EP 201: 12 Customer Service Mistakes That Drive Patients Away
Most patients won’t complain—they’ll just stop coming. In this episode, Jeff Blumberg shares the 12 most common customer service slip-ups that quietly wreck patient retention, and how to fix them fast to boost satisfaction, referrals, and revenue.
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Questions From This Episode
Why can't most doctors actually rely on patient complaints to know whether they have a customer service problem?
Most people who have a bad customer service experience anywhere, a restaurant, a dry cleaner, simply don't complain, they just quietly stop going back. Since the doctor is also stuck at the chair all day and can't personally observe most of what happens up front, the real long-term fix is a fully trained team that genuinely buys into the practice's customer service standard, not waiting to hear about problems directly.
What's the difference between the core service and the service personnel in a business like dentistry, and why does that distinction matter?
The core service is the actual dentistry itself, and the service personnel are everything surrounding it, scheduling, accounts, reception. A practice can have excellent core dentistry and still lose patients before they ever make it into a chair if the surrounding service is weak, someone can be an excellent dentist that a prospective patient simply never gets to meet because scheduling mishandled the call.
What should actually happen with a patient's accounts receivable, and why does it matter so much for goodwill?
Accounts need to be genuinely accurate, reflecting exactly what a patient or their insurance actually owes, and balances shouldn't be allowed to age past 60, 90, or 120 days without action. Billing errors and stale balances are one of the fastest ways to genuinely upset a patient, since people tend to get far more upset about money than almost anything else, and it quietly wrecks goodwill built up everywhere else in the practice.
Why does presenting a full treatment plan up front actually count as good customer service, rather than something that risks scaring a patient off?
Patients who are told everything they need at once, even if it's a larger number, tend to trust the practice as being straightforward, while patients who are drip-fed one procedure at a time across multiple visits start to feel like they're being upsold, the same way a car repair shop that only ever mentions the next problem starts to feel scammy. Patients who get their full treatment done are also considerably more likely to actually refer other people to the practice.
How long should a patient ever realistically wait to be seen, both in the waiting room and to get on the schedule in the first place?
In the waiting room, ideally under five minutes and never more than ten, tracked by simply noting arrival time against seated time on the day's schedule. For getting an appointment in the first place, a flexible existing patient of record should be able to get in within about a week for something like fillings, not five or six weeks, and if the book is genuinely too full to allow that, it usually means either the scheduling system needs fixing or the practice needs an associate.
Episode Transcript
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How good is the customer service in your practice, really? And to that end, how would you actually know? For most doctors, you won't know you have a customer service issue unless you see it directly, an egregious scheduling mistake, a patient waiting an hour, or a patient actually complains. But how often does someone actually complain?
Here's a thought experiment. Think of a business you've frequented, a restaurant, a dry cleaner, wherever, where you had a genuinely bad customer service experience. Did you complain? Did you ask to speak to a manager? Most people don't. The usual response is simply not going back, no complaint at all, which is the exact opposite of what you want as the business owner trying to catch the problem.
Compounding this for a dentist specifically is that you're in a patient's mouth all day long, so beyond your own chair, you genuinely can't see most of what's happening in the rest of the practice. It falls to the office manager to keep watch, but even they can't see everything. Which tells us the real, long-term fix for customer service issues is full buy-in and training across your entire team on your practice's actual customer service standard.
Dentistry is a service business, and it has a lot in common with other service businesses in that regard. First, the core service itself has to be good. I'm not comparing dentistry directly to an auto shop or a restaurant, but there's a real parallel, if the food is bad, or the car repair is bad, or a haircut is bad, that core service failure sinks the business. In dentistry, that usually isn't actually the problem. What also has to be good in a service business is everything surrounding that core service. In a dental practice, that means scheduling, accounts, and so on. Otherwise you can end up in a situation where a patient never even makes it into your actual service in the first place. You might be an excellent dentist, but I never get to find out, because your scheduling process turned me away, or I was a prospective new patient who never got scheduled at all. Your customer service problem started before I ever walked in the door.
