With the modern world becoming more and more integrated into the online world people are expecting to be able to shop online, book and reserve theatre tickets online so why not book their dental appointment online?

My honest belief is that if you don’t offer some form of online reservation system you could be missing out on a great deal of business. Think about it, a person is most likely to be online in the evening when you are closed, if you offer an online reservation system that patient is able to go some considerable way to solving their dental problem right there and then from their computer, phone or tablet.

But watch out, there are hidden problems with these systems.

This blog post may not endear me to some of these online appointment management systems, but my purpose for writing it is not to help them, it is to help you, the people that work in the dental practice everyday.

What are these online appointment booking systems?

The general principle is that various companies are now offering full integration into your software management program. This means that patients are able to search for an available appointment online and then book it. The program will then add it to your appointment management system in the practice..

You can decide which dentists accept bookings this way, which appointments patients can book and restrict patients from booking a full mouth prep appointment with a half hour slot!

Online booking makes the patient feel in control and reduces front of house time in the practice. All around, it’s looking good so far!

How do the systems work?

Most of the current online management booking systems have their own website which is available for Google to crawl and find. In other words, if you type ‘dentist in London’ you may well find many dental practices but also, in time, these online appointment booking directories.

The appointment booking directory websites have formed strategic alliances with various dental practice management systems and it is via this route that they have gained access to the back end of the databases.

What is the problem with these systems?

I have 3 particular problems.

1. The patient journey on your website could be compromised.
2. We lose the ability to enhance the patient journey after booking.
3. You may inadvertently end up promoting your competitor dental practice.

Let’s look at each of those in more detail.

The patient journey on your website could be compromised.

My main concern is the lack of full integration into your website. From what I have seen the online appointment booking systems operate as a simple button from your website. When the patient clicks on the ‘book an appointment’ button on your website they are redirected to the appointment management website.

You have worked hard to get that person to your website, either paying for adverts, referral marketing or search engine optimisation, the last thing I want to do is to lose that person off of your site onto another website – who knows what else they are going to do there!

My preference is to always keep people on your website and get them to engage on your own site without linking to any other site at all. If your appointment management system works directly from your own website without taking visitors elsewhere then perfect, but if it doesn’t think again.

We lose the ability to enhance the patient journey after booking

You know that when you book something online you get that welcome e-mail, or perhaps if you purchase something from Amazon you get a thank you e-mail which is nicely branded and has further calls to action, possibly sharing on Facebook or other ways to engage.

Unless you are integrating your online appointment booking system with some form of e-mail management software you are missing out on this ability to continue to engage with your patients.

There is also something called Post Purchase Evaluation, with people sometimes experiencing ‘buyers remorse’. This is a psychological phenomenon where people regret having booked or paid for something, big companies spend big bucks on reinforcing a person’s decision to buy.

Phone calls, those thank you e-mails again and follow-up messages after a booking has been made are critical to ensure that this new client goes ahead with that appointment. Your follow-up procedure should include reinforcement of their decision ” thank you for booking, you have made a most excellent decision, here is what one about happy patients says about us…”.

The question to ask now is, if a patient books using an online management system what you do to prevent buyers remorse and reinforce their excellent decision to ensure they actually turn up and refer you to their friends?

You may end up inadvertently promoting a competitor practice*

Let’s say someone clicks on the link to book an appointment, they disappear from your website and end up on your own page on a listing directory. Most of these listing appointment booking directory have the ability for the patient to search for another dentist in the local area. Not so great for business after all!

There is also a search engine optimisation problem here. If you are providing links from your website to the appointment booking website then Google will see this as a recommendation. Because you have a link you are recommending the appointment booking website directory, in the longer run this will mean that you are optimising the appointment booking website directory.

Over time this could mean that they out rank you for many of the terms you want to be found for in a Google search.

Who do you want to be top for ” dentist << your location>>”?

Do YOU want to be number one or do you want an appointment booking directory to be number one?

What is the solution?

Here’s my solution. I firmly believe in the concept of online reservations and so this is what I do for my clients.

• Set up an AWeber e-mail marketing account
• Create a list in your AWeber account for appointment requests
• Add a form to your website which encourages patients to request an appointment and asks them for the ideal day and time.
• Once submitted this form sends you a notification that a patient wants to book. You then need to deal with this in the practice in your usual way.
• The patient requesting the appointment then receives a custom branded e-mail thanking them for booking.
• That patient is added to an automated gentle e-mail marketing campaign where we can continue to build a relationship with them, help them with their dental health and suggest that they refer us to their friends.

Summary

* TECH ALERT: If you do need to place a link to the booking company make sure the link has a rel=nofollow attribute, this will tell Google that you don’t recommend the website you are linking to and any Page Rank that you have will stay on your site and not flow to the booking company site. Your web company will be able to do this for you.