Ep. 256: How to Train a Dental Receptionist
Your marketing can generate all the calls in the world, but it means nothing if your front desk cannot convert them into patients. In this episode, Jeff breaks down how to train your reception team, improve phone handling, and make a great first impression with every caller.
ADA Survey - https://www.ada.org/resources/research/health-policy-institute/dental-care-market/state-of-the-us-dental-economy
Mystery Call - https://www.mgeonline.com/your-mystery-call
New Patient Intake Form - https://www.mgeonline.com/np-intake-form/
New Patient Call Log - https://www.mgeonline.com/np-call-log/
DDS Success (coupon code RX269) - https://ddssuccess.com/
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Questions From This Episode
What three homework items need to be in place before you can actually train a receptionist?
A specific, invariable pattern for how the phone gets answered, a written intake form for new patient calls, and an actual new patient log that tracks the patient's name, number, what they called about, and specifically how they heard about the practice, since a marketing dashboard alone won't catch walk-ins or a family member calling in on someone else's line.
What should the average wait time be to get a new patient on the schedule, and why does it matter so much?
ADA survey data typically shows an average wait of twelve to fifteen days, which is a real problem, not a sign of being appropriately busy. A new patient with no existing loyalty to the practice, someone responding to an ad or a postcard, will simply call the next office if they can't be seen within 24 to 48 hours, since they have no relationship with the practice yet to keep them waiting.
What two things should a practice be watching for on its marketing dashboard?
Missed calls happening after hours, which may call for after-hours phone coverage or a good AI receptionist, and missed calls happening during business hours, which usually points to a genuine staffing or traffic problem at the front desk, since a properly staffed reception line should never send a call to voicemail during the day.
How should training on phone handling actually be structured?
In two layers, first, how the phone itself gets answered, a specific greeting everyone in the practice can deliver verbatim, and second, how specific types of calls actually get handled and routed, using role play drilled repeatedly, starting easy and then adding harder, more unpredictable scenarios, ideally recorded so it can be transcribed and reused to train future hires.
Why do shopper calls asking about price tend to go badly, and what's a better way to handle them?
Most offices either refuse to quote a price at all or hand over a number with no context, both of which lose the caller. A better approach is treating the shopper like a real person, asking genuine questions about what they were told they need and any symptoms they're having, then inviting them in for a free or low cost consultation, since most shoppers asking about one crown or implant actually need more than one and won't leave their current practice for just one anyway.
Episode Transcript
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I want to start this week's episode with three things we already know but should be reminded of. One, whoever answers the phones in your practice controls the flow into your practice, and we might call this person the receptionist or front desk. Two, if your receptionist knows what they're doing and they've been taught how to do it, this flow works well and moves relatively uninhibited into your practice, and hence you're busier. Three, if your receptionist doesn't know what they're doing, is overloaded, untrained, or your actual intake procedures aren't very good, the flow is inhibited and you're less busy, or not busy at all.
I've done several episodes on reception, namely episodes three, forty-eight, and seventy, and they covered general duties and how to rate performance. I haven't, however, done one on how to actually train your receptionist and sort out your phones and how they're answered, so I figured it was time. And to be clear, I'm not going to cover absolutely everything having to do with reception, I'm going to cover training procedures specifically. But remember, with training there's one thing worth keeping in mind: you can know what training you have to do, but you still have to actually do it. I could have a tackle box and a fishing rod, and unless I actually fish, I'm not going to catch any fish.
I've seen people whose primary focus is simply work, work, work, who spend zero time doing any training of any kind, and I understand, you're not making money while you're training. But look at it this way: if I'm going to spend a bunch of money on marketing to get calls into my practice, and the people answering the phone are mediocre, or maybe they're nice but have no idea what they're doing, I'm wasting that money. Versus, I could take a half day, and sure, I'm not making money in that half day while I'm training everybody, but those calls are going to get answered more efficiently and effectively afterward, and I'm actually going to get a product out of it, I'm going to get patients. Training is critical, our clients learn this, and it's something you have to carve out time for every week. I know you don't have time, but this is something where you actually have to make time.
