The arrival of the dental patient at the practice is one of the two forgotten ULTIMATE BUILDING BLOCKS of the patient visit that can make or break the dental office to patient relationship.
Most consultants and advisers out there spend an inordinate amount of time discussing lead generation and marketing, as well as case presentation, but they neglect the very important steps that go on between the marketing and the case presentation.
And believe you me, if your practice is falling down on any of the intermediary steps between what’s getting people to call your office and when they learn about what they actually need to be getting done, it really doesn’t matter how great your case presentation skills are, nor how schmick your marketing is.
The three intermediary components that will make or break your dental practice and which MUST BE mastered are:
- How well your phone is answered
- How well presented your office is and how the arriving patient is managed
- The performances of the ancillary staff who triage the patient from the lounge to the treatment rooms
Today we’re going to look at the experiences of the arriving patient….
The Ultimate Arrival.
The arrival of the dental patient can be broken down into three smaller stages:
- The physicality of the arrival and what the patient sees, hears, experiences, and smells.
- The greeting of the arriving patient
- The management of the patient following their arrival
For each of these stages we need to create a list and define what we at the practice consider to be our standards, both operational and experiential, as well as our opportunities to go Above and Beyond.
Our practice also needs to clearly recognise what can go wrong during each stage as well as what is needed to rectify any disappointments and errors that the patient may experience.
We should also be looking to document any opportunities we may have to Offer the OfferTM to any patients.
How Does Your Office Present?
What does your dental facility look like when patients arrive for their appointment?
Does your building present professionally when viewed from the street?
How does your facility appear as patients get closer to your front door?
Is your entrance clean? Is your doorway clean and swept clear of leaf litter and dust and dirt?
Are your glass and chrome areas kept clean?
How does your office smell? Is it pleasant?
Are your carpeted areas clean and are your surfaces free of dust?
How about your reading material? Is it neat, tidy and current?
And are your bathrooms clean and well stocked?
Do you have fresh flowers at reception?
How about a welcome board welcoming new patients to the practice?
And what about something that REALLY differentiates you from every other dentist in town.
- Incents
- Mood lighting and music
- Lounge room chairs
- Coffee table books and magazines
- Privacy
How each patient is made to feel when they first come in to your practice sets the tone for how they’re going to act with you, and your team during their appointment. Including… how receptive they’re going to be, to accepting new (and sometimes expensive) treatments.
Our goal should be to make our patients feel like welcome guests at our homes, rather than be treated like they are nameless, faceless “strangers”….
When we achieve this, we will go a long way towards truly differentiating our dental practice as being DIFFERENT from not only other dentists around us, but also being different from most other businesses around, in the way that we treat and respect our customers.
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Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Convert more calls into appointments…Click the link: http://www.calltrackingexcellence.com
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.com for more details.
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Have you read my book , How To Build The Dental Practice of Your Dreams [Without Killing Yourself!] In Less Than Sixty Days.
You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order
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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.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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