It seems that all you hear and read about these days is the need to attract more new patients. And as a management consultant, I am advising every client on strategies to be successful in this important endeavor. But I fear that in the pursuit of the new patient, we may tend to forget about – or certainly take for granted – our long standing patients of record.

I recently read an interesting study that analyzed the data as to when a patient decided to leave a dental practice. You might have thought it would be early on in the relationship. A patient decides that the staff, doctor, practice philosophy – whatever – doesn’t meet or match their expectations – so they leave. In actuality, it turns out that in this study, the average patient leaving a practice did so after six years. At the exit interview, here was the dominant theme. “When I first started at the practice, they always made me feel welcome and important. Nowadays, it seems like they don’t care that much about me anymore.”

That is shocking! And what a wake up call it should be. The dollar value of a dental patient – returning year after year for continuing care and new dental treatment – is huge. And think about the referrals and good will generated in the community from keeping a satisfied patient in the fold.

Hello – these patients are the people who pay our salaries and keep us in business. Perhaps it is time to redirect some energy towards our existing patients. Please look for every and any way to make an existing patient feel special. Praise them – coddle them – thank them – handle them with kid gloves. Let them know how much you care about them. To do anything else is indefensible and irresponsible.

A dental practice is populated with patients who respect and admire and trust you. Of course – otherwise they wouldn’t be there! So why don’t they refer more friends, family or co-workers to the practice? Probably because they think you are so busy that you don’t want or couldn’t accept any more new patients. I suggest it is time to educate your patient base and start asking for referrals.

But dentists and staff are reluctant to ask for referrals because they think it is either demeaning or un-professional. My assessment is that if you don’t ask, you are missing a golden opportunity. So when is it OK to ask and how do you ask? Very simple – you ask for referrals whenever a patient says “thank you.” This needs to be like a Pavlovian response – a patient saying “thank you” triggers the request for a referral. The doctor and each and every staff member needs to develop their own script for this. Here are two examples.

Patient says to the doctor after looking in the mirror – “I just love the way these front fillings look – thank you so much.”  Don’t be shy – you just heard the magic words. The proper reply would be “I’m glad you are pleased,  they do look great and I am excited for you. I love doing this kind of treatment – so if you have friends who might benefit, please send them our way. We’ll take just as good care of them as we did of you.”

Patient says to someone at the front desk – “Susie – thank you so much for getting my son a last minute appointment to get his teeth cleaned this week. We totally forgot he was going back to college.” A response might be “Mrs. Jones – it is my pleasure. That is the way we try to take care of all of our patients. So any friends you want to refer over – well we would love to see them. And you can be sure we will always extend the same courtesy to them.”

You get the idea.  Hopefully offering exquisite customer service is a corner stone of your practice philosophy, so you should be hearing patients say thank you all day long. Just be sure to seize that perfect opportunity to ask for a referral.

The typical busy dental practice is a virtual hub of activity with hundreds of patient conversations taking place daily. Most of these conversations are out of earshot of the dentist. They occur at the front desk or in the hygiene room, or even in the doctor treatment room with a dental assistant when the doctor may be out of the room.

In the course of those conversations, a lot of important information is exchanged. Deaths or illnesses in a family, jobs lost or landed, kids getting into college, awards won, milestones achieved.

I suggest that we need to put this information to good use by sharing it with the doctor. One of the staff is appointed to be the chairperson of what I call the Sunshine Committee. Every employee in the practice is responsible for reporting their daily relevant conversations to the Sunshine Committee chairperson who in turn shares the information with the doctor.

The details are placed on the desk in the doctor’s private office. Every night, the doctor must write two or three handwritten personal notes to these patients. Not a term paper – just a few lines- and in your best prescription handwriting! Example: “Dear Roberta – I was so sorry to learn that your mother had passed away. I know what an influence she was in your life. Please accept my deepest sympathies at this difficult time”. Example: “Dear Jonathan – I was so excited to hear that Bobby was accepted to Yale. How proud you and Mary must be. Please send him my heartiest congratulations”. Sincerely – Dr. Sam Jones

This is a total team effort. Everyone must have their antennae tuned and listen to your patients. Thirty to thirty-five notes a month – consistently – will create a major buzz in your community. Do not overlook this fabulous opportunity to let your patients know how well you communicate and how much you care.

So often these days, dentists are inundated with advice on how to market their practice to attract more new patients. Direct mail, radio or TV spots, pay per click programs on Google and now Facebook – everyone has something to sell you. And while I have clients using all of these external marketing mediums successfully, there is no question that the costs are significant. Hopefully the return on investment for any of these strategies makes them affordable. But in this difficult economy, many dentists are nervous about obligating themselves to big on going expenses for advertising.

Let’s not overlook the value of internal marketing to our existing patient base. As long as this is done consistently, it is very effective and the costs are negligible. Probably most of your patients don’t realize – or certainly think about the fact – that you want or need more new patients. In a busy practice, many of your patients assume that you are not even taking new patients.

So over the next few weeks, I will share with you a bunch of internal marketing techniques that I recommend that tap into the power of word of mouth advertising. Do you realize what would happen to your practice if every one of your patients referred just ONE patient? It might be too much to handle – what a nice problem to have!