So for this episode, I'm going to cover basic duties, what to expect, how to train and what to train on, how to know if you have a good candidate or not, and how to stay on top of this position's performance. My name is Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host.
Let's start with a couple of basic front desk concepts, since there are a lot of different names for this role, reception, front desk, and so on. If you go into the average dental practice and ask who the receptionist is, and then ask what exactly they do, the answer varies enormously by practice. They answer the phones, they schedule patients, they do walkout statements, they verify benefits, and so on. So let me give you a general idea of how we have our clients organize the front desk, since there are a few basic roles, and offices expand on these roles as they get busier.
In a typical client's office, the receptionist manages incoming foot traffic, manages the reception area, and handles and routes phone calls, but doesn't actually schedule patients themselves. A schedule coordinator handles scheduling. If that area gets busy enough, with multiple hygienists, you might add a hygiene coordinator who reports to the schedule coordinator. A financial coordinator handles insurance estimates and filing. A treatment coordinator handles sales alongside the doctor. An office manager oversees all of it. And in a very busy office with a lot of incoming calls, you might add a dedicated new patient coordinator.
The general idea is that as you divide labor by specific job function, each person handling and taking responsibility for a specific area, you have to make a realistic assessment of what it actually takes to get that job done. If I have four hygienists and two and a half doctors, one schedule coordinator alone might genuinely struggle to keep everyone busy, and I might need a hygiene coordinator. On the flip side, if my coordinators are telling me I need three more people just to keep those same providers busy, that's too many, I don't need that much support for that volume. You have to have a solid read on how many people you actually need.
Dial it back to a smaller practice, and you might have just two people up front, one acting as office manager and de facto treatment and financial coordinator, and the other as receptionist and scheduler combined. As the office gets busier, you might hire someone to take over reception specifically, freeing that receptionist slash scheduler to focus purely on scheduling. As you grow, you break these jobs apart, otherwise a single position gets overloaded and it limits the traffic actually able to flow into your practice.
Here's an example: say you're getting 200 new patient calls a month, roughly 50 a week, and you're open four days, so 10 to 12 a day. That's probably close to a full-time job on its own. You might think that doesn't sound like it takes that long, and you'd be right, but a dedicated new patient coordinator wouldn't just be handling incoming calls, they'd also be getting patients to leave reviews, filming testimonials from happy patients, talking with patients about referrals, and generally promoting the practice. So beyond simply handling that new patient traffic, they'd be doing other things to support growth within the practice too.
In any event, whoever answers the phone is the first point of contact in your practice. I've received some form of marketing, print, a Google ad, whatever it is, and this is the first person I'm actually talking to. So we want to make sure that interaction is excellent. Before we even start training people, you want to do some basic homework first to make sure you're actually ready to train. It's not an enormous amount of homework, but it is homework.
The first thing you want is a pattern, a specific, invariable way you want your phone answered. If I don't have a specific way I want the phone answered, people will answer it differently, and I won't have a clear standard to train against or measure someone's performance by. One way I'll know if I have a problem employee is if they're not following my training methods, but I can't identify that if those methods don't exist in the first place. So I want a specific pattern, and it can be whatever feels right to you, something like, good afternoon, thank you for calling Acme Dental, my name is Jeff, I can help you. Whatever works for your practice, though I'd steer away from just saying dental office.
A couple things matter here: it should be a friendly way to answer the phone so the caller feels well received, it should include the name of your business, and the caller should feel like they can actually talk to this person. Once the phone's been answered, you want the caller's actual need identified quickly. Say I've given my greeting, and the caller says they just moved to the area and are looking for a dentist and wondering about getting their teeth cleaned. At that point, and I'll get further into the intake form shortly, you want to get their name and number. You might think that's unnecessary given caller ID, but maybe they're calling from a work phone, or a spouse's or friend's cell phone, so I still want that name and number confirmed, spelled correctly, along with a callback number in case you get disconnected.
