Dental Answering Service: Why You Need One
Did you know that there are more than 200,000 dentists in the United States alone? When you have a dental office to worry about, the last thing you want to do is focus more on answering calls than on the patients currently present in your office. Fortunately, that’s why dental answer service options exist.
But what is a dental answering service exactly and how can you know if it’s the right choice for you and your dental practice? More than that, what are the benefits of dental answering service options? Will using answering services really improve the way you run your practice and tend to your dental patients?
COMPARE QUOTESKeep reading and learn more about the reasons why you need a good answering service for dental office.
A Dental Answering Service Will Allow You to Focus More on Your Patients
As a dentist, the last thing you want to do is spend all of your time taking calls. While taking calls is indeed important for getting new patients, it certainly won’t make your current patients very happy. Taking calls also isn’t a job for a dentist.
As a dentist, you have an education in providing important dental services and treatments. You don’t want to squander your talent by spending all of your time talking on the phone and answering basic questions. While it is true that you can hire staff to do this for you, there is still a level of inconvenience in doing this.
At the same time, it isn’t as if you can just start ignoring all the calls that come in. If you do this, your dental practice might get a bad reputation and people might think that your practice doesn’t care about its patients. This, of course, is not what you want either.
This is not to mention that if you ignore your incoming calls, your patients and potential new patients might take their business elsewhere. This will be great for your competitors and terrible for you and your practice. That’s where a dental answering service can come in handy.
The Details
If you hire a good answering service, you will find that your job as a dentist will be easier than ever. Instead of having to answer calls yourself or having one of your employees do it, you can instead let an answering service do it for you. Whenever a patient calls your office, an agent with your preferred answering service will answer from a remote location.
Answering services are ideal because they are very reliable and don’t keep your patients waiting. Your patients won’t be put on hold for several minutes at a time either. Instead, since several agents work at once, there should always be someone available to take your patients’ calls.
This will give you much more time to focus on the patients you currently have in your dental office. Instead of rushing to the phone every time it rings, you can instead spend more time with whatever patient you have at hand. This will not only save you time but it will also give you the opportunity to be a more attentive and caring dentist.
Save Money on Employees
If you don’t want to answer the phone yourself, you might hire a receptionist or two to do it for you. This is what many dentists do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best choice. After all, you need to consider how much you’re paying your staff just to sit at a desk all day and answer the phone.
If your practice is often busy, this might not be too much of a problem because your staff will also be busy answering calls. However, what about during the slow season when your practice won’t be receiving as many calls? Your staff will still be sitting at their desk but, because there are no calls coming in, you will essentially be paying them for nothing.
This, of course, is not how you want to spend your money. Running a dental practice is hard enough and the last thing you want is for your hard-earned money to go to waste. But, after all, you have to provide your staff with a certain salary no matter how much work they usually do.
So, is there really any way around this problem? Again, this is where dental answering services come in. While it is true that you also have to spend money on dental answering services, you won’t have to spend nearly as much on them as you would an employee that works in your office.
This is because you don’t need to provide dental answering service workers with a salary. Instead, you only pay them by the minute. Specifically, you will only pay them for every minute they are actively working.
What You Need to Know
If your dental practice is in the middle of a dry spell and not getting any calls, you won’t have to worry about paying your answering service agents extra. That way, you can save plenty of money if your business starts to slow down. You might even be able to cut down on staff members if you feel that they’ve become unnecessary once you start using a dental answering service.
By hiring a dental answering service, you also don’t need to worry about the additional benefits you need to provide with real, full-time employees at your office. For example, you won’t need to concern yourself with employee perks or anything of that sort. Instead, when you hire a dental answering service, the service will strictly function to take calls.
This, of course, can make your life much easier, and running your dental office will be a breeze. That way, you and your remaining staff members will be able to work more efficiently than ever. But this certainly isn’t the last benefit of hiring a dental answering service.
Another benefit to consider is that an answering service can help you improve your reputation among your patients.
Answering Services Can Improve Your Reputation
Because dental answering services save you so much time and are so convenient, it only makes sense that they can help improve your relationship with your patients. Suppose that you don’t have an answering service and you instead have to answer calls mostly by yourself.
It can be nearly impossible to juggle between answering calls and tending to your patients that are currently in your dental office. If you start ignoring the calls coming in, those patients on the phone will surely take their business elsewhere. They will also have a bad impression of your dental practice.
On the other hand, if you ignore the patients currently in your dental practice in favor of the ones on the phone, this will also cause you to lose some reputation among your patients. They might think that you are a distracted and uncaring dentist. As a result, they might not return to you for future dental services and treatments.
This, of course, is not ideal for your dental practice, especially if you want to grow your practice in the future. But you can prevent all of these problems by hiring a dental answering service. Once you hire such a service, you won’t have to juggle between the patients in your office and the ones on the phone.
Your Reputation
Instead, you can focus on the patients in your office while the service takes care of whoever might be calling your practice. Also, as mentioned before, answering services are very convenient and make sure to take every call without hesitation. Your callers might only need to wait a moment or two before an agent picks up on your behalf.
There is no need to put your patients on hold either. That way, your callers won’t get frustrated in the slightest. Instead, they will be able to ask whatever questions they may have and they’ll get their answers in no time.
As for the patients in your clinic, you will finally have the opportunity to tend to them without the worry of being distracted by an annoying phone. This, of course, will greatly improve your reputation among your patients.
All About Dental Answering Service Options
If you find that you are often overwhelmed by your patients in your dental office, it might be a sign that you need to hire a dental answering service. A dental answering service can free up time by automatically picking up calls from patients calling your dental office. This will not only save you time but it will also save time for your staff.
To learn more, get a quote here.
COMPARE QUOTES