ask these important questions:
- How long they will store call recordings and call data to be accessible to your team?
- Does the company uses its own patented technology, or has it simply white-labeled another company’s technology?
- Is the company a Google Partner and does it directly integrate with Adwords? That lets the company share its conversion data by campaign and keyword within your Adwords account.
The Best Dental Call Tracking Companies Generate much more Revenue than they cost
You spend money on advertising to make your phones ring. With the right call tracking service, you’ll know how well that investment is or is not working. You’ll know how many calls are coming in and what services callers request You’ll know whether they book an appointment. And if they don’t book, you’ll know the reason for the missed opportunity.
A member of your team can call the person back to address his or her concerns. They can try to book the lost appointment.
Recapturing lost opportunities means increasing the number of new dental patients you see in your office. And that means additional revenue.
Are you ready to learn more about how an innovative phone call tracking system can help grow your dental practice? Contact Patient Prism today. We are ready to help.
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