Most dental practices out there do not send welcome letters or welcome packs to new patients who have made their first appointment to visit.
Most dental practices do nothing.
New patient welcome letters and welcome packs are an easy and inexpensive way for your dental practice to differentiate itself from other practices.
But the welcome letter needs to be written in such a way that it adds value and creates anticipation for the new patient.
The welcome letter needs to be written with warmth and care exuding from the words and sentences in the letter.
The welcome letter needs to read like a conversation.
I see some welcome letters that read like signs displaying prison rules and regulations.
The aim of the welcome letter is to build MORE rapport between your team and the new patient.
The welcome letter should ADD to the anticipation of the new patient about their upcoming visit to your dental practice.
Here’s a template that I would recommend:
I’d have the letter written on plain paper with no logos.
It’s a letter. Its not an invoice.
In centered writing at the top, in bold and underlined, I’d have the letter read:
Welcome to ABC Dental Centre.
I’d then open with:
Dear Mrs Jones
It was so nice talking with you today on the phone.
I’d then thank them for choosing your practice, followed by a short sentence about the practice, and I’d include a professional photo of the team [not wearing scrubs]:
Thank you for trusting our friendly team to look after you and your oral health care.
ABC Dental has we have been providing quality dental our services here in [your location] since [write a year] and is now the [state some achievement] dental practice in the [your region].
[INSERT (Professional) PICTURE OF DENTIST AND TEAM ALL SMILING in team jackets (not scrubs)]
Location:
The next thing I would write in the letter is to let the new patient know the dental practice address.
And I would write the address conversationally, with a written conversational sentence about available parking and access to transport.
I would add a professionally taken photo of the outside of your building, along with a map showing access to transport nearby:
Here’s a good example:
WHERE WE ARE:
ABC Dental is located at 152 Marsden Street, between Macquarie Street and George Street, in central Parramatta.
[INSERT PHOTO OF BUILDING TAKEN FROM DIAGONALLY OPPOSITE WITH AFTERNOON SUN ON BUILDING…. MAYBE A PROFESSIONAL SHOT?]
There is plenty of 2-hour free parking [and all day parking] available in George Street.
The practice is located in close proximity to both train and bus services, with Parramatta train station situated only a short 5 minute level walk away.
[INSERT MAP]
I’d then move on in the letter to talk about preparing for the first visit.
We would like the new patient to complete their medical history ahead of time.
Here’s a nice way to include that request in the letter:
BEFORE YOUR VISIT:
As promised, in preparation for your first visit I have attached a copy of our practice dental questionnaire and medical history form for you to complete at your leisure prior to your visit.
I’d also like to build a sense of anticipation and excitement for the new patient about their upcoming visit, so I’d include the following sentences, offering them a couple of significant points of difference that your practice does that most other dental practices do not.
Offering a guided tour of your rooms, plus explaining to the new patient beforehand that you will be SPENDING TIME with them, are big points of difference:
AT YOUR FIRST VISIT:
We will begin your first visit with a tour of our practice, so that you know where everything is. [our patients love this!!] We’ll also spend some time before you see the dentist going over exactly what you’re looking to have done at ABC Dental, so that we can make your visits to see us better than you could ever imagine.
Please bring your medical paperwork and any private health insurance details with you.
And the money:
To be clear, it is good to point out to your new patients in the welcome letter [in a subtle manner] that you will be wanting payment on the day.
Put in a statement like this one below that clearly states your practice’s stance about payments and about insurance:
PAYMENT OPTIONS:
ABC Dental accepts all health insurance providers and we have the facility for you to claim any rebate component for your appointment directly on the spot at each visit. [Please , make sure you bring your health insurance card to each appointment.]
We do accept EFTPOS, VISA, MasterCard and Amex with no transaction surcharges.
For your convenience we also offer you a variety of affordable and easy payment plan options, so that you won’t have to worry about putting off the dentaltreatment that you need.
Concluding the welcome letter
I’d then end the letter with a personal sign off by whoever took the phone call and made the appointment for the new patient.
We want the new patient to feel as though they already have a relationship with this person.
