Affordability, quality care, and convenient hours are important to your modern dental patients to build lasting patient loyalty and differentiate your dental practice, by providing a WOW dental patient experience will ultimately help grow your dental practice.
Read below for some great ideas on how to improve the patient experience in your dental office.
How to Improve Your Dental Patient’s Experience (8 Key Tips)
- Refresh Your Reception Area
- Provide Free Wi-Fi
- Guide Patients to Your Office
- Create a Relaxing Environment
- Manage Patient Wait Times
- Improve Technology
- Ensure Your Website is User-Friendly
- Helping Patients Take Better Care of Themselves
1. Refresh Your Reception Area
Updating and maintaining your waiting room lets your dental patients know you care about their experience. You can do this by putting flat TV screens, keeping the reception area clean, ensuring that it looks impeccable, and putting the most recent reading materials.
A refresh of your reception area creates a welcoming atmosphere for dental patients. An effective way to look for improvements is to walk into your practice as if you are a patient. What do you notice? What could be better? Consider using this as your starting point.
2. Provide Free Wi-Fi
These days, most people in the reception area use their phones to browse the internet, process their email, or go on social media while waiting for their appointment. You can add an extra element of comfort and convenience by offering reliable Wi-Fi. This also enables dental patients to stream their favorite sports or TV shows while waiting for the appointment.
Free, reliable Wi-Fi is essential for boosting a patient’s dental experience in 2023. To make it super easy for to connect to WiFi, consider creating QR code signs that patients can scan with their phone.
3. Guide Patients to Your Office
An often overlooked tip for an improved dental patient experience is to guide your patients to your office. If your dental office is located in a building with other offices, it can be difficult to locate where your office is and how to get there.
Your dental practice can address this by using clear signage to help your patients easily locate your office. In addition to physical signage, you can also clearly communicate your location on your website, Google Maps, and social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
4. Create a Relaxing Environment to Ease Patient Anxiety
Going to the dentist can make some patients feel uneasy and anxious. A few patients may even have a fear of going to the dentist. To address this issue, dental offices and staff must provide a comfortable environment for your patients.
Creating a relaxing environment starts with a well-trained staff. From office managers and receptionists, to dental hygienists, staff members should create a warm and comforting environment for their patients to put them at ease.
Playing relaxing music can help set the vibe, and is shown to improves patient’s mood. Other ideas on how you can improve your patients’ dental experience include offering soothing refreshments, and providing cozy seats in the waiting room, or a dental patient chair.
5. Manage Patient Wait Times
When patients wait for a longer duration, they get tired and bored. To ensure they are comfortable, you must ensure that your front desk staff manages wait times effectively.
There are several ways to manage patient wait times. One way is to provide entertainment options. This can be done by providing magazines, televisions, and, of course, free WiFi.
Another way to manage patient wait times is to look for new ways to improve or upgrade your dental scheduling practices. To avoid backlog, make sure you are booking for an appropriate length of time.
6. Improve Technology
Patients want practices to use the latest technologies. Among the technologies believed to have improved dental patient care are computer-aided designs (CAD), cone beam computed tomography (CBCT), and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). You must ensure that you incorporate these technologies if it’s worth it.
7. Ensure Your Website is User-Friendly
The quality of your websites can make a huge difference in dental patient experience. A functional website can help with service information, booking appointments, and customer discovery. An online scheduling tool is a great way to make your site user-friendly.
Additionally, dentists using SEO can be an effective method in bringing new customers into your dental office. That way, when patients look for a new dentist in their area, your website pops up first in Google.
8. Help Patients Take Better Care of Themselves
Increase patient engagement by encouraging them to keep healthy habits and avoid problems. Encouraging patients to take care of themselves is part of your job as a dentist.
Dentists can help their patients take care of themselves by providing reminders and offering digital portals. They can also educate and inform patients by send over resources online to take better care of their teeth at home.
Dental Enrollment E-book
Improve enrollment by creating an emotional connection with patients and helping them see value in your services.
Use These Tips for Better Dental Patient Experience
To ensure dental patients stay with you long-term and refer other patients, you must provide a WOW experience. Discussed above are among the many ways of how to improve patient experience in your dental office.
For more ideas on how to improve patient experience in dental office, contact the dental coaches at Fortune Northeast – we help New England and the Northeast offices grow their dental practices. To learn more about how we can help your practice, contact us here.
