One of the big factors paramount to creating and achieving a higher income than “the average dentist” is the use of time.
We all on this earth are given the same amount of time.
Twenty four hours.
It’s the same amount for us all.
Twenty four only of them, per day.
Seven days only, per week.
The difference between Richard Branson and me, is how we spend, or utilise our time.
He utilises his time much better than I do mine.
And the only difference between me, averaging $1352.00 of collections per chairside hour and you, is the way we utilise our time.
This week I’ve had three instances, or reminders, of how easy it is to surrender valuable time, valuable chairside time, and therefore valuable income, simply by allowing someone to steal your time.
Firstly, my ceramicist dropped around eight units to be seated this week with a cursory, “Oh by the way, I haven’t etched these. You’ll need to do it”
Well that just stole twenty minutes out of my life and put it straight into his!
Stolen!
Apparently, some docs are re-etching their crowns after try –in and before seating, which is something I’ve never done.
And this process of re-etching chairside is now thought to cause a dramatic reduction in porcelain strength.
So by my ceramicist *NOT* etching, he’s now hitting every one of his clients in the time wallet for something only some of his clients do.
I’ve got a mantra that states:
“Don’t punish the ninety-eight percent for something that the two percent do.”
And this is what he’s done.
I see Dental Offices and other businesses all the time all over the world with signs, policies, and rules saying things that punish the ninety-eight percent.
Last time I looked we were not at school.
And we certainly were not in prison….
My ceramicist, through his actions, added another serious length of time unnecessarily to my day. And unplanned.
And nearly enough, unannounced…
The second and third things I’ve had this week that’s been stealing my time is the re-educating of new team members to the ways of an Ultimate Patient Experience practice.
And it’s surprising how highly qualified, long-term career Dental Assistants can come from a place where the theft of the Doctor’s time is acceptable.
And that’s not because she’s thought it up…. it’s because the previous dentists have been unaware and oblivious to the opportunity of leveraging their team to save time.
Example two involves the simple process of unwrapping and exposing your instruments to be used.
We’ve always had the dental assistants unwrap and arrange all instruments in front of the patient once they are seated in the dental chair, but before the doctor enters the room, so that when he does enter, this procedure is already done and completed.
Well, no, not this time…
So add that up, eighteen times per day at forty five to sixty seconds per time, there’s an average fifteen minutes per day, multiplied by four days that becomes an hour per week.
Multiply that out to a year and all of a sudden doctors you’re spending fifty hours
just unwrapping instruments….
And how much do you normally bill in an average week??
Thirdly, and finally for this week, the same goes to local anaesthetic…the protocol in my office has been subject recently to a time suck change for some reason…
I’ve noticed that now our LA syringes are being assembled chairside while the patient is there in the chair.
And that’s sucking away valuable time, because for some reason each individual carpule of LA is now coming in its own individual blister pack? For what?
And we know ahead of time that Mr. Smith is having three fillings replaced and decay removed from three teeth in the upper left quadrant, so he’s going to need to be given three syringes of LA.
So why on earth are we watching those syringes be assembled chairside in front of us, when we know in advance how many will be needed?
And that can be assembled prior to the appointment, so that they’re ready to go when needed?
That probably works out again as another good minute per patient wasted…. and do the math….
Like above, it’s fifty hours per year, or a week of your life spent annually, just watching someone assemble syringes.
A task that can easily be done ahead of time.
So if you’d like an extra two hours per week of chairside time, just fix up these last two time sucks.
At my hourly rate, that works out at an extra $135,000.00 per year of income.
And that’s significant.
If your hourly rate is $600.00 per hour, fixing these last two time sucks will add $60,000.00 to your annual collections.
And, you can do a lot with an extra $60K…
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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Now, most people will *NOT* know what we are talking about here.
Not at all.
What the heck is “Service Recovery”?
And “Zero Risk”?
“Service Recovery” is your ability to fully recover [and more!] from an error that occurs, from something that goes wrong, within the course of your delivery of your Customer Service Protocols.
“Service Recovery” is the ability of your Office to rectify any Service Defects that occur throughout your day.