I could spend days on this subject, and the real long-term fix is a fully trained, well-organized team and being an excellent manager yourself, which is exactly why we built the MGE Power Program, training the doctor and office manager as genuine executives, how to build a team, how to organize the practice, and so on, I'll put a link on the episode webpage. That said, what are some immediate, simple things worth checking or fixing right now, what I'd call customer service deal breakers? I have a list of 12 of them that can genuinely make or break a patient's experience in your practice, and that's what I want to cover in this week's episode. Even addressing four or five of these twelve can meaningfully increase goodwill and retention, reduce stress, and improve revenue. My name is Jeff Blumberg, and I'm your host.
As I go through these, I'm making one basic assumption I won't otherwise address: that the actual dentistry in your practice is good. That's rarely the real issue for an owner operator dentist. The one place I've seen this become a genuine problem is with a satellite practice or an associate whose clinical work you're not fully comfortable with, someone you wouldn't let work on yourself but are letting work on patients. That's a real problem, and it needs fixing before anything else on this list matters. Everything here assumes the dentistry itself is solid, and we're talking about what surrounds it.
So, the 12 customer service pressure points. Number one is your staff, your team. What do we actually want from them? Pleasant, responsive, accommodating, and genuinely selfless in how they provide service, meaning the attention stays on the patient, not on themselves. This can be taught. Some people simply haven't been exposed to workplace norms yet, and you'll see this especially with younger or less experienced staff, not a criticism, we were all there once. Someone with limited work experience might get a little too familiar with patients, calling a 70 year old Mr. Jones by his first name instead. They simply haven't learned that particular boundary yet.
Staff also need to understand that whatever's happening in their personal life stays out of the patient interaction, a bad morning at home doesn't get to show up at the front desk. That's not about being unsympathetic to your team, it's simply that patients shouldn't see it. This is a bit of corporate culture that not everyone arrives already knowing.
Here's another example worth training on: say someone walks into MGE and asks me where to find a specific team member's office. I wouldn't personally walk them there and interrupt that person mid-meeting, and I also wouldn't just point vaguely and say it's over there, turn right. I'd say something like, please have a seat, I'll go get them for you. Why? Because you're my guest, you're here to have a good experience, and I'm going to take care of you, get you a cup of coffee if you'd like one while you wait. Some people don't naturally think that way, they just point. Obviously you're not walking someone all the way to the restroom, just directing them, but the general principle is accommodation, not just gesturing toward the back and hoping they find the right room.
Some people also drift into oversharing. I once heard about an office manager stepping out toward the restroom while a new receptionist was on the phone with a patient asking for her, and the receptionist actually said, hold on, I think they're going to the bathroom, to the patient. I'm not assuming the worst about staff in general here, this is usually just a polish issue, not a character issue. The better response: excuse me one moment, she said she'll be able to call you back in five minutes, is that alright? Can I get your number? Creating a genuinely good, accommodating environment for a patient takes some real training.
Same idea applies the moment a patient walks in. Whoever's at the front should seem approachable, unbothered, not too busy or visibly frustrated. I should feel comfortable talking to your receptionist or scheduler, telling them about my day, mentioning I had trouble finding the practice, without feeling like I'm bothering them. I'd suggest actually practicing this directly, have someone show you exactly how they greet a walk-in patient, then coach them: offer a seat, offer water or coffee, whatever fits your practice, just something that makes people feel genuinely welcome.
Here's a suggestion that's admittedly a little tricky to pull off as the doctor, or even having your spouse or office manager do it: find a way to actually walk into your own practice, or have someone walk in, and experience it the way a real patient would. Your team will likely treat your spouse better than an average patient simply because they recognize them, so it helps to have someone more neutral, even the mail carrier, greeted the exact same warm, welcoming way you'd want any patient greeted.
Part of what makes this genuinely hard for a receptionist or scheduler is that they're simultaneously expected to keep the schedule full with the right kind of patients and deflect sales calls, stockbrokers, and other unrelated calls. That can put them in a strange headspace, deflect these people, welcome those people. But even someone calling to sell something doesn't need to be treated rudely. Thank you for coming by today, could I take your card, I'll let the doctor know you stopped in, thanks so much. There's no reason to be short with anyone. If a person does get rude or difficult, I'd still expect staff to stay composed and simply bring in the office manager to handle it, rather than absorbing that stress themselves.
One more thing that can happen with any repetitive process, scheduling patient number 8,001 can start to feel routine to the person doing it, even though it's the very first time that particular caller has ever spoken to your practice. Staff need to keep that freshness for every single patient, regardless of how many times they've personally done it before, they can't phone it in.
