The Personal Touch

The personal touch is something that every business needs, especially a business like dentistry where your are up close and personal with a patient.

The personal touch can give you the edge in the effort to gain new patients against competitors. It is something that can help practices at all levels of dentistry, whether you are a one surgery start-up practice or a multi-site corporate.

In a small practice, the personal touch will make sure that your patients come back time and time again for their dental care, it is the personal touch that they value and that they feel like they know you. Feeling cared for will help you retain that customer for the lifetime of their dental needs. Likewise, large corporates can feel intimidating and cold. A friendly smile, a welcoming drink can just make that patient feel a little more at ease. A corporate may be able to offer more specialised dentistry but they are clearly at a disadvantage when it comes to the personal touch which would be central to the offering of a smaller practice.

So what can you do when it comes adding the personal touch to a patient's journey throughout your practice? Well, we have a few ideas and Dentally offers a number of features that enables you to offer that little extra service to your patients. We think your dental software should always try to give you those little extra things to make the patient as comfortable as possible.

How do we do it? Let's take just one possible patient journey together...

It's a piece of cake

Imagine your patient has been welcomed into your reception and you have been sent a notification that they are in the waiting room awaiting their checkup. Before you take them into your surgery, you quickly look up that patient's chart to remind yourself what treatment they needed last time and if there is anything you need to investigate when they get into the chair.

The patient didn't mention it at reception, but today is that patient's birthday. It's okay, they don't like to make too much of a fuss. Now, in other dental software you might also miss that it is their birthday, even if you were looking at their details - after all, the date is often the last thing you would be looking at. But not in Dentally. Nope, we give you a handy little reminder that it is the patient's birthday.

If you look up at the patient's name, right beside their name (or a medical alert, if they have one), you will see a little cake icon. This is reminding you it is their birthday and you can welcome them into your surgery with a 'Happy Birthday'.

It is these little things that can make a patient's experience just that little bit better, a visit that they will remember.

Leaving a little note

No, I'm not talking about the medical kind that you put in their chart (although they're always helpful!) but I am talking about Dentally's pop-up notes.

Now, many practices we see use them in different ways. Some use them as a communication tool between reception and practitioner, others use them to communicate between practitioner and hygienist and we've also seen them used as a quick note taking tool for payment reminders etc.

One way that we love to see them used is for keeping notes about the little tidbits that the patient may drop over the course of the conversation while they are in the surgery. Have they gotten a new cat recently? Made a purchase on a new car? Getting married? Drop that into a quick note once their check up is done and you can mention it the next time they come into the surgery. They'll be impressed that you remembered and building that kind of rapport with a patient is priceless.

If this is something you would like to try, just hit the Notes tab and select 'Add a note'.

Enter the note you would like to leave and save it.

If you click the information button, you can pin the note.

And the next time you click into that patient's record it pops up.

The Birthday Report

The birthday report is a great little report that is offered in Dentally.

Just select the date you desire and the list of patients with birthdays on that day will come up.

Sending them a birthday card or even an email is a relatively inexpensive way of adding to their experience, and you could even couple it with a special birthday offer just for them.

This is a great way of being a proactive practice and shows you really value your patients. The patient will be surprised and delighted you remembered and is sure to mention it to you the next time they visit.

Do you have any ways that you make your patient's experience special that hasn't been mentioned here? Do you use Dentally or another dental software in a unique way that adds to the personal touch? Let us know!