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Tackling the Call Conversion Crisis in Dentistry: Insights from Traci Nervo, VP of Ops, VoiceStack

In this episode, we dive into the pressing issue of the call conversion crisis in the dental industry with expert guest Traci Nervo, owner and CEO of Patient Flow Communications and Vice President of operations at VoiceStack.

Traci shares her extensive experience in call center operations and discusses the importance of effectively converting inbound calls into appointments, especially in the realm of full arch and surgical dentistry. With alarming statistics indicating that 27% to 43% of inbound calls are not converting, Tracy sheds light on the challenges practices face and offers actionable strategies to improve call handling and conversion rates.

Key topics include:

The emotional aspects of patient calls
AI-driven platforms enhancing call center operations
Essential KPIs to track for better call conversion
Tips for creating a standardized call process

Whether you’re managing a dental practice or looking to improve your call handling processes, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you navigate the call conversion crisis.

Connect with Traci Nervo:

Explore VoiceStack:

Book a Free Demo – https://voicestack.com/

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VoiceStack Call Answering DSO podcast transcript:

Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now Show, the voice of the DSO industry. Join us as we talk with industry leaders about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. With over 200 episodes and listeners in over 100 countries, we’re proud to be ranked the number one DSO podcast. For the latest DSO news, analysis and events, and to subscribe to our DSO Weekly e-newsletter, visit GroupDentistryNow.com. We hope you enjoyed today’s show.

Bill Neumann: Welcome everyone to the Group Dentistry Now Show. I’m Bill Neumann. And as always, we appreciate you watching us. We are well over 200 podcasts and really enjoy the topics that we cover and always have a lot of great guests and interesting things to talk about. And today, of course, is no different. Our topic of conversation is the call conversion crisis in the dental industry. I love that. It sounds a little clickbaity, but I think it’s really going on. And it’s something that we probably as group practices and DSOs don’t always think about, but we should be. And I think it’s becoming more and more important. So we’re going to talk about call conversions. We’ve got with us Tracy Nervo. She is the owner and CEO of PatientFlow Communications, and she’s also the vice president of operations at VoiceStack. So Tracy, thanks for being here today.

Traci Nervo: Oh, thank you for having me, Bill. It’s my pleasure.

Bill Neumann: And you don’t think I was too over the top calling it a call conversion crisis, do you?

Traci Nervo: No, I don’t. I’ve been in this industry for over 35 years and it’s really happening. People just aren’t aware and they don’t have the information they need to control this crisis. And they’re not aware of what they’re missing as far as calls go.

Bill Neumann: Well, hopefully we can shed or you can shed some light on that topic today. So Tracy’s background, I’ll tell you a little bit about her and then please, Tracy, fill in the blanks. But she has a strong foundation in call center operations, treatment presentation and management training. She’s had an extensive career in the industry on clinical and the administrative side of full arch and also specialty dentistry. and she’s had prior leadership in a high-performing, full-arch dental support organization. I wonder if I can figure out which one that is, but my guess is I can, but I won’t say it. Maybe you can, if you want to. But Tracy, it sounds like you’ve got a lot of experience, maybe a little bit more about your background, and then specifically, what do you do at Patient Flow Communications?

Traci Nervo: Oh, thank you, Bill. I have been in dentistry for over 30 years, I started clinically as a surgical tech and was doing full arch surgery for longer than I would care to say. In the hospital, I moved to surgery centers and went administrative probably 20 years ago. I love every aspect of surgical full arch dentistry. I did have an executive role at a prominent DSO here on the West Coast, which was just a phenomenal experience. And when I left that role last year, one of the pieces that I liked most about that role was creating, building, and overseeing a call center for a 10 location surgical practice. There is nothing more tangible than the results you get at a call center level when the calls are coming in and you’re able to convert those to appointments. Obviously, surgical dentistry and Full Arch specifically requires advertising most of the time. And being able to convert those calls and contacts into appointments was just so gratifying. And I feel that it’s such an important part of the practices. So when I left my role, I knew that I was going to open a call center. And so that’s really what I’m doing now. I love it. I oversee a group of 15 to 20 representatives. I have clients all across the US, which is such a pleasure. And that’s what I’m doing now.

