Finding Excellence in Dentistry

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Dental-consultant-Kevin-CoughlinMuch of my professional life these days involves working with dental practices on how to deliver superior customer service while increasing profits.

It’s engaging and invigorating work. But It’s good to recharge the batteries and meet with my professional contemporaries in an environment where my core message can reach many people at once.

The Excellence In Dentistry conference taking place April 27-29 in Destin, Florida is an excellent example. It’s a way for dental professionals of all stripes to make presentations on their areas of expertise. For my part, I’ll be speaking on Practical Systems For Same Day Dentistry at the conference.

Others will delve into a wide range of topics including:

  • ​Sleep Apnea
  • Oral Surgery
  • Removables
  • Overhead Control
  • ​Hygiene/Productivity
  • ​Implants
  • Marketing
  • PPO Negotiations
  • Back Pain/Neck Relief
  • Staff Mgmt/Hiring
  • ​Endo
  • Hygiene/Perio
  • Practice Management
  • ​Efficiency
  • ​Financial Planning

As a dental speaker, it’s an honor to have my experience and successes showcased to others in the profession who might be struggling with where to take their practices in this increasingly competitive landscape.

In any business, it’s easy to get stuck in your own systematic method of addressing problems. Pulling on different levels of expertise from across the country can shake the figurative cobwebs and open eyes to new ways of doing things. So the best part about this conference, for me, will be the opportunities I get to discuss issues in the dental industry with contemporaries with a wide variety of viewpoints.

If you haven’t already registered I encourage you to do so by clicking here.

Meet your front desk receptionist: the most important person in your Practice…

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A patient in distress is your opportunity to shine in customer care

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Dental Practices can’t just phone it in

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Your front line team members are the first client/customer facing representatives anyone comes into contact with when they call or enter your dental practice. Hopefully you’ve trained them to be both empathetic and professional. Let’s say you’ve gone a step further and they are also well – versed on best practices surrounding customer care. That’s it, you’re done!

Not so fast.

What happens where they’re engaged with a real life customer and the phone rings? Is your answering system as good as your staff? If not, then you have a big hole that needs a filling.

First off, the phone should be answered within four rings. If staff are too busy to do so, let it go to the answering system. Nobody wants to hear, “this is Dr. Smith’s office. I’m going to have to put you on hold.”

If it isn’t possible for any member of your team to grab that phone call within four rings, your message has to be the next best thing to speaking to a real person.

First, the answering system should allow patients a choice. They should be allowed to leave their name and phone number along with a request or question.  Alternately, the caller should be able to opt to stay on the line and wait. But if they do so, it is vitally important they are reminded every 30 seconds that you haven’t forgotten about them and that someone will be with them shortly. If, after two minutes, they are still waiting, they should have an additional option to leave a message. Here is where you differentiate yourself by promising to return the call within 15 minutes. Why is this important? That 15 minutes buys your time before they call another practice to set up an appointment.

Still not convinced about the importance of this seemingly minor issue? I’ve got a simple test for you. Do you remember the last time you were put on hold for a long time? Did you call back? I would guess you might have moved onto another provider.

We are all busy. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have time for clients. How you treat someone when you are busy speaks volumes about how much you would value them as a customer.

If you want to talk about how I can transform your dental practice into a customer service dynamo, please get in touch.

The most important person in your practice is the first and last one to see your patients

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

So you’ve got a dental office with technicians and great patient care specialists. Who’s the most important person in your business?

The answer is surprising to some. The surprise is that it’s not you. It’s actually the front-desk person. They are a patient’s first and last point of contact. They set the tone for the patient’s experience at your practice.

young-dentist-opening-a-practice

Female patient coming to dental surgery check-up appointment reception

He or she must possess patience, knowledge, grace under pressure, and the ability to show empathy, along with being efficient and effective.

When recruiting for this crucial position, the following skill sets are of key importance:

∙ Sales skills

. Telephone skills

∙ Gathering and interpreting data

∙ Patient orientation

∙ Developing and providing information about a comprehensive treatment plan

∙ Reviewing financial options for the patient to receive care and treatment

∙ The ability to generate reports to assess the success and progress of your business team

∙ Review and make necessary adjustments to procedures and processes through daily, biweekly, weekly, or monthly meetings and discussions

 

As you can see, this is a position that goes well beyond “receptionist.” Your front desk person has to wear many hats throughout the day, and it all starts with how they answer the phone.

