The current generation is all about comfort and convenience. Expectations of customers have grown on a large scale, and they want swift access to services, whether it is shopping or dentistry. Dental patients usually have a lot of questions regarding the price, treatment plans, appointment availability, etc., for which they prefer an immediate response. Although emails have been seen as a reliable source of information over the years, they are more time-consuming in today’s time.
That is why features such as live chat are considered a great solution for instant communication and are leveraged by the best dental websites. The live chat feature enables both parties to actively participate in the communication, resulting in faster resolution.
Moreover, it increases patient engagement and reduces the bounce rate of patients on your website. This means you get more time explaining your services to the patient, and the chances of conversion become high. Therefore, a good dental website design must include a live chat feature.
Understand How Live Chat Works and its Effectiveness
Live chat is a feature added to your website that allows visitors to chat with your representative via text. The patients can utilise the chat feature to know about your clinic’s location, working hours, prices of services, or anything in the mind of a patient. Your representative can even book appointments for patients through this service and collect the feedback of treated patients.
The working of the chat feature is extremely simple. As soon as a visitor opens your dental website, a pop-up window is generated, greeting the customer and asking them for any doubts and queries. The customers can reply in the given chatbox, and your representative can further lead the conversation solving the customer issues.
This live chatting process is undoubtedly very effective as the process itself is very proactive. Although the website may consist of all the answers your patients would like to know, having a source that can help them get direct information is always appreciated by the patients.
The live chat feature can also work as a dental advertisement for your clinic as it helps display various services available in your clinic. Also, the chances of a patient booking an appointment with your clinic doubles when someone is actively answering their queries.
Top Reasons for You to Add Live Chat to Your Dental Website
There are numerous reasons why a live chat is the need of the hour in today’s dentistry. Let us look at a few of them:
Live Chat Works 24/7
Unlike your business operation hours that are definitive, a live chat feature can be utilised twenty-four hours of the day. Live chat enables you to answer the queries of the patients immediately.
A patient in need won’t necessarily wait for your response and will switch to some other service if not answered immediately. So having a service that will keep your business operative 24/7 will surely be an added benefit for your business.
Book Appointments Faster
One of the best features of the live chat process is making the appointment booking process effortless. Several times, the phone lines of your clinic are busy during the operative hours, due to which you may lose several appointments.
When booking through a live chat process, the patient just has to ask for available dates and times, and they can decide a suitable time for their appointment. In addition, the appointment booking does not only stay restrictive to your clinic timings and can be made during any time of the day.
Online Live Chat is Convenient
Live chat gives your patients the convenience of accessing information instantly. This is an excellent capability to have in times where everybody wants quick answers to their questions. Leveraging live chat functionality, finding out the offered services and their prices becomes easier.
A patient can comfortably sit at their home and chat with your dental representative to know everything about the service. Addressing your customer needs immediately will help you earn a patient’s trust, and they will naturally favour your clinic while availing dental services.
It Ensures Cost Effectiveness
Live chat is a pretty cost-effective way of answering your patient’s queries. For a live chat feature to work, you necessarily won’t have to keep a real person waiting for the chat to occur all day long. There are chatbots installed in the dental web design of your website.
They can efficiently answer all the frequently asked questions about the available services and their prices. Besides, they can even book appointments for the patients. A real person may only be needed if the patient’s query is beyond the ability of the chatbot to answer. For the remaining time, your appointed staff for the chat process can fulfil other duties.
More User Friendly
These days, chatting has become one of the most used communication mediums. People feel happy and satisfied to talk over chat rather than calls or emails. The reason is that chat is an efficient way of getting information without any formalities. Hence, a live chat is seen as a user-friendly way of communication and must be used by dental clinics.
Efficient Way of Resolving the Patient Problems
Live chat is a highly efficient way of dealing with patient issues. Patients love to go to a clinic where they do not have to wait for long hours to get their turn. Your front desk team can only handle one customer at a time.
However, a single person can easily manage 3-4 live chats at a time. This makes your overall work process efficient and faster, and you can provide faster responses to patient problems.
Creates Higher Brand Awareness
Live chat has a great potential to promote your brand across the internet. Many dental marketing experts suggest that websites with an online live chat feature typically have better sales rates than websites that do not.
Moreover, the number of visitors to the website is also higher. This is extremely beneficial for your dental marketing channel and creating better awareness for your brand among people.
Provides a Better Patient Experience
The first impression counts, especially when you are in a service industry. If you have a clinic that is usually crowded, the chances of your front desk representative annoying a few customers over the day are more.
Handling crowds is tough, especially when most of them are going through some pain. A small sentence said without a smile by your staff can lead to a bad representation of your whole brand. However, there are no such issues with the live chat feature, and you can deliver a seamless experience to the patients.
What Does Your Website Live Chat Service Requires?
To make the whole process of your website chat feature more effective and efficient, your dental website must take count of the following things:
Trained Operators: You must provide your staff that you are appointing to handle chats with initial training. They must be given scripts to prepare, which can lead the visitor to the next actionable step.
Data Collection: Live chat can be used to gather the information of the patient that is visiting your website. You can get the name, contact, and dental issue of the visitor. You can later follow up with the patient if they do not make an appointment with your clinic using the acquired data.
Bilingual Operators: You might need operators for your live chat process that speak different languages. Therefore, make sure to hire operators that speak languages according to your demographic needs.
Visitor Traffic Analysis: Acquiring the information about the amount of traffic on your website will help you analyse your dental marketing campaign more closely. You can further optimise your dental SEO in a much better way.
Conclusion
Live chat software can be a helpful resource to build a good relationship between you and your prospective patient. It not only brings convenience to the patient but also becomes a useful tool for your dental marketing channel to enhance your sales. You may get in touch with one of our dental SEO experts to know more about adding this feature to your website.