If it's a newer staff member who doesn't yet recognize most patients by name, they'd ask whether the caller has ever been to the practice before. If the answer is no, now you know it's a new patient and can start asking the relevant questions. You want a specific, invariable way the phone gets answered, because even if the person answering it 80 percent of the time is great, you don't want the other 20 percent of calls handled poorly.
The next thing you want is some form of a new patient log, specifically for new patients. I won't go too deep into this since I've covered it in other episodes, but you need a real way of tracking incoming calls. You might say your Google dashboard already does that, and that's probably true and genuinely useful, but that dashboard isn't tracking someone who walks in off the street, and it isn't tracking a spouse who calls in on their own line even though you're already a patient of record. So you want a separate new patient log where someone records the patient's name, phone number, what they called about, and specifically how they heard about the practice.
Be specific on that last part. If you ask how someone heard about you and they say I saw you on Google, that could mean a sponsored ad, an organic search result, or even something they saw on Facebook that got confused with Google in their memory. You want to actually identify the real source. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, I've seen maybe one or two call logs in my career that were genuinely kept correctly. When a call log just says the internet as the source, and you're running twenty different ads, you have no idea which one is actually working. So: a pattern, an intake form, and a new patient log. That's the homework.
The next thing to look at is how long new patients are actually waiting to get on the schedule. There's a quarterly report the ADA puts out compiling basic economic data on dentists in the US, I'll put a link to it on the episode webpage, and if I recall correctly, average wait time to get a new patient on the schedule tends to run twelve to fifteen days. Unless that's specifically what the patient wants, say they're out of town for two weeks and asked to be seen after they're back, if it's taking that long to get someone on the schedule, something is genuinely wrong with your business. You may not think so, since the more booked out you appear, the more successful you feel, but that instinct is flatly wrong. You want to provide service as quickly as possible. If you're pushing people out twelve to fourteen days for reasons that have nothing to do with their own preference, that's something to fix.
Especially with a new patient, I want them in within 24, at most 48 hours, unless they genuinely can't make it sooner. I've seen practices where hygiene is booked out weeks in advance and new patients just keep getting pushed further out on the schedule instead of being placed on the doctor's schedule instead. You need to get people in quickly, especially when there's no existing relationship, if someone found you through a Google ad, Facebook, a postcard, or your sign, they have zero connection to your practice yet. The longer you make them wait, the more likely they are to call someone else instead, since their excitement about actually seeing a dentist is happening right now. That's a genuinely unfortunate outcome when you've already spent real marketing money to get that call in the first place, you're paying to generate the lead and then losing it anyway.
I'd also look at wait times for existing patients of record coming in for a cleaning or treatment. If that's taking a long time too, maybe you need to add a hygiene day, reorganize your schedule, bring on an associate, or add a second assistant. You want to look at all of this because you want to provide service quickly across the board.
The next piece of homework is your marketing dashboard. If you're running Google ads, you likely have a dashboard from your marketing company where you can see who's calling off those ads and listen to the actual calls. I'm not suggesting you review every single call, but you want to use this dashboard regularly as part of your ongoing monitoring. First, look for missed calls, and for two specific reasons. That dashboard tracks calls coming through your pay-per-click number specifically, so these are largely people who clicked your ad, not random callers.
Look at when those missed calls are happening. If you're getting a lot of missed calls after hours, five, six, eight o'clock, ten or fifteen of them, that's worth addressing. There are AI receptionists now that handle this reasonably well, we actually had Dan on a few months back talking about AI and marketing, and he played a sample from an AI receptionist his team built that was genuinely impressive. Most of the ones I've heard aren't great, but even an imperfect one beats sending the caller straight to voicemail. If you're getting 10 to 15 new-patient-related calls after hours, you might set up a round robin where the phone forwards to staff who are paid a bit extra to answer calls into the evening, since they already know what new patient openings exist over the next few days. I've seen practices recover a meaningful number of new patients this way, since a caller who hits voicemail at night will often just call the next office instead.
