Did you know that 79% of dental patients say they prefer online booking over calling on the phone?

There’s a reason why dental patients prefer booking online over calling or being called. Their lives are busy, and they’re already multitasking in so many different areas of their lives. The last thing they want to do is waste time playing phone tag and juggling what works and doesn’t work with their schedule, their kids’ schedules, and their spouse’s schedule.

So, how can you start using online booking in your practice? First, check out the Online Booking in Dentrix Ascend webinar to see online booking in action.  Then, follow these five tips to make online booking work for you.

Tip 1: If you’re new to online booking, start with new-patient appointments.

If you’re new to online booking, we recommend that you start with new-patient appointments. When it comes to booking types, new-patient appointments are predictable and easy to control. Dentrix Ascend comes with this appointment type ready to select. All you need to do is choose when you want to offer new-patient appointments and which providers will be available.

Click here to learn how to enable or disable online booking.

Tip 2: Create custom booking reasons that fit your practice needs. 

If you already know which types of appointments you want your patients to book online, you can easily create custom booking reasons.

Click here to learn about Customizing appointment reasons for online booking.

Tip 3: Speed things up by offering multiple booking reasons at once.

Perhaps the easiest way to invite existing patients to book online is to offer multiple booking reasons at once. When you include multiple booking reasons, patients can select the reason that best matches why they want an appointment.

Tip 4: Use settings to fully customize your booking setup.

In the online booking settings, you have options you can customize. For example, when you have set aside a block of time for online booking, you can choose to show all the available slots, or just the next available slot. You will have to gauge whether your patients are willing to fill the schedule in an orderly manner or prefer to see all the available openings.

In addition, you can individually set the appointment length for each appointment reason. This means that you can fill your schedule more efficiently by only scheduling the amount of time that is needed for each type of appointment.

Click here to learn about Setting up default recare appointment lengths for online booking.

Tip 5: Stay alert to new appointments booked online.

When a patient books online, you’ll see it happen in two different places.

First, the appointment will appear in the Dentrix Ascend Calendar with a cloud icon to indicate that someone used online booking to schedule it.

Second, you can view appointments booked online in the Appointments Booked Online report.

Click here to learn more about Viewing the Appointments Booked Online Report.