A friend of mine and his wife were on a road trip recently when they stopped at a small town for some refreshments.
The town was small.
It was a one building town.
My friend’s wife was thirsty. In the shop, she asked:
“Do you have sparkling water?”
To which the attendant replied:
“Lady you’ve got to remember where you are…. we’ve either got water. Or coke.”
It was a small one building town.
With no sparkling water…
Is this how you run your dental office?
Is this following scenario a regular feature in your practice?
Q. “Do you take American Express?”
A. “No we don’t…”
Every time you tell an American Express Card Holder that your business does not accept their Amex Card, what you are saying is that your business is TOO TIGHT to stump up for the extra 1-2% merchant fee that American Express may charge you for looking after one of their card members.
And you’re actually not saying that message to American Express, but rather, to your customer’s face, each and every time.
And you’re telling each Amex Card holder that you’re ignoring the fact that American Express Card carriers are usually higher earners, and also pay their Amex bill off IN FULL each and every month. [Something that Visa Card holders tend not to do….]
Give me a whole practice full of Amex Card Holders each and every day please….
The town was small.
It was a one building town.
When I purchased my dental practice….
Way back in 1987 when I purchased my dental practice from Dr John Martin, I asked him whether or not he had Nitrous Oxide sedation available in the practice.
To which he answered no, he did not.
But then he offered me these words of wisdom. He said:
“If you don’t have it on the shelf then you can’t sell it. My advice to you is that if you want to be offering a service to your customers then you need to have it available to them from day one.”
And so I invested in an RA machine immediately.
So that I could offer the Nitrous Oxide Sedation immediately.
In your dental practice….
Work out the things that you need to be offering, so that you’re not offering up an excuse or an apology on a consistent basis that is actually driving your valued clients away and into the dental offices of your competitors, just because of your bone-headed ignorance for what consumers in your marketplace are actually wanting and requesting.
Because, leave you they will…..
*****
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.
Who would you rather guarding your house and your family and your property?
Would you rather they be someone trained in surveillance and in firearms, who practices and undergoes certification for the services they provide?
Or would you prefer that they be someone who just turns up?
With no real skills as such?
When it comes to protection, our political leaders, our sports stars and entertainers, all have “minders” who they know are certified and they know they can depend upon.
It’s the same when we dine out…
When we go to a restaurant, we want to be sure that the practices in the kitchen are safe and hygienic, and that the chef and the kitchen staff know what they are doing. Because otherwise it could turn into a dog’s breakfast…
We rely on the Department of Health and the regulators, along with the restaurant owners, to maintain certifications in the interests of consumer safety.
Yet despite the fact that we all know that we have these checks and balances that we expect to be in place out there in the big wide world that we deal with, there are a lot of dental practices out there that have no checks and balances and accountability plans for the people who work in their practices answering their dental office phones.
Their dental office phones are a FREE FOR ALL.
These practices have no ongoing trainings for their dental receptionists.
The practices don’t track and measure performances and results of phone calls at their office on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, and they have no ideas as to who are their star performing team members that are answering those phones, and which of their team members could do with some help and assistance.
These dental practices are living on HOPE.
They are hoping that their phones are being answered ok, and they are hoping that their existing patients and new patients phoning in don’t wonder if this is “as good as it gets.”
A dentist recently said to me that “his staff weren’t comfortable with the thought of having the dental practice phone calls recorded.”
And so on this note he wasn’t willing to proceed with training his staff in this manner.
But he did want some other “lecture” styles of training.
Well that’s just not going to work.
That’s like having piano lessons but not letting the piano teacher see and hear you play.
Or it’s like getting golf lessons, but never letting the pro see how you swing.
Really, as a business owner, you’d really have to ask yourself this simple question:
If your staff, who you pay money to to perform tasks, don’t want to be trained PROPERLY to improve and get better, and don’t want to be held accountable, then what else is going on in that business?
Because it sounds like the inmates are running the asylum…
Competence breeds results.
And improved competencies breed better results.
*****
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.
Continuing on from the theme I discussed last week that “Your Dental Practice Is Too Small” comes this thought:
Your dental practice is too small to let any call go to voice mail.
No dental practice anywhere should be letting incoming phone calls go to a voice message service, or go straight onto an on-hold service without first being answered by a real live human being.
Yet more and more I am hearing this happening at dental practices.
And it’s happening for one or more of the following reasons:
The dental front office staff do not understand the value to the practice of a New Patient, and an incoming phone call.
The dental front office staff are not trained or are not competent at managing more than one phone call at a time.
The dental front office staff believe that they need to be 100% focussed on the live patient in front of them and that the incoming phone call is less important.
The dental office staff believe that incoming phone calls are more of an annoyance to their tasks at hand, when in fact they are serious opportunities to be of service.
There are not enough people employed to answer phones at the practice and so the voice message service is a “safety net” when the practice has more calls than it can deal with at any one moment in time.
The practice, and the staff believe that if the call is important they will leave a message and phone back, otherwise they were probably a “shopper”.
