Ep. 32: Five Ways to Improve Customer Service
Dentistry is ultimately a service business, and having great customer service will do more to make your practice stand out than having the most impressive hi-tech equipment or expensive marketing gimmick. So, in this episode, Jeff discusses five ways for your team to improve the quality of service and make your practice a place where patients want to stay and refer their friends and family to.
Topics:
:12 – Why customer service has become even more important over the last few years
6:47 – Understanding the patients’ needs and wants
10:37 – Having procedures in place
13:26 – Building a service-oriented team
16:24 – Managing with the right focus
Links:
Learn more about MGE – https://www.mgeonline.com
Forbes Article – https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2022/03/15/15-stats-about-post-covid-customer-service/?sh=a7f9e8d14fde
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Questions From This Episode
Why does patient service tend to break down even when staff are genuinely nice?
Most negative service experiences trace back to disorganization rather than rudeness, staff who are pleasant but don't actually understand what the patient is trying to resolve, or don't know the correct procedure, not staff who are unkind. Being nice is essentially assumed, the real gap is competence and communication.
What's the first real skill every team member handling patients needs?
The ability to actually get a full grasp on what the patient is trying to resolve and what they expect, rather than answering only the surface level question asked. A patient asking how much a crown costs is really trying to resolve a dental problem, not just get a price, and understanding that changes how the call should be handled.
How should a practice decide which procedures to write down and train on first?
Start with whatever category of call or task happens most often, since training staff on the highest volume scenario first clears the largest share of daily traffic off the plate immediately, freeing up time to handle the smaller, more complex categories one at a time as they come up.
Why does keeping a promise matter so much in patient service?
Following through on what you said you'd do, calling a patient back, resolving an insurance question by a stated time, builds real goodwill, creates a sense of dependability for the practice, and is simply good PR, while breaking that promise, even without any rudeness involved, is often what actually drives a patient elsewhere.
What does it actually mean for an office manager to be doing their job day to day?
Actively watching office flow rather than sitting at a desk buried in one task, noticing when reception is backing up, when a treatment coordinator is tied up with a patient the doctor is about to hand off, or when the doctor is running behind, and stepping in to unstick things before they become a real problem for the patient sitting in the waiting room.
Episode Transcript
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Every business owner knows customer service matters, and in a service business like dentistry, it matters even more. The entire subject of customer service and customer experience has grown enormously over roughly the last decade or so. I remember reading a study called Walker 2020, back around 2016 to 2018, and one line from it really stuck with me. It said customer experience was going to become the driving factor by 2020, outstripping price as the main product differentiator. Obviously Walker had no idea what 2020 would actually bring, and it's been an interesting couple of years since, but that statement still holds true, and I'll explain why as we get into this episode, because customer service and customer experience are genuinely a big deal.
Now pair that fact, customer service matters enormously, with what's happened over the last two to three years. A number of business trends emerged out of the pandemic, and the biggest one relevant here is staffing. I've covered this in other episodes, hiring difficulties, turnover, and so on. So you've got customer service becoming more important right as staffing has become a much tougher environment than it was two or three years ago.
Where does that leave us? This all important customer service priority is running headlong into practices that may be understaffed, dealing with heavy turnover, or working with a lot of new staff, some without prior dental experience. Not a great combination. And complicating things further, by survey, customers are now expecting more than they used to. So: customers expecting more, real staffing challenges, and customer service becoming a bigger deal all at once. What do you do about it? That's what I want to talk about in this week's episode of Dental Business Rx, specifically five things you can do right now in your practice to improve patient service. My name is Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host.
Let's start by looking at where the average consumer actually stands right now, based on survey data. I found a genuinely interesting article from Forbes, written March 15, 2022, by Blake Morgan, I'll link it on the episode webpage, and I want to highlight a couple of points from it. One finding: 75 percent of consumers say customer service actually worsened during the pandemic. I think we've all experienced this ourselves, at the bank, at a store, at a restaurant. It's genuinely gotten worse across the board. Early on, I remember visiting a restaurant right after it reopened here in Florida, run by the owner and just two employees, running themselves ragged, and I was completely understanding given the circumstances. If that same thing happened today, I'd have a real problem with it, because consumer expectations have shifted.
