4 Patient Engagement Tips to Grow Your Dental Practice

Here’s a fact: Your job as an oral health provider is to ensure that your patients receive only the best treatment. No one can deny the importance of providing quality service when it comes to growing a business in the health sector.

But here’s the thing: Your dental practice doesn’t exist in a void. It’s a living organism that evolves and grows. And, just like any other living thing, it feeds on interactions with those around it.What do you do if your patients aren’t engaged with your dental practice? And how do you leverage patient relationships to take your practice to the next level and maximize your revenue? With that in mind, below are a few patient engagement strategies you need to start implementing.

Our 4 tips to ramp up patient engagement and loyalty that you can start today.

On Hold Messages

What are your callers hearing when they’re placed on hold? Deliver positive, patient-centric experiences with custom on hold messages.  If you had your patients’ undivided attention, what would you want them to know? On hold messages give dental providers the opportunity to keep patients engaged while waiting on the line. It offers the perfect opportunity to discuss your services, share your experience, and assure prospective patients that they have made the right call!In addition, you are also able to enhance the caller experience by reducing caller frustration and hang-ups.

Overhead Background Music

Using overhead background music to ease or lessen anxious thoughts or feelings is nothing new, and it’s especially not new in the healthcare industry. Since this discovery and practice, healthcare professionals have been using different genres of music to calm their anxious patients and dental office are no exception. If you use radio or other music sources you’re most likely subject to commercials or DJ interruptions which could possibly advertise a competitor, so having playing your very own custom music channel is free of competing ads. 

Waiting Room Video

Many practices fail to take advantage of the opportunity for engagement and education in the waiting room. Dental waiting room videos are an essential element for keeping patients satisfied while they wait for appointments at dental offices. But they can do so much more than that. When paired with the right content, waiting room videos can provide practices with multiple opportunities to educate patients, help them pass the time, decrease their anxiety, and reduce perceived wait times, thus boosting overall satisfaction of patients.Dental waiting room videos also help reassure patients that the doctor and staff have the patients’ health as their top priority.

Scent Branding

Imagine the power you have in shaping the neurological associations of your patients. Upon entering your office, your guests could be greeted with the typical dental office scent or with another scent that has a fond memory attached to it. Furthermore, the better your office smells, the more likely patients are to return. Imagine anxious patients walking into your dental office smelling not bonding agents but sugar cookies. The scent of hot apple pie or sugar cookies baking in the oven is recognizable and heartwarming.

How can scent branding also help increase revenues? It provides a positive effect on patient perceptions of the quality of service they are receiving, the cleanliness of the office as well as the overall personal wellness one takes away from an experience that is typically perceived as being less than an enjoyable one. It is a simple, inexpensive way to calm and nurture your clients.

How about reducing patient cancellations with the power of scenting! … Here’s an example: a Hospital in Celebration, Florida was experiencing a high degree of last-minute cancellations for MRI appointments. These cancellations became difficult to fill in a timely manner, resulting in decreased revenues for the hospital. In this case, the solution involved many changes including the introduction of scents into the clinic. The transformations in the MRI clinic decreased cancellations by 50 percent. So “Yes” scents make cents!!!

Final Thoughts….

While many practices in the dental industry are investing in marketing and social media to help get the word out and attract new patients, many don’t think to link their marketing efforts to patient loyalty, retention, and referrals. These are often disconnected efforts, when they should be two sides of the same coin.

Engaged patients are active participants in their home oral healthcare routines. They attend regular re-care appointments and accept your team’s treatment and home-care recommendations. They are your ideal patients and they are your best resource for more patients just like them – engaged patients refer more than 50% of your new patients. They are your practice ambassadors and happily visit your team and accept your expertise for themselves and their loved ones. They also make it easier for your team to do their work and stay on schedule.

Would you like to escalate your patient engagement, as well as patients’ perception of you and your team, but aren’t sure of what steps to take? Contact Original On Hold for a patient engagement consultation.