There are thousands of dental SaaS (software as a service) solutions out there from which you can choose.

They often include options for:
  • appointment reminders
  • online scheduling 
  • treatment plan tracking
  • online payments
  • text message review generation
  • forms that integrate with practice management software
  • phone and texting services & automation
The landscape of dental software is constantly evolving. It's a common misconception that marketing agencies are the appropriate providers of the above services. 99% of time (if not 100% of the time) marketing agencies that offer the above services are reselling these solutions to you from a third party. If it hasn't been disclosed, there's a possibility the white label relationship is non-disclosed and includes some mark up on pricing as well. 

It's not ideal that the marketing agency also have their hands in things like payment processing, online scheduling, practice management software, etc. You need the flexibility to cancel one service or another and with the aggressive nature of these bundled items, it sets you up for a difficult transition if you were to pause or cancel any of the above. 

There's also a conflict of interest in having many of the functionalities above available through one agency. Imagine your marketing is working, but your scheduling software is breaking constantly. You want the ability to replace what's not ideal and keep what's working. If you have an "all in one suite" you may be overpaying and under utilizing different services. 

In addition, it's more than a full time responsibility to keep up with the ever evolving world of marketing. Typically an agency is either a software developer OR a marketing agency. It's very rare to truly find both strengths under one roof. Although seemingly similar, they are worlds apart. 

How do we handle the above? 
Simply put, we are Switzerland. We work with all third party SaaS options and will help you integrate them. We have no horse in that race and if you need a recommendation, we're happy to point you in the direction we see most appropriate based on your needs. 

We don't charge you to set things up and this gives you the flexibility to leverage your favorite tools. Some integrations do slow down websites and can interfere with SEO, so please give us the opportunity to advise you if you are making these decisions. It's best to ask your strategist for their opinion, rather than sending this our tech support / web changes inbox. 

What should I consider for online chat? 
We recommend integrating Facebook Messenger app on your website. This allows anyone who is managing the Facebook business page to be able to respond to and handle leads. Facebook also allows automated responses, which you can set up to link to your appointment request page on your website, for full automation. The user may not have facebook, but their message will still come across your messenger app as a "guest" and you'll be able to chat in real-time at no charge. 

If you'd like help with this integration, please let us know. We may need admin access to your FB business page. it'll be required that you've engaged us for website management as well, as this support would fall under that service. This has been a free plugin for Wordpress sites in the past, but it's possible that may change at any given time. 

Why do some agencies offer online payments? 
Payment processors offer these agencies a revenue share in your processing fees. This means when the transaction fees go up to 4% without warning, there's a chance your marketing agency is keeping a cut! This adds up over time. We recommend hiring a third party and not working through an agency for online payments. Ideally, you want a solution that syncs with your practice management software.