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Survey of dental office managers shows pain points, opportunities
What’s on the minds of the dental office managers? Interacting with patients, training staff, acquiring new patients and maintaining a full daily schedule, for starters.
Those were the key activities identified by at least 80 percent of dental office managers surveyed by Futuredontics®, the dental marketing company and parent of 1-800-DENTIST®. Fred Joyal, founder of Futuredontics, reviewed the results of the online survey, titled “The Changing Role of the Dental Office Manager,” at this summer’s American Association of Dental Office Managers (AADOM) conference in Nashville, Tenn.
More than 1,000 office managers responded to the online survey between Sept. 1 2014, and Oct. 31, 2014. Consistent with previous research, more than 90 percent of office managers surveyed were female. The majority – 58.6 percent – were over 45 years old. Only 15.4 percent were 35 or younger.
Practice business activities
The area that has grown most in perceived importance is online reviews, with 63.4 percent ranking this activity as “very important,” compared to only 45.2 percent in 2013.
Social media is the area with the biggest reported increase in time spent, with more than half of the respondents saying they spend more time on this than they did two years ago. Even so, more than 10 percent of respondents said they spend no time on social media or online reviews.
“[S]ocial media is revealed as a major pain point,” reports Futuredontics. “Office managers show the least consensus about the importance of this activity – but at the same time, they are increasing the amount of time they spend and yet still feel it’s not enough.”
Staff training has also emerged as a major area of concern for office managers, and is overwhelmingly rated as a “very important” task to which too little time is devoted, according to Futuredontics.
More than 20 percent of the respondents reported spending less time on appointment reminders than they did two years ago, presumably due to the increased usage of automated services.
New patients and appointing
Dental practices are finally catching up with patient preferences by offering immediate appointment availability and scheduling new patients within the first two days of contact, according to Futuredontics. Over two-thirds of respondents (67.8 percent) reported that they block out at least one hour per day specifically to accommodate new patients, and close to 40 percent follow the best practice of seeing new patients within 48 hours, an increase of 17 percent from two years ago.
That said, dental practices may be missing a major opportunity by failing to offer an online option for scheduling appointments after office hours, says Futuredontics. Only 17 percent of respondents indicated that they currently offer an online option for scheduling appointments after office hours. More than 70 percent reported that after-hour calls are sent to voice mail and returned the following business day (although almost half at least provide an emergency number). “This represents a huge lost opportunity, as many consumers will continue searching for another practice who can accommodate them immediately, and others will simply hang up and fall back into procrastination,” according to the authors.
About 21 percent of practices have adopted a system where after-hours patients can speak with someone immediately – either by forwarding calls to a staff member’s phone or using a third party appointing service.
Practice marketing, social media
Office managers rate marketing as “very important,” yet they also identify it as one of the top four areas where not enough time is being spent. In fact, 34 percent of respondents said they spend less than one hour per week on marketing activities, and 91 percent spend four hours or less per week. Four of the five most-used marketing activities were online approaches – websites, social media, SEO (search engine optimization) and online yellow pages.
Futuredontics calls “troubling” the fact that 49 percent of practices neither interact with Yelp, the online review site, nor plan to do so in the future. This despite surveys showing that the majority of patients use Yelp reviews to influence their choice of dentists. What’s more, 49 percent of managers report that too little time is being spent on social media.
The office manager is far and away the most likely to bear responsibility for social media and online reviews. Yet in 12 percent of practices, no one has responsibility for social media, and in close to 14 percent, no one is responsible for online reviews.
Other findings
- Appointment reminders. Close to 96 percent of office managers feel appointment reminders are “important” or “very important” to the practice, and respondents consistently reported that they are spending the same amount or more time on this task than in previous years. More than 76 percent reported using patient communication software, representing a moderate increase from 2013. Text messaging, previously the least-used method, has increased by nearly 15 percent over the last two years. This is also the medium office managers indicated that they plan to increase most in the coming years.
- Dormant patient reactivation. Close to 40 percent of respondents reported that they have increased the amount of time devoted to reactivation of dormant patients, that is, those who haven’t visited in a year or more. “While this improvement is encouraging news, when asked about their specific time usage, a surprising 11 percent of office managers said they devote zero hours to reactivation each week,” says Futuredontics. “This represents a huge missed opportunity, particularly in light of studies that show that in the typical practice, 20 percent of patients are dormant.”
- Staffing. Close to 59 percent of respondents reported adding staff since 2013, and 62 percent said their practice has enough staff to support the number of duties they are asked to perform.