The personal sign off is very important.
[Your practice website should have up to date (professionally taken) photos and small descriptions of every team member, so that the new patient can see that there are REAL PEOPLE working at your dental practice.]
The letter should be signed by whoever took the call [with their role]:
Jenny Brown Patient Liaisons
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.comfor more details.
*****
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
ONE TIME WORKSHOP Friday NOVEMBER 15 in SYDNEY.
Are you looking for that competitive EDGE for your dental practice in these questionable economic times?
History has shown that those businesses providing LEGENDARY WORLD CLASS Customer Service to their clients have not only survived, but THRIVED in during difficult times.
For the First time in Australia, Vance Morris brings you his comprehensive one day boot camp style workshop:
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
At this FULL DAY EXCLUSIVE workshop, you and your team will learn:
All about the cost that poor customer service is having on your dental practice.
Vance Morris will provide you with multiple examples of the financial impact of what poor service is doing for your practice.
He will explain in detail how to clearly DEFINE the “Customer Experience” (CX) for your dental practice.
You will learn the TEN RULES for WORLD-CLASS customer service, including:
* Anticipatory Service
* You had me at “Hello”
* Customer Service as a revenue generator
* “Everything communicates”
Vance will also explain in detail the art of PROFITABLE Service Recovery, including:
* How PROFITABLE Service Recovery is a systematic business process
* How to uncover your opportunities for PROFITABLE Service Recovery
* You will discover how to anticipate the needs for recovery
* Learn how to Train and empower your frontline employees on PROFITABLE Service Recovery
And much, much more….
Best of all, you will discover Vance’s signature programme Systematic Magic.
You will learn how to easily Out-Serve, Out-Price and Out-Market your dental competition in ANY ECONOMY. Based off his 10 year experience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, Vance will reveal the 7 Magic Keys that Disney uses every day to create magic for their guests. This is the same system that Vance himself used while at Disney to create some of their iconic attractions.
At the end of the day, all attendees will leave with their own, personal blueprint to implement Disney style service in their dental practices, the very next day.
So if you’re looking for that competitive edge that’s going to set your dental practice APART from all of the other practices in your area, then book your dental TEAM into see Vance Morris NOW!!
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.
“What’s the ONE BIG THING I need to do right now to dramatically grow my Dental Practice?”
Or better still:
“David, if you were me, what’s the ONE BIG THING you would do right now to dramatically grow my Dental Practice?”
And I’m never quite sure why I get asked this question….
Not the part of the question about improving the dental practice, but the question about the thought that there is a SINGLE answer to this question that will solve all problems.
The first thing…
So as they do in the food and beverage industry, let’s do a deconstruction.
The first thing I would do if I wasn’t happy with my dental practice is to take a look at where the practice is now, and why is there and not where the owner thinks it should be.
Because if this is you…
If you were where you think you actually should be, then you would be in the right place.
Or the correct place.
And the fact that you are asking me for a solution means that you feel that maybe you are doing something less than adequately, or there is something that you should be doing, that you are not.
For one reason or another.
And it may be something you know of that you have chosen not to do.
Or it may be something that you have never heard of.
And this position is completely different from being happy [or not] with where your business is at this point in time.
And I am assuming you are happy with where your business is at this moment in time because if you WERE NOT HAPPY you would be in the process of actively changing things.
Which you are not.
Not doing.
So therefore you are content.
With your position.
Though it is far from ideal.
Otherwise you would not be asking for my advice.
The second thing…
The second thing I would do [if I were you] is take a look at my business and look at the reasons why my business is where it is right now at this point in time.
What are the decisions I have made that have led my business to be where it is?
What are the good decisions I have made?
What are the bad decisions I have made?
What have I done that I shouldn’t have?
And what should I have done that I decided not to do?
Make a list. Make it a long list. Make it an exhaustive list.
These are three significant columns.
When you make these three lists, you start to get a good image as to what kind of a business person you are.
Are you an implementer?
Are you a procrastinator?
Are you a ditherer?
The things that you put into each of these columns will create an accurate image as to what sort of a business person you are.
