Why You Should Be Building Trust Before the First Visit
Anyone with a computer, smartphone, or tablet can browse your practice’s website, read online reviews from your patients, and find your social media content in seconds with a simple Google search. Of course, a potential patient will form an opinion about your practice based on what they see. Are you confident that your practice’s online presence inspires trust? If not, what do you intend to do about it?
Reality Check: It’s About Confirming, Not Convincing
The hard truth many dentists still wrestle with is that you can’t build trust by relying on face-to-face interactions. By the time someone reaches out, they’ve already decided your practice is right for them. That’s because patients have access to so much information about your practice online — whether you put it there or not. They know whether they can trust you before anyone in your office has a chance to speak to them.
Whether a patient contacts your practice should not be left to chance. Even if you’re not actively marketing your practice with digital content, there’s information about it online for people to consume. Your practice likely has a website. At least a few of your patients have probably written reviews. Your practice may show up on sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor, even if you’ve never claimed the profile. You can’t stop it from happening. Instead, you need to control the narrative.
Building Trust From the First Impression
The quality of your practice’s online presence will determine if someone moves on to the next one in the search results or makes an appointment with yours. Rule number one for building trust immediately is be consistent. Your messaging should have the same tone and voice, regardless of whether it’s on the website, in an email, or in a social post. The Imagery you use online (and inside the practice) should tell a consistent brand story. All reviews of your practice should reflect a similar patient experience.
Show, Don’t Tell
Speaking of imagery, video is one of the best ways to build rapport quickly. People build relationships with people, and video shows the human side of your practice, which can go a long way toward eliminating uncertainty and fear. For someone deciding whether to trust your practice, the ability to see how your team interacts with each other and with patients is worth a thousand before-and-after photos.
The type of video also makes a difference. Real patient stories and testimonials will generate more trust than clinical explanations. You may find the clinical side of dentistry fascinating, but you must always remember that it’s not about what you do. It’s about what matters to patients, which usually boils down to quality care and empathy.
They Called! Now What?
Getting patients to trust your practice enough to call, text, or email is only the beginning. That trust can be broken in an instant if your team is unprepared. When a patient contacts your practice, response time matters, of course, but the actual response matters far more. For instance:
- If your team is rushing patients on the phone or waiting days to return messages because they’re too busy to handle incoming communications, that’s a problem.
- If your staff is trained to immediately ask for name, date of birth, insurance, etc., without establishing rapport first, that’s a problem.
You can have the strongest marketing in the world, but if it doesn’t reflect what someone will experience as a patient, that’s a problem. While all patients want a positive experience, premium patients are especially discerning. They will evaluate your practice based on the quality of your services as well as the quality of their experience. That’s why it’s important to build trust from the first impression and to reinforce it throughout the relationship.
Once you understand that the patient experience starts well before they contact your practice, you can begin to align all your digital marketing to inspire trust. Then, patients will come to you already confident, committed, and ready to accept treatment.