The second reason to watch for missed calls is whether they're happening during business hours. Say you're open eight to four and you're missing a call at ten thirty in the morning, another at nine forty-two, another at two-oh-six. Why is that happening? I wouldn't instantly assume the receptionist is bad, I'd look into what's actually going on. Maybe you find out the receptionist was doing a walkout statement and scheduling another patient by phone when that call came in and went to voicemail, in which case you have a traffic problem at the front desk, not a skill problem. I'm focusing heavily on new patients here specifically, but you genuinely shouldn't be missing calls at all during business hours, including lunch coverage, since patients don't know or care what your lunch hour happens to be.
Once that homework is done, start listening to actual incoming calls. If you have a receptionist who isn't especially well trained, or you simply haven't trained them yet, listen for how they actually sound on the phone, not how they sound talking to you, since people tend to perform better for the boss. Is their speech clear? Are they enunciating, or garbling the greeting into the receiver? Can you actually make out what they're saying? Are they using your intake form the way it's structured, or improvising? If they're not doing what you've instructed, you may have a training gap. Do they sound confused, or put callers on hold repeatedly to go ask someone else a question? Sometimes that's a training issue, sometimes it's simply that one person is handling checkout, a copay, another staff member talking to them, and a new patient call all at once.
This is exactly why, when we run mystery calls here at MGE, a service we offer for new clients where we call your practice pretending to be a shopper patient, I'll put a link to it on the episode webpage if you're interested, the practices that consistently handle these calls best tend to be corporate ones, even though we don't intentionally target corporate practices in our own client base, we work with private practices specifically. The reason corporate offices tend to do better on these calls is straightforward: the person handling the call is sitting in a cubicle with nothing else competing for their attention. They have all the time in the world for that one caller. Someone in your practice might have genuinely better skills than that corporate employee and still lose the call simply because they don't have the same uninterrupted time. So when reviewing your own calls, pay attention to whether people are being put on hold excessively, or clearly juggling something else in the background while trying to handle the call.
Next, think through how a new patient is actually routed once they call. Do you have a policy for a second opinion request, say a thirty minute appointment with the doctor for $29 if they don't have x-rays? Do you have a policy for a new patient calling with an emergency? For a standard new patient initial? You want a clear, specific answer for each, because if the person answering the phone doesn't know what to do with a given call, whether they're scheduling it themselves or routing it to a scheduler, that person also needs to know exactly what happens next.
Say a caller says they were just at another office, were told they need crowns, and want to know what you'd charge and whether they really need them. What do you actually do with that? You should know immediately: the doctor would be happy to see you, we offer a free second opinion, it takes about half an hour, do you have your x-rays? Whatever your specific policy is. Without that policy, you're handing your team something with no instructions, like putting away groceries and being handed a jar of pickles with nowhere obvious to put it, does it go in the cabinet or the fridge? You end up guessing, and sometimes guessing wrong. If a second opinion caller comes in and nobody knows what to actually do with it, that uncertainty comes through in the call and can genuinely cost you the patient.
So you want these policies established, ideally in writing, and there's no excuse not to have that today, especially with AI. You can dictate your policy into any AI platform and get a usable written policy back in seconds, then edit it and hand it to your staff. This is what we do for a second opinion, this is what we do for a new patient emergency, this is what we do for a standard new patient initial, and if hygiene is fully booked, this is how we still get them in within 24 to 48 hours.
These are genuinely basic things, and I know you're being hit constantly with new technology solutions for every corner of your practice, but these specific items aren't really technology problems, they're just how your business functions and how people actually get into your practice. Without them clearly laid out, confusion spreads, because other people are left deciding on the fly what to do. If any of the above is missing, fix it first, before you train anyone, it'll likely take you about a day. Your pattern will vary practice to practice, but I do have a sample intake form and a new patient log from our online platform, DDS Success, that I'll put on the episode webpage. And obviously, if you find your team is genuinely overloaded through this process, you may need to hire.
