When you come into your dental practice every morning:”do you want to be right, or do you want to have a business?”
If you want to have a business, keep reading…
You made the right choice. In this case customer/patient service must be second to none. It is essential that every patient feels like a “million bucks”. Treat every individual special, people are not numbers and they are not just dollar signs.
Being a good dentist and having high standards will make it easy for you to keep clientele happy. Don’t cut corners… don’t try to save pennies at a cost of losing dollars…
So, what happens when that particular patient is dissatisfied? You have to disarm the situation. As the cliché quote goes: “customer is always right!” If you start proving that your right than the patient will hate you. If you agree that the patient is right and you are wrong than Pandoras box is opened. No one is right, no one is wrong. A solution must be found where you as the dentist preemptively create a scenario where everyone is happy.
You are a referral business, don’t let your ego get in the way.
To build a dental practice you need two components: Internal and External strategies in this post I will only focus on the internal. From professional experience it take four main internal component strategies to build a successful dental practice and they are: amazing dentist, out of this world customer service, fair price point, and motivated employees.
You need to have an amazing dentist. What does that mean? A dentist that can do it ALL! I am talking about a General Dentist who can pretty much do all-phases of dentistry from root canals, to dental implants plus restoration, to simple fillings and much more. The provider/office has to be all-in-one shop because patients don’t generally like going to several locations to do procedures. People get attached to one person and they want to stick with him/her and they become loyal. Every time a provider refers a patient to another location their is a risk of losing that person to someone else. The reasons are limitless however some could be: inconvenience in location, found someone with a better price point, etc. The dentist also has to be charming, fair and likable by the patients. I know of a situation where a dentist is an amazing surgeon but he has a hard time connecting with his patients during the treatment planning phase. This is not good for business.
Next. Out of this world customer service, today we use the word patients when they are treated by doctors. This word “patient” is outdated in my opinion and is becoming less applicable with each day. Most people today have become Healthcare Consumers. There are many articles written about the shift in the psychology of this behavior. This is happening for many reasons, one is powerful search engines like google play a big part. People choose where they want their services rendered and they shop around for the lower price. Two, the heavy advertisement done by dental practices. Twenty years ago it was looked down upon, to advertise your practice so in turn the community didn’t really have options who to go to unless it was a direct referral from a friend/family member. Every person has to be treated like they are the King or Queen or else they will go somewhere else.
Fair price point is important. With the power of google and other search engines a novice computer user can find 50+ dental practices with a click of a button. It is hard to over charge your clients today. If you are above the average rate in your neighborhood your clients will go somewhere else. I am not suggesting that the services should be dirt cheap, I am only suggesting that you have to charge appropriately for your neighborhood. One of the ways to keep cost down is to have as mentioned before a provider or a group of providers that can offer services all under one roof.
Motivated Employees that go the extra mile will make you successful! They will work extra hours, they will put more effort in connecting with your patients, and they will be warm and polite. This is a huge topic of its own. In short, I think every business should focus on the needs of their employees which will result in happier customers. Generally you and I don’t like to go to places where the morale is low and people look miserable especially a dental practice where you already have nerves and butterflies in your stomach.
In conclusion having the four factors above will lead to a better and healthier dental practice. Happy customers means they will refer their family and friends to you. What can be better then free advertisement? I wish ALL the dental practices the best of luck with what they are doing and if you would like to chat further please contact me using this blog. I will get back to you as soon as possible. Have a Great Day!
Furman Dental Consulting 