One of the things that Zappos.com became famous for was their above and beyond customer service that did not involve the selling of shoes.
But, Zappos.com is an online shoe retailer, isn’t it?
But, I hear you say:
“Isn’t it the job of Zappos.com employees to help their customers purchase shoes?”
Well here’s a surprise..
The role of every telephonist receiving inbound phone calls at Zappos.com is to first and foremost be able to provide information.
To be of assistance.
And to solve problems and answer questions.
Even if those questions have nothing at all to do with shoes and buying shoes.
Nothing at all.
Callers can phone Zappos.com from anywhere and at any time, and ask what the weather forecast will be for downtown Clarkesville tonight, and would they [the Zappos.com employee] recommend taking a jacket or an umbrella…
Or ask who won the game between the Panthers and the Roosters on last Monday night.
And their questions will be answered, even if they are not and never ever have been a Zappos.com customer.
Would you do that or similar at your dental practice?
Even if it had nothing to do with dentistry, would your team members be as helpful if a total stranger phoned and asked which is the best Café in Newtown?
Or would you do this?
A caller phones your dental practice just as you are walking out the door for the evening. Your dentist has gone, and the caller is a New Patient in severe pain, who has not been to your office before.
And you can hear the desperation in the caller’s voice… they need to see a dentist right NOW!!
Would you say:
“I’m sorry, but we are closed for the day now.” CLICK.
Or would you say this:
Hi Betty, we’re closed for the night now, but let me do this. It sounds like you really need to see someone this evening. Let me phone around a few dentists that I know who work late and get you in to see one of them. Would that be OK? I’ll get you an appointment this evening and get straight back to you with the details and the address and the time…”
A lot of dental offices wouldn’t bother to offer this level of service or favour to a caller in distress.
Even if the caller was an existing patient of record, let alone a total stranger.
The response that a lot of offices would use would be along the lines of:
“Sorry buddy, but you’re on your own. Best of luck.”
And that would be the end of that.
But what if your dental office did help the caller find a dentist, and then did this….
What if someone from your dental office phoned the caller [who was in pain] the next day and just struck up a conversation with them to find out how they got on with the dentist that we helped find for them?
Without looking to poach the caller.
Chances are that the caller in pain will tell a story to her family and friends, and her nearest and dearest, that might go something like this:
“You’ll never believe what happened to me this week? I had a really bad toothache towards the end of the day last Monday, and I phone a couple of dentists trying to get an appointment.
Well the first two that I phoned, they didn’t have anything.
But then I phoned Active Dental. Now they were closing, but what Benita there did, was she rang a dentist that she knew, and she got me an appointment there.
And he was great. He got me out of pain. Very gentle.
But I tell you what? I was really impressed with the Above and Beyond service I got from Benita at Active Dental. Not only did she find me an appointment with Dr Smith, but she phoned me the next day, just to double check and make sure that I got my problem fixed.
I’m actually considering going there, to Active Dental, because Benita was so nice in doing all that…”
The story told by the caller, about the Above and Beyond actions of Benita, are a PRICELESS advertisement for your business because that CULTURE of service that your practice exudes, is such a rare commodity.
Are you looking for ways that your dental office can go that extra mile?
For any caller?
Because it certainly is an easy way to stand out from the crowd…
*****
Online Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this unique online ZOOM workshop Saturday March 20, 2021
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 wrote an article at the start of the year about the Five Essential Numbers I’d be tracking and measuring in my dental practice as we start into the new year of 2021.
The fifth number of the five that I’d be tracking is this one:
How much treatment are we diagnosing in the practice each and every day?
It’s really very simple… if you’re fixing teeth and doing dentistry on a daily basis, and you’re not diagnosing or treatment planning any dentistry on those same days, then its logical to presume that sooner or later you’re going to run out of things to do.
In exactly the same way that if you keep going to the pantry and to the refrigerator and eating and drinking what you have in there, but you don’t go to the grocery store or the supermarket to buy more, then sooner or later, as the nursery rhyme says, the cupboard will be bare, and so the poor dog will have none.
“Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the Cupboard,
To give the poor Dog a bone;
When she came there,
The Cupboard was bare,
And so the poor Dog had none.”
It is simple. If we do the dentistry, we need to be doing more dentistry.
