No dental practice can be without patients. Fortunately, you won’t run out of potential clients because almost everybody requires some form of dental care. However, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. You may never run out of potential clients—but keeping the existing patients you do have is an entirely different matter.
The Importance of Patient Retention
Attracting new patients is crucial to the survival of your dental practice, but focusing on this alone won’t keep your business afloat. This isn’t the only way to keep your waiting rooms busy and your office phones ringing. If you don’t want to lose the practice you’re building up, then you must invest in patient retention.
Patient retention can do a lot more for you than patient acquisition can! When your patients are loyal, you can enjoy these benefits and more:
More Profit for Less Effort
Since long-term patients have already formed a relationship with you, the trust accumulated over the years will make them more willing to consider suggestions and other services. Selling them your products and services to loyal customers is an excellent opportunity to increase sales without much effort!
Reduced Marketing Costs
Acquiring new patients takes a lot of time, effort, and, most importantly, money. Building your online presence, banking on social media marketing, and posting printed advertisements all cost a large amount of money, and sometimes, despite your best efforts, you may not achieve the results you aimed for.
If you don’t have the funds to spend on marketing, you can rely on word-on-mouth instead to grow your patient population. Loyal customers may talk about your dental practice to their circle and influence them to visit your clinic.
How to Increase Patient Retention
Besides acquiring new patients, you should also invest your time and effort into keeping the patients you already have. Many may even say that patient retention is more important than acquiring new patients—that this is one of the best ways for your practice to grow and succeed for the years to come!
Just read through our guide below to find out how to keep your patients happy:
Make Appointment Scheduling Easier
Patients are usually expected to schedule their next visit before leaving, but unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Some patients leave the dental practice without making a follow-up appointment!
Appointment-making is never the responsibility of the patient. Whether they forget or choose not to schedule their next visit, you and your staff will always be liable for it. To make appointment-setting easier and more organised, you should assign one person for scheduling to ensure that everything is done correctly, even on busy days.
Suppose you want to make scheduling appointments much more convenient for your staff and your patients. In that case, you should consider offering online appointment booking through your site or an appointment booking software.
Hire an Associate Dentist
Having many patients is good for business, but many things can also go wrong. Being booked out months in advance may seem like a sign that you’re doing well, but it can actually cause you to miss out on potential patients and lose existing patients that can’t visit on your available dates.
When you’re booked too far, you also won’t be able to entertain special cases. What do you do when a patient suddenly calls in or needs to move their appointment? If you’re always booked in advance, perhaps it’s a sign that you need an extra pair of hands to help share the work with you.
Maybe it’s time to post an associate dentist job opening, so that you can have another dentist on board to help you take care of your patients and prepare for any unexpected situations!
Conclusion
Many patients don’t always mean that you’ll have a successful business. If those new patients don’t return anyway after the first visit, then you’re only wasting your time! Instead of focusing on patient acquisition, consider banking on patient retention. Loyal customers are more likely to make your dental business thriving and growing for the years to come!
Are you looking for associate dentists for your dental practice? At Dental Talent, we have the best candidates you could ever hope for! With one simple upload, you can instantly promote your practice to attract the most relevant talents. Advertise your associate dentist job opening today!