I remember a conversation I had forty years ago with a work colleague. It was when I was working in a licenced club at nights, while attending Sydney University during the day.
The colleague was re-telling me a story of in “intimate moment” he had enjoyed with a young woman in the back seat of his car.
While my colleague was telling me that he thought at the time that he was going ok, when he looked up at his partner during this “moment” he found that she was doodling in the mist forming on the inside of the back window of the car.
Sadly, for my work colleague, his partner’s mind was well and truly elsewhere.
His partner was far from present, and “in the moment.”
Has this ever happened to you?
Has this ever happened to you?
Have you ever been in conversation with someone, and felt that their mind was elsewhere? That they were distracted from the conversation that you were having with them?
Have you ever been that person, where you’ve been listening to someone speaking, and caught yourself losing concentration about the immediate conversation?
Whenever this happens, it’s both embarrassing and also annoying.
It’s embarrassing for both parties because the listener has to very subtly and surreptitiously try to re-engage in the conversation without making it look obvious that they had temporarily checked out of the discussion.
And it’s annoying for the person speaking, to think that the subject matter of what they were speaking about had not been so riveting, and had allowed their companion’s mind to wander.
Sometimes people only hear selectively what they think is being said
Sometimes people only hear selectively what they think is being said. They listen from their own point of view, rather than listening with a totally open mind to the true words being spoken to them.
When we listen with a purpose of understanding, rather than with a purpose of responding, it is then that we can truly CONNECT in a conversation with someone.
It is very embarrassing for both parties when there is not a TOTAL CONNECTION between them.
In the dental office:
There are several events in a dental office where disconnection or lack of connection can lead to embarrassing moments:
Dental assisting during long procedures: It is very important for dental assistants to stay focussed on their roles and their duties while assisting the dentist in the treatment room. This is not a time for the dental assistant’s mind to wander away from being focussed on the job at hand.
On the front office phone: When answering the dental practice phone it is imperative to be focussed 100% on what the caller is telling us and having a very clear set of actions to pursue to help solve the caller’s problems.
I often hear recordings of calls where the dental receptionist is more focussed on filling a blank space in an appointment schedule, than she is on helping to solve any problems or find solutions for the caller at hand.
Conversations between dental team members and patients: It is important to always be “in the moment” when in conversation with a patient, remembering that the aim of the conversation with the patient is to stay totally focused on what the patient is saying.
We cannot be seen to be ignoring, or by our actions and inactions be seen to be trivialising what the patient is telling us.
Remember, be engaged!
Don’t ever be caught out not paying attention, and giving 100%.
Stay focussed.
Mental doodling at any time is far from a good look.
*****
LIVE 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 LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
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.
In the 1992 Movie A FEW GOOD MEN, there’s this now infamous courtroom scene, with a heated exchange:
The Colonel, in the stand, played by Jack Nicholson says:
“You want answers?”
The corporal interrogating, him, played by Tom Cruise says:
“I want the truth!”
Jack Nicholson replies:
“You can’t handle the truth!”
I know it’s only a couple of lines from a movie, but …. It is very true.
A lot of dentists have no idea what’s going on in their dental practices…
And that’s the truth.
Think about it.
The dentist owner is usually in a treatment room, with his door closed, working on a dental patient, totally focussed on the tooth or teeth at hand.
He’s drilling away, with everything going on in the practice happening behind his back.
And because the door is closed, and because he doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head, he has ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA really about anything else in the practice.
Except for those things he can perceive or those things he is told about.
But what about all those things that he is never told about?
Like staff members being constantly on their mobile devices?
Or callers to the practice who are not being given the appointment that they are in need of?
To put it frankly, if your dental practice is not recording the phone calls that are coming in to your office, and is not having an independent person review those phone recordings, you as the owner may as well be walking around with a blindfold on and your fingers stuck in your ears.
Or you may as well be putting your head in the sand.
When we listen to the recordings in dental offices we hear a lot of …..
We hear a lot of existing patients, with appointments, phoning to ask what exactly they are having done?
We hear a lot of confusion from existing patients.
And this all comes back to incomplete and inadequate handovers being done in the practice, resulting in a LACK OF CLARITY in the minds of the patients being treated as to what their next step involves.
Phone calls from confused patients then clog and jam the phone lines preventing new patient calls from being answered and answered well.
And we all know that only twenty percent of new patient phone enquiries end up being turned into a made and kept appointment.
If you want to grow good crop, you need to prepare your soil well.
You’ll never grow a good crop on dirty soil.
The second thing we hear is…..
The other thing we hear on these recordings are those calls that come in from angry and frustrated patients.
If you are not having your calls recorded FOR QUALITY AND TRAINING PURPOSES, then you will never hear the sheer anger and frustration from patients who have a perceived [or actual] concern about a possible [or actual] wrongdoing that may or may not have occurred.
These wrongdoings, and perceived wrongdoings, will occur.
No matter what you do, these calls will occur.
Even if you only do consultations, these calls will occur.
And unless you are recording your incoming calls, you’re going to be up the old creek without a paddle, on two counts.
First of all, the recording is a true and accurate record of the conversation that was had.
It is admissible in a court of law, and may be invaluable for your practice to have.
The second thing is that when you have an independent third party listening and training and coaching your team about phone skills, you can dramatically improve the chances of a favourable outcome for your practice, if and when you receive these calls.
If you don’t have good help, or THE BEST HELP in this regard, it’s kind of like doing your own brain surgery, or doing your own taxes.
