Happy Wednesday, ADOM Nation. Thanks for tuning in to another Wednesday live cast and very excited. Always great when we can bring on guests where it is their first time, but even better when we can bring on guests that have been with you many, many times and always a pleasure to spend some time with Dr. Roger Levin. And today's live cast brought to you by Crest Oral-B.
And as you saw, the five-star customer service practice. And before... Dr. Levin gets started and I do a little intro of who he is for those of you that did not know who he is.
Just a question to think about, maybe he's going to talk about this and it's kind of along the lines of customer service in your practice. Do you feel like your customer service is maybe a little better than it actually is? So Roger, I'm going to hang that out there for them because I think that you'll do a really good job of kind of helping them answer that question. But before we get started, everybody, I just wanted to take...
a quick minute i mean dr levin has done so many great things in dentistry and so i think when we get this opportunity you know i love to give back and share with you kind of where he's come from and then he'll get right into his presentation like always but um yeah so he's the ceo of the eleven group a leading dental management consulting firm founded in 1985 worked with over 30 000 clients uh which is always fascinating um and definitely one of the saw one of the most sought off uh sought out educators in dentistry when it comes to practicing success and sustainable growth, and really recognized expert on propelling practices into that top 10%, right? So I think whichever field we're in, we're all trying to get to that top 10%. And of course, authored over 65 books, over 4,000 articles. And he has served on the editorial board of prominent dental publications, been named as one of the leaders in dentistry by dentistry today for the last 16 years, was recently named one of the 32 most in- influential people in dentistry by Insigil Edge Magazine and voted best dental consultant by the readers of Dr. Bicuspid.
He's been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Time Magazine. He is the creator of the Levin Group Tip of the Day, which reaches over 30,000 dental professionals. Without further ado, it's great to bring to ADOM Nation, Dr. Roger Levin. How are you doing, Roger? Thank you, John.
I'm doing great. And I love being here because I know that ADOM office managers want... to grow. And I'm going to start off by, and I'm going to be careful how I say this because I'm always positive, but I read an article recently that talked about all these different types of office managers and what they should be paid. And I just felt it was so far off the mark.
I know we have many, many levels of experience and different backgrounds, and I understand all that. But what's great about ADOM is it's all working to bring people to a higher level. And a big part of my life is always...
trying to help people reach their real potential. So I'm thrilled to be here with you today and customer service is one of my favorite topics and I hope I can give a deep dive with a lot of practical ideas. So before I begin, I want to share with everybody a thought. Living Group has three principles that we want every dentist to live by and achieve.
Two of them are very relevant to today. The first one is Grow production every year. If you're an office manager, your number one job is grow production every year.
Because to do that, you've got to manage a team, grow a team, get work done, get new things put in place, deal with problems, all the things you deal with every day. And I'm going to give you a warning, which is we've had a lot of staffing change in the last few years, and office managers are spending a disproportionate amount of time, not that it's wrong. managing people versus also focusing on increasing production every year, which includes strategy and tactics and systems and getting things done.
And I think a lot of office managers have been pulled away from important parts of the job because they're so busy just putting out fires with other team members. Number two of the three principles, and we're only going to talk about two of them today, is build a world-class team. We believe that office managers can build a world-class team, not by putting out fires, not by micromanaging.
In fact, you ruin people that way over time, you end up doing their jobs. But if you can grow production every year and you can build a world-class team, which helps you to grow production every year, you are gonna have a great practice. So don't lose sight of your vision.
The doctors may have a separate vision, the owners may have a vision, whatever it is. Your main vision is grow production every year and build a world-class team. At worst-case scenario, that will make you a fantastic office manager. Today's topic is customer service. And if there's one topic I love, that I truly love and have loved since the 1980s, it's customer service.
I've been studying it since the 1980s. What I'm going to teach you today, and you'll see it come up later, is based on a... two-year research study of the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, the most elegant and luxurious and profitable hotel chain in the world.
Disney Corporation, one of the most successful corporations on earth. Most people don't think of Disney as a media empire. Disney is one of the biggest media empires on the face of the earth. Their parks are incredible.
