Managed Website Chat

The best managed website chat systems for dental offices provide a fast, highly efficient method of attracting new patients and helping current patients.

This instant, direct communication can remove any barriers in the minds of potential patients and address concerns that existing patients may have. In doing so, live website chat plays an important role in consolidating patient loyalty – critical for a dental office.

From a technical perspective, you need a webchat that can be easily installed on your site – software that can be set up within minutes to be fully functional with code embedded into your site's source file. Then your chat window should be designed to fit the rest of your website and reflect your branding, with an appropriate welcome message and text font.

The key element in managed website chat, though, is the user experience. Like good dental website design, the best live chat processes are simple for your patients to use.

So, in this post, we’ll be focusing on what you should be looking for in a managed website chat to enhance the overall user experience of visitors to your site, which will in turn give your office essential benefits.

The Best Website Chat Benefits Your Business and Your Patients

A good managed website chat will result in a mutually beneficial relationship between your office and your patients. This means it needs to work on two levels:

  • As a marketing tool to communicate with potential patients in real-time to facilitate business growth by increasing your patient base.
  • As a support channel where patients can quickly get answers to their questions and assistance to resolve their problems.

Overall, live chat must give your website visitors better service for requested information and faster solutions. Specifically, there are certain areas you may want to consider when looking for the best web chat system for your office.

Data Collection

It may not immediately spring to mind but website chat can provide the opportunity to collect different types of data that can be used to improve your website and patient service.

Look for a live chat system that allows you to gather information on:

  • Chat history. A record of chat history immediately tells you whether a site visitor has chatted with you before and, if so, how many times. You’ll also be able to see which chat assistant they spoke with and when the conversation took place. All chats should also be stored so you can view them later to help you improve your service by learning from good and not so good chats.
  • Patient profiles. Live web chat should facilitate the gathering of data to create a profile for each patient. This can be used to make the chat more personal, by using the patient’s first name, for instance. It can also help you understand what type of questions users have about your dental services.
  • Types of user devices and their operating systems. Are your patients primarily using mobile phones, laptops, tablets, or desktops? And which operating systems? Being able to answer these questions enables you to optimize your site if necessary.
  • Time spent on your site. Knowing how long a visitor has been on your website enables your chat assistants to engage with them proactively or wait a while if they have just arrived. Your live chat software must also collect and store patient data securely and ensure conversations are encrypted.

Patient Feedback

Besides gathering data, your managed website chat system should make it easy to collect feedback from its users, who can rate your chat service right after their interaction with you. This gives service assistants instant patient feedback on their performance. In the longer term, you can use this feedback to consistently work on ways to improve your service and impress patients.

Patient Interaction

You need professional, confident, and knowledgeable chat assistants to connect with your patients. The time they spend with each patient can be optimized with a system that uses chat macro templates to deal with frequently asked questions, giving your chat agents more time to focus on complex issues and personal interactions.

Clear Context

At the start of a chat, the service agent should be able to get a clear idea of the context of the patient’s reason for engaging with them. For example, they need to be able to see a message center that tells them which page the patient is currently on. This enables chat assistants to help users by steering them seamlessly around the site with screenshots or links.

Page Bounce Reduction

An effectively managed web chat system should reduce the risk of page bounce – people leaving your site after viewing a single page. If you have a bounce problem, it indicates your site is failing to engage with patients, provide instant help, or meet their expectations. Well managed website chat can help to fix all these issues by enhancing user experience and addressing patients’ needs and concerns immediately.

Why You Need Effective Live Chat Management

Once, website chat was regarded as something “nice to have” – an optional addition to phone and email channels. But things have changed.

Research suggests more than 40 percent of consumers now expect live chat on a business website. The inference here is clear: many of your patients will be disappointed if you don’t offer them a website chat facility, and may even feel you’re ignoring them.

More efficient than email, a website chat managed well will give you a better and easier way to connect with your patients, which will:

  • Improve patient service.
  • Strengthen patient loyalty.
  • Increase numbers of new patients.
  • Make your practice stand out in the crowd.

According to leading market and consumer data provider, Statista Research Department, the global consumer satisfaction rate with live chat reached nearly 86 percent in 2020.

Get in touch if you’d like to know more about how a managed website chat should tick all the boxes when it comes to achieving a high level of patient satisfaction.