Turning Missed Dental Phone Calls Into Profit
This means that your practice could be losing 71 potential new patients for every 100 calls received.
For small and medium-sized dental practices, the loss of potential revenue can be devastating.
Attracting and converting new patients requires an understanding of the patient experience. Your front desk team is the first impression your practice makes on potential patients, and how they handle calls can significantly impact your growth.
That’s why training your team and tracking your results with the right technology are crucial steps to improving your front desk performance.
Learn how the combined power of Scheduling Institute’s 5-Star Telephone Training and Peerlogic’s AI-powered call tracking technology can help you turn those missed calls into booked appointments and revenue.
The Challenge: Missed Calls, Missed Revenue
Whether it’s a busy front desk, insufficient training, or poor call handling, missed calls are missed revenue.
With 68% of calls unanswered and only 42% of answered calls resulting in appointments, practices are leaving potential new patients on the table.
That’s 71 potential new patients lost for every 100 calls made.
The Impact on Your Practice:
- Missed Calls = Missed Opportunities
- Every unanswered call represents a missed opportunity to convert a potential patient.
- Unconverted leads can cause your practice to lose revenue and clients over time.
- Every unanswered call represents a missed opportunity to convert a potential patient.
How do you solve this problem?
The answer lies in improving your team's ability to handle calls and implementing the right tracking system to measure success. Without proper training and the right technology, your practice will continue to miss out on valuable opportunities.
The Solution: Training + Technology = Maximum Impact
To improve your front desk’s performance, you need both effective training and the right technology. Here’s how Scheduling Institute and Peerlogic work together to optimize your call handling process.
1. Scheduling Institute’s 5-Star Telephone Training
The first step to improving your front desk performance is training your team to handle calls with confidence.
Scheduling Institute’s 5-Star Telephone Training program focuses on the core skills that help convert phone calls into appointments:
- Effective Communication: Training your front desk team to manage objections, build rapport, and engage patients during every call.
- Scheduling Techniques: Teaching your team how to confidently schedule appointments, ensuring that each call is a valuable interaction.
- Role-Playing & Real-World Scenarios: Empowering your team to handle real-life situations and overcome call challenges.
By improving how your front desk team interacts with patients, you can expect to see 30-40% increase in new patient appointments in the first 90 days.
It’s not just about answering the phone—it’s about making every interaction count.
2. Peerlogic’s AI-Powered Call Analytics
Training is important, but it’s not enough on its own. To truly optimize your front desk performance, you need to track and analyze the results. That’s where Peerlogic’s AI-powered call tracking comes in.
Peerlogic’s platform gives you:
- Real-Time Call Tracking: Monitor answered and missed calls, so you never miss an opportunity to follow up on a potential patient.
- AI-Driven Analytics: Understand call patterns and peak times, enabling you to optimize staffing during high-demand periods.
- Performance Monitoring: Continuously track call conversion rates and adjust strategies to improve overall patient engagement and appointment bookings.
With Peerlogic providing detailed data on call handling, you can make data-driven decisions to improve efficiency, reduce missed calls, and increase your overall patient conversions.
Real Results: Combining Training with Technology
A dental practice that implemented both Scheduling Institute’s training and Peerlogic’s technology saw dramatic improvements in their performance:
These impressive results were achieved by combining the human touch of effective training with Peerlogic’s real-time call tracking. When your front desk team is trained to engage with patients effectively and you have the technology to track and optimize call handling, the results are powerful.
Key Takeaways
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Stop Letting Missed Calls Cost You
Missed calls don’t have to mean missed revenue.
By training your team and tracking your performance with Peerlogic, your practice can increase conversion rates, improve patient retention, and generate more revenue from the calls you’re already receiving.
The combination of Scheduling Institute’s 5-Star Telephone Training and Peerlogic’s AI-powered call analytics gives your practice the tools it needs to optimize call handling and drive growth. Don’t let missed opportunities cost you—take control of your front desk performance and watch your practice thrive.
Maximize Your Practice’s Potential
If you’re ready to turn your front desk into a high-performing team and improve your practice’s new patient acquisition, let’s chat.
Together, we can help you unlock hidden revenue and ensure every patient call is a potential opportunity.:
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This ebook aims to help DSOs navigate portfolio expansion in 2025/2026 with confidence and data-driven insights. The global dental services market reached $457.5 billion in 2023 and is forecast to exceed $788.8 billion by 2033, growing at a 5.6% CAGR.
U.S. dental spend alone rose to $174 billion in 2023, up 2.5% from theprevious year.Cosmetic, preventive, and tech-enabled care are now essential growth drivers—not fringe services.Meanwhile, DSOs are absorbing more practices than ever. With scale comes complexity, and expectations of operational maturity.
Consolidation is up, but so is competition. Patients are acting more like empowered consumers than passive recipients. They have options, tools, and review platforms at their fingertips. They are not loyal by default.
DSOs must evolve from acquisition engines to experience-driven organizations.
Revenue growth will increasingly depend on your ability to:
- Deliver consistent patient journeys across every location
- Enable performance from the front desk to the executive suite
- Use automation to drive both efficiency and personalization
- Build a brand that earns loyalty, beyond price or proximity
Where will growth come from in 2025 and 2026? Download our e-book to find out.
The dental industry is consolidating, but market shifts are changing the rules for those rolling up practices looking to package and exit.
