How to Make a Chat Bot for Your Dental Website

Did you know that, according to IBISWorld, the market size of the dental practice industry in the UK is £5 billion? Additionally, the number of dental practice businesses is over 13,000, with industry employment of over 100,000.

Considering these statistics, you may be wondering how to make your dental practice stand out to patients when there are so many dental practices in the UK.

Fortunately, with a chat bot on your dental website, you can improve your dental practice’s online presence and reach more clients even when you aren’t online.

In this article, I’ll review how to make a chat bot for your dental website to give you a powerful online presence and customer service strategy, getting noticed and building up your customer base. Read on to learn more.

How Will Chat Bots Affect Customer Service?

Customer service for dentists is incredibly important because you want your potential patients to feel that you’re receptive to them. By being reliable and communicative, they’ll feel that you’re a health practitioner who’s there for them, which means they’ll more likely to become your patients.

When it comes to customer service, a chat bot can be incredibly powerful.

Availability

First of all, bots are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. Even if you aren’t able to speak with your patients when you’re out of the office, a dental chat bot will make it possible for your potential patients to ask questions and get additional information.

Builds Trust

A chat bot for dentists will also build trust. If you program your bot to answer the right questions, your potential patients who are worried about a problem with their teeth or an upcoming treatment/procedure can have some of their worries alleviated.

This feature of bots, which makes it possible to provide the right information, combined with availability, will build the trust your potential clients have in you.

This is an important element of customer service that will make potential patients more likely to choose you as their dentist.

Personalises the Customer Experience

One of the most important elements, when a potential customer visits your website, is the experience they have on it. This is why it’s so important to pay attention to design, optimise your website for mobile, and include content your customers will enjoy.

But if you’re able to make the customer experience personalised, targeting a specific type of customer, the positive impact you have on the customer experience will be even greater.

When a chat bot appears on the screen, they’ll be ready to answer questions your potential patients have. Immediately, they can start communicating with the bot, feeling that they’re getting a personalised service. I’ve tested this, patients genuinely talk to the bot as though it’s a real person excavation mark

Additionally, if you have a ‘Chat Live’ option enabled during working hours, the chat bot can then connect your patients to an actual person who can help.

This will make the customer experience even more personalised since someone from your practice will be there to speak with them, answer questions, and provide information related to their specific situation. My recommendation is that this  ‘live chat’ functionality is only turned on if your front of house team can actually cope withh the enquiries, if they can’t then just let the bot do the chatting.

How Do I Create a Chat Bot for My Business?

To create a chat bot for your business, all you need is a free chat bot builder. These include Mobile Monkey, Chatfuel, and ManyChat. I’ll review each of these in detail, so you can have an idea of how these different options work.

Mobile Monkey

With this chat bot builder platform, you can set the chat bot platform up so it answers the most commonly asked questions your customers give. Additionally, the chat bot can do this at any time, which makes it more likely that you can convert your customers into leads.

Additionally, it can work with SMS, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger, which can help with getting more engagement on social media.

You’ll also get audience segmentation tools, chat bot templates, and a chat bot builder that doesn’t require you to know how to code. However, note that, while this is a free service, there is a limit of 1,000 campaign sends.

Here’s the link: https://mobilemonkey.com/

ChatFuel

ChatFuel is a chat bot builder you can use to create chat bots for free for Facebook Messenger. To build a bot with this platform, you don’t have to have any technical knowledge or coding experience. This chat bot is AI-powered, which means it can answer many questions.

If there’s a need for a person to chat with your potential clients, the chat bot will hand the chat over to someone who can message in person.

You can also integrate this chat bot platform with Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. However, keep in mind that you have a limit of 1,000 subscribers with this free platform.

Here’s the link: https://chatfuel.com/

ManyChat

Another free chat bot building platform is ManyChat. With this platform, you can create a Facebook Messenger chat bot without having any coding skills. The drag and drop interface makes building a chat bot incredibly easy.

Once you’ve connected your dental practice’s Facebook page to this platform, it immediately starts working.

You can set up a welcome message that it automatically sends to potential clients when they open up the chat, as well as automated responses to your customers’ most frequently asked questions.

Note, however, that this solution is available for free for only 500 subscribers.

Here’s the link: https://manychat.com/

Can a Chat Bot Be Integrated With Facebook Messenger?

Some chat bots can be integrated with Facebook Messenger and some can’t. If you decide to work with me, the chat bot I use is the same on the website and Facebook Messenger, as it completely integrates.

Questions That a Chat Bot Should Answer

If you decide that you want to use a chat bot for your dental practice, you must program it to have the answers to some of your customers’ most frequently asked questions. We’ll review some of the most important questions you should include when setting up your bot now.

Questions Related to Making the First Dental Appointment

If your potential patients are researching dentists they might want to visit, they’re likely to ask questions related to making the first dental appointment. By providing this information, you can make it easier for customers to make their appointment, which will make it more likely they will.

Additionally, you can assuage any fears they might have about coming in. Some of these questions include:

“Should I call to make an appointment, or can I make one here on your website?”

“Do I have to arrive early before my first appointment? If so, how early?”

“Is there anything I should bring with me to my first appointment? Do I need to send you any information in advance?”

“How long does a first appointment usually last?”

Questions Related to Preventative Care

Sometimes, your potential clients will ask you questions regarding preventative care. Even though this isn’t directly related necessarily to them coming into your dental practice, providing them with these answers can demonstrate that you’re helpful and resourceful.

As a result, they can come to trust you and decide to get in touch when they’re looking for a dentist.

These questions include questions such as ‘What is plaque?’, ‘Why is plaque harmful?’, ‘What toothpaste is the best to use?’, ‘How often should I be flossing?’, and ‘Is an electric toothbrush better than a manual one?’

Questions Related to X-Rays and Fillings

Your potential patients might also have questions related to X-rays and fillings. Depending on how they feel about dentists, they might have a little bit of fear about specific procedures. By providing them with answers, you can make them feel more at ease.

This can improve customer service and make them more likely to become your patients.

Questions of this type include ‘What is a root canal?’, ‘Apparently I have a cavity so I need a filling, but why doesn’t my tooth hurt?’, and ‘How safe are dental X-rays, and are the new digital ones safer than the traditional ones?’

I’m not suggesting you can possibly answer all of these questions and any permutation in a bot, however the bot should be able to recognise certain trigger phrases/words and respond accordingly… Or, if it can’t, give the user the option to make an enquiry.

Need More Information?

If you’d like to investigate how a chat enquiry bot for a dentist works please visit this page to find out more. There’s lots of information about how bots can work and also a demonstration link which shows how the bot would interact in various situations. When it comes to integrating all your dental digital marketing into one place, including chat bots, you can trust Mark Oborn Ltd…

I look forward to working with you.