Dentistry is such a personal thing to people, so it’s important you take time and money to invest in creating a great patient experience! Whether you have a large budget for this or no budget at all, you’ll find one solution here to help make a difference to how people feel at the practice. So, have a read, take some of the information on board and you’ll soon notice the difference within your practice, whether you’re a dentist Leamington Spa based or LA based!
Offer Online Scheduling and Email Reminders
We’re living in the digital age now, and many patients respond really well to having the opportunity to engage with the practice digitally. People are used to booking everything through their phones, so having an online scheduling system is important to help maximise the experience for your patients.
These can be expensive to implement, but it can definitely be worth it. With the online scheduling, you can also set up email reminders to send to patients, which will help to decrease the rate of patients who forget about patients and don’t turn up. So, if this is an issue you’re experiencing, even just the email reminder side of things could be really useful.
Most people naturally prefer to book their appointments digitally, so offering this is important, however you should maintain some in-person bookings as there are still many people who would feel more comfortable working that way! Patient experience is all about considering your different types of patient and considering how they would prefer to experience your practice, then implementing changes accordingly.
Conduct Patient Surveys
The best way to decide how to improve patient experience at your dentist is to conduct patient surveys. Who better to ask than the people you’re trying to please? You could send out an email to all of your patients, or you could have some kind of in-practice feedback set up. You should ask your patients what they like about the practice, what they think could be improved, then you could also ask more specific things that you’ve had discussions about as a team but can’t decide on.
For example, you may find that you need more family-friendly parking, perhaps people would love to have a space in the practice to brush their teeth before the appointment, maybe they don’t like the current booking system and have suggestions about how it can be improved. You could ask anything you’re unsure about, then reward your patients who respond with a discount off their next appointment or a free dental goodie bag with lots of great things for their oral health.
Offer Flexible Payment Options
Last but not least, you should offer flexible payment options to your customers. Dental treatments could be unexpected for people, or they may have always wanted to fall in love with their smile but can’t pay upfront. So, you should offer flexible and interest free payment plans, especially for the much more expensive treatments like All On Four. This will help to make treatments more accessible to your patients, keeping them happy and with healthy smiles too!