Consolidation now requires integration across a portfolio to drive the enterprise value needed to move that portfolio to a private equity sponsor.
Five years ago, an operator could get away with packaging up 25–50 practices and turning them over to PE to integrate and optimize. As is typically the case, PE learns that EBITDA growth is in the operations, and operations is hard, therefore shifting the onus to the operator to create value in the portfolio before entertaining the transaction.
Now, dental operators must be adept at integration across people, process, and technology. No small feat—but to make investors whole, it’s the only way.
As an institutional investor in B2B vertical SaaS, I see the dental industry going through a common tech consolidation cycle.
Core systems lead the charge, in this case, Practice Management Software (PMS) becomes the technology backbone of the practice. Then smaller tech solutions flood the market to fill the gaps in the core solution. The stack starts to bloat, raising costs and complexity.
As in other industries, the tech leaders in the space do a great job of influencing process in the form of “best practices.” The best of them build armies of raving fans (power users) who become the mouthpiece in the practice for the adoption of new solutions. That’s great for the software company—but not always for the business. When an operator decides to roll up practices, this problem compounds, as you now have conflicting opinions about the right solution moving forward.
The next phase is tech consolidation, which typically looks like a series of M&A transactions led by the system-of-record tech (PMS), trying to roll up smaller solutions into their platform to acquire customers, transition them to their core, and generate the perception of a fully integrated solution. There are varying degrees of success here. But the reality is, most companies are not going to acquire the best-of-breed solutions—those are expensive transactions. And just like the DSOs rolling up practices, tech companies are building enterprise value for their investors. The result is often a half-baked solution that isn’t much more than a customer grab.
So, what’s the solution?
First, look at best-of-breed solutions focused on delivering tangible ROI for your portfolio, those that facilitate the consolidation of people and process through a seamless technology experience.
Second, examine their partner ecosystem. The best companies create deep partnerships that bring together the best of the best across specialized use cases. These partnerships go beyond tech integration. They extend into go-to-market strategy, deploying a value-based model that highlights the levers they can pull in your portfolio, the outcomes of pulling them, and the roadmap to get there. These partnerships often lead to M&A transactions that create outsized outcomes for both stakeholders and customers.
DSOs are at a crossroads when it comes to delivering enterprise value to their investment partners. The only path forward is an integrated portfolio, built on solutions that drive revenue, production, and efficiency across the enterprise—setting the standard for people, process, and technology.
As an investor and operator in Peerlogic, our charge is to serve 1 million patients through our AI-first solutions and deliver $1 billion in incremental revenue for dental practices. We do this through a truly integrated, value-first solution—one focused on meeting the DSO market where they are: building integrated portfolios that deliver enterprise value at the next turn.
Having a superior patient experience isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between a booked appointment and a missed opportunity.
Today’s patients expect clarity, and convenience, and they expect immediately. They want answers fast, reminders that don’t interrupt their day, and the freedom to communicate on their terms.
The takeaway: the best way meet the myriad of (expanding) patient needs is to do so through text.
The data back it up: patients overwhelmingly prefer text-based communication for everything from scheduling to follow-ups. It’s faster, easier, and puts them in control.
The best front-office systems are meeting that need. Not with voice bots or ticketing systems, but with conversational AI built around how people actually behave, supported by real humans.
Here's what else patients are looking for, according to the data.
1. AI That Listens and Learns, Not Just Talks at People
The power of good conversational AI isn't in replacing your front office. It’s in capturing what patients say, why they say it, and what needs to happen next.
Up to 30% of new patient inquiries go unanswered because of missed or mishandled calls.
One in three patients will not call back. That’s lost revenue that never hits your schedule.
AI built to understand, not just react, helps teams:
- Recognize common questions and concerns
- Follow up with the right patients at the right time
- Turn more calls into booked appointments
2. Voice AI Is Failing the Patient Experience
Most voice bots aren’t designed for empathy. They’re designed to deflect.
Seventy-nine percent of consumers prefer a human for healthcare questions.
Voice bots consistently score lowest in patient satisfaction across all channels.
Healthcare is personal. Patients want to be heard. And that starts with real conversation.
3. Texting Isn’t Just Easier. It’s What Patients Prefer
Here’s where AI can actually enhance the experience. When used correctly, it supports fast, frictionless communication.
Eighty percent of patients say they prefer texting for appointment reminders and updates.
Practices that use intelligent SMS workflows report over 25 percent higher confirmation rates.
Texting isn't impersonal. Poor automation is. When integrated into the right workflow, text becomes a natural extension of your practice.
4. Insights That Drive Real Action
The best conversational AI doesn't just automate. It informs.
With the right platform, teams gain visibility into:
- Call trends and communication breakdowns
- No-show patterns and missed opportunities
- Patient behavior and follow-up needs
Practices using conversation-level insights are reducing no-shows by up to 20 percent and recovering revenue without adding staff.
When AI helps your team connect, follow up, and improve communication in ways patients actually value, everyone benefits. It's not about replacing your people. It's about giving them the tools to do their jobs better.
If you're ready to stop automating for automation’s sake and start connecting in ways that matter, it's time to rethink what AI can do.
Close the Loop. Reopen the Conversation.
Texting isn’t just for reminders. It’s your biggest re-engagement channel hiding in plain sight.
In today’s patient journey, text is the gateway, not the destination. It opens the door for appointment confirmations, reschedules, follow-ups, and most importantly: revenue recovery.
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