Use These 3 Tips to Create Effective Dental Patient Surveys

by Ryan Mendenhall

June 27, 2022

Last updated on July 5th, 2022 at 09:45 am

Sending a satisfaction survey to your dental patients is much like going to a public Q&A session. Some can’t wait to express their feedback while others remain silent. Despite this, the sheer act of sending out a survey demonstrates to all patients that you care about and value their opinion, which cultivates and strengthens patient loyalty in a competitive dental market.

Tips for Dental Patient Surveys

Here are 3 key tips on how to create effective dental patient surveys:

1. The overall goal is to elicit responses that will help your practice grow.

Too often, dental practices seemingly ask questions for the sake of asking them. For example, if you have no intention of offering Saturday hours, don’t ask patients for their opinion on the subject. Keep questions focuses on things you can or want to change within an operational framework you plan to maintain.

2. Keep surveys short.

Lengthy surveys are like a conversation with a stranger that goes on way too long when dinner is going cold on the table. There’s no magic number to the number of questions you should ask. Rather, it comes down to overall time to complete a survey, which should be kept to under five minutes. To help make that happen, ask closed-end questions or simple yes-no questions. If you really feel the need, you can include a free-response field for patients to include comments.

3. Give patients a reason to complete a survey.

Yes, you can offer material incentives for completing a survey. Yet people are also motivated to provide input when they feel they’re contributing to the betterment of something that helps many people. So, if your survey is to ultimately help your dental practice improve its general patient experience, tell people you need their valuable input.