Once you're properly organized, training breaks into two parts. Part one is how you want the phone answered, and what to do with a call if the person answering it isn't the one actually handling it. I'd want essentially everyone in the practice able to answer the phone this way, not that they'd do it regularly, but if something comes up and they need to grab it, I want them to sound good doing it. Part two is how to actually handle each type of call, which is where the organizational piece comes in.
Before training, I'd map out the types of calls you're realistically going to get on a regular basis, since this becomes your training guideline. As a starting point: new patient calls, which break down into new patient initials, consults or second opinions, shoppers, and emergencies. If you're running an implant funnel, you're less likely to get a call and more likely to get a form lead. Then you've got patients of record calling about their next cleaning or treatment, billing questions, records transfer requests, and so on. Then vendors, lab and supply reps, salespeople, spam calls, and family members or relatives, occasionally with a real emergency mixed in.
That's a starting list, but the point is figuring out roughly what kinds of calls you're actually getting, since that tells you whether you already have someone who handles a given type, in which case the person answering the phone just needs to know where to send it. This becomes an easy cheat sheet for training a new receptionist: lab calls go to Susie the lead assistant, billing calls go to Jim the financial coordinator, and so on, so nobody's pulling the doctor out of an operatory because someone from a brokerage firm called.
When training part one, how to simply answer the phone, this applies to everyone. You're looking for a friendly, nice tone, clear and understandable speech, not garbled into the receiver, getting the caller's name and number in case of disconnection, and knowing exactly who to route the call to if it's not theirs to handle.
Then we get into the bigger piece: say it's a new patient call and this person is expected to actually schedule it. Beyond the basics, clear, happy, name and number, they need to establish the reason for the call and gather whatever additional information your intake form calls for. This matters enormously because unless it's a direct referral, the caller isn't sold on your practice yet, so you want to create a genuinely excellent first impression.
It helps to know your top three most common types of new patient inquiries, since those deserve the most focused training first. For a lot of practices that's a standard new patient initial off Google, a second opinion, and a shopper call. Walking through the intake form: after your greeting and establishing the reason for the call, say the caller is new to the area and looking for a dentist, you'd ask whether they've been to your practice before. If not, get their name and number, then ask how they heard about you, since that could be I found you on Google or my friend Joe is a patient and recommended you, in which case get Joe's last name too.
Then ask when their last dental visit was. This is where communication actually matters more than the form itself, since salespeople in particular tend to talk too much, something worth training out of them, because you also need to genuinely listen. Say the caller mentions their last visit was about five years ago, and the previous dentist recommended two crowns they never got done, maybe because of insurance timing. You'd note where in the mouth, upper or lower, left or right, ask whether they have any current discomfort or other dental concerns, and note anything else they mention, sensitivity, wanting clear aligners, whatever it is. You're not diagnosing anything, you're gathering enough to actually prepare for their visit.
This also helps you decide appointment length. I did a separate episode on how long to schedule a new patient appointment, I'll link it on the episode webpage, but the short version: if the intake conversation suggests this person likely needs more comprehensive treatment, missing teeth, symptoms, a prior recommendation for crowns, schedule a longer appointment, an hour and a half instead of the standard hour, so there's real time built in to properly present treatment the same day. A standard one hour new patient initial usually runs the hygienist doing imaging and probing for the first forty minutes, with the doctor getting the last twenty, five minutes building rapport, ten or fifteen doing the actual exam, leaving essentially no time to properly present a comprehensive treatment plan if one is needed. Trying to present real treatment to someone you just met in five rushed minutes is a reliable way to lose the case, or at best hand it off to a treatment coordinator with a much colder start than necessary.
