Top 5 Ways to Create Patient Loyalty

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With the proliferation of new dental practices opening across the country, retaining patients and attracting new ones is crucial to maintaining a level of practice success. No one opens a dental practice and hopes to close their doors within the first year. No patient visits a dentist and hopes to have a bad experience. To make sure you remain a success, retain your patients, and attract new ones, consider these top five tips to creating patient loyalty.

Be Flexible

The problem with maintaining regular business hours is that most of your patients also keep regular business hours at their places of employment. This means that in order to make and keep an appointment with you, they must take time off work, which can be a hardship to some.

To keep patients coming back and to attract new ones, consider having at least one day a week when you offer business hours earlier in the morning or later in the evening, so that people who work during the day can still make and keep appointments.

Create a Brand

Branding is an increasingly important part of business marketing. Branding is literally creating a mark on whichever industry you’d like to target. For dentists, you’ll want to create a brand that allows your patients to quickly recognize you.

Include a strong online presence by utilizing social media and blogs on your website. Every piece of your business should have the same color scheme, the same tagline or call to action, and should feature an actual trademarked emblem.

Patient Focused Schedule

One of the biggest complaints in the medical and dental industries is that many patients have to wait too long for their appointment, even after arriving on time. Long wait times occur when doctors overbook their appointments. While this may allow you to see more patients in the day, this can also leave those patients with a bad taste in their mouths.

To retain patients and gain new ones, consider scheduling your appointments with this in mind: The patient arrives on time for their appointment, the you need to be on time, as well.

Keep it Neutral

With the current level of stress and tension throughout society, it isn’t necessarily wise to share your political, religious, moral, or societal views with your patients or within your patient’s hearing. Many people are passionate about what they believe and depending on their own beliefs, you may have offended or lost your patient.

Get Involved

Community involvement is a strong indicator to patients that you truly care about them, their community, and the well-being of others. Getting involved in community events, planning and hosting community events, and even volunteering your professional services during times of tragedy or emergency can leave a lasting impression on anyone who hears your name.