Sleaford Smiles Talking Heads

Yvonne and Charlotte from Sleaford Smiles joined Louise for a chat recently about how DenGro helps support them and their team.

Louise:
Hi Charlotte and Yvonne, welcome and thank you both for joining me today. Let’s kick off by learning a little more about you both and your roles at Sleaford Smiles.

Yvonne:
Sure, so Charlotte is our TCO and admin, I am Practice Manager, Dental receptionist, everything!

Louise:
How did you manage leads before DenGro and what was the catalyst for change?

Charlotte and Yvonne in unison:
Spreadsheets which was time consuming. Very time consuming!

Yvonne:
We took a look at DenGro because we were worried we were losing enquiries. Enquiries from our website came through on email. We were then replying to each one, trying to put them on a tracker and then trying to follow them up. We were losing track amongst all the other stuff we had to do.

Charlotte:
There wasn’t a constant reminder unless you manually remembered to set one. We just didn’t want to lose anyone.

Louise:
Okay, interesting, that’s a lot to handle manually. How was DenGro introduced to you?

Yvonne:
It was brought in at the same time as Dentally and it was something we had been looking at for a little while. As a business we didn’t want to miss leads, that was our biggest thing.
When we get a lead in, we want to respond to as soon as we can and help the business grow.

Charlotte:
For us there are so many practices near us and in such a small town that the difference is in replying really quickly so that patient could come to us rather than wait for a reply.

Louise:
So it was a big change with two new software solutions to get used to. Was that daunting or exciting?

Yvonne:
We were excited as it was going to make things easier. It’s quite a youngish team so using software like DenGro rather than spreadsheets was more user friendly.

Louise:
What impact has using DenGro had on the team?

Charlotte:
More consistent, we know what’s happened to each patient. Someone’s in DenGro, if I’m nursing Yvonne will pick it up. If Yvonne is busy the reception team will pick it up.

Yvonne:
It’s just easier. Charlotte does a lot of ‘DenGroing’. But it means I can step in and make a note or set a follow up call. Nothing gets missed.

Charlotte:
I do DenGro every day and I tend to nurse two days a week sometimes. But generally it’s me. We all kind of dip in and out all the time just to check it and make sure we haven’t missed anything.

Louise:
Do you use the reports?

Charlotte:
Yes, I look so I know how many are coming in and I want to see how well we are doing, how well we’re converting these people into treatment.

Louise:
You’ve got a really strong conversion rate right the way through the new patient journey with little drop off, how do you keep your conversion rate so high?

Charlotte:
I think one of the main things is we don’t talk about money in that first phone call. We want to get them in to meet everyone and experience the practice so we’ll just say we can’t give you a figure at the minute, but we’ve got a free appointment, come and meet us.

Louise:
That’s really interesting. So they buy into you and the practice, rather than everything being based around price.

Charlotte:
We have a lot of people say “you’re so friendly and bubbly so I thought I would come to you”

Louise:
Hopefully they’ll become a lifetime patient as well, it’s not just about what they are interested in now.

Yvonne:
We also just try to keep contacting regularly, trying every few days.

Charlotte:
We are persistent.

Louise:
Now that’s really important. How many times do you try contacting a lead?

Charlotte:
I had one today. I contacted them for the first time in January. I’m still not letting it go. That’s  because I’ve had a couple of emails from them. I’m not wasting my time so I’m not going to give up just yet, I tend to wait about a month if I haven’t heard anything.

Yvonne:
If I can’t get them on the phone, we send an email and then keep chasing them.
But if I come across one that we’ve called maybe eight times, you know by then they aren’t interested. 

Louise:

You’re pretty tenacious  And that’s exactly what I was hoping you would say, we know being persistent pays off.

Yvonne:
It was hard at first. We felt like it was pestering them but then you see the results. And what is nice about DenGro is that when someone does join and gives feedback about the messages are nice, like ‘Congratulations on starting your treatment journey’ and things like that. We are putting all new patients on DenGro because it’s actually really nice for them all to get that experience, isn’t it.

Charlotte:
The map is really good as well. It’s nice to send them that so they can see how far we are and that’s really great.

Yvonne:
The appointment reminders really help so they are turning up to their appointments!
The best thing is just having all the patients in one place. Our practitioners never forget anything. They will ask me what happened to that patient from 6 months ago. I used to have no idea, now I can search on DenGro, find them and they know we haven’t lost them.

Charlotte:
I like DenGro as a whole, it’s quite entertaining to use. It’s fun, it’s not boring.

Louise:
Thank you both so much for your time today, great to learn more about how DenGro is used and supporting you and the team at Sleaford Smiles.