So that's the overall attitude worth cultivating in your team, and I'd genuinely recommend running practice exercises around it, greeting patients, walking someone to another part of the office, handling a difficult caller, until it feels natural. And make sure whoever's up front genuinely likes people and is comfortable interacting with them, since that's foundational to all of this.
Number two: answering the phone. I'm not a fan of a recording answering my call, I want a live person, and I don't want the phone to ring more than three times, ideally picked up on the first ring. This is something you can actually verify if you're recording calls, which I'd recommend doing on a routine basis, dedicating at least half an hour a week to listening in, either you or your office manager, since this is the very first point of contact with your practice, and problems here tend to surface early if you're actually checking.
I want the call answered quickly, and I want whoever's answering it to sound genuinely good doing it, clearly enunciating their name, greeting the caller warmly, and quickly figuring out why they're calling. Here's where it gets interesting: if the same person answering the phone is also scheduling patients, that combination can reveal problems you might not otherwise catch. If the phone isn't being answered quickly, or the person answering sounds scattered, or they're putting callers on hold repeatedly or for too long, that can point to a couple of underlying issues. Either that person isn't doing the job well, or they're simply overloaded.
You want a clear sense of your actual phone volume. If that person is handling both answering calls and scheduling patients, and the volume is heavy, you're creating a structural problem, they'll constantly have to put people on hold while checking someone out or scheduling someone else, and that's poor service regardless of how skilled they are. Ideally, whoever answers the phone is routing calls rather than handling everything personally, a new patient inquiry gets routed immediately to whoever handles new patient scheduling, freeing the receptionist to take the next call without feeling stressed or overloaded. As your practice grows and phone volume increases, it's often worth splitting reception and scheduling into two separate roles entirely, otherwise you end up with a receptionist who sounds aggravated from constantly being interrupted, and that comes through in how they speak to patients.
Number three, and this one's straightforward: the office and reception area need to be clean and look good. That doesn't mean you need a full remodel, though maybe eventually you will, paint isn't expensive, cleaning supplies aren't expensive. Sure, you might eventually redo the floors or reupholster the chairs, but there's no reason the practice can't be clean and presentable in the meantime. Very few things turn a patient off faster than walking into a healthcare practice that's dirty or dusty. This is worth being genuinely particular about, and it's something you can simply walk around and check regularly.
Number four is how the receptionist greets patients specifically, which connects to what I already covered about staff generally. Anyone walking into your reception area should feel genuinely welcome and comfortable, offered a seat, offered something to drink, and not made to wait long, which brings us to the next point directly.
Number five: I don't want a patient waiting more than 10 minutes, ideally under 5, ever. If your 2 o'clock appointment isn't actually seated until 2:15 on a regular basis, that's worth tracking. Have your front desk note, on a printed copy of the day's schedule, when each patient actually arrived and when they were actually seated, then review it at the end of the day or the next morning to spot any pattern. Waiting more than 10 minutes is a genuine drag for anyone, cell phone or not.
This usually comes down to one of two underlying problems. First, you don't have an actual scheduling system in place. I've covered building a real scheduling system in other episodes, and we also offer a course on our online platform, DDS Success, called the Art of Scheduling, which gives you a working system for staying efficient and seating patients on time, use the code RX269 if you'd like to save on a subscription, it's month to month with no contract. We also run a free virtual seminar called the Art of Scheduling Productively, I'll link both on the episode webpage. Back in the early 2000s, most practices had a real scheduling policy in place. Today it's genuinely rare, I'll walk into a practice and ask how they determine appointment length, and hear, whatever the doctor tells us. Then I'll ask the doctor how long a given procedure actually takes, and hear, maybe an hour and a half, even though it was scheduled for an hour. That's not a schedule, it's more of a suggestion, and it's exactly why the whole day ends up running behind and everyone feels like they're scrambling.
The second common cause: a doctor brings a patient back for two of five planned crowns, and mid-visit decides to just do all five instead, turning a scheduled hour into two and a half hours and throwing off the rest of the day. Or a treatment presentation runs long because the patient isn't closing, and the doctor keeps going well past the scheduled time. This all comes back to actually following your scheduling system, doing what's scheduled, and only expanding on it if you genuinely have the time without disrupting anyone else's appointment. If I've spent 20 minutes presenting a treatment plan that isn't closing and my next patient has arrived, I might give it five more minutes, but then I need to disengage and move on, because once a practice gets a reputation for running behind, patients start showing up late too, and then you've got real disorder.
