CUSTOMER STORY

Making Life Easier for Little Smiles Family Dental

The team at Little Smiles Family Dental were looking for an easier and more flexible way to communicate with patients. Practice Manager, Sam Vaglio, explains how HotDoc helped them streamline patient engagement from the first booking to continued care.

Automated and effortless patient engagement

When Sam first started with the practice, she knew that online bookings could really help the team out, but struggled to find software that made it easy. The first platform they trialled couldn’t give them the flexibility they needed for different practitioner availabilities or appointment types. “Within weeks I just took it offline and we left it at that until we looked into a better solution,” says Sam. “The whole process was so manual, so we were looking for a system that could do a lot of the jobs for us. That’s when HotDoc came on board.”

“HotDoc is easy, it’s simple, you don’t have to go through that many clicks to get to something that you need.”

She was familiar with HotDoc as a patient, using it to book her own GP appointments. So she reached out for more information on how HotDoc could provide similarly helpful services for a dental practice.

Sam had hesitations about working with a new platform and was particularly cautious of creating a bigger admin workload. But the team at Little Smiles Family Dental quickly found that it actually meant less work.

A straightforward appointment calendar with useful features

The biggest benefit for Sam and the team has been the HotDoc Appointment Calendar itself. At a glance, they can see which appointments have taken place and important notes about each patient. She says, “If I open my [appointment] book now, I can see exactly very quickly what’s going on and what’s about to come.”

“It’s just amazing, it works really well for us and it’s very easy on the eye.”

The Calendar makes it easier for the patients too, even if they call the front desk instead of booking online. “It’s quicker and simpler. As you start typing, a whole list of patients come up so you can quickly guess the patient you’re talking to rather than having them spell their names,” Sam says, “I think they really like how easily they can reschedule bookings.“

Consistent 5-star Google Reviews

In addition to making appointments more convenient for their existing patients, HotDoc has made it easier for Little Smiles Family Dental to attract new patients with the Reviews feature. It sends a simple and unobtrusive review request to patients after their appointments, and encourages them to contribute to a glowing online presence.

Their reviews have almost doubled in a matter of months, and only one of their new reviews was less than five stars. But Sam sees that negative review as a bonus, too. “It’s great because I’m able to target those and reply to them and if there’s anything of concern, call those patients to have a discussion,” says Sam.

“You’re going to stay in that customer's mind forever because you really approached the problem.”

HotDoc has made it easier for them to gather feedback and take each review on board to make sure the patient experience is great from first contact to long-term care. “The more you hear about how people feel, the better you can create new processes or give them an explanation.”

“We’re really confident with the service that we provide here so we really wanted those reviews coming in.”

Looking forward with Little Smiles

The proactive communication style of the HotDoc platform means that their existing patients are well taken care of while their website is down for an upgrade, without adding extra admin work for the team.

“Our patients are still relying on Recalls, text messages, and emails that they receive from HotDoc and doing their bookings that way.” Reminders and Registration Forms are sent automatically to patients to prepare them for appointments. With all these additional touchpoints in the patient journey, they’ve easily maintained consistent contact with their patients.

While Sam’s team work on improving their practice, they know HotDoc’s team are also working to make processes even smoother for them. “Every now and then when we open [HotDoc] and we can see there’s a new little thing here and there—it’s there for a reason and makes our life even simpler.”