Bill Neumann: And that’s patient flow communications, right?

Traci Nervo: It is, yes.

Bill Neumann: So you’re also the vice president of operations for VoiceStack. Can you talk a little bit about what VoiceStack is?

Traci Nervo: Sure. VoiceStack is an AI-driven phone communications platform is cloud-based. And I have worked, as you know, in the dental field for quite some time, and I really appreciate CareStack for everything that it offers the dental community. And then when they came out with VoiceStack, I worked a little bit in collaboration over several years with the team to give them feedback as to what was missing what could be better as they were continuing to develop the platform. So when I did open my call center, I knew that I was going to use VoiceStack and there are some very specific reasons why and some amazing things that VoiceStack offers. So now I work in tandem with them to assist their clients in operations. If they’re needing additional assistance, setting up their platform or utilizing it, that’s where I come in.

Bill Neumann: Gotcha. We’ll talk a lot more about VoiceStack and how you leverage that at PatientFlow Communications and how other customers can leverage VoiceStack as well. So what’s the typical profile of a customer of PatientFlow Communications? Are your customer base pretty much implant focused and full arch dental groups practices?

Traci Nervo: That’s correct. Most practices that we have on our platform, or clients of ours, are full arch or surgical dentistry related. We do have a couple of specialty clinics, pediatrics specifically, that utilize our services, which is terrific because they get a great deal of inbound calls, and they also need to be handled in a certain way. So that is really our focus is specialized services that take the time to get to know the practice and provide services for callers and contacts. Because as we know, call center is no longer just phones. It’s a lot of form fills and things of that nature. Leads coming from marketing, referral sources, social media and so forth. So we handle all of those leads at the center. at PatientFlow and just providing specialized services that give our conversion rate a huge boost. Generally speaking, if offices are taking these calls or trying to contact these leads, they aren’t able to give it the time and efforts necessary for people who are in the office. So that’s where we come in.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, that was, this actually leads to, I think, what I wanted to ask you. You started answering it, but … Oh, I’m sorry. No, that’s great. No, the typical customer, like when you first onboard them, what do you, if there is a typical one, what are you seeing? I mean, you kind of mentioned it where Maybe somebody at the front desk is answering the phone, right? The lead’s coming in directly to them. They’ve done the marketing, they’re calling the number, right? Which is the practice in a lot of cases. And it’s not always the same person answering the phone. Do they have a script? Like when you first talk to them, what’s the situation like? If there is a typical one, what do you say?

Traci Nervo: Okay, so clients that come to us normally, are experiencing less than adequate results from marketing campaigns, or there are ready to embark upon marketing and they know that they’re not going to be able to have a designated person or persons to take those calls and work that lead volume. So that’s when we come in patient, uh, clients are, normally are aware that using the call center services is going to result in a better conversion and it’s also going to be more cost effective. Hiring two or three people to work your dashboard or take your calls and work those new patient leads is going to be a lot more expensive than using the call center services. As a call center, we’re able to make contact with leads multiple times a day and take the time necessary to book them, which is sometimes seven to 10 minutes. It’s, it’s a relational call. Um, it’s a relational contact, uh, people who are looking to book their children into pediatrics or, or book, uh, a paid lead, paid leads. They need to, we need to gather a lot of information from them. Uh, and that usually isn’t a possibility at the office level. If someone is perhaps working front desk and taking the calls or, um, just doesn’t have the bandwidth of employees to do so. But the clients are usually experiencing some type of pain that way. If they’re keeping KPIs and they know what their stats are, they would perhaps have a high missed call rate or something of that nature.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, this is a great conversation here because I can only imagine, you know, the scenario and you’ve got people that are doing other things in the office sometimes there. And if you are going to actually invest a lot of money in a marketing campaign, you want it to work.