Service Defects are defined as any Obstacles and Challenges that can occur at any stage of the Customer Experience Cycle that can ruin the Customer’s experience.
Our Dental Office’s service recovery systems and the way we seamlessly swing them into action are what defines us as a business that cares unconditionally about our customers.
While these customers may complain about the service defect that just happened, they will be in awe at the way our business handles that defect through its service recovery processes….
Think about your Dental Practice for a moment….
Where have you recently had a Service Defect?
And how did your team swing into action to recover from that defect?
Sometimes the defect is not caused by us and our Office, and is beyond our control.
Yet, although it is not our fault, the defect is our problem.
And it is up to us to make good that problem, unconditionally, in the eyes of the customer.
That’s what it’s all about….
As an example, last night I conducted a webinar, and for some inexplicable reason, I accidentally paused the slide show as visible to my audience, but not to me.
How dumb!
My audience had to follow on from me talking, without any visual input whatsoever!
And so, at the end of the webinar, as I checked my recording, it became obvious that I’d “created” for myself and for my registrants, a massive service defect.
So how do I rectify this?
How do I create some form of Service Recovery that makes the day for those disappointed registrants?
Well, immediately this morning, all registrants will be receiving an audio copy of the webinar, via email, into their inbox.
And afterwards, later today, God willing, I’ll have a video copy of another performance of that exact same webinar that I’ll be conducting this morning for my USA friends who are fifteen to eighteen hours behind Sydney in time.
I’ve also upped the bonuses for those registrants from last night who take action as a result of listening through, and watching, the replay of today’s webinar, in that I’ve extended the limited offer unconditionally to all of those who tough it out and follow through to the end.
Ands that’s the kind of service recovery you need to have in your Dental Office.
When you run behind, and patients are worried about parking, do you send someone out to either move their car, or feed the meter for them?
Or do you offer them a taxi, or better still, offer to drop them on home, if their appointment finishes late, and you’re concerned for their well-being and getting home safely, due to nightfall?
Do you offer to drop pre-medication required for their next appointment around to their house ahead of time, to save them having to make an extra trip out, prior to treatment?
Do you send flowers, or chocolates to patients who, through no fault of their own, are inconvenienced because they need to have open contacts on their new crown corrected, before the crown can be seated, on another day then?
What we strive for, with our Service Recoveries in all situations in our Dental Office, is the creation of Zero Risk.
“Zero Risk” addresses an intimidating array of issues that can produce unhappy customers, yet those issues may not always be the fault of our Office.
Having a Zero Risk philosophy is essential in order to create those WOW! Experiences for your customers that make them become customers for life.
What does Zero Risk look like in a Dental Office? What does it look like to your patients?
As a patient of an Ultimate Patient Experience Dental Practice offering World Class Service, our clients and customers have a sense of security when they deal with us that should ever any little thing not go to plan, that we, as their Dentist, will make it right, regardless.
Thus, our Dental Office is Zero Risk to deal with.
Zero Risk for your Dental Office is having all your team members fully aware of the potential common service defects that can arise at any stage in the Patient Cycles and visits to your Office, and having the team trained and empowered to provide World Class Service Recovery if and when any defects do arise.
So your Dental Office is known as Zero Risk to do business with…
And that’s a nice way to be.
And a nice way to be known of, in your community.
**This blog post has been written with multiple references to the writings and teachings of my mentor, and great friend, John DiJulius III. Thank you John for your kindness, support, and guiding influences.
The Ultimate Patient Experience isa simple easy to implement system that I developed that allowed me to build an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me: david@theUPE.com
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“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” ― Henry Ford
“What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.” ― Norman Vincent Peale
Do you ever have those clients that you’re just plain old glad to see the back of?
Absolute painful customers who make your life a misery?
You see their names in the appointment schedule, and you just know, today’s going to be one of those days.
When this happens, and it does happen, you’ve got to go and take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself this question:
“Why the heck am I making myself have to deal with this sort of anguish?”
Why indeed?
Are you that hard up for a dollar that you need to put yourself through the torture and anguish of dealing with those kind of whiny patients?
The purpose of building an Ultimate Patient Experience Dental Office is that it allows you to charge and set your fees to whatever you want them to be.