Here's the next relevant finding: 58 percent of consumers say their customer service expectations are higher than they were a year ago. So you've got customers expecting more, right in the middle of these ongoing staffing challenges. That's where your patients are coming from, and it actually creates a real opportunity. Since customer service broadly has gotten rougher while expectations have simultaneously risen, a practice that genuinely pours it on with great customer service right now becomes a real differentiator, something that sticks in people's minds. The overall bar around you isn't especially high at the moment, and your patients are expecting it to be, which is exactly the gap worth filling.
So let's get into the five things you can actually do to improve customer service in your practice. Before the first point, I want to mention something that I'm not even going to formally number: people should simply be nice and pleasant. Obviously nobody should tolerate being insulted, but patients should feel seen, heard, and communicated with, and service should move at a reasonable pace, if a doctor is running behind, reception should be communicating that regularly. Being nice and considerate is essentially assumed, almost goes without saying. And here's the interesting part: I'd say the majority of negative service experiences I've personally had recently had nothing to do with how nice anyone was. People were nice. It was simply disorganized and a bit of a mess, and that's what actually made it negative. Rudeness was rarely the actual issue.
We run mystery calls here at MGE, I've mentioned this in prior episodes, where one of our team calls your office and grades how well your receptionist handles the call, if you'd like one done for your practice, I'll link that on the episode webpage. We've run a huge number of these, and I've talked before about how the conversion rate on these calls often isn't great. But the issue was almost never that receptionists were mean, that was a tiny fraction of the calls we've done. The overwhelming majority of the time, they were genuinely nice people, they just weren't especially good at what they were doing. Think about why someone actually calls a dental office in the first place, there's a specific outcome they're trying to reach, and the person answering simply wasn't accomplishing that, however pleasant they were while falling short.
So, being nice is expected. Let's get into the specific things you can actually put in place right now.
Point one: you have to get a full grasp on what the patient is actually trying to resolve and understand their real expectations. That means whoever's answering the phone or handling a patient needs to genuinely communicate, drawing the patient out enough to understand what they actually want. Here's an example: my wife recently called a business attorney's office. The receptionist was perfectly nice, but had no real idea what she was doing and changed her story three times, is the attorney in, no she's not here, wait, she's here but not taking calls, oh but she's about to be out of town, so my wife says she'll call back after that, or maybe the attorney could call her while traveling instead, the receptionist was simply confused. That doesn't work, and she never grasped how quickly my wife actually needed something resolved.
Another example: I went to a bank recently to open a new account for a separate company. If someone had simply told me they were busy and needed me to make an appointment, I'd have been completely fine with that. Instead, I sat down with someone who told me partway through that she didn't have time to finish and would route me to a virtual specialist in another room. Fine, I said, but I want the account open today. Then the virtual person tells me it'll take 48 hours to actually open. I spent nearly an hour at that bank and still walked out without an open account. Nobody was rude, everyone was genuinely pleasant, they simply didn't know what they were doing.
The same principle applies to a patient calling for an appointment, or even a shopper call. I've seen plenty of shopper calls handled this way: someone calls asking how much a crown costs, and the answer is, we don't quote prices over the phone, click. Did anyone actually understand what that caller was trying to resolve or what they expected? No. Compare that to: sure, I'd be happy to give you a general idea, would you mind if I ask a few quick questions first, what's your name, your phone number, what makes you think you need a crown, did another dentist mention it? Here's the interesting thing about shopper calls specifically, a shopper rarely needs just one crown, they're not going to leave their current practice over a single tooth, they usually need several. Handled well, a shopper call can turn into a genuinely great new patient. Ask whether it's sensitive to hot or cold, which side of the mouth, do they have recent x-rays, and ultimately, honestly, we won't know for certain until the doctor takes a look, so let's get you in for a quick, complimentary evaluation. We actually covered receptionist skills in depth in episode two, rethinking the receptionist position, where Sabri shared some real gems on handling incoming calls exactly this way, worth a listen.
