Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

FREE WEBINAR Presented by Colin Campbell BDS FDS Specialist in Oral Surgery Tuesday 5th March at 19:30 This webinar is suitable for ALL dentists, regardless of their experience with implant dentistry. The programme will introduce practitioners to the International Team for Implantology and its education principles and courses available. Colin Campbell has an extensive understanding of implant dentistry and provides referral services in oral surgery and implant dentistry from practices in Nottingham and Derbyshire. Colin also delivers training in implant dentistry throughout the United Kingdom. This webinar is suitable for ALL dentists, regardless of their experience Register for this FREE webinar www.dentalwebinars.co.uk Getting Serious about Implantology with the ITI www.itieducation.org/uk Call + 44 (0) 1293 651270 21Business ManagementFeb 11-17, 2013United Kingdom Edition don’t leave a voicemail. • 20 per cent of new enquirers don’t call back if the line is busy. • 85 per cent of new enquirers don’t call back if the call isn’t picked up at all. During lunch times and school holidays practices can expect to receive 30 per cent higher call volumes. This needs additional capacity to manage the over-flow calls but in reality: • 55 per cent of practices rely on answering machines to cope with over-flow calls. • 24 per cent have no over-flow facility. Therefore the line is en- gaged or rings out. Patient Frustration The result of this is patient frus- tration, a poor impression given of practice efficiency and a po- tential loss of business. If nearly half of all enquiries are lost due to the patient having difficulty reaching the reception what message does it send? Even if there is a system to book next appointments in per- son 45 per cent find they need to re-arrange these due to other commitments. Of the 100 practices sur- veyed, 90 had websites, three of which had technical errors so were not functioning correctly. Eighty one of the sites had a “contact us” web form. Of those sites with contact forms, only eight generated any sort of auto- response acknowledging the en- quiry. Worse still more than half (52 per cent) of practices did not follow up on the enquiry. What this excellent little re- port tells me is that large num- bers of practices don’t appreciate what their existing and potential patients want and need from them. Ask yourself the question; do you expect better service from others than you provide yourself? What really happened to those patients who you saw regularly for several years but then just disappeared? The area of lunchtime cover has always been and remains a thorny sub- ject in many minds, yet those practices that appreciate that their patients have limited ac- cess to use a telephone during the working day, and take steps to cater for that, are rewarded for their efforts. Perhaps you don’t think that this is important. For those looking to provide a high qual- ity of care to discerning patients who you want to expect the best that you can offer, then high standards in those areas that they encounter first will en- courage them to use your ser- vices. What are the solutions? If your practice is large enough, ensure that you have one person dedicated to dealing with incom- ing calls. This removes the need of a receptionist “multi-tasking” to dealing with patients in per- son and trying to cope with the telephone. This alone doesn’t remove the problem of blocked lines at busy times of the day, so consider the services of a virtual office with a dedicated and well trained staff that can contact you by email within seconds of dealing with your call. Those practices that use this or similar backup services have appreci- ated that the cost of the service is more than covered by the in- come gained by giving excep- tional service. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most responsive to change. “ Charles Darwin. My thanks to Exela and RED Virtual Office Ltd. If you would like to com- mission a Free mini-Mystery Shopper for your practice con- tact 0844 740 1469 or email dental@excela.co.uk DT About the author Dr Alun Rees trained in Newcas- tle and started his career as an oral surgery resident, before working as an associate in a range of different practices. With this solid foundation, Alun went on to launch two practices in the space of just 15 months, a chal- lenge in the toughest economic condi- tions. After years of hard work Alun finally sold his award-winning busi- ness in 2005. Alun’s background and experience give him a strong under- standing of what others go through to build a successful practice. He has seen many different approaches and learned his own lessons in the real world. Alun now runs Dental Business Partners with the declared aim of help- ing dentists build their perfect practice and offers specific and specialised support for dentists and their teams. Raised in South Wales, Alun has fam- ily roots in West Cork where he spends as much time as work allows. In other spare moments he has run three Lon- don marathons and lists rugby, real ale and music as relaxation.