Building a phone system that’s truly worth smiling about
Overview
Communication is the lifeblood of a successful dental practice. However, we live in a society that’s defined by digital technology even though the majority of communications are still done over the phone.
One problem: traditional phone systems and call centers simply cannot keep up with the demands of the modern digital ecosystem, from high call volumes to rapid scaling.
All of these issues directly impact the customer experience, which can lead to unhappy patients and decreasing customer satisfaction.
Discover how Smile Doctors worked with Momentum to seamlessly transition to a cloud-based unified communications solution to boost efficiency, growth, and scalability while providing an exceptional customer experience.
With our old system, it often took 2-4 weeks to implement a single new office. With the cloud infrastructure provided by Momentum, it takes us a fraction of the time. We also enjoy higher capacity, more granular reporting, and significantly better pricing.
About SmileDoctors
Smile Doctors is a network of orthodontists unified by a single goal—to create confident, beautiful smiles. Born in 2015 out of the shared passion of doctors Scott Law, Dana Fender, and Greg Goggans, the network prioritizes people above all else.
Affiliates are constantly in search of new opportunities to improve the patient experience, and already offer easy scheduling, flexible care options, affordable payment plans, and the latest in orthodontic technology including a mobile app.
- 300 offices in more than 20 states
- The nation’s fastest-growing network of orthodontists
- Host for the Lecture Center for Orthodontic Excellence
- Orthodontists are members of he American Association of Orthodontics & The American Dental Association
The problem
When Jerry first became an IT Systems admin for Devereaux Wynn Orthodontics, he never imagined he’d one day be responsible for keeping a nationwide network of dental offices connected with both patients and with one another. With 11offices in Mississippi and Louisiana, Devereaux
Wynn was a modest-size practice that experienced communication issues. The practice’s voice infrastructure consisted exclusively of Plain Old Telephone Systems (POTS).
Jerry and his colleague found and deployed a competing solution, but just one year after initial deployment, it became evident that they were rapidly outgrowing it. Next, they signed on with an enterprise solution. And again, it wasn’t long before the solution’s shortcomings became evident.
When they joined the Smile Doctors network, they quickly learned how difficult it was to deploy and scale phone systems and customer service across multiple locations. At the time of the merger, the company had 140 offices in the Smile Doctors network. In just one year, they added another 60. They quickly learned that their existing solution simply was not designed for the rapid scale Smile Doctors required.
That solution was unable to support scalability and advanced calling features. Plus, the cost of adding new licenses was high—costing the company nearly $50,000 each month. They also experienced significant audio quality issues, dropped calls, and a 72% call abandonment rate.
It was clear they needed a reliable platform that was built for the modern workplace—something that was agile, scalable, and customer-friendly.
The solution
Smile Doctors devised a shortlist of potential UCaaS replacements, opting to shift away from their onpremises VoIP system so they could leverage a cloud service provider. Sales call after sales call, the company found it difficult to find a provider that checked all of the boxes.
Enter Momentum. Smile Doctors came into contact with Momentum after learning about their Managed Cloud Solutions. They were quickly impressed with how genuine the company was.
Smile Doctors executed a phased deployment with Momentum. After successfully rolling out the new phone system to 18 offices, they turned their attention to the rest of their network.
They had all the right answers, they were honest and to the point, and they were genuinely interested in helping our deployment succeed. This wasn’t just about securing a new revenue stream for them, and their customer service reflected that. When we committed to work with Momentum, they provided us with our own dedicated resources, including a provisioning team, porting team, and project manager.
The outcome
Smile Doctors has now successfully connected 200 of its 300 offices to its new phone system and UCaaS solution. There are only 100 practices still using their old infrastructure, and the company is already moving to transition them to the new Momentum solution.
In addition to significantly reducing the workload on IT, Smile Doctors affiliates can now bring in more customers, take more calls, and offer a better overall customer experience. More importantly, the practices can achieve all this without having to spend tens of thousands on unused or underutilized licenses.
A lot of upfront work has gone into this partnership, but it’s been worth it. Through collaboration and Momentum’s expertise, we’ve been able to build, organize, and deliver a phone system that works seamlessly from a routing perspective. And the whole experience has taught me how to be more successful, too—that’s what I’m really excited about.