They have amazing customer service, which keeps people coming back and engaged. And then Nordstrom, the department store chain that built itself based on legends of customer service. And in studying those, reading every article ever written about them, every book ever written about them, and then going to the Disney and Ritz-Carlton Institutes, I've brought together a concept of five-star customer service in dentistry.
I even wrote a book on it, which helped me codify and organize my thinking. It's a video book. called wow every patient and some of that is also in this presentation so here we go on the subject and the question i want to ask you is how do dental patients judge your practice now as a dentist uh what wasn't mentioned in my bio i'm a general dentist i practiced 10 years full time while i was building levin group a manage a dental management consulting firm that i founded in 1985 And the experience in the last 39 years, I hope, has allowed me to help you and others in a bigger and bigger way.
And I know that when I was in practice that most dentists thought, if I do great dentistry, I will have a wildly successful practice. Now, when I was in practice, it was a lot easier. So the fact is that you could build a wildly successful practice even if you weren't a great dentist because everybody did well.
That's the supply and demand of dental economics. If there are enough patients for practices, we're all in a good situation. But in reality, it is not the doctor's clinical skills that build the practice.
Patients are what's called uninformed consumers. They don't know. But yet they will judge what they think is a fair yardstick of clinical quality. And the way they judge clinical quality...
is by how you treat them. If you treat them well, they think they're also getting great dentistry. And I do remember, and I say this very carefully because I try not to judge people, but I remember a dentist who was pretty well known not to be the best dentist, let's say.
And this goes way back, but I don't think it's any different today. And yet he had a tremendous practice and his patients loved him. And I know that because when he retired, some of his patients came to me and they told me how much he loved them. Do not underestimate that patients judge the practice and clinical quality based on how you treat them as people. We go forward and what we find is that patients have specific things, no they don't.
Patients have specific things, no they don't, that they want in customer service. Because the truth is that despite what you hear, many patients have no idea what they want. You know, they go to a dentist, well they want quality, they want to keep their teeth, they, you know, they want to be treated nicely. What does that mean? And there's no...
There are no studies on this anywhere. I've tried to take a hard look at it. But here's what I believe.
It's up to you to create the customer service system in your practice. And you have to create it for your patient base. Are they affluent? Are they not affluent?
Are you PPO? Are you fee-for-service? Are you a combination? Do you do big cases, moderate-sized cases, or smaller cases? And by the way, any of those can be great practices.
but they have different customer service models to some degree now when i teach i always teach five star customer service because in the end if you can get to five star and bear with me because most of us are not five star but if you can get and you just said to yourself we are well we'll find out it's not that you're bad it's just five star is you know off the charts incredible and rare five star prac customer service practices are always successful They attract more new patients. Patients don't leave them, so they have bigger patient bases. I'll go into all of that. But the reality is that in many businesses, the customer does not know what the customer wants. And there's a great story about Chrysler Corporation, big car company, that got in trouble.
And this was the first time they were in trouble. And they brought in a guy named Lee Iacocca. And Lee Iacocca was the new CEO of Chrysler.
And he was looking and learning, and he'd been in the car business for years, and he came up with the idea of a minivan. Some of you might have minivans. Now, nobody had ever heard of a minivan.
Nobody had asked for a minivan. There was no research saying people want minivans, so Chrysler, if you build minivans, you'll be back on top, you'll make a lot of money, you'll do great. But Lee Iacocca had a sense that people wanted these minivans. He had Chrysler create it, and of course, the rest of the story is...
It was wildly, wildly successful, just like you want to be. Customer service can make you extremely successful if you create the right system. So I want to make that point. Your patients don't always know what they want. We have to help figure it out and give it to them.
So what we see then on our next slide is the basis of all practice success. And for every office manager, if you have two takeaways today, you're going to see that every day. grow production every year and build a world-class team and put in phenomenal systems if you don't have great systems it's very hard to have a great practice you'll get to a certain level you can't get any higher the systems you have today pay attention to this statement may be keeping you in the same place think about an elite athlete the athlete goes out and gets new types of training and get stronger, faster, whatever the case may be.
