At the dental office, the ringing phone is not an interruption to your day.
Rather, the ringing phone is an opportunity.
It is your opportunity to make someone’s day.
The way that you look at your dental office phone has a serious impact on the outcomes of the calls your office receives.
Meet someone new.
Every time that phone rings at your dental practice, it could well be someone who has never been to your practice before.
This person could well be a person of influence in a circle of people that you do not know, and may be your personal opportunity to broaden your horizons, if you take the opportunity to get to know them in that instant, as well as later on.
Help them.
Nobody phones a dental practice just for the fun of it.
The phone at a dental practice rings because the caller has a dental concern that they need fixed.
It’s just that sometimes the caller may not know how to begin the conversation, so they start by asking a “careless” question that is unrelated to their issue.
This question that they ask may be about your prices, or about your opening hours.
If you are good, you will skillfully dig through the fluff and carefully expose the true reason for their call.
If you are no good you will just blurt out an answer to the careless question and the phone call will usually end just there.
You will have failed to do what you have been employed to do.
Make a friend.
The best way to help someone is to be friendly.
And the best way to be friendly is to ask questions, so that the person you are talking to can answer them.
When someone is answering “the right” question, and speaking, they feel more at ease than when they are listening to someone rattle on.
If the caller feels your genuine concern, you will have created a friend.
Go the extra mile
Make each caller feel as if their call to your office is the call that you have been waiting for all day, and that nothing else in the world has any relevance, at that point in time.
The easiest way to do this is to create a viable solution for the caller that includes clarity, and action.
A clear, next step.
The call must conclude with the caller feeling that you have “gone out of your way”, and you have given the caller a significant degree of certainty about what they now need to do next.
Create anticipation
Let each caller know that if an opportunity arises, you will be phoning them and bringing their appointment forward.
Every call to your practice should end with the caller putting down that phone and thinking:
“I hope that they can get me in sooner.”
When your team believe the ringing phone is an opportunity…
When you have any employees who consider a ringing phone to be a nasty interruption to their day, `then you have the wrong employees.
The ringing phone is the opportunity to help solve someone’s dental concern.
The way you handle that opportunity allows you to become “a hero” in the eyes of that caller.
Don’t deflate that opportunity..
Step up.
And embrace the opportunity….
*****
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….
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.
I know that scientists have found pain in the same brain circuits that give you pleasure, and that the pain that masochists feel releases adrenaline and dopamine, which makes them feel good.
What concerns me more about the cliché is the use of, and the acceptance of the existence of a “so called” fine line…
Whoever decided that fine lines made the co-existence of two things acceptable?
Sometimes someone may window dress a behaviour in an attempt to disguise what it really is.
One person’s perception may be their one hundred percent reality.
Let me explain.
A person may perceive comments made to them as being of a harassing behaviour.
But the person making those comments may believe those comments to be complimentary [about someone’s appearance] or of a flirtatious nature.
The reality of the matter is that the intention of the comments is irrelevant.
The interpretation of the comments is all that matters.
If the comments are “taken” in a way they were not meant to be taken, then those comments are out of order because the purpose of those comments has not been clarified, or pre-clarified.
In the same manner, if we were to ask somebody to perform a task and they failed to do so, it may have been because we had failed to deliver our instructions with complete clarity as to the result we were expecting.
And so the reason in this case for the failure falls firmly upon the messenger rather than on the receiver of the message.
Humour should be funny.
In the workplace, attempts at humour should not be at the expense of somebody else’s self-esteem.
Making “jokes” about a co-worker’s ability or lack of ability is humiliating, and frankly, is bullying.
Derogatory comments that attempt to create a laugh at the expense of someone else’s behaviours, or choices, or worse still, things out of that person’s control, say a lot MORE about the [lack of] character of the person making those comments than they do about the intended target of those comments.
This also goes for derogatory comments made outside of the workplace as well…
It’s time to grow up…
In the twenty-first century, there must be no place for bullies.
Banish the bullies from your workplace. Dismiss them.
Remove them from your groups, and your clubs, and your circles.
Only allow them to return to those places on the understanding that those previous behaviours will no longer be tolerated.
Our world grows by building, not by destroying.
