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Your Receptionist... Your Marketing Front Line
Although this article is fairly short, I want to clearly outline three concepts that are critical when answering the phone in your dental practice. The first concept is the importance of a great first impression. The second concept is having appropriate hours of operation and the third is making sure your schedule is wide open to new patients. Improvement in these areas is needed by most practices and will result in dramatic gains in the scheduling of new patients.
As a dental marketing professional one of our core objectives is to get the phone to ring at a dental practice. It’s a skill that we’re very good at. However, in the past few months I have become aware of several dental practices that have failed to capitalize on their marketing investment because of a weakness in answering the phones. In fact in one case, nearly all the marketing calls made to a practice were lost because of poor communication skills at the frontline. For training purposes, our clients utilize an internet-based phone number that allows us to monitor their marketing calls. Because we’re able to listen to recorded phone calls from our office, we can review firsthand every marketing call made to the offices of our clients, good or bad. It’s rewarding when we hear a new patient call that is handled perfectly. It’s equally frustrating to listen to a prospective new patient who calls an office only to be treated rudely or with no enthusiasm at all.
Think of your receptionist as your “Director of First Impressions”. She can make or break a new patient experience and can make the all-important marketing call a huge success or a huge waste of your precious marketing budget. If a few prospective patients never schedule, thousands of dollars of income are lost, and believe me, it happens everyday.
Now in fairness to receptionists and office managers everywhere, sometimes dentists will run an ad campaign without even advising his or her office team. When this happens, it creates a lot of confusion and lack of professionalism when a prospective patient calls and asks about the special offer or discount seen in an ad. A good receptionist can overcome such an awkward situation, but I’ve witnessed poor receptionists do just the opposite by arguing with the caller or just acting ignorant.
Dentists often do a poor job of creating expectations for receptionists or providing training for individuals who are willing to learn and improve. I’m not an expert at telephone skills and any amount of advice I could give would be negligible. My only advice is to hire coach-able individuals who have great people skills and a great attitude, and train them until they are great at their jobs. Pay them well and keep them happy because great phone talent will bring many thousands of dollars into your practice every year, especially during an important marketing campaign.
As I mentioned earlier, your hours of operation are also an important component of your marketing success. Call records show that lunch hours, Fridays and early morning hours are the times most new patients call dental practices. Having a live receptionist available during those hours is critical for capturing those inbound calls from new patients. Call records also show that rarely will prospective patients ever leave a message or call a second time if the phone is not answered during regular business hours. Having a live receptionist also creates a sense of availability. Consumers don’t want to get a recorded message that reminds them that unlike most people, you only work four days a week. Consumers more than likely don’t work in a business that closes for lunch, so they don’t like the idea that you do.
The final important concept is that of making new patients feel like your schedule is wide open to them. If you have to work a bit later or make a change of some kind in the schedule to accommodate a new patient, you will leave a lasting impression that they are important to you. Running a marketing campaign only to notify a new patient that you are booked four weeks out or only have few openings available does little to make them feel like they’ve found a permanent home for their dental care. I’m not suggesting that you make it a permanent habit of allowing your patients to control your schedule. However, in the case of a new patient, treat them like they are a rare and valuable gift. In most cases, you’ve either spent a lot of marketing dollars to get them to call or you’ve been good enough at doing your job that a referral was given by an existing patient. Either way, a new patient is the life-blood of your practice and they should be treated as such.
Remember that a great first impression, available hours of operation and a wide-open schedule will ensure that your marketing investment is not wasted.
Operating System
Windows XP Professional is the ideal choice for the office environment. It contains many features not found in XP Home, such as the ability to automatically log into certain types of networks, and Remote Desktop, which allows you to log into the computer from home or anywhere else in the world. However, the core of Professional and Home are identical, so any program that runs on Professional should run identically on Home as well. As mentioned in a previous article, Windows Vista is still not compatible with many dental programs so I do not recommend it at this time, although you won’t be able to buy a new computer with XP after January, 2008.
Warranty
Ideally, you should purchase a computer with a warranty that is equal to the amount of time that you plan on owning the computer. With the ever-changing nature of technology, most offices will find that three years is the expected life-span of these computers. The computers will still run beyond three years, but will have trouble keeping up with the applications available at that time.