Each day our dental practice needs to diagnose and present dental treatment to our patients that is equal or greater in amount than the dentistry we are doing each day, otherwise our dental practice will become insolvent.
Now, this is NOT TO SAY that dentists should be over-diagnosing unnecessary extra treatment.
To do that would be unconscionable and totally unethical.
What I am saying is this:
Dentists need to make sure that their practice has an adequate supply or inflow of new patients that require dental treatment.
Your dental practice should know how much money an average new patient spends at your dental practice. Then you can market your practice to attract the number of new patients each month that you need.
[Simply use your dental software to summate the amount of money each of your new patients from 2019 spent on their dentistry. And divide that total amount of dentistry by the number of New Patients on that list to calculate the average New Patient value.]
Your practice also should be able to calculate what an average EXISTING patient spends at your dental practice. Using this number, we can calculate how many existing patients should be returning for hygiene on a regular basis.
[Similarly, look at your hygiene figures for 2019 and see which patients saw the hygienist and then scheduled and completed some restorative dentistry uncovered during the hygiene visit.]
These figures are available to you, in your dental practice, and SHOULD BE being used by you as the practice owner to FORECAST your dental practice future.
Because, if you’re not forecasting, then you’re only HOPING.
And if you’re hoping things will work out, then you’re probably not living the life of your dreams.
You can’t run a business, a family, a lifestyle based on hoping and wishing.
The figures are there.
Find them and use them.
And if you can’t find them, call me, and I’ll help you get sorted and back on the RIGHT ROAD to recovery.
Because the other road leads to failure, and at best, mediocrity.
You choose….
Like I said at the end of the first article in this series, if you measure these five metrics each and every day, you’ll go a long way towards building the dental practice of your dreams in 2021….
*****************
Online Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this unique online ZOOM workshop Saturday March 20, 2021
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.
This is a question that needs to be regularly asked, and answered in any organisation with more than one employee.
All team members need to be working together towards a common goal for the organisation.
All team members need to be on the same page and need to be COMMUNICATING with each other.
We can’t have teams, and team members, operating in silos without cross communication. The efforts, and exertions, and results of one sub-team or team member MUST BE SHARED with other team members and sub-teams in the organisation so that collaborative discussion can occur and build upon positive results and also amend efforts that are resulting in outcomes that are less than desirable.
Team members in a department need to share and educate each other as to what’s working for them in their roles as well as helping those team members struggling with mastering certain duties and roles.
Remember, the word TEAM stands for Together Each Adds Meaning.
A football team works to outscore their opposition.
One football team member may be struggling to get past his opposing player, but some helpful advice given from one of his team members may be the GOLD NUGGET that is needed to create the needed competitive advantage.
Similarly, in the dental office, on the phone answering team, one team member may be booking a significant number of new patient appointments compared to another team member.
This information about what is working well needs to be shared between co-workers. Comparing what one employee is saying compared to another, will help the team member with the weaker appointment booking numbers to improve.
After all, in dentistry, we owe it to our callers to make sure that we solve their problems. And that usually means scheduling them an appointment with our dentists or hygienists to attend to their issues.
Remember, as Jayne Bandy says:
“They haven’t phoned your office to order a pizza.”
The caller has not phoned your office for the fun of it or because they have ten minutes of time to kill. The caller has a dental problem or concern and they are looking to your dental office to HELP THEM.
If collaborative training of your team is not your forte, then the best thing to do is to outsource the training, and employ someone who can come in specifically to help engage your team members to work together as a TEAM, and not work as a group of individuals.
Economically, the investment in a coach is far less than the lost dental production time wasted by a dentist trying to do something they are not trained to do or are not good at doing.
And then the dentist can do what they are meant to be doing…. some dentistry.
The ROI on external training is always a 5X or 10X or more multiple, unless the team members do not want to be trained.
A football team would never tolerate or endure a team member who did not want to be trained.
Yet some dental offices do?
Why is that even logical or rational?
A dental practice is a business with owners who have invested money in that business.
And that skin in the game should mean that the owners have the right to choose who is on the bus, and who needs to get off the bus.
******************
Online Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2021”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this unique online ZOOM workshop Saturday March 20, 2021
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.
