As a provider of practice marketing for orthodontists, one of the services that we provide to our online marketing and targeted direct mail clients, is lead tracking and the ability to listen to actual phone calls to our clients' offices. You should hear what we hear (or even worse, what we don't hear when you don't answer your phone)!

While we believe that making your patients feel like the most important person in the world, and running on time with your appointments, are the two most important policies for an orthodontic office, an extremely close third has to be your protocol for answering the phone.

Before I go any further, let me acknowledge that we know the thought of taking time out of your ridiculously busy week to listen to your staff's phone etiquette and protocol, is not appealing. Frequently, when we identify a problem with the handling of inbound calls for one of our clients, our suggested solutions are met with resistance. However, consider that if one employee answering your phones with a poor attitude, or a condescending demeanor, costs your practice one new start each month, the loss in collections to you is easily $60,000 or more each year. And that doesn't include the value of lost referral business those lost starts could have generated, as well. Do we have your attention now?

Consider your patient's point of view for a moment. To them, investing $5,000 - $6,000 for orthodontic treatment might mean the difference between their family taking a vacation that year, or not. They want to be treated like they are the most important person in your office that day. While a patient being made to feel unimportant is bad, a potential patient calling from your marketing campaign, being treated this way is far worse. Frequently, orthodontists never even find out about this lost business, because the potential patient says something like "thank you...I'll call back to make an appointment." Then they start searching for another orthodontist immediately, or ask around until they get referred to another orthodontist's office.

This improper treatment of a potential patient's phone call is far worse because this is one of the biggest reasons orthodontists discontinue a practice marketing campaign - they blame the marketing vehicles for lack of performance, rather than rightfully acknowledging that their practice's phone protocols are the culprit.

While many more procedures for optimal phone-answering skills exist, we'll conclude with one other common telephone failure. The lack of acknowledgment that in 2011, we live in a microwave-society.....people want and expect, immediate gratification.

What message are you conveying to potential patients who call you during your office's lunch hour, when that caller gets your voicemail message? People despise having their calls go to voicemail during normal work hours. They despise having to leave a message with an answering service, only slightly less. Think about it, how do you feel when you hustle to a bank to make a deposit at 4:05 in the afternoon, and the bank is closed? You find it aggravating. You wonder why bankers don't work normal hours like you do.

Potential patients feel the same way about you when they get referred to your office or respond to your marketing, call during their lunch hour, and you don't answer your phone. And when people get aggravated, they call someone else.

I'll close with a brief story from one of our clients' actual direct marketing campaigns. We assigned a marketing tracking phone number to their recent direct marketing. This client has 2 offices. They have hours in office 1 on Mondays and Fridays. They have hours in office 2 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Both offices are closed on Wednesdays. On the five days out of each week this orthodontist is not working in a particular office, all calls to that office go to an answering machine.

Their postcard marketing generated 22 unique callers to the marketing tracking phone numbers we assigned to them.

And remember, we tracked and listened to the lead calls:

• 7 callers got no answer because they called when this orthodontist and staff were working in their other office.
• 4 callers got no answer because they called on Wednesday.
• 3 callers got no answer because they called over this office's lunch break.
• 8 calls were connected.

Out of 22 leads that this orthodontist paid to generate, they only answered the phone for 8 of them. What is the potential in collections for those 14 lost calls from just this one postcard mailing? For this practice it was $72,400.

In 2010, clients of GetOrthoCases averaged a 424% return  

on their marketing investment with our system. If your practice is looking for a 

marketing solution where every lead can be tracked, your profits guaranteed in writing, 

and you get the tools to trouble-shoot your staff's phone-answering protocol  

at no additional charge, visit us at

www.GetOrthoCases.com

call us at 888.657.2762

or visit us in Booth #3220 at the 

AAO Annual Session in Chicago, May 14-17.

Marketing System

• Targeted, professional direct mail/email marketing campaigns
• Increase referrals from your present patients (and get your staff to ask for them).
• Increase professional referrals
• Increase new starts from online searches with OrthoSearch - totally trackable paid search marketing campaigns.
• Practice marketing with every lead tracked for you.