And that athlete improves. The next time they compete, they do better. So they keep doing the same thing then over and over and over and over.
And what happens? Of course, they don't get any better because they're doing the same thing. Your systems, for many of you, are doing the same thing.
And they're keeping you right where you are today. And they will restrict your ability to grow. Now, when you put in systems and they have to be great, your job as an office manager is access great systems, find whoever can provide them, find what's proven out there.
Don't work with brand new concepts. They're unproven. You don't want to be a guinea pig. Work with people that really put the work in.
And I can tell you, just as an example, you know, we have a curriculum department. We put tremendous work in. We test everything. we build systems step by step and that's what you want step by step systems so the rest of the team can follow them otherwise you're going to be retraining reteaching and doing other people's jobs all the time and frankly between the dealing with team members and doing other people's jobs office managers are losing a lot of time so we keep going and we understand you want documented proven step-by-step systems but Do you go back to your team from this webinar and say, guys, I heard Roger Levin speak on customer service. I got motivated.
I got excited. It feels good. Be nicer to the patients.
The answer is. Customer service is not an accident and it is not about just being nice to your patients. Really important.
Customer service is a system, just like the ones I'm talking about, that you follow every patient, every time, every day. Every patient, every time, every day. That's how customer service wins. It wins when you do it almost every time the same way because human nature doesn't change.
Whether it's a PPO patient, fee-for-service patient, affluent patient, not affluent patient, everybody wants to be treated well and everybody wants to feel important. I think feeling important is one of the most powerful motivators in human nature. So as we go to our next slide, keep in mind that customer service is not just about being nice. And the reason it matters is relationships.
People want relationships. whether it's live, online, with celebrities. You know, you feel like you know Kim Kardashian if you're watching her show and you're following her on social media.
Everybody wants relationships. And if we in dentistry can create practices that build great relationships with patients, we win and you're gonna have a great practice. I'm all about building great practices. Let's go from good to great because great practices will do fine with. competition, fine and bad economies, you're still going to always have a great practice if you build powerful relationships.
And part of it is five-star customer service. And anyone, any person, think about this, that can build great relationships with other people, they're going to be successful in any field, any service business, because this is one thing customers want. I want a great relationship. I want great service.
I want to feel important. Those are constants for all. all patients.
And that's what I work with is how do we put in customer service that works everywhere, every time. And having done it a lot, having so many clients where we've put in customer service systems with their other management systems, we know it makes an enormous difference and it allows for a great trajectory of growth in the practice. Okay, so keep in mind what you're dealing with. I was in Nashville, Tennessee the last two days. I was at a business conference.
I learned a lot, but as part of this conference, they had all kinds of events. They had all kinds of meals. Everything was phenomenal. It was a first-class experience.
And, you know, if I spent a little bit of money in Nashville, that felt pretty good. That was kind of fun. Now you go to the dentist.
Nobody really wakes up in the morning and says, I've got a little extra money. I think I'll go to the dentist. People don't want to spend their money at the dentist. I'm a dentist, so I'm talking about me.
I don't practice anymore, but I'm talking about my world as well. Vacations and new cars are more fun than the dentist, believe me. And many people believe they have to spend money at the dentist.
They'll come every six months. They'll do the restoration. They'll do the crown. But it's really about trusting you.
because they're spending money because they trust you. When you tell a patient they've got periodontal disease, they don't know that. It doesn't hurt.
They're not suffering. It's not keeping them awake at night. Nobody's looking in their mouth and saying, oh my God, look at your gums.
They're trusting you that there are these bad bacteria under their gums causing problems. And that is so important. So I wanna talk about trust a little bit as we move into our next section here. And you begin to realize, that trust is a key factor.
It's also the secret reason that customer service is so important. Think if you've never been told this before, when you have five-star customer service, which is not easy, you need a system, people trust you. You build trust through customer service. Let me tie it together.
