There are 8,760 hours in a year. The average dental patient comes in twice a year for her continuing care visit. Between the time she gets there, fills out the paperwork, gets her cleaning and x-rays, pays the bill and leaves, she will have been in your office for about 90 minutes. And you won’t see her again for another six months.
You see your patients, in general, for a total of three hours each year.
Now take that 3 hours and divide it by 8,760 and you’ll realize that your dental practice only gets .0003% mindshare per patient over a twelve-month period.
When your patient walks out the door, she’s no longer thinking about the practice. She’s thinking about picking up the kids, making dinner, going back to the office or any number of other things. Life has taken over.
How is your practice supposed to build solid, long-term relationships on a mere three hours of contact?
Expanding Mindshare With Your Patients
In any given week, I receive 3-5 solicitations from dental practices in my mailbox. That doesn’t even account for the advertisements in various magazines I’m getting and their accompanying discount offers.
You already know that I don’t want you direct mailing discounts to potential clients, but it’s important to note that your competitors might be making more contact with your current patients than you are!
In addition, if you haven’t done a fabulous job during visits and you’re not reaching out when they’re away, your patients may decide to give that competing practice a try when those discounts show up in the mailbox.
Appropriate and Quality Communication is Key
Social media is a great tool for staying in touch. If your practice is on Facebook, ask your patients for a “like.” Put updates and information about the practice on your page. However, you can’t lean on social media alone. You have to have multiple “pillars” to hold this process together.
Add a monthly newsletter to communicate with patients. Content doesn’t always have to be health related: if the holidays are coming up, send a recipe with a great story behind it. Make it personal! Let patients know that you’re not just their caregiver, but you’re also their friend.
Keep Tabs! When a new patient comes in, take notes about that person and what’s specific to them. Gather key dates like birthdays and anniversaries. Ask about their kids. Is there a graduation coming up? A new baby on the way?
Keep a running list with the patient’s chart or input it into a computer system. Look for opportunities during the year to reach out to them about personal events or milestones.
For example, we encourage our practices to call patients on their birthdays. It’s a really simple gesture and it goes a long way, even if you end up just leaving a message. Keep it short and sweet and never mention business. Say, “We just wanted to give you a call today and say happy birthday. Hope your day is wonderful.”
One of my client practices left a birthday message for a patient who had missed a couple of six-month recall (continuing care) appointments. About ten minutes later, they got a call back from the patient who said, “It’s so funny that you called! I’ve been thinking about you guys!” He made an appointment and when he showed up, he brought a birthday cake to share with the team.
No discounts will ever take the place of a solid, long-term relationship.
Leave a comment below and share some of your ideas for effective ways to keep the lines of communication open with patients between appointments.
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