By Sally McKenzie, CMC
A few years ago, the Harvard Business Review reported that between 65% and 85% of people who leave one business for another do so even though they are satisfied. What does that mean for dentists? Many of your patients stay with your practice until they find a reason to leave.
Most dental teams are more than a little surprised by some of those reasons: The practice hours are not convenient. There’s no place to park. The doctor hurts me. I don’t understand the bills. They don’t accept my insurance. They changed a practice policy. They don’t answer the phone. I can’t leave a message. They charged me for a missed appointment. They are always trying to sell me something. The fees are too high. They can’t keep staff. They told me I have to go to a specialist. They don’t listen to me.
What dental teams consider insignificant issues or minor patient problems cost practices a fortune in lost loyalty. Obviously, it doesn’t take much to persuade patients to take their dental needs and wants elsewhere.
So how do you turn patients waiting for a reason to leave into long-term loyal partners? You must take a close look at systems and service. Surveys indicate 70% of customers/patients cite service as the No. 1 reason they defect. Yet too often employees view managing patient service as a distraction from what they consider more important tasks, such as ensuring a full schedule, collecting from insurance companies, confirming appointments, and more. Ironically the success of each of these goes hand-in-hand with providing excellent service.
First, find out what your patients think. Survey them to assess if seemingly minor concerns raised by a few are bigger problems than you may realize. Invest in a statistically valid survey instrument that is designed to ask questions that will elicit the most valuable and revealing information.
Next, engage in “action listening,” which is different from active listening. With action listening, the dental team commits to bring concerns and issues voiced by patients to the staff meetings for discussion and action. For example, if patients are commenting that practice hours are inconvenient, the team develops a plan to address the issue, such as adjusting the practice hours for 60 days, marketing the change, and monitoring patient reaction and retention. The team then assesses if the change should be made permanent.
Look at practice systems and evaluate if they are best serving patients, thereby best serving the practice. If the schedule is booked out weeks for the doctor and months for hygiene, if patients routinely decline treatment, if collections are low and holes in the schedule are frequent — these are all system indicators that patient service is deficient.
While you’re at it, pay attention to the obvious:
1. Welcome each “guest.” Treat each patient as the most important person in your office from the moment he/she walks in the door until they leave the parking lot.
2. Have the answers. Patients expect immediate answers to basic questions. Track the common questions that patients ask. Take steps to ensure that every member of the team is prepared to answer them.
3. Acknowledge patients immediately. Under no circumstances should a patient be ignored when he or she comes to the counter. It takes five seconds to look at the patient and let them know you’ll be right with them. If you pretend no one is there, you tell patients they are an annoyance and unworthy of your time.
Providing excellent service means building a strong emotional connection with each patient, not just running on time and delivering good dentistry. It means that every member of the team makes it clear that they care about each patient, are willing to listen to them, and has genuine interest and concern for them.
Reprinted with permission from Sally McKenzie’s e-Management Newsletter ... www.mckenziemgmt.com
