It’s all about convenience when it comes to running a dental practice. This also includes providing them with accessible resources to contact your practice or make appointments. Your customers don’t want to waste time and effort on back-and-forth phone calls and texts.

Online Appointment Requests

Online scheduling is a software tool that allows patients to book or request appointments from any internet-connected device with just a few simple clicks. It is one of the most widely used and straightforward technologies among forward-thinking healthcare organizations, including hospitals.

Because online scheduling is faster, more convenient, and reduces data entry errors that occur when taking information over the phone, ensuring that new patients can easily schedule appointments online benefits both your practice and the patient.

The only difference between an online schedule request and a phone appointment request is that the latter does not require a phone call to complete. That doesn’t rule out the possibility of a phone call.

If a patient requests a time that becomes unavailable for any reason, your front office staff can call the patient to reschedule, just as they would if the appointment had been made over the phone. The difference is that for the vast majority of online scheduled appointments, no phone call is required.

Practices that use online scheduling can reap numerous benefits.

Increase In New Patients

 People are becoming less likely to call each other. Instead of calling the practice, patients prefer to book an appointment through a website or an app. Patients may be embarrassed to discuss their problems over the phone in some cases. As a result, new patients seeking a new dentist are drawn to practices that offer online scheduling. This gives them the ability to schedule appointments without having to call someone they don’t know. 

24-Hour Availability

Patients could previously only schedule appointments during the dentist’s practice operating hours. They can now access the practice website at any time of day, on any day of the week, thanks to online scheduling. They can check a dentist’s availability and schedule an appointment at a time that is convenient for them, allowing them to better plan their schedules around their visit.

More Effective Information Management

Online systems make it much easier and more efficient to manage patient information. Some online appointment scheduling systems include patient health records management.

Increased Opportunities for E-marketing

One of the advantages of online scheduling is that it allows you to include patient phone numbers and email addresses. When patients use the software, they are more likely to keep these details up to date, increasing the likelihood that it will reach the patient. This may result in more visits from current patients or the registration of new patients based on referrals.

Reduces Empty Slots

Dental practices are much more likely to fill empty appointment slots when they use online scheduling. This is a significant benefit for the practice, as empty appointment slots result in revenue loss. It allows patients to schedule same-day or next-day appointments quickly, whether late at night or first thing in the morning. They can easily check a practice’s availability and schedule an appointment that is convenient for them.

Sticky Menu CTA 

Sticky navigation is most effective for “actionable” sites where the company wants the user to take a specific action, such as using their service. Sticky menus have been shown to improve customer experience in these situations by keeping users oriented and giving them more control over their journey through your website. A great CTA will grab the attention of your website visitors and make the next step in becoming a customer as simple as possible. 

While you may have specific actions to take on different pages or parts of the website, it’s best to have a single, primary CTA that’s targeted at the majority of first-time visitors. Every page’s header and footer can contain this information. As the user browses your pages and scrolls through your content, your primary, header CTA should be visible on the screen at all times so that when they decide to schedule an appointment, the button is right there.

Add Forms to Service Pages

If you don’t have contact forms on your website, you’re missing out on one of the most important features of a well-designed and interactive website. You can use contact forms to generate leads, close sales, and better understand your audience. The advantages of using contact forms on your personal blog or business website cannot be overstated. With the recent influx of WordPress contact form plugins, it’s even easier to create and design high-quality contact forms that attract users without putting in a lot of effort.

The goal of the website is to gather as much information as possible from potential patients. By providing online forms, it makes it easier for patients to request an appointment. It’s critical for customers to be able to contact you easily if you own a business. A simple contact method is the first step in winning new business, whether they want to use your service or ask questions. 

What are contact forms? 

When you visit a website, a contact form that appears can have a significant impact on user engagement. Contact forms are basically online forms with a few fields for you to fill out. These forms frequently include questions requesting your feedback or opinions. There may also be fields where you must select one of several options.

This simple form on your website allows visitors to contact you quickly and easily. Name, address, and a text area for questions or feedback are common fields on these forms.

6  benefits of adding forms to your website

When you use your email address instead of a contact form on your website, visitors must navigate to another page to email you. In this way, the visitor leaves your site too soon to go to their email tool or other pages. This has a negative impact on your website’s traffic and Google ranking. With a contact form, however, you can keep your visitors on the same page.

WordPress contact form plugins even include a feature that allows you to specify how your users should be redirected after submitting the form. You can specify which page your users should be directed to after completing a form. As a result, you gain greater control over what and when your audience sees on your website.

People visiting your site will think it’s broken if you don’t have a contact form. Some visitors will even spend time looking for it, and if they don’t find it, they will be disappointed. See how quickly things escalate to judgment and decisions? That is the problem with not having a well-built form and placing it in the proper location. People have no trouble getting in touch with you via email. However, if they have to walk an extra mile to contact you, that’s a problem.

People’s attention spans are decreasing, so make sure your website has a good contact form plugin! 

How to Respond to Online Requests

Customer communication (responding to customer requests) can make or break a company. More satisfied customers, referrals, and a better overall online image result from the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. Failure to do so, on the other hand, results in a tarnished reputation and dissatisfied customers.

 Respond In a Timely Fashion

If you have an automatic response set up that says you’ll respond as soon as possible, don’t wait a week or you might miss an opportunity. Try to respond to new potential customers within an hour of their request for more information, or at the very least the same day. You can even tell your customers how long it will take you to respond on your contact form.

Categorize and prioritize the requests you receive

One of the most effective ways to improve the speed with which you respond to customer service emails is to categorize and prioritize them.

When a new request is received, it should be processed through a ‘triage’ system, similar to how a patient would be treated in a hospital emergency room. You can categorize requests based on their subject or theme and assign them a tag. Different tags should have different levels of priority based on factors like response time, problem complexity, and importance to both the customer and the company.

Create response templates

It’s a lot easier to make some response ‘templates’ that you can cut and paste into your replies this way. This way, rather than rewriting the entire message over and over, you only spend time quickly personalizing each message.

How do you want to grow? 

The Dental Engine gives dental practices the choice. Attracting and keeping new patients requires knowledge and expertise in marketing, patient communication, accountability measures, processes/procedures, and much more. In short, practice growth requires an effective growth system that can be leveraged to take the actions that lead to the desired results. With The Dental Engine, you can hire us or do it yourself!