And in so doing, it then allows us the opportunity of letting go of, or setting free, those patients with whom we now have zero tolerance of their habits and behaviours.
You know the ones?
Firstly there are the patients that are constantly whining.
Constantly.
They whine about this. They whine about that. They whine about everything!
They whine about your parking.
They whine about the weather.
They whine about the bill and their rebate….
They say, “Don’t take this personally, *BUT*…”
You know the ones….
Well why are you putting up with those types of patients?
What makes you so desperate that you have to take those sorts of insults?
Shouldn’t all patients be grateful to be in your presence, and experience your wonderful skills in idyllic surroundings?
Secondly, what about the patients who aren’t comfortable “lying all the way back?”
Well “Hello?”
How on earth do they sleep at night?
Do they think it’s reasonable to make you lean further forward with those darn loupes, apparatus and headlight on?
Don’t they know how march that thing weighs?
Do they even realise the damage that thing does to your neck and spine when you do not having it centred properly?
No. Of course not.
Well, it’s now time for that patient to get into the correct position for *you*, not for them.
And we all have patients who are polite as pie down in the treatment room and then like to push their weight around and throw their insults and comments when they’re out at the front desk.
And what about the patients that are consistently late arriving for their appointments? Throwing your day into disarray, and making *you* have to play catch up all day and making it look like *you* are the one with the time management issues….
That’s just four examples…I’ll bet you know of more.
My point is, there comes a time when enough is enough.
If it’s your business, why are you tolerating it being anything less than perfect?
The purpose of creating the Ultimate Patient Experience Dental Office is that we are not only creating an environment for our clients and customers to enjoy our dentistry, we are also creating an environment for us to enjoy our clients and customers.
Do you remember that scene in “The Big Chill” where Richard is eating a snack in the kitchen at two in the morning, and he says, about life, that “nobody said it had to be fun” or words to that effect?
Well I’m telling you, with the Ultimate Patient Experience philosophy, it certainly can be.
You can regain it.
Fun.
Yes you can.
It’s your choice….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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I received my weekly email from Shep Hyken last Thursday.
The Shepard Letter.
And it began like this:
“You can have outstanding customer service, but it only takes one mistake to erode the customer’s confidence, thus diminishing the chance you’ll have at gaining the customer’s loyalty. This mistake can be summed up in one simple sentence:
Don’t do what you say you’re going to do.
Don’t follow through. Miss a deadline. Show up late. Don’t call back when you promised. The list can go on and on. All of these are examples of how many people – and many companies – destroy a customer’s confidence, thereby destroying the customer’s loyalty.”
Which is exactly what I teach when I talk with my clients about The Ultimate Patient Experience.
The driving principle of The Ultimate Patient Experience is that the Dental Visit, *EVERY* Dental Visit to your Office needs to be a *complete* and total Experience for your client, and not just a series of slapped together stages with the “hope” that everything goes right.
Because a business built on hope is a House Of Cards.
Teetering on instant demolition with the slightest waiver…
A business built on hope “hopes” that they get things right, and “hopes” that something does not go wrong.
A business built on sound business principles knows that there has to be systems and rules and policies, that are adhered to as a framework to ensure consistency.
Consistency of product.
Consistency of experience.
So that your clients, customers and patients never feel disappointment during or after their visits to your Dental Office.
The premise of the Ultimate Patient Experience Programme is that it is a *TOTAL* System designed to make sure that your office is indeed providing your clients and customers with a systematic series of Magical Moments as they journey through their visit to your Dental Practice.
A consistent series of Magical Touch Points that leave the patient saying to themselves:
“WOW!!” and
“How did they think of that?”
The patients believe that these Magical Moments are just incidental incidents of amazement.
But we know that they are seriously scripted and choreographed well thought out stages of amazement that we have weaved together to create a truly wonderful *Experience* to share with them at our Dental Office for today’s visit.
Because it is so important, and I drive this point home ad nauseum, it is so important that all team members in our Office are stepping up to the plate and covering all our bases all of the time.
