How Long Should Dentists Try to Reactivate Patients?

Losing a dental patient is one of the great downsides of running a practice. The income you lose from that patients will need to be replaced. Unfortunately, studies have shown that only 20-40% of lost customers return, across all industries. 

Reactivating Patients 

Below are a few tips when it comes to trying to reactivate patients: 

• Have the next appointment scheduled before the patient leaves – This should be a standard practice in any dental practice. There are three benefits to having patients schedule beforehand. These benefits are: 
  • Scheduling as many patients beforehand as possible will allow your employees to determine how they’ll fill the schedule of the coming days and weeks. 
  • Scheduling at the end of each appointment lets your patients know that their dental health is a priority to you and your dental practice. 
  • Lastly, pre-booking makes it much easier to contact the patients to confirm the appointment already made than it is to get them to schedule a new one. 
• Keep in mind that cancellations will occasionally happen – Patients may cancel appointments and never call back to reschedule or have an emergency and can’t arrive for their appointments. Whatever the reason, your unscheduled patients can easily fall into the file of inactive patients. Stay on top of rescheduling. 
• When to stop trying to reactivate patients – Just because a patient stops responding to your attempts at communication doesn’t mean that he or she has found another dentist. They could be having a family emergency, a hectic schedule, or maybe they’re simply scared of the dentist. Don’t stop attempting to reactivate patients until they let you know they’ve moved or found a new dentist. 

Here at Pro Dental Designs, our dental marketing experts can help you put together a marketing plan specifically made for your dental practice. We can help you bring in new patients and reactivate your inactive patients via services like dental SEO or social media marketing for dentists. Call our office today for more information!