IS YOUR FRONT DESK KILLING YOUR BUSINESS?

You spend countless hours developing your marketing strategy. You invest even more time blogging, posting on social media. You engage in community outreach programs and charity work to build goodwill. You spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on marketing and promotion. Then, someone calls you… Does your receptionist or office staff handle the call well, resulting in a lead, appointment or new business? Or, do they fumble the opportunity and the person hangs up? As a marketing company, we work very hard to make sure the campaigns that we produce for our clients produce interest and reach. Our campaigns grab attention and cause people to call our clients. However, our clients ultimately only care about the number of new patients or customers they get. I may do a great job and get the phone ringing, yet if the front office is wasting those incoming calls, the owner of the business will assume my campaign didn’t work.

Having said that, here are a few tips to help your front office staff convert more incoming calls to clients:

• Smile. When you answer the phone, you should be smiling. Practice this with a partner: say your standard phone greeting with a frown on your face. Then say the same thing with a smile. You’ll quickly see how big a difference just the simple act of smiling can have on your tone of voice.
• Know your products and services. Unless the staff member is brand new, you should be able to answer most questions without asking someone else. Waiting on hold was the number one complaint for incoming calls in practices that had customer service issues. I’m sure you can recall a time when you were on hold for several minutes to handle an issue with a bill or your bank. In situations where someone is looking for a new doctor or dentist, they don’t -and won’t- wait several minutes to find out if an appointment time is available.
• Don’t leave people on hold. If you don’t know the answer to a question, and can’t find out the answer in 30 seconds or less, get the person’s name and phone number and offer to call them back. They will respect the fact that you aren’t wasting their time.
• Get their contact information early. You should try to get at least the name and phone number in the first 20 seconds of the call. I usually say something like, “can I get your name and phone number in case we are disconnected?” They may not always give this to you, but many will. This allows you to follow up with people if they hang up without scheduling.
• What is your goal? The end result of any incoming call should be an appointment or sale. When I am working with clients on increasing conversions, I always tell them to focus on scheduling. Don’t get into long question-and-answer sessions; just tell them the doctor will consult with them and let them know exactly what is needed. Unless you are getting a lot of people just taking advantage of free offers, tell them the consultation is free. 80% of people will at least opt for a cleaning or basic service once they are there.
• Don’t quote prices. Usually, you can’t tell what a person needs by just listening to them over the phone. Schedule an appointment and let the doctor determine what is needed. This is true for non-medical practices also. Let the sales guys talk to them to determine the best product or service.
• Don’t answer with “No.” the word no ends conversations. When someone asks if you take their insurance, tell them you will work with them. Most of the time, insurance companies will pay you, even if you are out of network. If you are a cash practice, tell them that your fees are competitive with insurance copays and deductibles (if they are).

Try to take a long term view of new patients. Many times, a patient will not be worth much on an initial visit. However, the lifetime value of that patient may be worth thousands. When you add referral potential, that one patient can be worth tens of thousands. Put the above into practice and watch you revenue climb fast!