Has your practice suffered due to you failing to act?
Has your practice suffered as a result of you doing the wrong things?
The Third thing…
The thing to realise is that there is no silver bullet.
There is no one big thing that will reinvent your dental practice to make it into something spectacular.
My answer is this:
“The Simple Answer to the Question ‘What’s the ONE big thing?’ is that simply, there is NO ONE BIG THING……it’s about EVERYTHING!!”
Successful business coach Brad Sugars says it even better:
“Stop looking for the silver bullet … you don’t double a business by doing one thing 100% better … you do 100 things 1% better …”
Businesses are composed of a multitude of processes. When we focus only on one or two of those processes, we end up turning our backs on 98% of our other processes, often to the detriment of our own businesses.
It is those businesses that have a system of review and accountability for ALL of their processes, and that keep their employees accountable for their own departments and systems, that truly move up into the rarified air of business success.
And it is because of those systems.
So, it’s not about the NEXT BIG THING.
It’s about being better tomorrow than we were today.
It’s about being accountable to ourselves, to our businesses, and to our customers.
About improvement. And about progress.
And it’s about being whole.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.comfor more details.
*****
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
ONE TIME WORKSHOP Friday NOVEMBER 15 in SYDNEY.
Are you looking for that competitive EDGE for your dental practice in these questionable economic times?
History has shown that those businesses providing LEGENDARY WORLD CLASS Customer Service to their clients have not only survived, but THRIVED in during difficult times.
For the First time in Australia, Vance Morris brings you his comprehensive one day boot camp style workshop:
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
At this FULL DAY EXCLUSIVE workshop, you and your team will learn:
All about the cost that poor customer service is having on your dental practice.
Vance Morris will provide you with multiple examples of the financial impact of what poor service is doing for your practice.
He will explain in detail how to clearly DEFINE the “Customer Experience” (CX) for your dental practice.
You will learn the TEN RULES for WORLD-CLASS customer service, including:
* Anticipatory Service
* You had me at “Hello”
* Customer Service as a revenue generator
* “Everything communicates”
Vance will also explain in detail the art of PROFITABLE Service Recovery, including:
* How PROFITABLE Service Recovery is a systematic business process
* How to uncover your opportunities for PROFITABLE Service Recovery
* You will discover how to anticipate the needs for recovery
* Learn how to Train and empower your frontline employees on PROFITABLE Service Recovery
And much, much more….
Best of all, you will discover Vance’s signature programme Systematic Magic.
You will learn how to easily Out-Serve, Out-Price and Out-Market your dental competition in ANY ECONOMY. Based off his 10 year experience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, Vance will reveal the 7 Magic Keys that Disney uses every day to create magic for their guests. This is the same system that Vance himself used while at Disney to create some of their iconic attractions.
At the end of the day, all attendees will leave with their own, personal blueprint to implement Disney style service in their dental practices, the very next day.
So if you’re looking for that competitive edge that’s going to set your dental practice APART from all of the other practices in your area, then book your dental TEAM into see Vance Morris NOW!!
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.
“The great dividing line between success and failure can be expressed in five words: ‘I do not have time’.”
Lee Iacocca said:
“If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s important and give it all you’ve got.”
And Charles Darwin said:
“A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.”
We are all given twenty-four hours each day.
It is how each of us put those hours to use that determines our effectiveness and success.
Because once those hours are gone, they are gone forever.
Time cannot be saved or banked.
Time can only be used wisely.
The optimal organisation of a dental appointment book is not to squeeze every last possible penny out of each hour of dental treatment.
The aim of the well-structured and well-templated appointment book is for the patient to feel that they have received maximum attention during their visit to your dental office.
Paramount to this feeling being achieved is the practice’s ability to create true value for the dental patient during their regular dental hygiene appointment.
