Enhancing patient care for a loyal base
Featured Products Promotional FeaturesPosted by: Dental Design 26th February 2023
The competitive world of modern dentistry often requires dental practices to provide their patients with an excellent customer experience. This is important, especially with the developing culture of shopping-around for dental providers.[i] Within a busy practice, however, it can be difficult to consistently make this the priority, so it’s useful to have a good understanding of what shapes patients’ views of their dental care experiences. It may also be useful to have measures and standards in place to maintain communication with patients to help keep your practice running smoothly.
Creating a personalised experience
To create a personalised experience for your patients you should consider ways in which you can accommodate the preferences of individual patients. This way, you can create the best experience for them and optimise efficiency in practice. This includes ensuring that patients feel they’re receiving good value when it comes to their dental care. For some, this could literally mean monetary value, but for many the perceived value of treatment will be in terms of money spent as well as pain endured, and appointment waiting time. The value of the service you provide to your patients is important, as if they see your practice as good value in all of these aspects, they’re more likely to become or remain a loyal patient.[ii]
Trust is another key aspect influencing patient loyalty. Within the dental practice, as with any other environment, trust needs to be earned, so it’s important to establish good rapport with your patients from their first appointment. Ensure that you make them feel comfortable and confident in your skills, helping them to leave their appointments feeling satisfied with the standard of care they received. Often, it is this satisfaction that leads to trust, which makes it more likely that patients will return. The trust built between a dental professional and their patient reduces any sense of uncertainty on both sides.ii
Feedback and communication
Don’t be afraid to ask your patients for feedback. Whether this is a short questionnaire after their appointment, an email asking them to rate their experience, or asking them to leave a short review for your practice website – feedback is always useful. Not only do reviews of your service encourage improvement and growth, or reaffirm your strengths and positive interactions, but these can be useful for attracting new patients.
Adding reviews to your website or social media channels helps to boost search engine optimisation (SEO) – increasing your visibility, helping those looking for a dental practice to notice you. Additionally, creating positive experiences during appointments can encourage your patient to recommend your practice to friends and family with confidence.ii
Creating a loyal patient base
It is long established that, in any business, customer loyalty is important. Customer retention is valuable for many reasons, but most often, the reason is the direct value of the customer to the business. Loyal customers lead to increased revenue for businesses alongside predictable income and the increased potential that loyal customers may purchase additional goods and services.[iii] This same logic applies to dental practices too. It is important to focus on patient loyalty because this in itself may drive patient retention, repurchase, long-term profitability and improved relationships.ii
Patient Bridge is the cloud-based software update for existing R4+ practice management users. This innovative software from Carestream Dental allows your practice to communicate and engage effectively with your patients. This enables you to optimise patient satisfaction, build a loyal patient base and, in turn, generate more revenue. Patient Bridge integrates seamlessly with R4+ practice management software, allowing you to better maintain and customise high-quality patient experiences, encouraging continued engagement. You can easily build marketing campaigns easily, customise contact with patients, and allow patients access to the virtual waiting room to complete pre-appointment forms. You are even able to minimise missed appointments with the FTA manager, using automated messages for patients who repeatedly miss appointments.
There are many important aspects when it comes to managing you patient base effectively. Ultimately, finding a solution which allows you to provide excellent services, while maintaining consistent contact and engagement will help you to retain your loyal patient base, and in turn help more potential patients find you. When you use software that facilitates this growth and management, you are able to do this with ease, without compromising on providing excellent patient care.
For more information on Carestream Dental visit www.carestreamdental.co.uk
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Cheryl Hayes
DPMS Regional Product Manager
Europe, Middle East & Africa
[i] Levin, Roger P. “Developing lifetime relationships with patients: strategies to improve patient care and build your practice.” J Contemp Dent Pract 9.1 (2008): 105-112. https://www.thejcdp.com/doi/JCDP/pdf/10.5005/jcdp-9-1-105
[ii] Alhidari, Abdullah Mohammed, and Omar H. Alkadhi. “Keep Them In: How to Drive Dental Consumers’ Loyalty in the Modern Era?.” Expert Journal of Marketing 6.2 (2018).
https://marketing.expertjournals.com/23446773-612/
[iii] Gremler, Dwayne D., and Stephen W. Brown. “The loyalty ripple effect: appreciating the full value of customers.” International journal of service industry management (1999). https://www.roarsolutions.com/downloads/1999_Loyalty_Ripple_Effect.pdf
