Simon Palmer, May 2011
Let’s say your dental practice is open forty hours per week (9am -5pm, 5 days per week). This equates to 40 out of 168 (24x7) hours in the week. It also means that for 76% of the time no one from the practice will answer the phone. Does this mean that no patients or potential patients will call during the other 76% of the week? Most probably not.
Existing patients and potential patients will certainly have emergencies after hours or on weekends. They will sometimes be too busy to book during office hours. Any practice wanting to maximise conversion of calls to appointments and retention of existing patients needs a strategy for these after-hours callers.
There are five main strategies for dealing with after-hours calls. They are:
1. Have the phone ring out and hope that whomever calls will call again when someone is at the practice. You can also call this a non-solution. No one is going to be sure that they called the right number, potential patients and emergencies are almost certainly going to call another practice.
2. An answering service with no message. This solution has the phones of the practice diverted after hours to an answering service business that answers the call and takes a message for the practice. Having someone answer the call and say XYZ practice’s answering service is much better than having the phone ring out. The caller knows that they have the right number and they are able to leave a message for the practice. But this is not the best solution as your practice has no opportunity to show its personality and provide information to the caller.
3. An answering machine message without the ability to leave a message: an answering machine of any kind helps retain patients and convert enquiring potential patients. A good after-hours message should be clear and in tone demonstrates some of the practice's personality and professionalism. A good after-hours message includes:
• The opening hours of the practice
• The date the practice will re-open if the message is left during a practice closure period (like between Christmas and new years).
• Instructions in case of an emergency including the dentist's home number or a nearby practice that is open long hours or while your practice is closed for holidays. The fact that you are willing to interrupt your time off or even send them to another dentist demonstrates that their welfare is important to you.
4. An answering machine message with the ability to leave a message is better than no messages and has the same advantages as the previous strategy but it also gives the practice the chance to follow up on missed calls. The message should include those listed in option 3 (opening hours, in case of emergency) as well as:
• When a message left is likely to be responded to (when the caller will be called back)
• Instruct patients what information to leave (the reason for the call, contact details, a good time to call back, etc)
5. The fifth strategy involves diverting the main practice phone line to a practice mobile phone after hours. This is less well known than other strategies and is very effective at converting after hours calls to appointments. It works like this:
• The practice diverts the main practice phone line to a practice mobile phone after hours;
• This practice mobile phone is then taken home by a different rostered practice team member every day;
• This rostered team member has:
o a sense of the availability of appointment times in the practice for new patients and emergencies that can wait till the practice is open. (this could mean the appointment schedule for the next week);
o the dentist's after hours contact details in case of an emergency that can't wait.
• This rostered team member is reimbursed somehow for the extra responsibility after hours (an amount per evening, an amount per appointment made).
When weighing up all of these strategies the only question you need to ask yourself is this: what is the potential value of after-hours calls to your practice? Once you have an answer for this you will know if it is worth the cost involved in these strategies.
