Because the call was answered late, or by someone in the middle of three other tasks, or by someone whose goal was to give information rather than book an appointment. The advertising worked. The phone did not.
This is the least glamorous problem in dental marketing and the most common one. Before you increase your spend, sit down and listen to a stack of your own new patient calls.
What goes wrong on the call itself?
A short list, in rough order of how often it shows up.
- Nobody answers. It rolls to voicemail, or rings out over lunch, and the caller moves to the next practice.
- The caller asks about insurance and hears that someone would have to check, with no next step attached.
- The caller asks about price, gets a number with no context, and hangs up.
- The team member answers every question accurately and then ends the call without ever offering a specific appointment time.
- The caller is put on hold before their name and callback number have been captured.
Capture a name and number in the opening moments of every call. Then a dropped call is a follow-up rather than a loss.
Is this a training problem or a staffing problem?
Both, and you need to be honest about which one you have. If one person is checking out a patient, taking a payment, and answering the phone at the same time, no script fixes that. That is a capacity problem, and the answer is coverage.
If coverage is adequate and calls still go badly, it is training. And the missing skill is usually not warmth or product knowledge. It is asking for the appointment.
How do I find out what is actually happening?
Listen to calls. There is no substitute for hearing them yourself.
If you want to record calls, get your attorney’s guidance first. Consent requirements differ from place to place, this is not an area to guess in, and a marketing vendor is not the right source for the answer.
If recording is not practical, sit near the phone for a morning. You will learn most of what you need.
What actually changes the outcome?
Offer specific times instead of asking whether someone would like to come in. Naming two openings and asking which works better gives the caller a decision they can make on the spot.
Answer the insurance question with a next step attached. Offering to check it and call back within the hour, and to hold a spot meanwhile, keeps the call alive.
Handle the price question by moving to the exam. Nobody can quote a crown over the phone without seeing the tooth, and saying so plainly lands better than a number with no basis.
And call back missed calls the same day, every day. A missed call from a new patient is an opportunity you already paid for, sitting in a log.
Should I use an answering service or an automated phone system?
Possibly, if the alternative is unanswered calls. An imperfect answer beats voicemail. But test whatever you use by calling it yourself as a stranger with a hard question, because these systems get demonstrated with easy ones.
Whatever you choose, the handoff matters more than the technology. A message that sits until tomorrow has solved nothing.
How does this connect to what I am spending?
Directly. If you are paying to generate calls, every unconverted call raises your true cost per new patient. Improving call handling is the cheapest way to move that number, because it requires no additional spend.
That is the argument to make before your next marketing renewal. A practice that handles calls better gets more out of the same budget, and that stays with you in a way a media buy does not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should the same person always answer new patient calls?
Ideally one trained person owns it with a trained backup. Rotating the role among whoever is nearest produces inconsistent experiences and makes it impossible to tell whether a change helped. Consistency also makes coaching meaningful, because you can trace outcomes to specific handling.
What is a good call conversion rate?
Whatever yours is now, improved. Definitions of a qualified new patient call vary so widely that outside figures are close to meaningless. Count consistently for a quarter, then work on the trend. Your own direction of travel tells you more than any comparison.
How quickly should we return a missed call?
Same business day, and ideally within the hour. People calling about dental care are often working down a list of practices or dealing with pain. The practice that calls back first frequently gets the appointment regardless of anything else it does well.