Your caller to your practice whose call goes through to voice mail feels the following emotions:
This practice doesn’t have enough staff.
This dental practice doesn’t care about people who phone in.
If they are a new patient calling your practice, they probably are thinking that your practice is now not for them.
If they are an existing patient phoning your practice they are feeling taken for granted, or undervalued, or ignored.
The dental practice phone is the most important piece of equipment in your dental practice.
It needs to be mastered.
It needs to be respected.
The dental practice phone should NEVER be taken for granted.
*****
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.
Dental treatment these days can be very expensive to the average consumer.
Some patients are quite surprised when they find out the cost of restoring their mouth back to a state of comfort and health.
This “sticker shock” reaction by your dental patients can easily be avoided when your dental office operates with a sequence of carefully planned protocols and processes that are designed to help make the unaffordable affordable.
When we present the patient with their necessary dental treatment plan with a goal of making that treatment affordable, then:
The patient will see the value in the treatment and care being recommended.
The patient sees a way to pay for their treatment and care.
The patient will want to go ahead with this necessary treatment and care.
You and your dental team must be able to talk comfortably about money and treatment with your patients so that they can go ahead with their necessary dental treatment.
When you avoid talking about money with your patients, or when your office DELAYS talking about costs and fees, your patients:
will be shocked and upset when they eventually find out how much their treatment will be.
say “NO” to treatment and care because of the shock.
will become confused. They will wonder why you did not give them adequate advanced notice of your fees and charges.
may often not see the value.
may feel deceived and change dentists.
and ultimately, you may have helped your patient to not go ahead with the necessary treatment and care that they really do need.
Sadly, many dentists believe that their team are not capable of talking money and ways to pay with the patients.
These same dentists say:
“Even if my team knows what to say, they won’t get it right.”
“My practice is not set up well to talk to patients about money.”
“My patients do not want to talk about money and how they can pay for treatment.”
“I don’t do much high production treatment because my patients have no money.”
You Want an Easy Step By Step System of Communication:
That is easy to follow
That gets you results
That results in more patients going ahead with treatment
When your team know how……you will see a BIG difference in patients saying “Yes” to Treatment and Care.
The Choices that your dental practice offers will give your patients a variety of payment methods to choose from.
There is no one payment plan that fits all, so have choices.
Many patients can still pay a significant piece of the payment, but may need to break up only a part of their payment.
It is often much easier for your patients to digest a smaller dollar amount that they know they can manage and pay. How many patients don’t go ahead with treatment because they can’t get their head around the large total amount?
Once your team and you are confident in the way you are talking about the ways your patients can pay, your patients will also become more confident in themselves with their ability to manage their payments.
Ultimately you are trying to help make things quicker and easier for your patients to receive their necessary diagnosed treatments.
Talking about How to Pay…..
“Did you know that many of our patients are using …………to pay for their treatment?”
“Would you be interested in knowing more about…….?”
“I can show you some different options for payment. How does that sound?”
“The good news is, with all of these payment options you can choose the one that will suit you best.”
“Let’s work out which payment option will suit you best.”
When your dental practice helps your patients to be able to afford their necessary dental treatment, here is what happens:
No becomes YES!
Patients become more confident and become more ready to go ahead with their treatment.
Patients know and understand that they have this type of payment as an ongoing backup and plan.
Patients will tell their family and friends how easy and affordable it is to get their dental work done at your office.
Your practice will never need to offer a discount again and undervalue the dentistry you provide!
*****
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.
Recently I came across a list of activities needing to be performed in a dental practice.
This list was a list of activities that would differentiate the practice that performed these tasks as being exceptional when compared to other dental offices around that do not bother to perform any of these tasks of differentiation.
However, after listing these tasks, the excuse was given:
“Your Dental Practice Is Too Small!”
The implication was that if your dental practice is small, it need not bother doing these tasks, because the practice’s [lack of] size is in fact a deterrent to prospective patients attending, and therefore any attempt to create a positive point of difference for the small practice would indeed be a waste of effort and time.
The implication from the list of tasks was that they would only be noteworthy for a larger practice to perform, and that smaller practices need not bother.
How wrong that implication is….
The tip on this list that stood out to me as being unnecessary for small dental offices to do was this one:
“It’s too small for the dentist to do personal welcome calls to all new patients.”
When the dentist phones each new patient in advance to welcome them to the practice ahead of time, and to thank them for making their appointment with his office, and to ask if there’s anything in particular that they are looking to have done, this is such a WOW FACTOR for each and every new patient who receives one of these calls.
Because simply, no other dental practices out there are bothering at all to make one of these types of phone calls.
And that in itself creates an AMAZING point of difference for your dental practice in your local market place.
Imagine your new patient at work saying to a co-worker:
“You’ll never guess who just phoned me? I’ve got a dental appointment next Monday at a new dental practice, and the dentist there just called to personally welcome me to the practice!”
And of course, the co-worker says:
“Gee, my dentist never does things like that….”
Make your dental practice stands out from the others.
Be on the look-out for easy to do points of WOW!! that your dental office can easily perform.
*****
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.