When a patient calls your office, they have very high expectations that you will be able to help them. Help them to resolve an issue, or help them with answers to questions. And in this microwave society in which we live, they want the answer quickly. My recommendation is to try – at all costs – not to say “no” or “I don’t know” to a patient. Instead remember these nine words – “the best way that I can help you is…” The best way that I can help you is to check with our insurance coordinator and get back to you promptly. The best way that I can help you is to speak with the doctor and return your call later today.

Another pet peeve – and I am certain that all of you have experienced this in numerous situations – is that people don’t listen to you when you are speaking with them on the telephone. Hearing is a sense and just happens automatically. Listening is what we choose to do, and it is a very valuable skill. So listen intently to your patients. Make listening noises so that the patient knows you are engaged like “tell me more” or “uh –huh” or ‘absolutely”. Don’t just nod because they can’t see you.

And finally, welcome the opportunity to handle customer complaints. Research shows that if you can successfully resolve a complaint quickly and courteously, that patient will continue to do business with you and continue to refer patients. So never be confrontational – our customers are always right!

Here are some suggestions that should and can be implemented immediately.

1.Your greeting – My recommended greeting is “Thanks for calling – or thanks for choosing – Dr. Levitt’s office – this is Susan.” And you say “this is Susan” with an upbeat inflection that says or implies “how may I help you”. The last word I want the patient to hear is your name.
2. Remember that how you look on the telephone is how you sound on the telephone. So smile when you are talking on the telephone because the image you convey forms an image of everyone in the practice. I love the comment that says ” a smile is a gift – try giving away a couple of hundred every day.”
3. In your ensuing conversation with the patient, be sure to refer often to the patient by their name. This is a sign of friendliness, and people tend to do business with people they like. “I will look forward to seeing you at your appointment Mrs. Jones” is much more effective and personal than saying “I will look forward to seeing you at your next appointment.” Patients love to hear the sound of their name. In fact, in a recent survey conducted by British Airways and Westin Hotels, it was discovered that bookings increased significantly when the potential customer was referred to by name three to four times in the conversation.
4. Be interested with your voice. Be enthusiastic – if you don’t sound like you want to be in the office, why should they?

It is so easy to integrate these ideas and to incorporate them into the DNA of your practice. Look for my next posting where I will offer more ideas on this topic.

My last few blog posts have been about the importance of great customer service as a way of differentiating your office from the competition. Perhaps no one in your practice is more influential in this regard as the person who answers your telephone. The telephone is the conduit for patients to enter the practice, and is the very first step in the key process of relationship building.

There are proven systems and scripting to convert phone leads into happy patients with an appointment. I would respectfully suggest that any new patient telephone interaction needs to be a minimum of ten minutes of back and forth dialogue. You need to create a major “WOW” in the mind of that patient based on the care you took to understand their individual needs and requests, and by the great customer service that was extended. That patient needs to feel when the call is over, that they have never had such a positive experience from any professional office.

When a dental practice understands the enormous lifetime dollar value of any new patient – both from dental treatment for that patient now and going forward, and the potential of referrals – they just have to become exquisitely good at converting calls to appointments.

Look for my next blog where I will share some tips on great telephone techniques that work.

The saying goes “that you never get a second chance to make a great first impression.” Delivering consistent – and NOT schizophrenic – exquisite customer service will separate you from your competition.

Providing this type of experience – by the doctor and by all team members – for each and every patient interaction – must become an essential part of the DNA of your practice.

This won’t happen automatically by some decree from on high. Don’t think that places like the Ritz Carlton got their reputation for unbelievable customer service without hours and hours of meetings, going over every last detail of what each staff member does in every situation. And as good as they are, they constantly strive to improve.

So make the commitment as a team to get started with planning and training to become a truly remarkable office. I feel that when it comes to customer service, it is not difficult to be outstanding when pretty much everyone else is so bad.

The biggest challenge facing any business today is to build and maintain a loyal, talented, dedicated, and customer service oriented team. The dental business is no different. It is absolutely impossible to have a great practice without a great team.

Building the best staff you can is an on-going process. I feel it is the responsibility of the dentist to create a nurturing environment where the best staff WANT to work. Pay well – anything different is penny wise and pound foolish.  Offer an outstanding benefit package,  and give people responsibility and opportunity for growth and advancement. Create easy to understand barometers to measure individual performance as well as overall practice results. Don’t be afraid to incentivize and reward outstanding performance. The greatest management principle in the world says that if you reward great behavior, you will get more of that behavior.

The two things that staff want more than sex and money is to (1) know that  they are appreciated and are doing a good job, and (2) that they have some opportunity to influence business and management decisions at the place they spend most of their waking hours. So go out of your way to tell them every day if they are doing a good job, and create communication opportunities where they feel that they have a voice to express ideas.

Building the perfect staff will take time. Resist the temptation to hire any warm body. be selective and don’t compromise your standards. The results will be well worth the effort.

It should be virtually impossible for the size of a dental practice to stay the same. You either have to get bigger or else you get smaller.

You get bigger by attracting more new patients to the practice. They come as referrals from satisfied existing patients who are impressed with your clinical expertise or by your fabulous customer service. Many times these days new patients are also finding you on the Internet.

In my experience, the biggest obstacle to growth is the lack of a proper facility. Without enough treatment rooms and providers to deliver care, it becomes chaotic and frustrating to try to service an expanding patient base. The systems that used to work are no longer effective. And why spend marketing dollars to attract more new patients when you have no place to put them.

A new or expanded physical space will allow your practice to flourish and expand. Without it, you may grow smaller – even if you don’t want to.