Patient experience is at the top of the dental receptionist’s mind. Day-in, day-out, you’re the face of the dental office. You’re the first person a patient sees as they enter and handle all their needs leading up to the appointment itself, and you want to give them all the attention and care that you can to ensure they have a great experience.
A frustrating patient experience will stick in their mind—especially as many people don’t exactly think of a dental appointment as an enjoyable thing as it is. Unfortunately, you’re probably incredibly busy, and the pressures of everything you’re responsible for often means that you can’t give that standard of patient experience you’d like.
Juggling giving your full attention to those needing your help in-person and making and receiving phone calls is never easy. But those phone calls are important.
The dental office will only run as long as there are patients coming in, and that means someone’s got to call them and book appointments.
When someone doesn’t show, they’ve forgotten, or they fell ill and never told you, or they just didn’t want to go. So, you’ve also got to contact people to remind them of their appointment, call them as many times as it takes, confirm their attendance, or reschedule and do it all again later.
All this while there’s a constant stream of people actually showing up, walking through the door, and growing more and more impatient as you’re trying to end the call with the information you need.
There is a solution to the busyness problem: automated reminders.
The reminder and confirmation process is relatively straightforward. If a patient does need to reschedule, then you do have to deal with rebooking them. But if they do confirm their attendance, that’s all they actually have to do, and you don’t have to take any further action.
That means the reminder process can be automated. Instead of you manually putting together a schedule of all those you must call, you can have a system automatically send your patient a message when the time is right, and collect their response. If they confirm, the job’s done without you having to actually get involved.
Is there more information you need to send your patient than just the date and time of the appointment? Not a problem when your system also allows you to send customizable messages. Include information important to your dental office, and specific instructions for the patient to bear in mind before the appointment.
Receptionists report saving hours per day when such a system is adopted. That’s hours per day you’re not on the phone, and hours per day more to spend face-to-face with your patients as they arrive. You’re able to provide a better patient experience for them, and they leave satisfied—with the knowledge that next time, they can once more count on receiving simple and convenient reminders that give them enough time to prepare.
EasyMarkit is an automated patient reminder system built to allow receptions to provide a better standard of patient experience. It includes all these features and more—such as smooth integration with your existing Patient Management System. To find out more and book a demo, click here.