Introduction

As with all service-based industries, dental offices rely on operational efficiency to meet the needs of the community and to run a successful practice. Keeping track of patient information, appointment times, and work schedules can become overwhelming without a logical, easy-to-use system to organize, display, and automate massive amounts of data. Akin to the circus act of adding an ever-increasing number of spinning plates atop long poles, everything can come crashing down without a streamlined, fully optimized system to handle complex data sets. Okay, that’s a bit of an extreme analogy, but an optimized data management system IS important!

Let us present an average, successful American dental practice. They were not of another dimension in space and time, but they were stuck in…the Spreadsheet Zone! (Cue the Twilight Zone theme music.)

The Challenge

The dental office was already using Salesforce for other processes but relied on spreadsheets to track appointment times and schedule patients with available dental hygienists. While the manual input system was operating okay and no spinning plates were crashing down, the staff recognized there was room for improvement.

The busy staff wanted to get away from using spreadsheets and move toward a method where each client could log into a system to schedule their own dental appointment. They also wanted an automated method to create patient records and to match the patient with an available dental hygienist at the chosen appointment time. But how does one escape the Spreadsheet Zone? Client Cloudcare to the rescue!

Solution

Upon learning about the dental office’s wish list, Client Cloudcare jumped into action, took the time to understand and analyze each individual need, and began researching options to fulfill the client’s request.

After careful analysis, a community portal via Salesforce’s Experience Cloud was set up, configured, and connected to the dental office’s existing Salesforce instance to allow customer logins and appointment scheduling. Templates were created to allow for the input of patient information and to show available appointment time slots. With this setup in place, customers could log into the community portal to enter patient information and reserve a time slot for an office visit. Upon submitting this information, Salesforce account and appointment records were automatically created or updated.

This is when the magic happens….A flow was created that launched upon each appointment submission. Several complex formulas were created within the flow to translate the date/time entry from the Experience Cloud template into a readable time slot for the Salesforce record. The flow also contained a series of manual loops that assigned an available dental hygienist to the appropriate appointment.

Conclusion

By utilizing Experience Cloud, Salesforce, and a complex flow, Client Cloudcare fulfilled and exceeded the dental office’s requirements. Patients, staff, and dental hygienists now enjoy a fully automated appointment booking experience and no longer have to deal with spreadsheets or manual updates, thus saving valuable time and eliminating possible inevitable human error.

Client Cloudcare is a mission-oriented organization committed and passionate about supporting organizations that provide vital services to communities. We specialize in Salesforce setup and optimization, research and configuration of connected applications, and automation of manual processes. Is your organization trapped in the Spreadsheet Zone? Contact us today for more information or a one-on-one consultation.