Traci Nervo: Yes.

Bill Neumann: So we started things off again. I call it the call conversion crisis in the dental industry. I saw a stat that was shared by Dr. Scott Kalniss, actually in an article that he did with us on Group Dentistry Now not too long ago. You mentioned it actually to me when we had a call the other day. But he mentioned a stat that about 27 to 43% of inbound calls are not converting. Does that sound accurate?

Traci Nervo: Oh yes. In fact, I believe it’s actually higher in most cases. Um, you know, missed calls contribute to that. The inability to spend the time necessary on the call, the lack of knowledge as to how to handle a paid lead is a big issue. Um, these patients call in, something has sparked the fact that they need services and it’s usually a pain point. They can’t eat. They can’t be in a relationship. They can’t get a job. They can’t smile. These are people with a real need to have full mouth tooth replacement. And those conversations are long. We gather significant information as to what prompted them to call at this time. And as I mentioned previously, this is an emotional decision for a lot of people. So we want to really portray our caring and our empathy for their situation, and let them know that there is a solution.

Bill Neumann: Can you dive a little bit deeper? I mean, you’re pretty much, you’re talking about some of the issues there, but how about some strategies for people that are listening, whether they’re actually handling the inbound calls themselves, or maybe they’re looking for a solution like VoiceStack, in the office, or maybe they’d even want to leverage a call center like yours. Maybe specific strategies and challenges, things that you see and strategies that you use at PatientFlow around full arch and implant dentistry. You talked about, obviously it can be gathering a lot of information. You said it’s very emotional. It’s not inexpensive. It can be probably a very scary procedure, at least the, you know, for a lot. So these are all probably things going on in somebody’s mind is your or your people are having these conversations.

Traci Nervo: You’re exactly right, Bill. People call and it is an emotional decision to enter into something that is so expensive and There’s so many components to implant and filage dentistry. Patients are experiencing pain, and we really need to understand what that pain point is so that as they move through the process, we can help and remind them what their pain point is and what the solution is going to look and feel like for them. It’s very scary. financially scary, emotionally scary. People don’t want to lose their teeth. People don’t want to have surgery. There’s a handful of components that are very meaningful to these patients looking for this service. And we just want to continue to remind them, this is why you called, and this is what it’s going to be like when we’re done. This is what you’re going to have. That entails a loose script, but the agents at PatientFlow are all individuals. You have to have a high emotional intelligence and an ability to show a lot of empathy over that phone call to make, to create a relationship with the patient. This is a, like I said, a relational phone call. That’s key. If you’re just in the office or you know, even at a call center that’s not specialized and you’re just booking, you have a very high potential for no-shows. The patient doesn’t feel like, oh my gosh, I loved that conversation. I think I actually found a place that’s going to be able to help me. I’m going to come to that appointment. Paid leads are a little slippery. Patients are in the moment when they contact you and If you can get right back to them and have these relational phone calls, it usually results in a positive booking and a patient who shows up for their appointment. However, if you don’t connect relationally and the patient doesn’t get that feeling of, oh, this place is going to be able to help me. I loved that conversation. What you get is, you know, a day or two goes by, the patient forgets, or gets outside of that moment when they were saying, you know what, I’m going to do this now. And that results in someone who doesn’t show up for their appointment. That’s basically the strategy behind booking a full arch consult and having a patient move forward with services. So Generally speaking, offices can create their own call center per se or contact center with just a couple of individuals. If you have an office that perhaps is just one or two locations and you have the area or the individuals that you can assign to this task and train them to have these types of conversations, that is a great solution. And VoiceStack would be the platform on which to start something like this. And there are some very specific reasons why, um, you know, I have built multiple call centers in my experience, some at the office level with just a couple individuals, I have had five and 10 location DSOs want to start their own call center. And I’ve assisted with that, but Previously, you used to have a phone system, and you used to always have call center software. And that call center software would collect information and data where you would get reports on your KPIs. And now, amazingly, VoiceStack is a phone system, and it also acts as a call center system that gathers those KPIs for you, and you can see those KPIs at a glance. It’s really just amazing. Another huge thing about VoiceStack is that they integrate with most PMS systems. Integration is hands down the number one component that is the reason that I recommend VoiceStack. Secondarily, it is all in one. You do not have to have a separate phone system and another platform to collect data for your call center you can actually have it all in one and it’s all at a glance and most of the time it integrates, which is just amazing.