Remember, they don't judge your clinical care because they understand clinical dentistry. They judge it by how you treat them as people. That's called customer service.
So when you can make people feel good, when you can build relationships, we teach the golden 10, you never touch a patient until you know 10 personal things about them, a new patient. When you can build great relationships and you have a positive personality, and office managers raise your enthusiasm by 20% starting today, you'll be amazed how the rest of the team will improve quickly. It seems like magic, it's not, it's contagious. But understand, that a positive approach making feel people feel important great customer service creates trust and trust is the number one factor that patients judge you and the dentistry and the doctor buy there are a lot of things you can do in marketing like having the team say positive things about the doctor to create confidence that's not today's webinar but The bottom line is patients have to trust you.
Now you're saying to yourself, oh our patients trust us. They do, but not necessarily at the level you think. Our patients keep coming back.
Yeah, until there's more competition, until there's a change in their insurance, until this world is changing fast. If you're a manager today, you've got to be more resilient and more flexible than ever before. A great customer service foundation will do a tremendous amount. to keep your practice strong no matter what you're facing if i built any new type of business in the world the first thing i would do is focus on how do we give great customer service we do it in our consulting firm we work on it every day it's it's something i would bring to any business activity because it's so powerful okay so trust is important but do you do you really have trust well Here's a patient that just happened with a fairly new client of ours, went to a doctor, had been going to the doctor for a number of years, and the doctor proposed a $22,000 treatment plan.
Patient had been going for years, so you say, well, the patient must trust the doctor. Well, they trusted the doctor for hygiene, for restorations, for basic stuff, but something felt off in the presentation, and the patient went and got a second opinion. Now, the second opinion was exactly the same as the first opinion. No different, almost the same level of fees. It was not that the first doctor oversold, found too much, did something wrong.
The patient didn't need it. It was a $22,000, very solid treatment plan. And I wasn't there, but they told me all about the treatment plan and everything sounded really like it should be done.
This dentistry should be done for the patient. So the new dentist, when they came in. had a great new patient experience, was a client of ours, had learned the golden 10, had been through the front desk new patient experience training.
That's a system had been through the doctor diagnostic training. That's a system had been through case presentation, a critical system. And with that, what we found was the patient said, I'm staying here. They didn't go back to their original doctor when they found out that the second doctor believed that this treatment plan was good. Why?
They can't. trusted and liked the second Dr. Moore. And it only took one 30-minute appointment for the patient to go up front and schedule to have this treatment done, which has now been completed. So they didn't schedule it and disappear.
And every touch point from the first time the phone rings all the way through the end of treatment, and now they're in hygiene, every touch point was at a high level of service. When I build customer service programs, with our curriculum folks and then we teach it to our consultants we teach them every step along the way you can't just have customer service you've got to break it up into an experience step by step when you go to the disney parks disneyland disney world there's a reason that you have the experience you have they they i know their lines and nothing's perfect but they have the experience every step of the way they have the experience when you go there, when you arrive, when you are standing in line, when you are interacting with any of the characters, when you're in the restaurants or the hotels, everything is pre-mapped out from a customer service standpoint. They don't call people customers. They call them guests because they want everyone in their organization to think of people at Disneyland, Disney World, Disney China, Disney, Euro, Euro Disney. They want everyone to think of their customers.
as guests. And what makes the difference in the treatment plan I just described? Customer service.
It was not a better dentist. It was a better presentation, but customer service was mapped out every step of the way. I know that sounds hard, but there are systems already that exist that you can easily put in place to make this happen. You don't have to figure it out all from the beginning on your own.
Okay, so that's the story of the patient. And our next slide, we begin to understand that trust is just so absolutely important. But what else is important? How likable are you?
I gave it a name. I call it the likability quotient. I love that name, the like phrase, the likability quotient.
Now, we all think we're likable, but some people are more likable, and some people are off the charts likable. And if you are one of the rare people who is off the charts likable, then maybe you don't. need this webinar. But you know what?
You don't have a whole staff of off-the-charts likable. Doesn't happen. Your doctors may not be off-the-charts likable.