The core issue across all of these examples is the same: not actually understanding what the caller needs or expects, what they're genuinely trying to resolve. If I'm calling about the cost of a crown, the thing I'm actually trying to resolve is that I need a crown, not simply that I need a number. Same logic applies to an emergency call, someone says they're in pain and need to be seen, you ask how much pain, where exactly, make sure it isn't a true 911 situation, and then offer a same-day slot, say two o'clock. If the response is, actually, can we do three instead, that tells you something, maybe it isn't a genuine emergency after all. The bottom line: you have to actually get into real communication with people and understand what they're trying to resolve and what they expect. That's the first thing that needs to be instilled across your entire team, and it requires genuine communication skill.
Point two: you need real procedures in place for these situations, and they have to actually be taught. I know that can feel overwhelming, especially with a lot of newer staff and procedures that have never been formally written down. But here's a practical approach: look at what makes up the bulk of your incoming calls. Say roughly 75 percent of your calls are patients scheduling hygiene appointments, and you've got a mostly new team. Train that team thoroughly on handling hygiene scheduling calls first. Once that highest-volume category is competently handled and clearly documented, and a written procedure is useless if nobody actually knows it, that alone takes a large chunk of daily traffic off your plate, freeing you up to focus on training the next most common category, and the one after that.
The key organizational principle here: if you've got, say, ten different things happening in your practice every day, and one of them happens three times as often as everything else combined, that's the one you teach first, since it clears the largest share of daily traffic immediately. Same logic applies to procedures for a patient waiting, or the doctor running ten minutes behind, develop and teach these in a simple, prioritized order, starting with whatever happens most often. That's point two: real procedures, genuinely taught.
Point three, and this is something that's always been a factor in customer service but has taken a real hit since the pandemic: if you say you're going to do something, do it. Going back to that attorney's office example, my wife was told she'd receive a follow-up email that same afternoon, it never came, and naturally, she went with a different firm. If you tell a patient you'll call them back, call them back. If a patient has insurance questions and you say you'll have an answer before four o'clock, have it resolved before four o'clock. This builds real goodwill with patients, creates a genuine sense of dependability for the practice, and it's simply good PR, and good customer service. Do what you say you're going to do.
Point four: don't keep ineffective personnel on your customer facing lines. If someone isn't nice, isn't accommodating, or simply isn't service oriented, you're going to run into real problems. Let me explain exactly what I mean by service oriented, with a story from years back, this was actually the nineteen-nineties. I'd hired a receptionist whose responsibilities, spelled out clearly in the manual, included emptying the front trash cans when they filled up, with the dumpster right outside the office. One day I noticed the cans were overflowing and mentioned it, and the reply was, well, I didn't really think that was part of my job. I brought her back to my office, let her go, emptied the trash myself, and hired a new receptionist.
There's a specific mindset that comes with genuinely delivering service to others. If I'm walking through the office and notice trash on the floor, I'm going to pick it up. I've actually tested this before, leaving a crumpled piece of paper in a hallway just to see how many staff would walk right past it without picking it up, purely out of curiosity about that underlying service attitude. There's a front of house and a back of house in any business, certain things employees handle that customers never need to see or worry about, almost like a bit of a backstage curtain. I never let a customer see behind that curtain, partly because it's genuinely not their concern, and partly because that's simply where the team operates while the customer is there to receive a service.
The bottom line: the people you have on the front lines of a service business need to be genuinely comfortable providing service. I've never felt degraded by doing something in service of a client, if I have a client wondering where to grab dinner, I'll go make them a reservation, that's simply service, there's nothing lowering about it. Same with picking up a piece of trash, or handling something unexpected because the usual person isn't available, whatever it takes to make sure the customer is actually served, I'll do it. That's genuinely one of the great things about the team here at MGE. But I've also hired people over the years who simply didn't carry that mindset, who felt that certain tasks were somehow beneath them, and that's not someone who's going to work out in a service business. Some people just don't fit the customer service mold, especially in a business built entirely around service, and when that's the case, you have to find people who do. It's genuinely great when you build a full team that shares that mindset, working together toward the best possible experience for the patient.
