Leveraging AI to Increase Full-Arch Dental Implant Production - Part 4

Note: This is a 2022 article that describes a previous version of the Patient Prism software. For example, the term RELOs is no longer used to refer to missed opportunities for follow-up, the number of new patients calls analyzed by the AI exceeded 11 million at the start of 2023, and Patient Prism now updates all call analytics in real-time, delivering missed opportunity alerts within one minute. Read about the major V3 enhancements here.

Make the Most of Your Full-Arch Implant Leads with Bart Knellinger

January 2022—How many full-arch implant cases are you leaving on the table because good leads are dropping off before they can be served with a consultation? According to Bart Knellinger, CEO of Progressive Dental Marketing, it’s a very large number and you won’t know how many until you have the right optics. The right optics are possible with Patient Prism's artificial intelligence. Not only will you learn how many leads you are winning and losing, but Patient Prism’s alerts and AI feedback will quickly train those who are answering your phones to become adept at triaging and scheduling the right people. 

Patient Prism’s AI Enables You to Re-Engage Lost Opportunities

According to Bart Knellinger, Patient Prism is a “no brainer” because his clients have leads coming in and they are not being managed well. Even if incoming calls are recorded, dental practice owners and managers do not have time to listen to the calls, identify the high-value leads, and sort out the issues. He says, “Call recordings are rendered completely useless without using artificial intelligence to do the heavy lifting and then give you the recordings that matter most for you to listen to.”

Patient Prism’s CallViz technology enables dental practices to see what is happening. The artificial intelligence translates key words into metrics and graphics, so you don’t even need to listen to any calls. Text alerts tell you which calls need follow up and what to say. 

“It actually shows you in nearly real time,” says Nirgudkar. “You’re spending all this money driving the leads into the system. You may have had call tracking and call recording but never had anybody listen to these calls. Which of the calls are important? How should you take action?” 

Patient Prism’s innovative idea was to listen to calls and test out re-engaging lost opportunities by calling back leads shortly after the initial call failed to book a consultation. It was so successful that Patient Prism designed unique technology and trained its AI robot through millions of new dental patient phone calls. It’s now the fastest, most dental-focused AI call tracking and alerting system available.

“We invented this idea called RELO,” says Nirgudkar. “It's called Reengage Lost Opportunity. We decided to leverage AI to do something that's never been done in dentistry before and that’s to recover a lead lost just 15 minutes ago. You now have a second chance to make that first impression."

For example, a lead comes in at nine o'clock in the morning. A prospective patient calls and says he is looking for a full-arch solution. Somehow, the conversation isn't as good as it could have been, and the caller is not scheduled. Maybe the caller was a price shopper who was given a price too early or with inadequate context. At 9:05 Patient Prism's AI recognizes this was a lost opportunity. At 9:20, an alert shows up at your dental practice that indicates you just lost a full-arch opportunity. 

When the treatment plan coordinator or office manager reads the alert, she or he feels a sense of urgency to make an immediate call back. The alert contains feedback on what was missed in the previous conversation. For example, you didn’t mention there are treatment options with different price levels and that financing options are available. On a call back, you can say you forgot to tell the caller about these and that you have found a choice of immediate consultation appointments.

Once financial triage questions and information sharing reveal treatment is affordable, the biggest point of attrition occurs when you are not able to offer an immediate appointment.

"Because a $50,000 lead has priority, arranging with the doctor to offer an immediate appointment and calling back is worth the few minutes and effort," says Nirgudkar.

Nirgudkar proposes the call back could go something like this, “Sir, you called us earlier and we didn’t have an appointment when you wanted it, but we’ve found out the doctor can see you at 8:00 am tomorrow and we’ll give you a free CT scan. It’s free on us. We love new patients. Our doctor is one of the best in the country. He’s done thousands of full-arch cases. By the way, we have a new patient special right now that gives new patients a free tooth whitening kit. I can you give one of those, as well.”

“RELO alerts are brilliant,” says Knellinger. 

Patient Prism’s AI does a 14-point inspection across four different phases of each call: 

1. Greeting to make a great first impression
2. Rapport building 
3. Interviewing the caller to learn the caller’s needs and wants
4. Converting the caller to a scheduled appointment and reassuring the caller they called the right place

In the case of full-arch implants, the triage decision to schedule a consultation or not is made at the end of the interview which is based on integrity selling techniques. 

“Across these four phases of each call, the robot scores what goes right and what goes wrong with the conversation,” says Nirgudkar. The RELO alert informs your team what to do next to recover the lead in a call back.

Teams Readily Adapt to Patient Prism 

RELO alerts can be received by one or more members of the team who are set up to receive them. For a while you may want to have the doctor, treatment coordinator, and office manager receive the alerts, so they become aware of the magnitude of opportunities lost and won in nearly real time. They can then create energy around recovering and converting good leads.

As front desk team members or call center receptionists become used to Patient Prism alerts and coaching, perhaps, only one member of the team receives the alerts and manages them. The other practice leaders can monitor the data from Patient Prism at any time, and the patented CallViz visualization used in Patient Prism reports make monitoring data fast and easy.

