As one who is on the telephone with dental practices every day to evaluate their dental marketing, I take the pulse of practices and find out how they are answering the phone. Here are the results of my informal, non-scientific survey of dental practices.
About 75% of practices have someone answer the phone by giving her name as part of the greeting. (I am using “her” to mean “his or her” but most phone answerers in dental offices—but by no means all—are female). The other 25% omit a name in their standard phone answering script.
What are the 25% thinking? Some of these offices claim to offer “personal service,” and on their websites they use words such as “caring” or “friendly”; but every day they answer the phone without revealing the phone answerer’s identity. Are the people at the front desk in the Witness Protection Program?
Alas, the explanation for this curious lack of dental marketing is more mundane. The problem is either that a) no one taught the phone answerer how to answer the phone, or b) no one is supervising this function.
Lack of training results from an assumption: “Everyone knows how to answer a phone politely.” However, there is a difference between being polite, attentive, and even chirpy on the phone and making sure that good dental marketing techniques are used consistently. When even the most helpful person remains incognito, the practice loses an opportunity to connect with the caller.
Even when people are taught exactly how to answer a phone—and given a script to read—problems arise when there is no reinforcement or accountability. People fall into patterns and habits, and phone answering is a mantra that becomes fixed very easily.
Kudos to the practices that always provide a name as part of the greeting. For those who have forgotten this important lesson in dental marketing, it’s an easy fix that will help the practice be perceived as one that puts an emphasis on personal relationships.
David Schwab