Are you a dental practitioner who has been facing a high patient attrition rate? You should know that patient attrition from your practice is quite common and inevitable. However, some strategies can help in increasing the loyalty of patients towards your practice. The strategies to increase patient retention rate are as follows:
1. Maintain Proper Communication With Patients
If you want to increase the retention rate of your patients, you need to build a strong connection with them. You need to keep patients updated with the latest information regarding your clinic. Some dentists send newsletters to patients regularly and keep them engaged. You can also invite your patients to free seminars and help them learn oral hygiene tips. Another good way to keep patients vested with your practice is to send them birthday wishes. You can also create personalised offers and discounts for your loyal patients for many years.
2. Send Notifications For Appointments
Your patients follow a hectic schedule every day and often forget about dental appointments due to their hustle. You can put in some effort to remind your patients about their appointments. The notifications can be sent in the form of text messages, phone calls or emails. It shows that you care for your patients and want them to prioritise their oral health.
3. Flexible Office Hours
If you offer flexible office hours to your patients, it will be quite beneficial in keeping them loyal to your practice. Having nine to five office hours is fine, but dental emergencies can occur at any time. Moreover, it might not be possible for some of your patients to come for their appointments during the conventional hours. It will be helpful for them if you can offer them teledentistry services. Teledentistry will also help you retain patients who live far away and face issues commuting to your chamber.
4. Good Customer Service
Providing efficient customer support is one crucial factor for avoiding unnecessary patient attrition. You will have to recruit efficient and well-behaved customer service professionals at your dental clinic. They should be able to help patients and boost the retention of patients. The customer service staff has to be patient in dealing with the queries of patients. Patients should not have a negative experience when they come to your clinic for dental care.
5. Easy Process For Booking Appointments
You need to ensure that the process of booking appointments to your chamber should be easy. You can make the appointment process online to provide increased convenience to your patients. But the app or web browser for making appointments should be easy to use. Besides, patients should be able to pay their appointment fees online without much hassle. Refunds should be available in case of cancelling appointments.
The Bottom Line
You need to improve the overall experience of patients when they come to your clinic for dental care. Pay attention to possible issues that might be causing high patient attrition and get rid of them quickly.