Which brings us to the fifth and final point, and it has to do with management. I want to spend a minute on this, because I've seen people carry some genuinely strange ideas about what management actually is. Management needs to be actively aware and continually on top of office flow. I remember a conversation with a newer client back in 2002, twenty years ago now. He had an office manager, one person up front, a hygienist, and two assistants. I started mapping out his division of labor, what does the front desk actually handle? Turned out the front desk was scheduling patients, collecting payments, answering the phones, sending promotional postcards, and filing insurance, essentially everything. And the office manager? Sitting in her office reviewing statistics. In an office that size, that one front desk person would realistically also be functioning as both the financial coordinator and treatment coordinator, since there simply wasn't enough volume yet to justify a purely administrative, desk-bound manager role.
I think people sometimes develop a strange idea of what management actually means. Management doesn't happen at a desk. Sure, there are desk tasks that need doing, but a manager should be up and moving, observing, troubleshooting, making sure things are actually flowing. Going back to that chaotic bank experience I described earlier, had an actual manager been paying attention, they would have noticed a customer who clearly needed help and gotten it to them, whether personally or by connecting me with someone else. I saw several people walking around that bank, one of whom appeared to just be wandering, no idea what they were actually doing, maybe handling safety deposit boxes, who knows, but nobody was actively managing the floor.
If I'm the office manager in your practice, I'm watching, is reception starting to back up, is my treatment coordinator still tied up with a prior consult while the doctor is about to hand off another patient who's now stuck waiting, is the doctor running behind schedule. I'm watching for exactly these moments so I can unstick the flow and keep things moving. If needed, I might personally step in and present treatment to a patient the doctor just diagnosed, since the treatment coordinator is still occupied, all while keeping an eye on everything else happening around the practice. A manager has to continuously observe these lines and flows.
Eventually, as a practice grows and staffing expands, this genuinely becomes a full-time role, work, observe, plan, and so on, there's real depth to the office manager job. But even in a smaller practice where you're wearing multiple hats, you can still do this, filing insurance one moment, then noticing reception is backing up, stepping over to help, and returning to what you were doing. The core point stands regardless of practice size: management has to stay continuously aware of and on top of office flow.
Which brings up one more related pattern I've seen play out with quite a few MGE clients. As a practice grows busier, with stronger new patient flow and hygiene production, the office manager, often lacking a dedicated treatment coordinator yet, naturally becomes the default treatment coordinator. Larger cases get routed through the office manager, who handles the financial arrangements and closes cases worth four or five, sometimes ten thousand dollars or more. And for a while, this genuinely works, everyone else is handling insurance, scheduling, assisting, hygiene, and things run smoothly.
But if you're the manager and you notice that role has quietly grown to consume four, five, six hours of your day, that's a real problem, not because the growth itself is bad, quite the opposite, it's genuinely a good sign, but because you're now effectively locked into being the treatment coordinator rather than actually functioning as the office manager. That's exactly the signal that it's time to bring in a dedicated treatment coordinator, so you can step back into the actual management role.
So those are the five basic points. These are simple things you can start implementing right away, and there's obviously a great deal more to building out a complete management system around this, which we can talk through separately, you're always welcome to give us a call here at MGE. But putting these five things into practice, keeping people genuinely happy and meeting their expectations, will do more than boost office productivity and morale, it builds real goodwill for the practice and makes the office a genuinely more enjoyable place to be.
That's everything I have for you this week. I hope this was useful. If you have any questions about MGE or want help implementing any of this, you can always call us at (800) 640-1140, or find us online at mgeonline.com for a free consultation. And if you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more like it, take a moment to subscribe or follow us on whatever platform you're listening on, and feel free to leave a review if you're so inclined. Otherwise, folks, that's all I have for you, and I'll see you at the next episode.