If the intake conversation suggests the person is in solid shape, regular checkups, minimal history, I'd schedule the standard hour, since there's a good chance they won't need extensive treatment. If it goes the other way, book the hour and a half, with the same forty minutes in hygiene, twenty with the doctor for the exam, and the remaining thirty minutes reserved specifically for presenting treatment, same day. Just make sure that block is properly represented on the schedule so the doctor isn't mid root canal when they're supposed to be doing that exam and presentation.
Once everything's established, you'd move to actually booking it: the appointment is an hour and a half, my first available is tomorrow at eleven, can you make that? If not, offer the next option, and once they confirm, get them on the book before working through remaining questions, pre-med history, allergies, insurance, and so on. Some people prefer asking all of that before booking, that's a legitimate choice too, there's no strictly right or wrong order, just be consistent about it in your own practice.
On insurance specifically, if it's a PPO you don't participate with, the person answering the phone needs to know how to handle that conversation, I covered this in detail in our three part series on getting out of network, I believe episode two or three of that series specifically addressed what to say to a caller in that situation. The short version: ideally your preventive and diagnostic fees land close to what your largest former plan used to pay, since that's usually where patients notice the difference, cleanings for their kids, most, not your basic and major fees, where patients already expect a financial conversation regardless of coverage.
Now, shopper calls. People tend to dread these, but we've all been a shopper at some point, if you've ever bought something on sale, that's you. Nothing wrong with it. If someone calls asking how much you charge for a crown, use the same pattern: happy to answer that, do you mind if I ask a few quick questions first? Get their name and number, then ask what made them think they need a crown. Most shoppers asking about a single crown or implant actually need more than one, since most people won't leave their current practice over just one tooth, so it's worth asking specifically how many they were told they need and where.
Ask about sensitivity to hot or cold, whether they're in any current pain, and then explain that the doctor genuinely can't diagnose anything over the phone, nobody can, so the next step is a half hour consultation appointment. Ask if they still have their x-rays, and I wouldn't turn that into a point of friction either way, whether you offer it free or for a nominal fee like $29, most people either have their x-rays or can get them sent over easily. Get them scheduled, today or tomorrow if possible. Some callers will still ask the price directly even after a good conversation, roughly a third of the time in my experience, and you can give them a reasonable range, but reiterate that you can't know exactly what's needed until the doctor actually looks. Handled this way, you'll convert a real share of shopper calls, even though you won't win every one.
Emergency calls deserve their own clear policy too, palliative care today, definitive treatment on a follow-up visit. But genuine emergencies fit specific criteria, if a caller is arguing with you about when they can be seen, that's usually a sign it isn't a true emergency. If you offer them two o'clock and there's a real chance of a short wait, and they're fine with that, that's a real emergency, and the doctor can step over as needed.
The core point across all of this: you want people actually following your intake form, and that form should ask genuine questions about the caller's situation without turning into an interrogation. When a shopper feels like they've been treated as an actual person rather than brushed off with we don't quote prices over the phone, click, they're far more likely to schedule.
I haven't touched implant funnels here, that's its own separate topic, but worth knowing that funnel leads come through almost entirely as form submissions rather than phone calls, which requires a different kind of follow-up than a typical incoming call. Check your landing pages specifically, since some may capture form leads directly, and those leads can get missed just as easily as a missed phone call if nobody's specifically watching for them.
So, pick your top three most common incoming call types and train your team specifically on how you want each one handled, always anchored around your intake form. Now let's talk about the actual training process. We offer reception training, scheduler training, and a full phone skills course on our online platform, DDS Success, I'll link that on the episode webpage. But even without that, you're going to want to drill this, meaning role play it, repeatedly.
Remember, reception breaks into two parts: how the phone is answered, and how specific call types get handled. Pick whoever might realistically answer your phone, you can be selective here, a phenomenal dental assistant who's genuinely bad on the phone shouldn't be your default answer, since this is the first point of contact with your practice. Give that group your pattern, and have them sit down and drill it, with each other or solo, until they know it verbatim. If everyone answering your phone uses the exact same greeting, that's your baseline, enunciated clearly, practice name and their own name both coming through distinctly.