Because there’s no benefit in being truly amazing at one or two stages of the Customer Experience Cycle, or Visit, over in one part of your Office, while someone on your team, unwittingly or unknowingly, is dropping the ball routinely in another part of your Office, and they and nobody else, really knows that they’re doing it!
And that’s the Crux of it.
That’s what Shep is saying in his Shepard Letter.
That’s what I’m saying with The Ultimate Patient Experience.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a truly integrated System designed with you and your Dental Team specifically for your Office.
But it’s more.
It’s a Cultural Shift.
It’s a conscious shift by your team to willingly raise the bar forever in the way that they deal and interact with your patients so that your patients leave your Dental Office saying:
“Wow! This is like no other Dentist I’ve been to in my life EVER!!”
What The Ultimate Patient Experience is not is that it is *NOT* my Three Best Tips, or my Five Best Secrets.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is about creating a watertight Customer Service process for your Dental Office that retains and maintains all those clients and customers that traditionally, in other offices, slip through the cracks in the system purely because of our apathy and perceived apathy towards them.
As Shep says:
“Show up, keep your promise and you meet the customer’s expectations. Bump the experience up just a little above average, and you start to have a shot at creating amazement. And, when that experience is consistent and predictable, you’ll create confidence.”
***
In two weeks time I’ll be in St Louis and catching up with Shep Hyken for dinner. I’m looking forward to breaking bread with him and as we say,“chewing the fat”.
***
The Ultimate Patient Experience isa simple easy to implement system that I developed that allowed me to build an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me: david@theUPE.com
Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!
Shep Hyken, CSP, CPAE is a customer service expert, hall-of-fame speaker and New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. He works with organizations to build loyal relationships with their customers and employees. He is also the creator of The Customer Focus, a customer service training program that helps organizations develop a customer service culture and loyalty mindset. For more information contact (314) 692-2200 or www.Hyken.com
What’s the best way to Market your Dental Practice to attract new patients?
To me there’s a right way and a wrong way.
The right way is the way that brings new patients in.
And the wrong way is the way that does not.
Results are what matters.
Numbers.
Numbers are what matters.
Nothing else.
Nothing else matters.
Only results.
How you as the dentist feel about an ad does not matter.
Only results.
The best form of marketing for new patients without a doubt is the marketing that puts your Dental Office out there as memorable to those looking for a new or different dentist and those people who don’t really have a dentist who are looking for a dentist.
And most times it’s very difficult to use one marketing piece to advertise to both those types of new patients, at the same time.
One advert needs to say, “We’re different!”, while the other advert needs to say “We’re here!”
Sometimes you need to use both types of advertisements within one marketing campaign.
You might have a great location with high visibility. If you do, then just advertising yourself as: “Hey, there’s a dentist in here!” may be sufficient to make those passing to say to themselves exactly that.
Then they’ll either stop and come in or later go to your website to find out more about you, and that’s when you’ll need to make sure that you’re telling them then and there *WHY* your dental office is different, and why your office is going to be their best choice for a new dentist.
And they’ll choose to do business with you based on either price, quality or service.
I’ve said it before.
The public, for the most part, believe that all dentists are competent and have an equal level of skill.
The public trusts that their state regulator allows only competent dentists to practice.
And so, quality is rarely a reason the public use for choosing their everyday dental office.
So that really leaves only service, and price.
And the public will believe, on the whole, that most times most dentists will charge roundabout the same prices for most dental services, most of the time.
So unless they’re penny-pinching misers, they’ll not be choosing you on price.
The main or number one way that people choose a new dental office is by how that dental office makes the new patient feel.
Does that office want my business?
Will they value my business?
How will that Dental Office treat me as a client or customer?
How does that Dental Office communicate that to me before I become a patient and how do they convey that feeling of caring once I have become a patient?
Letting the public know that you’re a real person, and that you care, is a far better way of attracting new patients and keeping new patients than any marketing method that competes on price only.
All the public really wants to know are these three things:
Are you a real person?
Will you treat me like I’m a real person?
Will it be pain free?
So long as your answer is “Yes” to all three of these questions, and you and your office keep on reminding them the answers to these three questions, then your marketing will keep the public beating a path to your door.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!
