Customer experience is the key to growing your dental practice

How do you view your clients? When it comes to how they choose you they are obviously consumers first. They do research online and ask for recommendations from friends and family. And you need to market to them as potential sources of recurring revenue for years to come.

However once they sit in the chair with mouths wide open, they become your patient.

And that’s how they see themselves as well. I’m going to assume that your skills as a dentist are good to great. So how do you differentiate yourself from the dentist down the street?

I suggest that providing a good “consumer experience” is just as important as providing good patient outcomes to the success of your business.

If you constantly make mistakes on your billing, or let your waiting room overfill with patients waiting to be seen as they flip through decades old issues of Dentistry Today, people will be less likely to return to your practice or recommend it to friends and family.

If you want to be successful over the long haul you need to have the processes and procedures in place to turn your patients into repeat customers.

It really is the little things. But also the big things. A solid customer focus should be as important to you as providing great clinical outcomes. People remember waiting rooms and billing issues – and they talk about them with their friends because they understand them and can be communicated as short anecdotes that sum up their experience.

If patients have a positive experience with all aspects of your business they are more likely to agree to treatment plans recommended by you. This is key to growing your practice.

If patients do not believe, like and trust (BLT) you, it can become very difficult to get case acceptance. And even when you do get grudging case acceptance from a patient who does not 100% believe, like or trust in you, it will ultimately it will lead to problems.

In the end, health care providers are held in high esteem. But selling is not negative. You are a service provider. And if your service has value and it is demonstrated at every point of the customer experience your practice will grow.

If you are interested in learning how to take your dental practice to the next level, please contact Ascent Dental Solutions today at 413-224-2659 to learn how Dr. Coughlin can help.