 Hello everybody. Andrea here. Nice to see you again or welcome if you're new to my channel. So what I want to talk about in this video today is about the dental receptionist. What makes an amazing dental receptionist what's going to set you apart from other dental receptionists and what is expected of you. So I first became a dental receptionist when I was 19. I wanted to work as a dental assistant but at the time that dental office needed a little bit of both. So they needed a dental receptionist and a dental assistant as well. So I did both and I really enjoyed my job as a dental receptionist. And I remembered the office manager coming to me and saying to me like what do you do? Like you just started here but you're really good at what you do. Patience like you. Staff likes you. You're always on time. You manage the paperwork. You manage everything so well. Like I feel like other dental receptionists could learn from you. And that's what she said to me. And I kind of thought to myself really that made me feel really good because here I was just doing what I thought was my job. But when I started to pay attention at the other receptionists around me, somewhere amazing of course. I'm not judging here but her comment made me pay attention. There was usually three of us at the front desk and it made me pay attention. And I noticed that others might not pick up a chart right away. They might not file charts until the next day. They might not have had the best phone skills or they weren't as friendly when I just thought I was doing my job. But enough about me. Let me explain to you things that you will be looked at as a dental receptionist. So I'm just going to go through a couple things here that are very basic and then I'm going to go into them a little bit further. So a professional and positive attitude. Meaning you have to be friendly. You need to look the part and you need to be friendly because you're going to handle things from all avenues. You're the first person that the patient sees when they come into the office and you're the last person. You're going to deal with happy patients and you're going to deal with unhappy patients. That's just part of the job. But then you also need really good communication skills. If somebody's asking you a question, if a patient's talking to you or asking a question and you keep saying I don't know or I guess or just have a seat, you're not seen as a very good dental receptionist. The friendly ones. The ones that go above and beyond. The ones that say Mr. Smith, they're about five minutes behind. I apologize. Here's a gift card for you. There's a Tim Horton's right over there. Feel free to have a look because we actually might be closer to 20 minutes. I know I said five minutes but it might be 20 minutes. But doesn't that sound friendly opposed to saying Mr. Smith, we're five minutes behind, have a seat? It's not very friendly, right? You need to have outstanding customer service both in your communication skills, but also how you handle charts, insurance, making phone calls, checking up with appointments, reminding of appointments, maybe collecting a balance because there's a balance on the patient's file, outstanding customer service. But as a receptionist, one of your biggest jobs is going to be scheduling and appointment management, both trying to find a time in the schedule that works for everybody, depending on how many dentists, how many assistants, how many hygienists are working. Maybe that patient wants to have their teeth cleaned and their crown appointment the same day. Do you have their teeth cleaning first, the crown appointment afterwards? Do they have to wait 30 minutes? Do they have to wait two hours or can you just not fit it in? So appointment management is so important. But you're also going to be confirming appointments and you're going to be reminding people of appointments, but you're also going to be canceling appointments. So if a patient cancels, you need to take them out of the schedule and then find another patient to go into that schedule. That is one thing that I have to say that makes a really good dental receptionist off the bat is when there's no openings in the schedule. Sometimes it can't be helped. But if you get a cancellation, you're on the phone right away trying to find another patient. You're not just letting it slide and being like, Whoops, five people canceled. Oh well, what can you do? Multitasking and time management. This is so important because as a receptionist, you're going to be signing patients in, signing patients out. You're going to be taking phone calls. You're going to be putting people on hold. You're going to have to go in the back to check the chart for your latest patient. You're going to have to go in the back to check like, Oh, the patient's been waiting 10 minutes. They're getting kind of antsy. So multitasking is huge. Attention to detail and being accurate. Very important. If you're updating personal information, updating client records, filing charts, documenting treatment, maybe you need to be precise and you need to be accurate in complete chart notes, spelling mistakes, not filing properly. You won't be keeping your job for very long. You do need knowledge of dental terminology and procedures. This is something you can learn, of course, but typically just anybody can't be a dental receptionist. They need to have dental knowledge first, either as a dental assistant, a dental hygienist, or just simply taking a course to have that dental knowledge. Because without that, when a patient's coming to you asking about their crown on this tooth, you're not going to know how to explain the tooth or the crown. So you really do need to have that knowledge that is easily taught in school. You need to be confident and you need to understand privacy policies. So confidentiality and privacy policy, sorry, both in written and digital. So if you're emailing a newsletter to patients, you need to make sure that every patient can't see every patient's email address. It has to be done in such a way as a blind carbon copy or in a newsletter mailing list somehow. So you're not just sharing all of those email addresses with everybody else. This is huge. And this mistake does happen and it's reason for dismissal, if not legal action. So you need to understand privacy and confidentiality policies. And I guess last, not least is going to be problem solving and being adaptable. So if your shift is nine to five, you'll probably have to come in 830 and stay till 530. What if that last patient of the day is 20 minutes late? If they're 20 minutes late, it means their appointment is probably going to be 20 minutes longer. So if you're staying till the end of the day, your day and procedures can't start until all of the codes are put through and that last appointment is done. So you have to be adaptable and you have to be okay with that. You can't just take a break every 10 minutes. You know, there are things to do at the front so important and a dental receptionist is absolutely the backbone of the office. I think every staff member is in one way or another. The dentist, the dental assistant, the dental hygienist, the dental receptionist. But I can tell you right now, I've been in offices where if the dental receptionist calls in sick, we're all like, I don't want to do that job because it's hard. You have to multitask. You have to do so much. And you know, us as either a dental assistant, dental hygienist or a dentist, we just love being able to pass the chart to you and say, take care of it. Take care of the payment, the billing, the booking, sending to insurance, go for it. Now I have my own mobile dental hygiene practice, so I am my own dental receptionist, but that's the first thing that I'm going to hire out for it because I don't like the paperwork. I don't like the billing, all of that stuff. So we definitely need dental receptionists. If you need help or if you're starting to work in a dental office but you feel kind of clueless of where to start and what's expected of you, I do have a full dental receptionist e-course. Check it out. I'm going to leave the link in the description down below. Check it out, you guys. It is updated often and I really am passionate in helping people love their job in a dental office. And being a dental receptionist is no exception because you can honestly love your job, but you can also hate it if you don't have the right training, the right skills, and you just don't know what's expected of you. I loved working as a dental receptionist. I really, really did. I did that for several years and I loved it, honestly. It's nice to have that power. You can multitask and people really appreciate you, but you can also get lazy fast and then not be a very good dental receptionist. So let me help you guys. Thank you for watching the video. I hope this did help. Please click like if you haven't already. That does help me and my channel a lot, so I really appreciate it. Thank you guys for watching. Comment if you have any questions and I'll see you in the next one.