How to Handle Incoming Phone Calls So Patients Book

A minimum wage receptionist can undo every dollar you spend on marketing. That’s not an insult to receptionists. It’s math. The phone call is usually the first real contact between a prospective patient and your practice, and phone handling is the single biggest failing we see when we start working with clients.

It doesn’t matter how clever your marketing is or how much you spend on ads. If the person answering your phone is quoting prices and reading off information instead of booking consultations, you’re paying to fill a leaky bucket.

In this episode, I walk through how to fix it: recording your calls, mystery shopping your own front desk, the mindset shift your staff needs, and the questions that build rapport instead of killing it.

Why This Matters Now

In the accounts we manage, the cost of buying a lead keeps going one direction: up. Every fumbled call is more expensive now than when I recorded this episode. You can double your ad budget, or you can double the booking rate on the calls you already get. One of those is free. When we rebuilt lead handling for a midtown Toronto surgeon, consultations went from 72 to 125 a month, during a recession. Same phones. Different handling. I broke down the dollar value of a single blown call in the phone call that costs you $50,000.

Where Practices Lose the Most Money

This is a recurring topic in our own client work. Of everything a practice does, the phones are where you can lose the most money. The call is the first point of contact between a prospective patient and your staff, and it’s the moment she decides whether you’re worth her time.

Phone calls are what people remember. Phone calls are what they use to make a decision about coming in.

Treat Every Call Like Gold

Staff your phones with the best, friendliest people you can hire. Compensate them enough that they care. Build a culture around them so they do a great job on incoming calls and build real rapport with people. Your front desk isn’t overhead. It’s your most important marketing channel.

Are You Recording Your Calls?

Before we get into technique, one question: are you recording your incoming calls? The answer is usually no. If that’s you, good news. You’ve just found something concrete to work on.

If you’re not recording, you don’t really know what’s happening. You don’t know what’s going on in your practice.

Set up call tracking and recording and the guesswork ends.

Listen Like a Marketer

You need to understand your callers’ hopes, desires, fears, and dreams. Start recording, then listen. Load the calls onto your phone and play them in the car on the way to work. You’ll hear exactly where bookings die.

If You Can’t Record, Mystery Shop

Maybe a law in your state, province, or country prevents recording. Maybe the technology feels like a hurdle. Maybe your staff is fundamentally opposed to it. If your staff refuses to be coached on the most revenue-critical activity in the practice, my honest advice is to get new staff. You’re paying people to help you. Either way, have someone mystery shop your practice so you know what callers actually experience.

Your Receptionist’s Real Job

When I talk to staff at medical practices, most of them believe their job is to inform: give the caller all the information so she can make a decision. That belief is the problem.

How well you do at informing the customer is not going to translate to sales.

The number one job is to get the booking. Write that down. Nothing else on the call really matters. It’s a genuine mindset shift: the job is not to inform, it’s to book.

The Caller Is Vulnerable. Act Like It.

When a patient calls your practice, she’s in a vulnerable state. She’s been living with this concern for years without knowing what to do about it, and she’s finally hopeful that someone can help. That someone should be you. Your staff shows empathy the only way that works on a phone call: by asking the right questions and letting her talk.

Credential and Qualify

Two more jobs on every call. First, credential the physician, the practice, and the procedure, naturally and with permission, so the caller understands she’s found the right place. Second, ask qualifying questions so your consultation calendar fills with patients who are ready, not price shoppers collecting quotes.

If you suspect your phones are the leak, that’s exactly where we start. Our plastic surgery marketing engagements begin with listening to your calls before anyone touches your ads.

Take Action

That wraps up this episode. Take this and implement it in your practice immediately. The only way to appreciate information like this is to act on it.

I’m Nick Dumitru. I will see you on the next podcast.