It’s well known that a lawyer who acts for himself in court has a fool for a client….
The facts are these:
Put simply, the more patients you see, the more things will happen in your practice.
Proportionately, when your practice grows, there will be more phone calls, and there will also be more complaints.
These are facts of life.
Minimising risk is a vital part of any successful business.
HOPING that things will be OK is not a good business strategy.
*****
LIVE 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 LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
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.
Every now and then the age-old chestnut of cell phones in the dental practice rears its head.
It’s an interesting discussion, and its usually raised by a dental practice where staff use of their mobile phones during work time has reached epidemic proportions.
So, when considering what we need to do, as is the case with most business decisions, we need to have a good look at the numbers, because the numbers will tell the story.
But before we do that, let’s understand the reasoning from both sides of the argument as to whether we should allow staff members to carry cell phones on them during work hours.
Firstly, the carrying and checking of cell phones by staff during work hours represents a distraction from the task at hand.
Whenever a phone beeps, dings or vibrates, that’s a distraction. Looking at the phone display screen is also a distraction.
Those who say that THEY NEED THEIR PHONE in case there is an emergency or an urgent call from their child care or school, do have a valid argument..
Now, what do the numbers say?
A recent survey showed that on average, an employee looks at their cell phone screen on and off for a total of fifty-four minutes every working day.
Multiplying that out by five days per week and 48 weeks per year gives us a total of 216 hours per year spent looking at a personal cell phone screen, while being paid to do work.
That’s five weeks and three days and two hours of paid time each year spent looking at personal stuff on a personal cell phone.
The argument about needing to be contacted urgently is a Furphy.
If a staff member needs to be contacted urgently by a relative or by day care or by a school, they can easily be phoned at the dental practice on the practice’s main phone line.
After all, that’s what we used to do back in the 1980s and earlier, before cell phones were ever invented.
Every time you look at your cell phone while you are on the clock at work you are stealing.
If you are being paid to do work then you should be doing work.
Looking at your phone for as few seconds when you have a chance during work hours is wrong because you really should be doing something else that is work related and productive for your dental practice.
When you look at your cell phone during work hours you are stealing time and also money from your employer.
You are also stealing time from your work colleagues who you are being paid to support.
And you are stealing time from your patients and paying customers who are buying, or paying for your time and attention.
There is no “just a quick glance”….
There is no QUICK GLANCE at your device.
And that includes iWatches as well.
Patients and other team members will notice when your eyes are not 100% on the job at hand.
And patients will show their dissatisfaction by simply taking their business elsewhere.
I once saw this:
In 2014 in a mini-mart in Paris, I watched a cashier scrolling through her messages on her phone during the few seconds of time between my card being swiped and the EFTPOS machine printing out the transaction receipt.
No word of a lie…
Her cell phone was positioned between the register and the EFTPOS machine.
This was a SERIOUS CUSTOMER SERVICE FAIL.
Should our dental practice implement a zero cell phone policy?
I truly believe that when people are at work and are being paid to work they need to remove distractions that prevent them from performing their duties.
If you and your team are dead serious about creating a world class experience for each and every patient of your practice, then a zero cell phone policy needs to be one of your dental practice non-negotiable policies.
And thinking logically, if you are working for 38 hours per week, there are another 130 hours each week for you to look at your cell phone for as much or as long as you want on your own time.
*****
LIVE 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 LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
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.
Following on from last week’s article on self-imposed glass ceilings, I believe the major driver behind all achievement needs to be the establishment of a clearly defined set of goals to focus and re-focus on.
Our goals are our destination. They are our end point.
Our goals are our DESIRED end point.
In the same way that people regularly plan their holidays and vacations in detail, we need to plan our life destinations with exactly the same clarity.
When we plan our vacations, we know exactly when our vacation begins.
We know where we are going. We know our hotel. We know all of the necessary means of transport that is already booked to take us from our home to our destination hotel. And we know where we need to be and at what time we need to be at certain points throughout that journey.
Once we arrive at our destination hotel we know what we will be doing with our time during our stay there.
In life, we can compare our journey through life to the booking of a vacation.
Our vacation hotel, and the time spent there, is like our retirement. We can look at what things we will be doing in our retirement, in the same way that we can consider our daily events while on vacation.
Our travel to our hotel will be comparable to our journey through life.
If we know our time frames and our methods of transport, we can plan exactly where we should be financially along the timeline in our life, in the same way we that we plan our taxi rides, our plane travel, and our valet pickups along our trip to our holiday hotel destination.
The trouble is, that most people spend a lot of time planning out the details of their vacation, yet spend very little time planning out the details of their life journey.
The reason for this is simple:
Most people do not prioritise the day to day things that are needed to successfully create a comfortable retirement.
Only three percent of the population have clear and written down goals that they read and review on a daily basis.
And statistics will show you that only five percent of the population are able to retire comfortably at age sixty-five.
There’s probably a SIGNIFICANT connection between these two statistics.
Knowing clearly what you want from life will go a long way towards you successfully achieving your life goals.
Napoleon Hill said:
“The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.”
Nurture your desire.
Guard against those thoughts and those people who will try to distract you from achieving your goals.
There is no reason why you cannot achieve your desired goals.
You will only fail to achieve those goals when you give up on the necessary actions required to achieve them.
Don’t ever give up.
And don’t ever allow others to talk you into giving up on your lofty goals.
*****
LIVE 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 LIVE workshop Friday July 30, 2021 in Melbourne, VIC.
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.
You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order
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