Five fresh ways to show patients you care...

In a weaker economy, many practices are discovering that they must go back to basics and remember what made them successful in the beginning.

Many businesses that become successful become lax in doing those little things that make a big difference. It all boils down to making patients feel so special in your practice that they can’t wait to come back for excellent service and refer others such as family, friends, neighbours and co-workers.

Following are 5 fresh ways to reignite your customer service fire.

1. Coordinate a special deal with a local florist that you will place a card in front of each bouquet at your front desk “Compliments of ______ Florist” along with their cards for marketing their business. You never know when a patient thinks, how beautiful, I need to buy/send flowers. By ordering more than 40 bouquets each year (delivered every Monday morning), you can most always get these for 10% above cost. On the mid to last work day of each week, select a special patient or team member and give them the flowers to take home.
2. When a new patient calls to make an appointment, give your doctor the patient’s name, date and time of the appointment and the prospective patient’s mobile number. When the doctor has a two minute break, or on the way home, they can call the appointed new patient to introduce themselves and let the new patient know how much they are looking forward to meeting them. Dentists who take the time to do this have a 95% chance of not having a new patient no-show! A personal VM message is impressive if they don’t answer.
3. At the morning huddle, each team member and dentist announces to the rest of the group which patient that they spent time with yesterday will receive a personal thank you note from them (mailed the day after). It takes less than three minutes to write a quick thank you note and if there are 7 people on your team, that is 7 lucky patients each day (112 per month). The cost to the practice is a postage stamp and the card (estimate $1.50 per or $168.00 per month). Some of you might say emails and texts are quicker and less costly...but how do YOU feel when someone takes the time to write a personal note these days?
4. The person answering your telephone can make or break the chances of a call turning into an appointment by how they sound and what they say. Answering machines in a patient facility is the “kiss of death” during office hours. The person who takes the calls must sound friendly, caring, enthusiastic and empathetic. Each scheduling coordinator’s daily goal should be to turn 80% of the shoppers/callers into appointed patients. Some will already be patients, but many incoming calls do not result in making an appointment due to the tone of voice and attitude of the person taking those calls. Over-zealous (desperate sounding) is as bad as an uncaring, unenthusiastic tone.
5. The day after each new patient visit, the dental assistant who works in treatment room #2 as the New Patient Coordinator doing the radiographs and intake, calls each new patient to “see how well we did yesterday”. If your customer service was top-notch as it should be, the new patient will brag about how impressed they were and write a great social media review. This is a perfect time to invite other new patients into the practice by saying: “Mrs Brown, we are so happy that you enjoyed your first visit with us. We also enjoyed meeting you. Please tell your friends, relatives, neighbours or co-workers who do not have a personal dentist, we’d love to see them as well. Please remember to tell them about our practice.

Today we are inundated with online reviews! Personal verbal reviews are back to basics and are powerful!

I hope you can all join me on my 2019 tour downunder in August with Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy in either Melbourne (August 3) or Sydney (August 10). Not one or two management pearls and growth strategies will be shared... but instead, the whole string of pearls!