Bill Neumann: Let’s talk a little bit about KPIs that these group practices and DSOs should be tracking when it comes to call conversion.

Traci Nervo: Sure. Call center KPIs are generally incoming call volume, missed calls, missed call return rate, booking rate for our agents and then show rate at the office level. Those are the KPIs that we track most commonly and at the call center, at patient flow, we report those KPIs to our clients weekly and monthly. We have monthly meetings with our clients, so we’re all on the same page, and we understand how we did that month, what the lead volume was. Transparency is key. We want everyone to understand exactly what we’re dealing with, and we work as a team, as an extension of the offices that we service. But back to the KPIs, again, you used to have to report these out of a separate software, and now with VoiceStack. Those KPIs are literally real time and you can look at them at a glance, which is so amazing for someone who has a small call center or is utilizing a call center because the doctor or the executive team or anyone there can just log on and take a look and they know what’s happening at any moment.

Bill Neumann: Do you happen to have any benchmarks for any of those KPIs you’d be willing to share?

Traci Nervo: Of course. Yes, absolutely. You know, let’s talk about missed calls and missed call return rate. When I come on to help practices, I usually find that their missed call rate is somewhere, you know, between 40 at 20 and 40%, right? Sometimes it can be 50 or 60%. But the biggest issue is that these offices do not know that they’re missing the calls. They don’t have voice stack. They don’t have software that tells them that they’re missing the call. So they have nothing tangible. Once we bring that to light and we say, well, this is why your booking rate is down. This is why your new patients are down. This is why, you know, that’s happening. we can address the problem. And then we also look at missed call return rate. So if you’re missing 30% of your calls, which is high, then how quickly are those calls being returned? Are they being returned within an hour? Are they being returned same day? We often find that if they’re missing 30% of the calls, perhaps 20% aren’t even ever being returned. And again, Dental practices as a rule have not had access to this type of reporting or data, and VoiceStack is so unique for that. At the office level, if you have one office and you could be doing full arch or any type of dentistry, for an owner or an office manager to be able to just log on and take a look at how many calls they missed that day, and how quickly those calls are being returned, that’s magic. It changes everything. And back to the point, our missed call rate, once we start working with a client and they really get to see what their KPRs are, their missed call rate goes down to, you know, in between 5% and 10% most of the time, and their return call rate would always be within the same hour. You know, this really highlights where your team members are spending their time and where you need perhaps more support in your offices. And a lot of times it’s just about assigning these tasks to individuals and making them responsible for them and everything changes like that.

Bill Neumann: How about some thoughts on, obviously at PatientFlow, you’ve got a standardized call process, I’m sure. Do you have any tips or thoughts on how some members of the audience that run groups can kind of create some type of process? I’m sure some have a process, might not be a good one. Some probably do have a good process and then others probably don’t have anything.

Traci Nervo: Right. You know, the first thing that I do as a coach who goes into offices and assists practices with this exact issue is we want to make sure that individuals are assigned these tasks. A lot of times I go into a practice or even groups and the phones are ringing everywhere and no one is specifically responsible. If we can put people in those positions and that is their main focus, I notice that things change pretty quickly. So that’s number one. Number two is training on the call flow and the goal of the call and how the call should go. As I said, all of the agents at PatientFlow are individuals. They all have different conversations, but we do have a call flow. We do have a way to gain information from the patient. We do have a direction toward the appointment, and we do have answers for every question that could possibly be proposed. So training in that respect would be the next best thing as well.