There are two ways to own the tallest building in town.
One is to tear down and destroy all those buildings taller than yours until yours is the tallest building left standing.
And the other way is to just go out there and build something of significance.
The second thought.
Although purposefully ignoring someone in the workplace can be seen as an act of “workplace harassment”, my thought is that on nearly every occasion in life, our SECOND THOUGHT will be far more appropriate as a response than our initial first thought.
And often that second thought can simply be silence.
Or “No comment”.
Sometimes there is merit in letting a few “go through to the keeper”.
Buying time often buys respect.
When I was an employer, I often would have employees come to me with questions.
What I found worked well for me was to ask those employees if I could give their question some thought and get back to them later with my answer.
This worked well because it allowed me time to digest the question and plan my response, as opposed to “shooting from the hip”.
And the other bonus that came from this approach was that during the time-out that I had asked for, the employee was often able to come up with their own solution to their original question.
And that was empowering.
There should be no fine line any more…
There is only what there is.
There should be no grey areas.
Right and wrong need to be clearly demarcated, and separated by a thick black line.
“Intent” and “attempt” should have nothing to do with anything.
*****
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….
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.
I often am asked about THE POINT of Customer Service in a dental practice.
When I tell people that’s what I do, in that I teach dentists how to improve their customer service delivery systems, I often receive really strange looks.
Looks of confusion.
Looks that say to me:
“Really?”
And
“What’s the point?”
It’s as if these people believe that dental practices DO NOT need to provide Customer Service to their patients.
These looks imply that employees at dental practices DO NOT need to provide Customer Service to their patients in a similar way that employees at Land Tax Offices tend to go out of their way sometimes NOT TO BE helpful and friendly towards their customers.
Is the response of these people simply because these people believe that a visit to the dentist is such a negative experience that no amount of customer service could ever be sufficient to make it a pleasurable and memorable experience?
Well I’m here to tell you….
In the Movie “FIELD OF DREAMS” the key line is:
“If you build it, he will come”.
And in your dental practice, you have the opportunity of building the dental practice that you want, and attracting the type of patient that you want, simply by making choices.
When Matthew McConaughey accepted his Oscar for his role in “DALLAS BUYERS CLUB” he said:
“Gratitude reciprocates”.
Providing service to someone is simply the act of helping them move away from what they do not want and towards what they do want.
Sometimes the person receiving this service is unaware that the place they are being moved to is a better place than where they are.
And in so creating these moments of improvement for the people we deal with, the people we love, and the people we serve, we are able to create a “state” of improvement, a perception of something better, that has actually been instigated by our action.
What act of kindness, of service, are you willing to instigate today to improve somebody’s state of mind?
And better still, what sequence of actions, what series of processes can you implement in your business on a permanent basis that will have your customers, clients, and patients saying:
“WOW! These guys really do get it.”
*****
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….
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 easiest way to be successful when starting a new business is to see what all your competitors are doing, and then do the opposite.”
And I know, that is during times of crisis, when most people are fearful or hesitant of change, that the greatest opportunities arise.
The difficult thing is to selectively filter the true opportunities from the GHOST opportunities.
Because there will always be situations that present as opportunities, that are nothing more than blatant distractions using false silhouettes in an attempt to disguise themselves.
And it is during these times, that the vulnerable do need to have their BS meters and their radars cranked up to the max.
Life is Simply a Series of Tests…
“A Smooth Sea Never made a Skilled Sailor” – Franklin D Roosevelt
It was said to me this week that during a growth market it is easy for people to get away with being lazy.
And that’s true, because the momentum, or the current of growth, simply sweeps those lazy people along, as they float downstream with that current.
It was also said to me that in a tighter more economically challenged market, the lazy need to be able to pivot and adjust to ensure survival.
And it is in tighter market where the things that we previously avoided doing consistently [during the growth market] now become those things that we have to do and MUST DO.
The time is now.
There has never been a better time than now to grab the bull by the horns and take ownership of your destiny.
At present there is so much opportunity to take a grasp of.
Our leaders and influencers within our communities need to stand up and take ownership of those currently vacant titles that are available for them.
Do not avoid your destiny.
The time is upon us.
*****
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….
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.