Dentists should take the time to choose computers based on their current and future needs, rather than looking at the cost of the systems as the most important feature.
Interested in increasing your new patient flow? Click Here
To reach Joel Harris Email him at Joel@thedentistsnetwork.net
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The Key Ingredients of an Associate Contract
If you’re considering hiring an associate, by all means, you must have a written contract. Associate contracts are for mutual protection. They clearly outline all terms and conditions of your relationship and assure there is no miscommunication along the way. Contracts are also a way of protecting your most variable asset, your dental practice. Here are several key ingredients of Associate Contracts.
Work Schedule
List the associate’s work schedule. Also, make sure you list any responsibilities for “on-call” duty since this is often not discussed prior to an associate’s employment. Clearly defined schedules avoid any embarrassment if a patient calls on the weekend and there is no one to take the call.
Compensation
Compensation Ranges
Associate compensation ranges nationally between 30% to 35% of Net Production and 32% to 37% of Collections. Most well run practices, will collect 98% to 99% of Net Production, so that may be a good alternative to Collections. Your decision to use Net Production or Collection often is based on the quality of the dental management software to track associate’s Net Production or Collections.
Lab Expenses
We recommend that the percentage the associate is being paid as compensation should be the same percentage that is deducted for lab expense. This means that you are deducting lab expense from the fee charged for the procedure.
Health Insurance
If you are offering health insurance to your full-time staff and if your associate is a full-time employee, this fringe benefit must be provided. We recommend single coverage for the associate, and if there are any dependents, you can have the additional premium paid by a pre-tax payroll deduction through a Section 125 plan.
Malpractice Insurance
We see this benefit being provided by the Employer about 50% of the time. Premiums for general practitioners are usually low in the first few years after graduation, so it is not a major expense. However, for specialists where premiums are considerably higher, it is provided as a fringe benefit in the associate’s Compensation package.
Continuing Education Allowance
We recommend a continuing education allowance of $1,500 per year. This would be for courses that the practice feels would be beneficial to the associate’s clinical development and to and the practice in general. These courses must be approved by the Employer.
Non-competition Clauses
It has been our experience that an associate will develop goodwill after a one to two year period due to the relationships that the doctor has made with patients. In fact, to offset a potential loss of patients, if the event the associate leaves your practice, a non-compete clause should be added to the contract. Certain states do not allow covenants so check with your state board in that regard. Non-competes must be reasonable in their geographic restriction. We recommend generating a zip code analysis to determine what distance 80% of your patients are traveling. This will give you a basic mile radius for the covenant. We then add one mile and that should cover 90% of the distance your patient’s travel. Another key element of the covenant is its duration. We find that Covenants running more than two years may be nullified in many jurisdictions.
Incremental Covenant Penalty
We utilize an incremental covenant penalty in our contracts. They are as follows
| Months Employed | Penalty |
| 0-6 | None |
| 7-8 | 3 Months |
| 8-9 | 6 Months |
| 10-11 | 9 Months |
| 12 | 12 Months |
| > 12 Months | 24 Months |
Non-solicitation
Minimally if a covenant is not allowed in your State, or if you cannot get the associate to agree to a covenant, at least have them agree to a Non-solicitation Agreement prohibits them from soliciting patients or staff. The duration of a Non-solicitation Agreement ranges from 1 to 2 years.
Option to Buy-in
Some doctors want to include an option to buy-in. This clause must be carefully worded so not to “promise” a partnership relationship, but rather offer an opportunity to discuss its possibility.
Identification Issues
The associate should carry the same professional liability insurance company as the employer with the same thresholds, for example: $1,000,000 / $3,000,000.
Marketing Materials
In the event the practice is investing funds on associate related marketing activities and if the associate leaves on their own accord within the first six months, we suggest that the associate reimburse up to 50% of those marketing expenses.
Summary
Employments Contracts are your insurance policy against an unscrupulous employee who may potentially cause economic harm. In fairness to the associate, terms and conditions of employment are clearly defined so that there are no misunderstandings in your affiliation together.
The Snyder Group provides comprehensive employment agreement contract templates. Please visit our website for details.
Questions regarding Partnerships? Email Dr. Snyder at Drsnyder@thedentistsnetwork.net.
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