With dental content marketing becoming an essential cog for dentistry success, your dental practice brand is now very much in the spotlight. As part of a successful brand, your patient reputation is the key driver, notably the patient experience. Serving patients in your dental practice isn’t just about the quality of your care or the cost of your services. There is much more involved to ensure your patient base continuously return to your practice for treatments and check-ups.
In order to press ahead of the competition, a positive reputation rides on these factors:
- Regular positive patient reviews
- Patient loyalty and trust
- Positive engagement
- A consistent positive service
When it comes to an efficient dental marketing strategy, it’s not only about what you offer, but also meeting patient expectations.
To create an efficient patient experience, these five tips will promise to have a powerful impact.
Meet Patient Expectations
As a dentist, your utmost concern is your patient’s needs in order to maintain positive oral health. In order to manage their expectations, you must understand what their oral health goals are. This will ensure you tailor your care to their needs and deliver the dental services they need. Do your homework on each patient before they visit the practice, so you’re adequately prepared to meet their goals and deliver a quality experience.
Create A Good First Impression
In particular for new patients, they will begin to judge your reputation as soon as they step a foot in the door of your practice for the first time. A first impression is critical. From the first greeting on the telephone to the greeting at the reception desk. This sets the stage of the relationship between a patient and a dentist. If they see that effort is being made to welcome new patients and maintain the optimum level of service for regular patients, this will only create a strong brand image and reputation, along with these tips for effective brand marketing. You can find out more here about creating a good first impression.
Ensure Of Short Waiting Times
There is nothing more frustrating for a patient when a booked appointment does not begin on time. As a dental practice, you must consider that a patient has scheduled a specific appointment time for a reason. Whilst it may sometimes be out of your control when you’re seeing to other patients, constant communication with a waiting patient is a good way to keep them happy. You can control how patients feel about their wait. Keep them engaged at all times. If they need to wait for a certain time, let them know this.
Guide Patients To The Appointment Room
When the patient’s appointment is about to begin, ensure that you escort and welcome them to the treatment room. A dental practice can contain many treatment rooms and it can be easy for patients to become lost if they’re requested to visit the treatment room on their own.
Request Patient Service Feedback
Patients want to feel as if their opinions can be heard. A great way to maintain an efficient experience for your patients is requesting service feedback. At the end of an appointment, on their way out, ask them to fill out a feedback form with their opinion on how the service was. Any negatives can immediately be turned into a positive by adapting to what the patient requests the next time they visit your dental practice.
Are you seeking support to create an efficient patient experience? Contact us at Smile and Grow today and we’d be happy to help.
