Recently, I stood in front of a room full of forward-thinking dentists. They were learning how to utilize the new features on the iTero scanners and the newly launched Invisalign Smile Architect software.
There was energy in the room. Curiosity. Excitement.
But as I watched, one thought crossed my mind: This is exactly where most dentists go wrong.
Skills don’t pay bills—patients do
Investing in new technology and mastering clinical skills is admirable. But let’s be honest. For many dentists, monetization is an afterthought. For others, it never even enters the conversation.
All the skills in the world will not improve your profitability unless you have a patient in the chair. And that new patient experience you work so hard to create? It doesn’t start with your scanner, your consultation, or your treatment presentation software.
It starts with one thing: the phone call.
That first contact from a potential patient, maybe your next $20,000 cosmetic case or your $7,000 Invisalign case, is where success or failure begins.
What you don’t know can hurt you
As dentists and practice owners, we like to believe those calls are handled exactly the way we envision. We imagine our front desk greeting every caller with a cheerful voice, a smile you can hear, reassurance that they have called the right place, and a confident close that ends with a booked appointment.
So, to test that assumption, I decided to mystery shop a few of the practices attending the session.
We created a standard scenario: a potential $7,000 Invisalign patient calling to inquire about treatment and the potential cosmetic case valued at $20,000 calling to request a consultation. Every office was measured using the same scorecard.
The results were shocking. Every office failed. Not one or two. All of them.
What should have been a confident, guided conversation turned into polite Q&A sessions. No control. No connection. No appointment booked.
When I played the recordings, a few dentists recognized their own front desk voices. The room went silent. Some dentists visibly cringed. Names were beeped out, but the message was loud and clear.
“If your phone calls are broken, everything else you do will leak profit like a cracked filling.”
Don’t mystery shop until you’re ready to fix it
This is not the dentist’s fault. And it’s not the team’s fault either. It’s a training problem. You cannot expect performance you have never trained, measured, or supported.
That’s why my advice is simple: do not mystery shop your practice until you have a plan to train and support your team.
Otherwise, all you will create is fear, resentment, and an employee who starts quietly looking for another job, possibly with your competitor down the street.
Your phone is either your most profitable asset or your biggest source of lost revenue. Every missed call, every uncertain answer, every unbooked inquiry costs money.
So, before you invest in another scanner, marketing campaign, or consultant promising new patients, start with your front desk. Because if your phone calls fail, your marketing dollars and your new technology cannot save you.
Train your team, measure your results, and turn every call into what it should be: a profit-producing opportunity.
About the author
Dr. Galia Anderson graduated from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry and built a successful private practice in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she served patients for 15 years. Today, as the founder of Dental Business Experts, Dr. Anderson is committed to empowering dentists to achieve substantial growth in their practices.