You can carve out a couple hours on a slower day, maybe an afternoon, to actually practice this. Have them do it without notes in front of them while someone else holds the script, then ask them the next morning to recite it from memory. The only real latitude I'd give is minor variation, good morning versus hello, as long as the practice name, their own name, and a genuine offer to help all come through.
From there, move into drilling how specific call types get handled, using your top three sources as the starting point. Whoever's practicing should have the intake form in front of them, working with a partner playing the patient, starting easy and gradually adding trickier, less predictable questions to build real confidence under pressure. I'd genuinely recommend recording these drills if you can, a phone on a small tripod works fine, since you can transcribe them or replay a strong example for future new hires as a training aid.
If someone still sounds rough on the phone after real practice, keeps fumbling the basic greeting, or keeps getting the intake form wrong repeatedly, that's a signal worth taking seriously, maybe they're better suited to a different role in the practice, or maybe they're simply not the right fit here. I wouldn't want that person handling patients or prospective patients regardless, since every mishandled call is marketing spend quietly going to waste.
Once someone can handle a given call type without having to think about it, you let them loose, with real ongoing oversight. Listen in on live calls periodically, or have them shadow you taking a call, then take one themselves while you listen, ready to step in smoothly if needed, ideally with a pre-arranged signal so it doesn't feel abrupt to the caller. Keep spot-checking calls regularly and correcting as issues come up, and you'll end up with a genuinely strong receptionist over time.
None of this replaces deeper communication training, there's more to develop beyond this, and they'll also need to actually know your phone system itself, which is its own separate thing. But to summarize the steps: start with the homework, do you have a phone pattern, an intake form you're satisfied with, a properly maintained new patient log, and a clear sense of how long new patients and patients of record are actually waiting. Check your marketing dashboard for missed calls and hold time issues, and make sure you've laid out specific routing policies for second opinions, new patient initials, emergencies, and so on.
Then begin training, starting with how the phone itself gets answered and routed, using a simple map of where different call types go. Once that's solid, move to your top three new patient call types and drill those until they're second nature, then continue into patient of record calls and beyond. You want anyone handling your phones to be a genuinely strong representation of your practice, since a prospective patient may never actually get the chance to meet you, the doctor, if that first call goes poorly.
You have to carve out real training time for this, otherwise you'll never get to it, and I can't stress the ongoing oversight piece enough, even twenty minutes a week matters. Sit down with a notepad, listen to a few calls, and note what needs correcting, or whether you're missing calls, or where they're going to voicemail during the day. If you don't check, you genuinely don't know whether there's a problem, patients could be getting handled brilliantly or terribly, and you'd have no idea either way.
Monitor overall busyness too. If your team is having to put callers on hold constantly, that's going to slow your new patient flow, and if you're having to push new patients further out, make sure whoever's handling those calls actually has the time to give them proper attention. And one more thing that often gets missed: whenever you launch a new marketing campaign, offer, or reactivation push, make sure whoever's answering your phones actually knows about it. Otherwise a prospective patient calls asking about the free second opinion or virtual consult you're advertising, and the person answering has no idea what they're referring to.
So those are the basic guidelines. This doesn't replace formal communication training, a genuinely good course on this covers considerably more, but running through the basics laid out here, your pattern, your intake form, your routing policies, real drilling, and ongoing oversight, makes a real difference. Skip the basics and even excellent communication training will underperform. Get the basics right and pair them with a well trained, productive receptionist, and it becomes a genuine boost to both morale and productivity across the whole practice.
That's everything I have for you this week, a bit longer than usual, but worth it. I'll put links to that ADA quarterly report on wait times, along with the intake form, new patient log, and the relevant DDS Success courses, on the episode webpage. If you have any questions about any of this, or about MGE generally, you can find us online at mgeonline.com or call us at (800) 640-1140. Folks, have a great week, and we'll see you at the next episode.