Bill Neumann: And you can leverage what you do, tools like VoiceStack, and use that as really a coaching tool, right, as a learning tool. So you can, you can evaluate the calls, and then people can learn from possible mistakes from the calls.

Traci Nervo: Yes, I’m so glad you asked about that. VoiceStack is AI-assisted. And it’s beautiful because old call center Owners or managers used to have to actually pull the calls up, listen to the calls, and then coach on those calls. VoiceStack is unique because every single call has an AI transcription. And it also records the call, of course. And those things are real-time. So you can utilize those tools to coach real-time. And it’s not heavy. It’s right there for you the minute the call ends. And the calls are also categorized. They’re categorized in three ways. They’re categorized into what the caller called for. So if you’re a multi-specialty service practice, It would be classified and maybe the caller is calling for hygiene. Maybe the caller is calling for implant services. Maybe they’re calling with an emergency. So you can’t, it will be put into a category and the user can go into the category that is most important to them first. You can prioritize. You can also prioritize because the call is rated. And it will give you a percentage of the ability to close that call, to book that appointment. So that’s another way to prioritize. And these are features that are just unbelievable coming from a phone system and a platform like this. We’ve never had this before. This is AI combined with a phone system combined with a platform that generates all of your KPIs. So it’s, it’s, there’s just really nothing like it.

Bill Neumann: How easy is it if somebody is interested in, in voice stack? And I mean, it sounds pretty intriguing and super powerful from a lot of different perspectives. What, is it relatively easy to get things set up?

Traci Nervo: Absolutely. It really is. Um, The phone system, the phone numbers need to be ported into VoiceStack. If you don’t have a voice system currently, then they can provide numbers for you and you can kind of start fresh, so to speak. But the onboarding and getting VoiceStack for you is incredibly easy. Yeah, I would urge everyone to do a demo because it’s really nothing like you’ve seen before.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. Well, that’s great. I’m going to ask, I always ask the crystal ball question at the end of the podcast. I mean, you’ve also, you talked about something that sounds like it’s the future, but it’s happening now with the AI and with VoiceStack. But do you have any like idea, like, where does this go? What’s the future of call centers and technology like VoiceStack? Where do you see that in the next couple of years?

Traci Nervo: Oh, well, call center is something that is so needed right now, especially for specialty dentistry. And that was the reason that I started my call center last year. It just changes everything. Having that lead management and having that partner to take the call conversion off of your plate from the practice level is a game changer. So call center, I believe, is really going to have a resurgence in this industry. Um, I’m super hopeful. And I, I know what the, like I said, it’s, it’s the most tangible change you can make in your practice. Um, and voice stack. One of the reasons I love care stack and voice stack so much is because this is a company that is constantly evolving. Um, it’s not like a platform that just doesn’t change quarterly. There are changes and improvements and features added. So voice stack is definitely the way to go. If you’re looking for something that’s going to grow with your practice. Um, I’ve experienced that firsthand myself and I can’t stop talking about it. Cause I, I believe so fully in the, in the platform.

Bill Neumann: Well, Tracy, this has been a great conversation. If people wanna learn more about VoiceStack, they can go to voicestack.com, and at the top right, I’m looking at the website right now, there’s a book-free demo, so you can easily, you can check everything out, but you’d wanna definitely get a demo and really experience it for yourself. People wanna find out more, Tracy, about what you do at PatientFlow Communications, how do they do that?

Traci Nervo: We also have a website, patientflowcommunications.com, and I’m on LinkedIn, Tracy Nervo, Patient Flow Communications is on LinkedIn, so we have multiple ways to be contacted, and we’d love to hear from anyone who’s interested or just wants to have a conversation.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. Well, thanks so much, Tracy Nervo. And we’ll make sure that your LinkedIn handles in the show notes and that your website address and voice stacks demo link, and then also their websites in the show notes as well. Great conversation. We’re going to avert the call conversion crisis with this podcast, I think. Yes, I think so too. And thank you everybody for watching us today. Until next time, this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.

Thank you, Bill.