I'm not being critical. They could be likable, but I want you to be off-the-charts likable. You want to improve likability constantly. And there's so much good science today.
You know, there's the basic science of smiling and being friendly and positive and energized, a lot of which I came across in my research and wrote in the book. But then there are... is a different part, asking questions, learning to be curious about people. I met a high, high level uh person uh very very successful some of you would know the name so i won't give it not a dental this is not a dental person incredibly successful uh and one of the best questioning people i've ever come across he has an innate curiosity about everyone and everything and within five minutes of meeting him you're just in love with the guy because you think he's completely interested in you and he kind of is but he's also interested in learning what you did, who you are, what's your field, how do you do things.
That kind of curiosity, get curious about patients, get your team curious about patients. That is a higher level of customer service. You got to get the system in place first, but then you really need to learn how to be curious about people and ask questions.
And you don't realize the effect that it has on people, but they just light up. They're ecstatic then to... be with you because you're so interested in them and you learn a lot too which is kind of fun so what is your likability quotient zero to ten i would say most office managers are a six or a seven not bad there's nothing bad about that i don't want you to everybody wants to be a ten you don't want to feel insulted in any way and i'm not insulting you six and seven are fine but nine and ten are amazing and by the way when you're more likable people like you better and everybody's easier to get along with so do you want to improve it always work to improve it how do i relate to somebody how can i be more likable how do i meet people i sat down at a table in nashville with people who are not in dental not in my field and i started asking questions and i learned a lot about their field and and i even got a couple of ideas to bring back to our consulting in dental because uh it wasn't a direct correlation but a couple of ideas were really really interesting and good. So, you know, it's just great to have the ability to build relationships with people and ask questions and be trusted and learn something because we never stop learning.
Office managers, you have to be lifeline, lifetime, not lifeline, lifetime learners, because guess what? A year from now, your world will change. And two years from now, it'll change again.
Business is dynamic. It's not static. It changes constantly.
artificial intelligence we are at the very very beginning despite what you hear slow down don't panic uh i just was with a artificial intelligence world-renowned person and he said we're really at the level of the first year or two of the internet we have not seen anything yet but it's not here yet you don't have to panic but again as things change artificial intelligence will change our world and every manager is going to have to know what to do and you will because it will it will come in systems to you just like you need to put in customer service and management systems okay doing great so on our next slide we start moving along and understand the more likable you are the larger your patient base will be we are now in year 31 one more year of an ongoing study of top 10 producing practices and that study has showed us that there are about 17 principles we've been able to identify that these top 10% practices have in common and one of the principles is that they typically have a much larger patient base in fact they often have patient bases 363 percent larger than the average practice now the larger patient base easier it is to increase production every year more people have needs If you lose people, you have plenty of people left. You can fill in unfilled chair time. They refer more.
A large patient base is a real asset for a practice. One way to keep your patients is great customer service because another principle we found is they lose about half of the number of patients annually versus most other practices. they actually lose about half so every year not only are they getting new patients but they're retaining more current patients to get that larger patient base and a larger patient base i can tell you because i've been studying production for 39 years if that's my main study how do we livingers brand promise is increasing practice production this is what i focus on and one of the great ways to increase production is that larger patient base because there's so many positive spinoffs that take place. And one way to have a larger patient base is five-star customer service, which I'll explain more about that in a bit. Okay, so we keep going.
We find that there are 10 steps. Now, I'm going to move along here with you toward being more likable. I sectioned out likability.
It's so important. And by the way, you want to be liked, but it's also important. And don't think you have to be a mean, tough office manager.
You can discipline people and be likable. You can help people correct mistakes and be likable. You can motivate people and be likable. You know, this idea that you got to be a tough boss really is a bad idea. frankly, because when you're tough on people, they're not turning around and giving great customer service.
Okay. And by the way, every business doesn't need to give great customer service. The dollar store doesn't need great customer service. Walmart doesn't need great customer service.
It's not bad, but people go there for the prices. They come to your practice. You're a boutique. Whether you like it or not, they see their dental practice as a boutique.
