Samera Business Advisors
Samera Business Advisors
Samera Business Advisors are leading UK Dental Business Advisors. On this blog, we share our tips, ideas and expertise to our readers across the UK and beyond. This blog is a must-read for dentists seeking to buy, build, or sell a dental practice.
Blog By:
Arun Mehra
Arun Mehra

Why most dental practices lose new patients within 12 months (and what the ones who keep them do differently)

10/19/2023 2:22:59 AM   |   Comments: 0   |   Views: 246

A few things the practices with strong retention are doing differently:

Treating patients as a process, not a moment - Not just the clinical encounter, the waiting room, the front desk tone, the small touches for nervous patients. Plants, a fish tank, a kids' corner sound trivial until you realise they're the difference between "I felt at ease" and "I felt like a number."

Front-desk and clinical staff who remember small things. Not friendship rapport. Asking how the house move went, remembering a patient's anxiety from last time. It costs nothing, and patients never forget it.

Gentle, well-timed recall. A friendly text or email when a check-up is due, not a pushy chase. Most practices either over-message or never message at all.

Actually measuring retention rates instead of guessing. If you can't tell me your 12-month retention number off the top of your head, that's the first problem.

Asking patients directly what's working and what isn't. Quick surveys surface issues the team will never spot from inside the practice.

Remarketing to patients who already know you — Facebook and Google ads served only to people who've visited specific treatment pages, or to your existing patient email list. Warm audiences convert at multiples of cold ones, and almost no independent practice does this properly.

The practices growing fastest aren't the ones with the biggest ad budgets — they're the ones losing the fewest patients out the back door.

We've broken down the full retention playbook - https://samera.co.uk/learning-center/retaining-new-dental-patients/

What do you think could be the reasons for low patient attrition?
 
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