Here are some sure fire ways to reduce and eliminate the feeling of value for your patients in the dental hygiene room
Begin the appointment after time
End the appointment ahead of time
Leave the patient unattended during the appointment
Have the dentist come in to do the hygiene exam when the dentist feels like it, rather than at a specific repeatable and pre-calculated time. This includes the dentist entering the hygiene room before the patient has been seen by the hygienist, as well as mid-cleaning, when the patient has a half-dirty and half-cleaned dentition, and a mouth full of blood and prophy paste. This also includes allowing the dentist to come in late after the hygienist has cleaned the patient’s teeth and then abandoned the patient because the dentist is taking too long to get in there.
Hygienist fails to take adequate and appropriate and necessary photographic and radiographic records of the patient AHEAD of the dentist arriving for the oral examination.
Can you imagine the feelings going through the minds of your regular patients?
“Last time he came in at the end, this time he’s come in and looked before my teeth were even started, and the time before that he came in when my mouth was half dirty? How can things be so different?”
All our valued patients want is consistency.
When they visit their hairdressers they want the same people cutting [and COLOURING] their hair each time.
When they get their nails done they want the same person doing their nails each time.
They should deserve the same sort of consistency with their dental hygiene appointments.
And dental hygiene appointments are usually more expensive…
Other dental practice time management failures:
Why can’t dental practices organise the departure times [and arrival times] of their patients to allow for less congestion at the front desk area?
I worked with a dental practice in the USA that employed six dental hygienists each day.
But the practice had only three front office people to greet and farewell those hygiene patients, as well as the restorative patients seeing the two dentists of the practice.
Can you see the bottleneck?
Every hour eight patients were departing and eight patients were arriving but only three employees were available to interact with those patients.
And to heighten the frustration,the practice had just moved in to a brand-new facility. What a major office design failure!
The best solution we were able to arrive at for this practice was for the six hygiene patients each hour to be arriving and departing individually every ten minutes and not all at once on the hour, so that their transactions could be staggered and shared across the three front office employees.
If you run a structured appointment schedule this tip is golden.
When a dental practice employs more than one hygienist it is imperative that the hygiene examinations are all scheduled at the same time of the appointment for each and every patient.
This creates a consistency of visit for each hygiene patient.
What this also does is that it also allows the dental practice to reconstruct the practice appointment book so that the dentist is doing their own correct procedures at the correct times in the dentist’s treatment rooms that then allows the dentist to easily be available at the best time for hygiene.
And if there are two hygienists operating on the same day in the practice then their appointment schedules need to be diametrically opposed so that the dentist DOES NOT ever have to be in two hygiene rooms at the same time.
Better still, the hygiene schedules need to be organised so that when the dentist is needed in one room he is not required in the other room.
This requires some concentrated thinking.
It also requires a concentrated effort to maintain changed appointments using like with like.
The beauty of all this.
When a dental appointment schedule is constructed correctly, and MAINTAINED correctly it then becomes a very profitable appointment schedule.
Appointment schedules that are slapped together or not even put together at all create physical and mental and financial frustrations.
And that doesn’t benefit anyone at all.
It doesn’t benefit the patient.
It doesn’t benefit the dental team.
It doesn’t benefit the dental practice.
And it fails to provide for the dental practice owners.
And what’s the point then of all that?
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.comfor more details.
*****
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
ONE TIME WORKSHOP Friday NOVEMBER 15 in SYDNEY.
Are you looking for that competitive EDGE for your dental practice in these questionable economic times?
History has shown that those businesses providing LEGENDARY WORLD CLASS Customer Service to their clients have not only survived, but THRIVED in during difficult times.
For the First time in Australia, Vance Morris brings you his comprehensive one day boot camp style workshop:
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
At this FULL DAY EXCLUSIVE workshop, you and your team will learn:
All about the cost that poor customer service is having on your dental practice.
Vance Morris will provide you with multiple examples of the financial impact of what poor service is doing for your practice.
He will explain in detail how to clearly DEFINE the “Customer Experience” (CX) for your dental practice.
You will learn the TEN RULES for WORLD-CLASS customer service, including:
* Anticipatory Service
* You had me at “Hello”
* Customer Service as a revenue generator
* “Everything communicates”
Vance will also explain in detail the art of PROFITABLE Service Recovery, including:
* How PROFITABLE Service Recovery is a systematic business process
* How to uncover your opportunities for PROFITABLE Service Recovery
* You will discover how to anticipate the needs for recovery
* Learn how to Train and empower your frontline employees on PROFITABLE Service Recovery
And much, much more….
