Fix Conversions · New Patient Calls
Your first chance to build a relationship.
Not just book an appointment.
The new patient call is the moment a prospective patient decides whether they trust you. The tone, the knowledge, the questions asked: these shape whether that person books, shows up, and chooses your practice over the one down the road.
The market has shifted
Advertising patients
are shopping.
A patient referred by their dentist or a friend already has affinity with your practice before they pick up the phone. They're close to a decision. The call is almost a formality.
A patient generated through advertising is different. They're earlier in their journey. They're comparing. They have no existing relationship with you and no one has vouched for you. That new patient call isn't a booking call. It's a sales call, a trust-building call, and a patient education call all at once. The practices that understand this are the ones converting at the highest rates.
More patients from advertising.
As digital marketing drives a greater share of new patient enquiries, the proportion of patients who arrive with no prior relationship with your practice keeps rising. That trend isn't reversing.
Earlier in the shopping journey.
Advertising patients are often in research mode, not decision mode. They may be calling three or four practices on the same day. The call your team has with them is often the first real human contact they've had with any practice.
The call is the conversion point.
Done well, the new patient call builds enough trust and clarity that a prospective patient books and shows up. Done poorly, they hang up, call the next practice on their list, and never think about you again.
The system behind the call
Skills and systems.
Working together.
Call training in isolation only goes so far. TIO's new patient call programme works because it's connected to two things: a system that makes sure the call happens at the right moment, and a feedback loop that makes sure what's said keeps improving.
The PRM system triggers follow-up at the right time, automatically, without relying on a team member to remember. Coaching and mystery shopping then close the loop: what's actually happening on calls gets reviewed, refined, and fed back into training. The system and the skills build on each other.
PRM triggers the call at the right moment
Speed matters. The PRM system ensures your team follows up within minutes of a lead coming in, automatically, every time, including weekends.
Mystery shopping surfaces what's really happening
You can't improve what you can't see. Regular mystery shopper calls give you an honest, objective view of every stage of the call experience.
Coaching and scripting close the gap
The findings from mystery shopping feed directly into coaching sessions and script updates. Every cycle, your team gets better.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions.
TIO's own practice coaches run all coaching sessions. These are people who have worked inside orthodontic practices and understand the specific dynamics of new patient calls in this context, not generic sales trainers.
Find out what's really happening on your calls.
Then fix it.
Book a call with TIO and we'll walk you through how the mystery shopper programme works, what coaching looks like for your team, and how it connects to your PRM system.