If you want to talk about how I can make your dental practice a dynamo in customer service, please get in touch.

The journey from believing to achieving business success

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Are you a believer or an achiever? Do you cruise through your day believing you’re doing a good job or do you actually have a strategy to make it happen?

I read statistics recently that showed 92 percent of CEOs believe they deliver excellent customer satisfaction. The reality however, showed that only about 8 percent actually hit that goal.

The 92 percent may be true believers.  But belief in itself doesn’t deliver anything other than a false sense of achievement. Making the leap to actually producing results requires something I call the 3Ds: design, develop and deliver.

So how do you do this?

First, take your final product and divide it up into the elements needed to design a complete customer experience. Then hone and further develop and refine that complete customer experience on an ongoing basis. Remember it’s not a ‘do and done’ thing: it requires attention and adaptability to influences both within and without the organization.

Finally, you and your team have to deliver.

Every. Single. Time.

Failing on that third ‘D’ makes everything else pointless. I’ve seen this happen again and again. And the result is wasteful spending on advertising, additional sales staff, acquisitions, products and gimmicks all in a desperate attempt to achieve a goal that is not clearly defined or understood.

Would you set out on a road trip without a map and travel plans? Of course not. So why would you do it in business?

The key is to make the connection between profits and your customer satisfaction experience. Many managers don’t understand this connection and spend their time squeezing staff and customers in pursuit of fast profits over long term success.

They never understand that a satisfied customer base is actually the best street level marketing team a company can have. Customers talk to their friends and colleagues and rave about your service at their dinner tables, social gatherings and family events. These advocates have a level of access and a credibility that no salesperson could ever match. What’s more, they’re free to you if you deliver a great customer experience.

Of course the opposite is true. Deliver a mediocre or poor customer experience and your business will suffer. Instead of talking your business up, people will ask their friends, family and colleagues for suggestions on where to find a better experience. So you’ve not only lost that one customer – but everyone else they talk to.

When developing that customer experience, look at all of it. From your appointment system to the cleanliness of your washrooms to the magazines in your waiting room, all of it is about delivering the ideal customer experience.

Design, develop and deliver. Turn that into your business mantra, your business culture and you’ll see the results in your bottom line.

If you’re a dentist or other healthcare professional and you’d like to discuss how to lead a business that works for you please get in touch.

Ownership still has it’s privileges

/0 Comments/in , /by

When you own a practice as part of a chain, you have certain obligations to the franchise. At times it can feel like you aren’t your own boss although shedding a bit of  professional sovereignty yields considerable benefits.

The most important of these is that you don’t really have to put too much thought into how you run your practice. Or at least that’s how many owner/dentists tend to approach things.

But what happens is that you start thinking about your services as products to be sold rather than treatments for patients. So your practice becomes a glorified assembly line. Where treatments are ranked based on price and not necessarily patient need.

I recently told the story of an elderly couple who came into my practice facing either a pricey root canal, or a simple extraction. Obviously a short term win for me would have been the root canal. But then given the patient’s age and medical history, would that have been the right choice? Of course not. So we did the extraction.

If someone owns a practice that is part of a chain they could theoretically still offer advice to a patient that would save them money.

Doing so would create loyalty with that customer and make their operation stand out among the other chain services lining the streets.

So why don’t more do this? Depressingly, it could be because it doesn’t matter.

Being part of a chain means a steady flow of customers drawn in because of the brand. Word of mouth means little. A chain store is a chain store is a chain store, right? Is your local Starbucks any worse or better than the one down the street? Does it really matter if someone is just looking for a coffee?

Well yes and no. Because a business person can have their cake and eat it too. They can operate under a chain and deliver superior service with an eye to getting return business, loyalty and word-of-mouth.

What’s the cost? Very little if one puts the cost of saving customers money against the cost of regional marketing and advertising budgets.

But there is a very real reason why individual service initiatives don’t often happen in a chain store. Simply put, most dentists working in chain operations only stay for two years. Any quality service improvements will ultimately just frustrate the next dentist who may not have the same integrity.

So what to do? As a customer, I always choose the independent operator.  It doesn’t mean I don’t trust the chains. I simply want my dentists to have more of a long term investment in myself and my community.

When the chains make this a part of their business model, maybe they’ll even be able to retain some of their best talent beyond that two year mark.