Best of all, you will discover Vance’s signature programme Systematic Magic.
You will learn how to easily Out-Serve, Out-Price and Out-Market your dental competition in ANY ECONOMY. Based off his 10 year experience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, Vance will reveal the 7 Magic Keys that Disney uses every day to create magic for their guests. This is the same system that Vance himself used while at Disney to create some of their iconic attractions.
At the end of the day, all attendees will leave with their own, personal blueprint to implement Disney style service in their dental practices, the very next day.
So if you’re looking for that competitive edge that’s going to set your dental practice APART from all of the other practices in your area, then book your dental TEAM into see Vance Morris NOW!!
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.
Dan Kennedy said that to be successful in business you need to be a better marketer of what you do than a doer of what you do.
Basically, people out there who need your services need to find out about you and your services.
And they find out about what you do by looking at your marketing.
Recently this email letter came across my desk:
“Dear David,
There are so many good people in the world with expertise who aren’t making the money they desire or having the freedom they deserve — and worse, they aren’t making the impact they could.
I’m thinking of one of my friends in particular. Every time I talk to him it boggles my mind – He’s a world-class expert, he’s connected to celebrities, he put enormous effort into writing one of the most comprehensive books in the world on his subject matter… and yet, this guy can’t make money or market to save his life. He keeps himself broke. The worst part about this is that I can’t even help him because despite my best efforts to give him marketing books to read, ideas to implement, and even trying to send him business (really!), he just can’t bring himself to love or appreciate marketing or making money.
I feel for him because he’s a really good guy and he is, in my opinion, one of the most knowledgeable people in the world when it comes to his topic — but he can’t get out of his way and market. He sees himself as an “expert.”
There’s nothing “wrong” with being an expert, but it’s super sad to watch experts flounder. When you have expertise, you can make such a difference in the world and have a huge impact…but unless you are going to rely on luck, you have to appreciate, respect, and love the vehicle that makes that difference and impact possible – Marketing!
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – There’s no relationship between being good and getting paid! It doesn’t matter how good your product, service, or expertise is until somebody has bought it. And let me ask you, what precedes something being bought? Yes! Selling and Marketing!
There are a TON of really good people running around with expertise who are broke and never get paid. The reason they never get paid has nothing to do with whether their expertise, product, or service is any good…
Listen, when I was a dead broke carpet cleaner, I knew how to clean people’s carpets and we provided a great service. But when I couldn’t get anyone to hire me, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t until I appreciated, loved, and implemented marketing that everything shifted.
If you’re “good” and you create value, you’ve got to position yourself, your product, your service, and/or your expertise in a way that is appealing to people. If you don’t, not only will people never do business with you but you won’t be able to serve them either — and you will never have the kind of freedom you want.
Make a commitment NOW to start using marketing to make more money, have more freedom, and make the impact we all know you can make. Today really can be the last day of the way you used to be.
Regards….”
These are pretty powerful words.
Last month I presented information to an audience of dentists and dental employees about how I built a very successful dental practice over twenty eight years in a working class part of western Sydney.
At the end of the presentation I explained in a few short minutes how attendees, if they so wished, could work with me, if they wished, to help improve their own dental practices.
As a result of these few minutes, some twenty-eight percent of the dentists attending sought me out to find out more.
These dentists were interested in growing their own practices with my guidance.
Interestingly, some of the other attending dentists criticised me for being “salesy” and objected to me taking a few minutes to share an offer with those interested.
Which brings me to the question…
What gives those dentists who don’t want any further information the right to have an influence on those dentists who sought me out for more information after the presentation?
Imagine if I had not taken those few minutes to share an offer with the audience?
If I had ended without offering any help at all, then twenty-eight percent of the dentists in the room would have wandered out of the room and headed home with the thought of
“Well what the heck do I do now?”