Number six: I would never leave a patient alone in the operatory. If the doctor steps out to check on another patient, the assistant stays with the patient they're working on, briefly stepping out only to grab something specific. Leaving a patient sitting in the chair with nothing to do and nobody checking on them is simply poor service, and it doesn't go over well, even if it doesn't seem like a big deal from the practice's side.
Number seven, and this is something I've noticed happening less and less over the years: giving patients clear post-op instructions when they're dismissed, written and verbal both. Whether it's a printed handout or a link to something online, make sure whoever's delivering it, even a dental assistant, takes the time to actually walk through it with the patient rather than just handing over a sheet. After extractions, let's go through this together, any questions at all, now's the time to ask, and call us if anything comes up. Without that, you inevitably get callback questions, or worse, a patient who forgot the instructions entirely and ends up with a dry socket from drinking through a straw.
I'd put together genuinely good post-op instructions on your own letterhead, maybe with a small FAQ attached, can I use an electric toothbrush after this, that kind of thing, and I'd also post the same content on your website, it's useful extra content and it can help with search engine optimization too. This has simply become less common than it used to be, and skipping it is poor service, especially after a surgical procedure, and in the worst cases can genuinely contribute to implant failure or dry socket.
Number eight has to do with scheduling access. Patients should be able to get into your practice reasonably quickly. If I'm a patient of record who somehow didn't get rescheduled for a cleaning and I call in flexible on timing, and the earliest hygiene opening is three months out, that's a real problem, and it usually means you need more hygiene availability. If it's for the doctor, say I need a couple of fillings and I'm told to call back the next day, only to find the next opening is five weeks out, that's also a problem, I should be able to get in within about a week. If a full, well-organized book is regularly pushing routine treatment out five or six weeks, that usually means either your scheduling system needs work, likely including proper double booking, or you genuinely need an associate. Which one depends on actually looking at your book, but it's worth a real look either way. If the delay is on the patient's side, say they're out of town for a month, that's different, but you should always be able to accommodate someone sooner than five or six weeks if the schedule allows.
Number nine, and this is one I've actually seen get worse over the last twenty years even as clinical dentistry has improved dramatically: how accounts are managed. Your accounts receivable needs to be accurate, and there needs to be a real system for collecting on it. If a patient keeps receiving statements showing a balance that should have been filed with insurance, or a discount that never got entered, and they're told they owe money they genuinely don't owe, that's going to genuinely upset that patient. People get upset about money more than almost anything else, so keeping accounts accurate matters enormously for goodwill.
I covered a system for regularly collecting patient balances in last week's episode, and I'll cover what to do about genuinely problem accounts in an upcoming one. For now, the priority is resolving discrepancies quickly, since account issues are a real source of patient frustration. Pull your accounts receivable report regularly to check this. One caveat: if you take prepayments or carry credit balances, say from insurance overpayments or large cases like full arch or all-on-X treatment where you might collect $40,000 up front but only charge out $10,000 in the first couple weeks, you'll want to pull that report excluding credit balances, since otherwise the numbers get misleading. If you're carrying $300,000 in patient credit balances against $400,000 genuinely owed to you, a standard report might just show the net difference, $100,000, when your real receivable is actually $400,000. Pull it without credit balances first, and check specifically for anything aging past 60, 90, or 120 days, since balances that old either mean the practice isn't actively collecting, or there's no clear process for what happens next, or the patient is genuinely upset and disputing it, believing insurance owes more than it does. Whatever the reason, it needs resolving, since it otherwise creates real patient frustration and damages goodwill. I'd also recommend periodically reviewing credit balances themselves, since you don't want those sitting indefinitely either, if a patient like Mrs. Jones never came back for a case she'd already paid toward, that's worth following up on directly to get her back in.
