Your dental office often struggles to get clients to come to their annual cleanings. And once those cleanings are done, your office sometimes struggles to get those same clients to foot the bills for those particular cleanings.
Be Compassionate
It’s frustrating to have clients with outstanding payments. Waiting on these funds can hurt your business and hinder your cash flow. While these feelings are understandable, you have to put yourself in your client’s shoes.
Many Americans do not have dental insurance offered through their workplace benefits. Private dental insurance plans are available, but they are often pricy and come with a lot of stipulations for coverage. So, many of your clients will need to cover the costs of cleanings and other dental treatments all on their own. And when their budget is tight, their payments could come up short.
Hounding your clients to foot their bills is not the best plan. Being aggressive about outstanding payments could push them away. They may ignore your calls and emails. They may avoid making any future appointments. They may skip the dentist altogether.
The last thing that you want is for clients to stop coming to your dentist’s office for the sake of saving money. Oral healthcare is important, and ignoring cleanings and treatments will lead to tooth problems down the line.
The Right Debt Collection Agency
So, what can you do to recoup those outstanding payments? You shouldn’t be trying to settle outstanding payments from your clients. Your job is dental work, not debt collection. To make things easier, you should outsource this task to a professional debt collection agency. This will remove the financial task from your plate so that you can focus more on your area of expertise: taking care of teeth.
Contact a debt collection agency with a compassionate approach. The agency Summit A*R is known for using debt-collecting strategies that are respectful. It follows the P.H.D. philosophy: Preserve Human Dignity. Debt is a sensitive matter. People should be able to repay that debt without feeling antagonized or ashamed.
The P.H.D. approach is not just nice — it’s effective. It will improve your business’s chances of recovering funds. And it will help you maintain good relationships with your clients. If your client has a respectful and positive debt collection experience, they won’t harbor hard feelings toward your business. So, you’re less likely to lose a client.
Preventing Outstanding Payments
Hiring a compassionate debt collection agency is a good way to recover outstanding payments. But how can you prevent this payment problem from happening all over again? You can take some precautions to help clients cover their dental treatments.
Offer Payment Plans
Some clients won’t be able to handle the full cost of treatment upfront. They may be able to cover the cost when you divide it into installments. If you’re offering up a payment plan, make sure that the installments are affordable for the client. You’ll also want to give them enough time to save up and make the payments. Making payment installments too high or the deadlines too short will defeat the entire purpose of this payment solution.
Accept Dental Discount Cards
Private dental insurance may be financially out of reach for some of your clients. A more affordable alternative is a dental discount card.
Dental discount cards can save users between 10% to 60% on their dental treatments, including their annual cleanings. The card costs a lot less than private insurance. It typically costs less than $100 for an individual’s annual membership and approximately $150 for an annual family plan.
By accepting dental discount cards, you could make dental treatments more affordable for your clients. A significant discount could mean that they can manage the entire treatment cost upfront. They might not even need a payment plan!
If your dental office already accepts dental discount cards, you should make this clear to your clients. This information shouldn’t feel like a secret. In fact, if you notice that a client has struggled with payments in the past, let them know that this solution is available.
Provide Different Payment Methods
Make it easier to pay the bill! Your office should accept different payment methods like cash, credit card and check. It could also have an online portal where clients can make payments instead of forcing them to come into the office to do so. With an online payment option, the client could easily log into the portal and cover a payment the moment that their paycheck clears.
These simple preventative measures can reduce the rates of outstanding payments at your dental office. You’ll notice that offering more flexible payment options and discounted rates gets clients to foot bills more often.
And, if you still get clients who are dragging their feet with payments, even with these preventative measures in place, you know what to do. Call a compassionate debt collection agency for help. It will get your clients to make repayments, all while keeping your reputation squeaky clean.