To make Patient Prism receptionist-friendly, “we’ve also gamified it,” says Nirgudkar. The AI robot is trained to recognize each receptionist’s voice, and it tracks each receptionist’s performance. In the staff performance report, practice leaders and team members get to see the things each receptionist is doing well and the things the receptionist needs to remember to do on subsequent calls to improve performance. The alerts and reports are constantly coaching receptionists into optimal conversations with callers. In the call recording graphic that shows the best and worst parts of a call in green and red, you can click on an area of a call to listen to just that segment and learn from it.

After a few calls, receptionists relax about being monitored and start enjoying the competition and success they build says Nirgudkar. The coaching helps them perform better and be recognized for their contributions. 

“Guys, this is so cool,” says Knellinger. “And this is so useful for our Progressive clients right now. It literally tells you where in the conversation in the dialogue to look. For my clients, I’m saying let's get on this software. If for nothing else, use this for tracking and optimizing full-arch leads. The artificial intelligence is going to do all the heavy lifting for you. It will show you where in the dialog something could have been said differently and give you an action plan to recover the lead.”

If a receptionist regularly forgets to mention financing or treatment options or ask relevant questions to triage the caller, then you know that receptionist needs to understand the why behind those things and receive more training says Nirgudkar. When the AI tells receptionists they are forgetting to do something 50% of the time, the data wakes them up. They no longer forget. The data is powerful.

Here’s an example says Nirgudkar, “They're not calling the patient by their name and introducing themselves by name. It's important to ask for somebody's name. Saying the person's name develops rapport. So, Patient Prism coaches them to get the caller’s name and use it in the conversation. This helps the caller connect with the receptionist on a more personal level. That's one of the variables that the robot looks at. And at the end of the day, we're in the business of changing people's lives, but first they have to trust us. And the only way they're going to trust us is if they feel we care and are competent… if they feel that we know what we're talking about… if they feel that they can actually afford what they're being offered and what they need.” 

Building rapport is essential for a satisfying patient journey and therefore essential to get new patients in the door and closed. “People are not buying a denture. They are buying you,” says Nirgudkar. “The Closing Institute teaches that you are not selling implants. You’re selling a lifestyle… the gift of health, predictable function, and social confidence.”

Why Is a Higher Level of Lead Conversion to Appointments Important?

“You are spending a lot on marketing. Maybe you are doing well but you could be doing a million dollars better this year if you consulted with more qualified leads and closed more cases. You need to measure your leads and what is happening with them,” says Nirgudkar. “You've hired the best marketing agency in the world to get you full-arch cases, the least you could do is make sure that you're optimizing these conversions and getting more people in the door.”

Knellinger explains that clients ask him how much they need to spend on marketing to do ten arches a month, and he then asks them how efficient they are going to be in converting callers to appointments that lead to case acceptance. A client can spend more to generate more leads or spend less and be more effective at converting fewer leads.

Knellinger says that, before Patient Prism, there wasn’t a way to manage leads effectively. Marketing can drive 500 calls a month for full arch and no one can listen to all the calls. “With Patient Prism, you have the right business optics, and you have artificial intelligence listening to the calls and pointing out the right opportunities for follow up. The RELOs are going to alert you about missed opportunities in almost real time. If you are going to use analytics, then they should be used for the most profitable, most competitive cases you are offering.”

Nirgudkar reports that 24.6% of patients who are lost on the first call, do book an appointment when they are called back. “Imagine having a quarter of your lost leads coming in for consults without spending an additional dime on advertising,” says Nirgudkar. “Because now you have a second chance to make that first great impression, make all the wrongs in the previous conversation right, and create enormous goodwill because you cared enough to call back.”

AI Makes It Easier to Predictably Scale Your Business

“If you have a business that's smaller and your business is generating twenty full arch leads a month, you can manage twenty. You can get through them. You can listen to all of them if you want because there's only twenty calls,” says Knellinger. “But you can take twenty consults to 200 at two or three locations. You can take 200 to 400. The only way to scale is to start using automation technology.” 

How to Contact Progressive Dental Marketing & The Closing Institute

Although this video series is based on an online seminar produced for Progressive Dental Marketing’s clients, many others viewing and reading this blog may want to develop a full-arch practice within their dental practice or multi-location group of practices. If you would like to reach out to Bart Knellinger and his team, go to their contact page on www.progressivedentalmarketing.com.

Amol Nirgudkar recommends Progressive and The Closing Institute because they are so effective at marketing full-arch implant treatment and in coaching dental practices in selling full-arch cases. 

For any Progressive client who signs up for a Patient Prism demo, Knellinger is providing them with a complimentary ticket to attend one of four Closing Institute courses in 2022.

The Closing Institute was developed because Progressive Dental Marketing’s clients needed someone to teach them how to take a prospective full-arch implant patient through the entire patient journey from recognizing their need through choosing who will perform the treatment and showing up for treatment explains Knellinger. “We needed to teach them the sales process, to teach them how to close. And part of the sales process is lead management. Once you attract the lead with marketing, how is that lead going to be handled and how efficiently can you triage out leads that are not qualified so you don’t waste the doctor’s time and the team’s time? Patient Prism provides the solution,” says Knellinger.