For dentists
A digital business card for dentists
Dentistry runs on people coming back. The six months between one check-up and the next is long enough for a paper card to be thrown out, and long enough for a patient to forget which practice they were even at.
Six months is long enough to lose a patient
A recall card goes in a drawer, into a bin during a tidy-up, or into a coat that gets washed. When the ache starts, the patient does not go looking for it. They search, and they book with whoever appears first. You are not being beaten on clinical work, you are being beaten by the fact that nothing with your name on it is still within reach. It is worse for an associate, because when you move practice the patients who liked you have no way of finding out where you went.
At the front desk, while the next appointment is booked
The card changes hands at reception, at the end of the appointment, usually alongside the date for the next one. The patient is already holding their phone to put that date in the calendar. That is the one second in the whole visit when scanning a code is less effort than pocketing a card, and it ends with the practice name, number and booking link sitting in their contacts beside the appointment they just made.
What it does for dentists
The number ends up in the phone, not the drawer
One tap saves a standard contact file with the practice name, the number and the address spelled correctly. Six months later it is still there, under a name the patient will recognise.
An associate who moves takes the card along
Edit the practice name, address and number, and everyone who already saved the card sees where you are now. The printed code on anything still in circulation keeps working.
Referrals that reach the right surgery
Sending an implant, endodontic or orthodontic case onward usually means passing details to a patient who will not remember them. Send the card link in a message instead, and the specialist saves into their phone correctly the first time.
Point at booking instead of a phone queue
The card holds a link you control, so it can open your booking page or the practice site. Change booking system and the link changes with it, with nothing reprinted.
Questions dentists ask
- Can patients book an appointment from the card?
- Only in the sense that the card can link to whatever booking page you already use. It is a contact card, not a booking system, and it holds no appointment or clinical data of any kind.
- Should the card be the practice or the dentist?
- Usually both. The practice card is what reception hands out, because recall is a practice relationship. Individual cards suit associates, who refer cases to named colleagues and who may not be at the same address in two years.
- Can I put the code on a printed card for the waiting room?
- Yes. You can download a print-ready PDF at the standard business card size of 85.6 by 54 mm, with 3 mm bleed and crop marks, which is what a printer will ask for. Leave a few somewhere patients already pick things up from, rather than only handing them over.