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This is our final blog in our mini-series focused on Reception tools in Dentally Over the last few weeks, we have covered a number of areas of your reception, which is imperative to the successful running of your practice. Having the correct tools in place to streamline and increase the efficiency of your team's workflows whilst ensuring ease of use is a great place to start in guaranteeing your reception team feels valued.
At Dentally we understand that practice reception teams are very busy; they have many daily admin tasks to fulfil all the while maintaining exceptional levels of customer service to ensure patients feel at ease and safe in your practice’s care. Ease of use is at the heart of Dentally’s ethos and we have tools in place to help you help your team - let's take a look at just some of these now.
Automated Recalls
Ensuring that your reception team’s time is kept as free as possible to concentrate on patient care is vital as is keeping the practice calendar full. Dentally’s recalls aid you in both of these areas by allowing you to create automated recall workflows. These can take the form of SMS, postal or email updates that are set automatically within Dentally and sent periodically throughout the day to patients - without any extra effort from your team. Simply set the workflow up, decide how many times you want the patient to be contacted and let Dentally do the rest. 
These messages can not only be tailored to suit your receptionist's hectic schedules but they also mean that recalls do not have to be individually sent out to every patient at multiple points throughout the day. By tailoring automated recalls around your receptionist's busy schedule you can be sure that they aren't inundated with recall responses on their busiest days. Instead, you can set for the recall messages to go out on days that tend to be quieter within the practice freeing up yet more of your receptionist team's time
Postcode lookup, Invoices and Sundries
Reception teams can often encounter challenges when looking up patient details;
- Not all patients will want to reveal their full address at the front desk and two - drawing up a patient’s details can often become cumbersome and a time filling task for reception teams. Dentally can provide the perfect solution for this with our postcode lookup add on. This feature allows for your reception team to pull up all of your patient's details with just the patient's postcode and all in just a few simple clicks! No more time wasted searching for the patient and no more embarrassing moments for your patient if they are not wanting to reveal their address in front of the rest of the practice.
- Invoices are also simplified with Dentally. As long as the practitioner has carried out the few simple steps within Dentally whilst in surgery - by clicking the treatments they wish to charge for and charging. An invoice will automatically be generated and added to the patient's record tab. The reception team can immediately see the invoice in the patient's accounts screen, from which it can be printed, emailed or payment recorded or requested
- Sundries can also be added directly to an invoice from the account tab in the patient’s record. This means that reception can record transactions without having to add items directly to a treatment plan. Dentally’s invoice system is fully flexible so that you can tailor it to you and your busy practice’s specific and individual needs.
The waiting room
The waiting room feature within Dentally gives reception teams the ability to mark patients as arrived for their appointments and notify the practitioner they are there to see. This of course saves time as they do not have to physically get up to let the practitioner know. The patient's first line of address and postcode is also shown on the screen so that your reception team knows quickly that they are identifying the correct patient. 
Dentally shows your reception how many minutes a patient has been waiting. There is also a colour coded system within the waiting room feature that creates visual alerts for your receptionist team warning them of how long the patient has been in the waiting area. So green means that it is more than 5 minutes until the patient's booked appointment, amber means less than 5 minutes after the scheduled appointment time and red - meaning that your patient's appointment is over 5 minutes late. This provides reception teams with the ability to go that extra mile for your patients. If they do notice that a patient appointment is running significantly behind schedule then they can offer them some refreshments or a magazine - a little something to fill the gap whilst they wait for their appointment.
Task automation
A key part of Dentally is streamlining your practice workflows - especially those mundane daily admin tasks. Routine admin can become very time consuming for your already busy reception team and the goal of task automation is not to take away the magic of human interaction. Instead, it aims to make processes more efficient therefore alleviating the burden of admin and providing your reception team with more time to build successful relationships with the patients of the practice.
Our iPad app is a perfect example of a task automotive tool. Dentally’s iPad app allows for patients to complete PR forms, medical histories and agree to treatment estimates which immediately updates the patient's records within Dentally without the need for any manual input from your reception team. Dentally’s iPad app saves your reception team time further by eliminating the need for them to spend hours each day printing out countless forms. Instead, they can all be found on the iPad app. Your reception team can easily help those patients less comfortable with technology and can help create strong relationships with your patients once again.
Reception teams truly are fundamental to the success of dental practises. Let Dentally help you take care of them. Our reception month focus may have come to an end but our care for you and all of your dental team has not. Contact us at hello@dentally.co now to start streamlining your practice and keep your reception team happy and feeling valued.