The Caller Who Tried Twice

"What do I say to her?"

Sooner or later a scheduling coordinator asks her office manager some version of that. A patient has just told her, at the counter, that she called and nobody picked up, and the coordinator said what front desks always say: I'm so sorry, we must have been on the other line.

An earlier post on this blog was about the page that makes a better answer possible. Your phone system writes a row for every call, and that post walked through the columns and ended on three words the coordinator could say instead: let me look. This post is about what she says after she has looked.

Look first, and look for two rows

The patient at the counter is easy to find. Sort the day's inbound calls by number, and hers is the one that appears more than once.

What the rows say matters, because there are two different true stories here and they deserve different sentences. In one, her calls came while you were open and rang until they stopped. In the other, they came before the doors were unlocked or after close and reached a recording. The first is the practice not answering. The second is the practice not being there, which is no failing at all, though from her side of the phone the two felt identical.

Checking takes less time than apologizing twice. And until she checks, the coordinator is apologizing for something she is guessing at.

An apology with the facts in it

The trouble with "we must have been on the other line" is not that it is rude. It is that it could be said to anyone, about any call, without knowing a thing. Patients can hear that.

Compare something like: "I see it. You called twice this morning while we were open, and both times it rang out. That is on us, and I'm sorry." Or, for the other story: "You called before we opened and got our recording both times. I'm sorry you had to try twice, and I'm glad you came in."

Neither sentence explains. There is nothing in them about being short a person or how busy the morning was, because the reason belongs to the practice and the patient did not ask for it. Neither one promises it will never happen again, because the coordinator cannot promise that and the patient knows it.

What both do is tell her the practice can see what happened to her. That is most of what she wanted when she brought it up.

The call still has not happened

Then comes the part that gets skipped. She called for a reason, twice, and the reason is still unanswered. Once the apology is made, the next sentence is the one she would have heard if someone had picked up: "What were you calling about?"

Sometimes the visit she is standing in has already taken care of it. Often it has not. She wanted to move her husband's appointment, or ask about a statement, or tell you a temporary crown came off. If the coordinator apologizes warmly and then simply checks her in, the practice has now failed to take the same call a third time, and this time she was standing right there.

The ones who are not at your counter

The patient at the counter is the one you heard from. The call log holds everyone else who tried twice and did not happen to have an appointment today.

Finding them is the same sort. Any number that appears more than once among the unanswered inbound rows, with no outbound row to that number afterward, is a person who wanted to reach you enough to try again and whom nobody has called. Those are the first calls to return, ahead of the single tries, and they are returned by a person on your team.

The call itself is short. The coordinator gives her name and the practice, and then something like: "I can see you tried to reach us twice and we did not answer. I'm sorry about that. What can I do for you?" If she reaches voicemail, the message is her name, the practice, the number, and that she is returning a call. Nothing about care goes on a recording.

Two things keep this from staying a good intention. One coordinator, by name, owns the repeat-caller rows, and the office manager can tell from the outbound rows whether those calls were made. And the sentences are written down where the next hire will find them. An apology that a new coordinator has to invent on her first hard call will come out as "we must have been on the other line."

Where the second try goes away

Everything above happens after a call went unanswered. Laine, the patient-facing side of AiroDental, works earlier, at the first try. The call that would have rung out, or reached the recording while you were closed, is answered in the caller's language (Laine speaks more than 90), and the appointment is booked into Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, Open Dental or CareStack. A caller whose first try was answered does not need a second.

The conversations in this post stay with your coordinator, and they should. Looking at the log, returning the calls that went unanswered, and saying "that is on us" to someone's face are things a practice says through a person who works there.

Hear Laine take a call. There is no long-term contract and no onboarding fee.

As for "what do I say to her?": what the log says happened, and then, what were you calling about.

Deren Flesher, DDS. Founder, AiroDental.