There are several non-negotiable things that your front office staff must always be doing to make your dental office stand out as the PREMIER dental office in your local area.
In fact, if your office does these things consistently and routinely, your dental office will become sought after by people from outside of your local area and they will beat a path to your door.
1. Be Prepared
It’s the good old boy scout motto…. yet nobody acts upon it.“DYB DYB DYB DOB DOB DOB”
Do your best. Do our best.
We have an agenda for the day.
We know who is coming in to see us and at what time.
But we ignore it.
It’s like having someone coming over to your place for dinner and you’re out washing the car or making up a cubby house and swing set for your children.
If you know people are coming, have the place ready, be ready for them at their expected arrival time.
After all, it’s plain common courtesy.
2. Beat the Greet
If we know who is arriving and when, and we already know most of them because we’ve seen them before, then our aim should always be to greet that person by name before they greet us, or before they have to introduce themselves to us.Dale Carnegie said:
“a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in the language”
So why not lead from the front foot by greeting your customer with the recognition they deserve.
It’s such a point of difference because everywhere else that they go there is a failure to recognise.
Make their day by knowing who they are and recognising them.
3. Be Interested
At my practice we used to let our arriving patients know:“Won’t be too long. Just take a seat.”
With monotonous regularity.
Until I was at the hairdresser and I heard him greet an arriving customer with the EXACT SAME PHRASE.
And so I knew we had to do better.
And so we changed, and we ENGAGED our arriving customers immediately:
“Hi Gary, great to see you. Thanks for coming in early. I’ll just run down and let Dr Moffet know you’re here. How’s your day been going?”
By ending this greeting with a question about THEM we immediately create rapport and respect with our arriving patient.
People enjoy doing business with people who like them.
We must make efforts to create and build instant rapport.
4. “Make Yourself Comfortable.”
Instead of telling the arriving patient to “take a seat”, motion towards one of your comfortable chairs and use the words:
“Make Yourself Comfortable.”
It’s so much more friendly and pleasant.
And nobody else is saying this to their arriving patients.
5. Suggest a Refreshment.
There is a right way and a wrong way to offer a beverage.The wrong way is to ask our guest if they would like a drink.
Most people don’t want to put you to too much bother, and will say “No” even though you have made the offer.
However, if you were to say:
“Gary, I was just about to make myself a coffee. Can I get you one as well?”
You will find that your patients will indeed accept your invitation more often.
Of course, then, the trick is to JOIN your patient and sit with them in the client lounge with your coffees, until they are needed in the treatment room.
This helps to relax the patient by engaging with them and being interested in them.
If you implement these five key points of difference as Standard Operating Procedures in your dental office you will go a long long way towards creating a significant point of difference for your dental practice.
And that’s a WIN-WIN for you and for your customers.
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My next public speaking presentation showing Dentists how to grow their Dental practices will be in London England on Saturday 4 August 2018 with Jayne Bandy.
For more information and to secure your seat click this link here..
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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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