Even if you're part of a group and even if you're part of a DSO, they still see that practice. as a boutique and boutiques by definition need five star the best possible customer service if you're catching my enthusiasm on all this by the way i am i love this subject i love teaching it and i want you to know i sincerely hope that the information you're about to get is practical and useful and here now we go practical number one greet every patient with over-the-top enthusiasm i'm not kidding when i tell you to raise your enthusiasm 20 every day there was an author years ago named norman vincent peel he wrote a series of books i read them all several times but his main message was if you bring enthusiasm your world gets better maybe not overnight but your life will get better your practice will get better somebody once said to me yeah i i listened to you i raised my enthusiasm as a client so i had a chance to get this follow-up he goes and the patients all got easier well we both knew the page Patients didn't get easier. They got friendlier because he was more enthusiastic.
So the team on the phone at checkout give every patient huge greetings, huge goodbyes. You know, when you see a friend sometimes, you go hug them. I'm not saying hug your patients, but there's so many ways to just express, Mrs. Jones, I'm so glad you're here. It's great to see you.
We've been looking forward to your visit. We look forward to next time. We're so glad you're a patient, and so on. Okay, number two is. There we go.
Tell every patient how glad you are to see them. When they walk in, have a script. Mrs. Jones, it's wonderful to see you today. We've been looking forward to your visit. When we create management systems, we create scripting to go with it, and you need to do the same thing.
Again, you do it for the team, you do it for phone calls, you do it for checkout. Tell patients how great it is to see them. We all want someone to feel like, wow, I'm so glad you're here.
Okay, so that's that one. Number three, run on time. This has been said forever.
I've been saying this for 39 years. Let me make it clear. Are you serious about customer service? Are you serious about being five star?
Because if you are, you run on time. Let me ask you a question. If you're watching this live, not recorded, and you took time out of your day and scheduled to listen to me today. at one o'clock East Coast time, and I showed up at 12 minutes late with no good excuse. I wasn't in a car accident and nothing happened.
How do you feel about that? Well, first of all, you'd probably be gone already. And secondly, if you hung in there, if John kept saying, oh, he's coming, he's coming, he's texting me, he's coming, he's coming, you are not happy with me. And you have every right to not be happy with me.
I flew in from Nashville, Tennessee this morning, back to my office to give the webinar here. Now, I was getting on a plane. Planes don't always go on time.
They don't always land on time. Mechanical problems, they don't even always go. So I had a backup.
Our vice president consulting was here ready to go as my backup if I wasn't here. Because part of running on time means I also have to show up. If I was stuck on a plane and I literally could not give this webinar, we covered ourselves to make sure it...
that we respected your time. It's not acceptable to say, oh, Roger's stuck on a plane and we're going to have to cancel and reschedule the webinar. Running on time is not running on time.
It shows, it's showing respect. It reduces anxiety for some patients. The longer they sit and wait, even your hygiene patients, they're not anxious, scared.
When they're done with the hygiene appointment, they want to leave. They don't want to sit there for 12, 13 minutes waiting for a doctor to show up. and doctors, I'm one of them, so I can say this, think they have a right to run late because they're working with another patient.
No, we don't. In another seminar, I teach doctors how to be in the hygiene room 99% of the time within three minutes of notification. And then they start telling me all the excuses.
which I very politely refute for them one after another. And third, people hate their time wasted. If you want to make a person feel small, unimportant, and you're wasting their time, then you just run late. There's the story, I don't know if it ever happened, about the lawyer that finally walked out of the office and sent the office a bill for his time.
I don't know if that's true. I've heard these stories. But what is true is that's how people feel. Okay, number four, apologize if you run late. go buy a bunch of Starbucks gift cards, $5 each.
When you run more than 10 minutes late, you walk out to that reception room and you say, Mrs. Jones, I am so sorry. We're running a little bit late today. And tell them why.
Dr. Smith is helping another patient who has a problem. Whatever's going on back there, it's a problem because they're late. Please give them the gift card and say, please have a cup of coffee on us.
