How a 1-Cent Piece of Electrical Tape Can Increase Collections

When you’re out of earshot, the practice doesn’t always run as you expect it should.

For example, every time the phone rings at the front desk, there may be someone on the other end who wants to be your next new patient.

If your phone isn’t answered and they don’t leave a message or call back, then you are going to lose out on potentially thousands of dollars in their lifetime.

Don’t worry, this email isn’t a pitch for the Virtual CA or to tell you to forward calls to a cell phone after hours.

If you already know you should be doing one of those approaches and aren’t, then I don’t know what to tell you. Must be nice being rich enough to turn away money. 🙂

This is about when the phone rings and there’s a living breathing person sitting there whose job it is to pick it up and talk.

What percentage of the time do you think that happens?

Based on our data, about 36% of the time.

Now, I know what you may be thinking…

“Well, my front desk would never ignore a call from a potential patient but we do get a lot of telemarketers and spam calls from out of the area so the staff knows it’s okay to miss those calls.”

Really?

Have you ever considered that people don’t want to change their phone number when they move to a new are or even get a landline (with a local number) when they move into a new house? Their primarily and only phone number may be the number that they brought to town with them.

Some of those “out of state” calls being ignored aren’t people trying to sell you something. They’re people down the street wondering why no one is picking up during regular business hours.

Solution…

Take a small strip of black electrical tape and cover the part of the phone screen that shows the caller ID.

Now, every call is a surprise and a potential patient.

And when you step out of the office and call the front desk to check on something and they answer, you’ll know they did so because they didn’t want to miss a call… not because they saw it was your cell phone in the caller ID and know they’d better get that one.