Dental Support Specialties Blog

Isn’t that the truth? It’s all in how someone makes us feel. Make us feel good, we’ll be back. Make us feel bad, forget about it! Make me feel good, and I’ll share it with everyone I know. Make me feel bad, and yes you can bet I will share that as well!!

Every single patient interaction in your practice should reflect positive feelings, friendly feelings, feelings of genuine caring for your patients.

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” Carl W. Buechner

This is so true. Think about it. Wherever  you go, your impression on that particular place of business is directly based on how they made you feel. Crappy service at the dry cleaners? They did a fine job on your clothes but the staff was rude, didn’t talk (or use your name) and didn’t thank you sincerely for your business. What do you go out feeling? Unappreciated, like you didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that they did the actual “job” you expected them to by delivering your clothes clean, pressed and neatly packaged. You’ll go out thinking, and saying “That dry cleaners has the worst customer service ever!”.

“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.”   Stephen R. Covey

In a dental office, this quote is sooo true. Urgency is the walk in emergency patient and no treatment rooms available.  The phone that is ringing off the hook. The overbooked schedule, no clean instruments and no clean rooms.  The 3 holes in the schedule from no-shows and the quick scrambling trying to fill them last-minute. We need to be always prepared for the urgent while maintaining focus on the important. Continual adjustments, shifts in our behaviors and systems to make accommodations for life. Yet the structure, and expectations, remain the same.

What questions do you have for me?

That’s it.

These 7 words are very powerful and will open lines of communication that might otherwise be absent.

What questions do you have for me? After diagnosing and recommending treatment, coming from the doc the patient fully feels on an emotional level that you care and gives the opportunity to make sure that the patient fully understands the necessity of treatment, and allows you to instill the sense of urgency with a time frame.

Patient care & consistency. Unparelled patient care and reliability. Isn’t this what your patients want?

There are over 160,000 dental practices in the United States. What sets your practice apart from the rest? Why should a patient choose your practice as their dental home?

First and foremost, patient care will set you apart from the rest. Superior patient care. “Nobody has ever treated me so well” kind of patient care.

It’s a strange world with these economic times. Some practices are thriving, new patients are flowing and it’s business as usual. Other practices aren’t so fortunate – cash flow is down, new patient flow is slow.

Is this your practice? Are you stressed out, wondering how on earth you are going to manage to keep things going, make your payroll and overhead while still somehow trying to get enjoyment out of what you do?

How’s YOUR WOW?

In Part I and Part II of our “Maximizing The Opportunities Within Your Dental Practice” series, we discussed appropriate phone coverage – from making sure you have enough availability to your patient’s throughout the week to making sure who’s answering your phone is doing it with WOW for each and every call!  (go ahead, call your office on Monday and see for yourself if the WOW comes through!)

What is the hand-off protocol in your office? Typically in many dental offices the clinical team member walks the patient to the front desk with the patient’s chart under their arm. When they reach the desk they “plop” the chart down, tells the Appointment Coordinator that the patient is done, looks at the patient and says, “Thanks Nancy, have a great day, Mary Beth will take care of you”,and then runs off to break down the room to get ready for the next patient. In the mean time, Mary Beth sits at the front desk wondering what was done, what needs to be done next, and what can I now do to not look stupid here!

We discussed the major importance of having quality phone coverage for your patients 40 hours a week. We discussed how when a patient decides to pick up the phone and call they want to speak to someone NOW, not after leaving a message and waiting. So many positive responses came from this article; many practices are jumping on board with this as they realize the mass of opportunity they are missing. So now that you are improving your phone coverage availability, the next obvious questions are who is answering your phone and how are they answering?

Does your practice see patients the average 26-32 hours per week? What opportunities is your practice missing out on the other 14 hours a week? Even if it’s one new patient a week, that’s a potential of 52 new patients a year that you could be missing out on!

What happens when patients, or new patients, try to contact your office on your afternoons or days off? Answering machine, voice mail? Most new patients don’t leave messages, they want a person.