How the Front Desk Affects Case Acceptance
Your job of your front desk team is not simply to greet callers and visitors warmly. Being pleasant is important, but it is a personality trait, not a skill.
If you just want to train your team in the basics of communicating – how to answer the phone properly, how to put people on hold, etc. – save yourself some money and do that in-house. You will find most of what you would otherwise be paying for by doing a simple topic search on the Internet.
The real skills of this job – and there are several that are unique to the orthodontic profession – directly impact your conversion rate, as well as the satisfaction of patients with your treatment experience.
There are three that we focus on in our front desk training process:
First, the initial impression. we coined the term “Practice Ambassador” for these team members, and for good reason – they truly are the face of your business to the public. This is the person that provides the first impression of your business, and because it is the first contact, nobody at your practice makes a more profound one.
Second, the ability to establish and maintain a leadership role in the wide variety of situations that present themselves is critical. Knowing how and when to delegate, having the ability to resolve issues quickly and efficiently, and dealing with irate callers and other stressful situations can make the difference between a new patient and a lost opportunity. This applies to existing patients as well. Unlike most doctor’s offices, yours has a two-year continuous relationship with patients. This fact alone makes the need for skills at the front desk especially important, because there is ample opportunity during that time for patients to form a relationship with, and an opinion of, your team members.
Third, the ability to properly handle the new patient inquiry call, which, in terms of return on investment, is the most important skill needed at the front desk. What happens, or doesn’t happen, here directly impacts your conversion rate. Consistently obtaining insurance information is critical, because not having it in hand at the appointment results in stopping the decision to move forward in its tracks; the family cannot say “yes” until they know what their out-of-pocket expense is going to be. We know from hands-on observation that there is a lot of room for improvement in most practices here, and we provide highly effective scripting to our client’s team members to ensure that it happens consistently.
Likewise, identifying all who, along with the caller, have a vested interest in the decision process, and inviting those parties to the meeting, are steps that are frequently missing from the skill-set of front desk staff members. In fact, before we get involved, extending that invitation is almost always non-existent.
How big of a problem is this at your practice?
Count the number of times a month the consultation ends in “I need to talk to my spouse”. There is your answer.
