Hi Doc – How R U 2 Day :)

We find ourselves living in a world of e-mail and texts and tweets filled with contracted words, symbols, and abbreviations. Whether you are on the subway, or out for dinner, or at a ballgame, all you see are people glued to their smart phones. It seems that we have forgotten the art of interpersonal communication. One of my favorite journalists recently wrote “Did you ever think you’d see the day when handwriting seems like an endangered species?”

One of the major keys to success in life and in business is making people feel special. And in my opinion, nothing does that better than sending a handwritten note. I advise all of my clients to write two handwritten notes at the end of every single workday before they leave to go home. Here are the logistics of how to make this happen.

Your dental practice is a huge gossip center where happy occurrences or tragic events and everything in between are discussed every day. The people who answer the telephone at your office often have to reschedule appointments based on these events: births, deaths, business situations, etc. Life as we all know it is complicated and ever-changing. Unless the change occurs on the doctor’s schedule that day, he or she may not be privy to or informed of that information. There are also many patients who are processed through Hygiene that the doctor may not be scheduled to examine. So again, important social information will not be heard by the doctor.

The goal is to channel all this information to the doctor so that he/she can respond. I suggest the creation of a position in the office called the “PR person”. This is the name for the designated staff person in charge of public relations to whom everyone who works in the practice reports all significant information that they might hear during the course of the day. The PR person’s job is to accumulate the information, along with the name and address of the patient, and leave it on the doctor’s desk.

From the list that has been prepared, the doctor chooses who will receive notes. Using personalized stationary, the note is written in your “prescription” handwriting. This is not a term paper–just two or three lines at the most.

“Dear Mary–I was so sorry to learn that your Mom had passed away. Please accept my deepest sympathies at this difficult time. Sincerely”

“Dear Robert–I was so excited to learn that you were accepted to the University of Pennsylvania. Congratulations on all of your hard work. Please send my best to your proud parents. Sincerely”

A number of wonderful things happen with this note writing program.

1. People are very surprised to get a personal note from their busy dentist. It is so totally not expected that it gets talked about–to many many people – all over town.
2. It shows great inter-office communication. The information that might have been discussed with someone at the front desk or a hygienist or an assistant somehow was made available to the doctor.
3. It makes people feel special. You took the time to write a note. How often does that happen? Usually, the only correspondence one gets from a dental practice is a bill!

So please try this strategy of writing notes to your patients. You might be skeptical about the time this will take. But so many clients have told me the joy they experience by staying in close touch with their patients. And they certainly get a lot of positive feedback. Two notes per day soon becomes thirty-five per month. If you commit to this effort, it doesn’t take long for a huge buzz to spread around your community recognizing you as a caring and compassionate professional.