Top 3 Challenges Dental Practitioners Can Overcome with the Help of VoIP
Running a dental practice is more than just about taking care of a patient’s oral health. Just like any other kind of business, dental offices also need to juggle several tasks and activities in order to succeed in their field. This is why today’s offices seek the help of various tools and technologies to accomplish tasks and ensure productivity in the workplace. One of the tools that help dental offices achieve efficiency is none other than a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone system.
Using a VoIP phone solution in a dental practice does more than just keep business phone bills down. It is also an effective tool that can help solve various challenges that are inherent in running a dental practice such as:
Attracting and retaining patients
When it comes to ensuring the success of a dental practice, attracting new patients and building customer loyalty play a significant role. A reliable VoIP phone system can help you accomplish both due to the wide range of features that help establishments provide a better patient experience.
An auto attendant (one of the more popular, included features in most VoIP plans) can be customized to deliver greetings and announcements as well as direct callers to the right extension. Dental practitioners can also activate the find me/follow me to forward calls to a pre-determined sequence of numbers or devices whenever they step out of the office.
And there’s also Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software integration. Syncing your phone system with CRM software lets you serve patients better because you are better informed. When a patient calls you, all of their information appears on your screen, too. This eliminates the need to put the caller on hold to manually pull up his information. All the data you need to serve the customer (whether it’s billing, schedule of appointments, and other relevant notes) is now at your fingertips.
Maximizing a small office space
Dental practitioners, especially those who are still in infancy, usually have to settle for a smaller office space in order to control costs. With all of the equipment and furniture a dental office needs, the last thing they want is a bulky, wired phone system that consumes precious office space. Moving to a VoIP phone solution can help dental offices declutter and maximize small spaces. And with VoIP, offices have the option to skip the traditional desk phones and go for wireless and inexpensive softphones instead.
A softphone is a program installed on a computer (or a mobile device) that gives users access to all of your business phone’s features. All you need is a headset with a microphone, or your mobile device’s built-in speakers and microphone.
Taking emergency or after-hours calls
Another challenge most dental practitioners face is handling emergency calls or after-hours calls. Whether a patient is suffering from a dental emergency or is simply inquiring about an appointment, it’s important that you are able to respond to their call (or at least be able to inform your patients about the next best thing to do). VoIP’s call forwarding feature can be setup to route after-hours calls from your office to another extension, your mobile phone, or your home phone number. You can also choose to customize your auto attendant to play a message announcing your hours of operation, and even what to do in case the caller needs immediate care.
These three challenges are some of the most common problems dental offices face today. Fortunately, these can easily be overcome with the help of a reliable, feature-rich VoIP phone system.