Number ten might sound a little different, but it's genuinely a customer service point, and it's entirely within your control as the doctor. If you've listened to this podcast before, you know I'm a strong advocate for presenting full treatment plans, telling a patient exactly what they need, and I've covered the specific technique for doing that effectively elsewhere. But I'd also frame it as a matter of customer service in its own right. Put yourself in the patient's position for a moment. You've come in as a new patient, gotten a thorough exam, scans, imaging, and you're expecting to be told what was found and what's needed to fix it. Would you be upset to learn you need a $15,000 treatment plan when you assumed you needed nothing? Maybe, and there are real ways to soften that moment, which I've covered elsewhere. But the underlying truth doesn't change, and you're not withholding it out of fear of upsetting the patient, because your primary interest is getting them healthy, and you're confident and unapologetic about that, which is exactly why they came to you in the first place. Here's what I found, here's why it's a problem, here's how I'd fix it, here's what it costs. They may not accept it, but at least they know exactly what they need.
Compare that to the alternative: worried that telling someone they need $15,000 of work all at once will scare them off, so you tell them they need scaling first because of gum disease. They come in for that, and while they're there, you mention they also need some crowns. Next visit, you mention missing teeth that need implants. That starts to feel mildly deceptive, similar to bringing your car in because it's making a knocking sound, and the shop only ever tells you about the one thing causing that specific noise, fixes it, and then reveals another issue afterward. You start wondering when it's actually going to end. Telling a patient everything up front, delivered with a confident, professional attitude because you know you can fix it, is itself a point of good customer service, whether or not they accept the treatment that day. At minimum, they know you're being straightforward with them.
There's also a real practical benefit: patients who get their full treatment done are considerably more likely to actually refer people to your practice. It doesn't need to be a huge case, six fillings, an implant, two crowns, doesn't sound massive, but if you fixed everything that patient had going on, their teeth look and feel great, they're going to send friends your way, especially combined with a genuinely friendly team and accurate accounts. Patients who were told they need scaling, then crowns, then implants across multiple visits generally aren't going to feel that same confidence or enthusiasm to refer anyone.
Lastly, and this isn't so much a specific point as an invitation to get creative: you can always add something genuinely unique to your practice. I've seen all kinds of things over the years, headsets, VR headsets, ceiling-mounted movies, and you can use your own imagination or look at what similar practices are doing well. One of the more interesting examples I've come across involves the restaurant Eleven Madison Park in New York City, which was ranked the number one restaurant in the world for a period of time by one of the major industry publications. Their chef and front of house staff visited a number of other three Michelin star restaurants specifically to identify what those restaurants weren't doing well, rather than what they were already doing right. They found that coffee tended to be an afterthought industry-wide, and that beer drinkers were generally overlooked in favor of wine focused programs. So they specifically built out excellence in coffee and beer alongside their wine list, which genuinely contributed to their rise.
The point is worth applying to your own practice too: look honestly at what you already do well, then ask what you could genuinely improve, whether by observing other practices or simply sitting down with your own team. I'd bring this up directly at a staff meeting, let them know you're prioritizing patient experience because you want people to feel genuinely taken care of, and open the floor for ideas, people often come up with genuinely great suggestions.
On the individual observation side, you might have your spouse or a friend walk through the office and quietly observe, or have a dental assistant keep an eye on how long patients are actually waiting. And as I mentioned earlier, if you start listening to recorded calls or noticing issues, don't immediately assume the worst about your staff. In most cases, people genuinely want to do a good job, and if something's not working, it usually comes down to needing more training or being overloaded, both of which are fixable.
It also helps enormously to actually incentivize and reinforce great patient service when it happens. If multiple patients mention a specific dental assistant by name, make a real point of recognizing that, some kind of reward or acknowledgment. If a patient shares a genuine win, cried happy tears over their new veneers, felt truly cared for during a difficult procedure, bring that up at your staff meeting. It's easy to lose sight of the real impact you're having on people's lives day to day, and reminding your team of that regularly matters.
Putting real focus on this isn't just good for your patients, it's good for your practice and genuinely good for your team too, giving them a stronger sense of accomplishment and reminding them how directly they're helping change people's lives for the better.
With that, I'll wrap up this week's episode. I hope this helps. If you have questions about any of this, you can reach me directly at jeffb@mgeonline.com. I've included links to DDS Success and the Art of Scheduling Productively seminar I mentioned earlier on the episode webpage. If you'd like to learn more about MGE, you can find us online at mgeonline.com or call us at (800) 640-1140. Folks, have a great week, and we'll see you at the next episode.