There are 77 implant machine.5 million1 millennials, and they’re changing the way we do business. Dental care is no exception. This generation is bigger than the baby boomer generation. To gain and retain their business, dental practices must consider their needs and wants. Lincoln Financial Group recently surveyed American consumers about their expectations in regard to dental care, looking specifically at generational preferences. Subsequently, Lincoln surveyed dental offices across the country, including dentists and dental professionals. The findings from these studies uncovered some interesting discrepancies in patient expectations versus dentist perceptions, particularly among millennials. It’s All About Digital It sounds simple enough. Keeping up with current, user-friendly technology is critical to meeting millennials’ needs. Patient expectations around dental care are being influenced by external factors—the fast-paced, easy, and always accessible consumer experiences provided by “born-digital” companies today. Forty percent of millennials surveyed cite a dentist’s website as “very important,” compared to just 14% of baby boomers. Also, a whopping 77% of millennials say that it’s important for a dentist’s website to be engaging and user-friendly when accessed from their mobile device, often referred to as mobile optimization. However, just about half of dentists say their website is optimized for mobile use today. According to our research, once millennials access a dentist’s website, they are looking for certain information: Accepted insurance: The top priority is a list of accepted insurance carriers, as 74% of millennials want to see this information on a dentist’s website. The problem? Only 43% of dental offices say they offer this information online. Appointments: Next up, 71% of millennials want to be able to make or change appointments online. A quarter of young millennials (ages 18 to 29) say that the ability to make online appointments actually keeps them coming back to a dentist. Less than half of the dental offices we surveyed, though, say they currently offer an online appointment feature. Average costs: Sixty-five percent of millennials want to view average costs for dental procedures on a dentist’s site dental file. This is where we see the largest discrepancy when we look at reality, as a mere 18% of dental offices provide this information online. The data shows that many dental offices are not meeting millennials’ expectations when it comes to their digital offerings. Instead, most practices currently feature content like educational material on oral hygiene (59% of dental offices) or information about office staff members (70% of dental offices). This poses an opportunity for dentists to differentiate with a well-designed and mobile-optimized website. About a quarter of consumers find dentists by browsing online, starting with a search from their insurance carrier’s website. Offering up the information that consumers want, in the format they want, may just set your office apart from the rest vacuum forming machine dental. Taking mobile technology to the next level, our research also found that 85% of millennials say they would find some value in a mobile application. And, 51% say they would “absolutely” find value in an app from their dentist. Approximately half of the dental offices we surveyed seem open to this idea, as 54% of dentists say they think an app with personalized information would be beneficial to patients.