There’s a reason….
There’s obviously a market in the furniture industry for people who like to take home flat packs and turn them into furniture.
But there are also people out there who detest the process of trying to read instructions with no words and who do not want to spend hours and days of their lives trying to build things with only an Allen key as a tool.
Each to their own.
But let each choose.
I hear plenty of stories of families where uneducated family members take it upon themselves to rescue other family members from the opportunity of being successful.
And the same thing happens amongst groups of friends too.
And in professions, it seems…
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.comfor more details.
*****
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
ONE TIME WORKSHOP Friday NOVEMBER 15 in SYDNEY.
Are you looking for that competitive EDGE for your dental practice in these questionable economic times?
History has shown that those businesses providing LEGENDARY WORLD CLASS Customer Service to their clients have not only survived, but THRIVED in during difficult times.
For the First time in Australia, Vance Morris brings you his comprehensive one day boot camp style workshop:
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
At this FULL DAY EXCLUSIVE workshop, you and your team will learn:
All about the cost that poor customer service is having on your dental practice.
Vance Morris will provide you with multiple examples of the financial impact of what poor service is doing for your practice.
He will explain in detail how to clearly DEFINE the “Customer Experience” (CX) for your dental practice.
You will learn the TEN RULES for WORLD-CLASS customer service, including:
* Anticipatory Service
* You had me at “Hello”
* Customer Service as a revenue generator
* “Everything communicates”
Vance will also explain in detail the art of PROFITABLE Service Recovery, including:
* How PROFITABLE Service Recovery is a systematic business process
* How to uncover your opportunities for PROFITABLE Service Recovery
* You will discover how to anticipate the needs for recovery
* Learn how to Train and empower your frontline employees on PROFITABLE Service Recovery
And much, much more….
Best of all, you will discover Vance’s signature programme Systematic Magic.
You will learn how to easily Out-Serve, Out-Price and Out-Market your dental competition in ANY ECONOMY. Based off his 10 year experience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, Vance will reveal the 7 Magic Keys that Disney uses every day to create magic for their guests. This is the same system that Vance himself used while at Disney to create some of their iconic attractions.
At the end of the day, all attendees will leave with their own, personal blueprint to implement Disney style service in their dental practices, the very next day.
So if you’re looking for that competitive edge that’s going to set your dental practice APART from all of the other practices in your area, then book your dental TEAM into see Vance Morris NOW!!
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.
A recent experience of a good friend of mine prompted me to revisit the way that we used to create an Ultimate Referral Experience in our dental practice for our valued patients who were in need of specialist dentist attention.
I’ve seen some pretty poor referral processes in my time, and I’ve also seen some arrogant and unappreciative specialist dental practices.
And those are not ULTIMATE experiences for our valued patients.
The first thing that I tried to do at my dental practice was to locate specialists who would come to my rooms and deliver their services in my rooms to my patients.
Whenever you can offer THIS type of referral service in your practice you have the ability to control the referral process.
And that is important.
Because a dental practice that is able to provide as many dental services “all under one roof” is a service that many of your patients will be very appreciative of.
Doing this allows your patients to see the dental specialist without having to travel to a building or town or place that they are unfamiliar with.
The specialist service is then being provided in a location that your patients already know and trust. And the staff of your practice, who those patients know and trust, will be all around to add familiarity.
This is very, very powerful.
At my practice we were able to utilise the services of one travelling dentist who specialised in oral surgery procedures and implants, and who also was able to bring his own registered anaesthetic nurse if sedation procedures were needed.
We also utilised the visiting services of an overseas trained and overseas registered endodontist for a full day every two weeks. This dentist performed and enjoyed treating difficult endodontic procedures. This meant that our patients then didn’t need to travel across the city for their root canal treatments.
Crazy referral processes.
If your referral processes at your dental practice are flawed you run the risk of patients leaving your rooms and not having their specialist treatment completed.
And I’ve seen this happen.
I’ve seen dental practices where the patient is given the address and phone number of the specialist rooms and is asked to call the specialist and organise their own appointment.
And the necessary referral from the general dentist is either mailed or emailed to the specialist.
Or sometimes the referral is handed to the patient to take with them.
Often in these sorts of cases the patient ends up at the specialist in a confused state, and not really knowing what they are there to have done. And because the making of the specialist appointment is taken away from the referring dentist, the referring dentist doesn’t really know when the patient has been completed by the specialist, and whether the patient is then ready for further treatment at the general dentist practice.
In these sort of situations there is a major disconnect happening that is easily avoidable.
Here’s the best way….
Here’s what we used to do.
When a valued patient needed to be referred out to a specialist dentist, our dental receptionists and treatment coordinators would phone ahead to the specialist’s rooms then and there, right in front of the patient, and book the needed appointment for the patient.
First and foremost, this allowed our valued patient to see that there was a friendly and courteous working relationship between our dental practice and the dental office of the specialist.
Our dental receptionist and the receptionist of the specialist would coordinate all the necessary details right then and there for the patient, so that all that the patient needed to do was attend the specialist at the agreed time.
With this process working so seamlessly, our practice was also able to schedule our patient for ongoing treatment required following their visit to the specialist.
The dental specialist also appreciated that the patient referred to them in this manner had a better understanding of what was going on than a patient who phoned them cold to schedule an appointment.
When your dental practice is able to develop a good amicable working relationship with their preferred dental specialists it makes life easier for the patients, for the specialists, and for the dental practice.
Recently a friend of mine was referred by her dentist to an OMFS office, only to be told by that specialist practice that the OMFS was not seeing any more new patients.
This message was then conveyed [by my friend] back to the referring dentist who then jumped on the phone himself to secure my friend the necessary appointment.
When my friend attended the OMFS, it became apparent to my friend that the OMFS was just a rude and arrogant person who failed to ask my friend any questions and failed to explain anything to my friend about the condition she was seeking treatment for.
It’s when I hear stories like this that I realise that there is easily plenty of opportunity out there in the marketplace for dentists who care to build themselves successful dental practices.
And one location would be right next door to this OMFS practice.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.comfor more details.
*****
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
ONE TIME WORKSHOP Friday NOVEMBER 15 in SYDNEY.
Are you looking for that competitive EDGE for your dental practice in these questionable economic times?
History has shown that those businesses providing LEGENDARY WORLD CLASS Customer Service to their clients have not only survived, but THRIVED in during difficult times.
For the First time in Australia, Vance Morris brings you his comprehensive one day boot camp style workshop:
“How to Bring the Customer Service Magic of Disney Right There Into Your Dental Practice”
At this FULL DAY EXCLUSIVE workshop, you and your team will learn:
All about the cost that poor customer service is having on your dental practice.
Vance Morris will provide you with multiple examples of the financial impact of what poor service is doing for your practice.
He will explain in detail how to clearly DEFINE the “Customer Experience” (CX) for your dental practice.
You will learn the TEN RULES for WORLD-CLASS customer service, including:
* Anticipatory Service
* You had me at “Hello”
* Customer Service as a revenue generator
* “Everything communicates”
Vance will also explain in detail the art of PROFITABLE Service Recovery, including:
* How PROFITABLE Service Recovery is a systematic business process
* How to uncover your opportunities for PROFITABLE Service Recovery
* You will discover how to anticipate the needs for recovery
* Learn how to Train and empower your frontline employees on PROFITABLE Service Recovery
And much, much more….
Best of all, you will discover Vance’s signature programme Systematic Magic.
You will learn how to easily Out-Serve, Out-Price and Out-Market your dental competition in ANY ECONOMY. Based off his 10 year experience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, Vance will reveal the 7 Magic Keys that Disney uses every day to create magic for their guests. This is the same system that Vance himself used while at Disney to create some of their iconic attractions.
At the end of the day, all attendees will leave with their own, personal blueprint to implement Disney style service in their dental practices, the very next day.
So if you’re looking for that competitive edge that’s going to set your dental practice APART from all of the other practices in your area, then book your dental TEAM into see Vance Morris NOW!!
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.
Click on this link for all details