We call that in my book, turning a negative into a positive. If you do nothing, it's a negative. We take the negative.
We ask, what's the opportunity here to have someone shocked at something positive? Nobody else does this. Give them that gift card.
You've turned a negative into a positive. Now, we had a new client. When the consultant told him about this customer service part of the system, he said, I can't afford to give out all those gift cards.
Now, think about that. If you can't afford to give out all those gift cards, you're running late. a lot. Now, we teach our scheduling system.
We run very close to on time. So we said, well, there's a factor. If you're running that late all the time, you're worried about $5 gift cards adding up. We really need to clean up these management systems.
We're delighted that you're a client. So apologize if you run late. Give them a gift card.
It turns a negative into a positive. It's a little bit shocking. Great customer service can be shocking, really fun, shocking.
and of course reduces tensions if somebody's getting tense because things aren't going well number five the assistant should have prepared questions for the patient when you escort a patient back you should be asking about their life their job their kids you ought to have a personal reference sheet uh in your software what do we know about this patient take 10 seconds and look at it ask some questions it builds the relationship it creates trust it says oh you know me you care about me i trust you. And there are people who are immoral, unethical, that take advantage of people because what are they good at? Getting trust.
They get you to trust them. Well, we certainly don't want that, but my point is trust is so powerful, people do foolish things when they trust people. We're going to do great things for our patients, but trust works exactly the same way. Number six is where we look at learning one new thing about every patient, every visit.
I love this one. Start... with a question. What a great idea in life when you meet people, see people, get together with people.
Start with a question. At this conference, I was sitting, and again, I always bring top of mind recent things in. I was sitting with someone who owns furniture companies.
And I don't, you know, I'm not in the furniture industry. I'm not going to be in the furniture industry. I've bought furniture. But the first thing I did, because it's so automatic, is I looked at them and said, what's the biggest challenge in the furniture industry?
furniture industry. And then we had a great conversation because it was at a meal. You know, instead of sitting there and the last thing I'm going to do is talk politics with people I don't know and stuff like that, I really got a great insight into the furniture industry, what their challenges are. And I made a friend, you know, which is always a great thing to do.
So every time, every patient, every day, learn one new personal thing. And when you do that, it adds to the relationship. Remember in life, you're either adding to the relationship or you're deleting something from the relationship and then keep a personal information record.
Number seven is, wait for my slide, there it is, update the patient continuously through the procedure. Every five minutes, assistants should be telling patients, this is going great, wow, this is going to come out beautifully, you're going to be so happy, are we keeping you comfortable, would you like a blanket, pillow, you know. a meal, I'm kidding. But basically what you wanna do is keep updating them. Too many patients lay there for a half an hour, an hour, nobody's telling them what's going on.
So assistance should always be telling patients things are going well, it's gonna come out great. Part of an assistant's job is creating positive reinforcement for patients. Okay, so we keep going. We jump to number eight. At the end of the visit.
Tell every patient how glad you were to see them. Here's the script. Mrs. Jones, it was a delight to see you today. We love having you as a patient and we look forward to your next visit. These are the scripts we write.
They go with the systems. Thank the patient. Thank you for being our patient.
I mean, people love to be thanked. You should be saying thank you to your team, to your patients all day long. And I'm teaching you how to teach your team to give great service. Number nine gives us when the patient returns to the front desk.
Big question. Every single time, no matter what, we ask one question. How was your visit today? And if it wasn't great, which should be rare, have the doctor call the patient that night.
That is great customer service. Call the patient that night. You'll see this in a couple of minutes. And then if they had a great visit, you can ask them for a review.
We had hundreds of reviews. to our clients in one year year in 18 months i've seen us add over 250 reviews without spending one dollar just by setting it up with how was your visit today oh that's great i'm so glad you were happy can i ask you for a favor would you be nice enough to write a review we give them a card customer service the top of the card says we're delighted that you are our patient uh you know we hope you had a great experience today if we can ever make your visits any more pleasant please feel free to let us know and then how to leave a review underneath. And finally, number 10, because we got to move along, always use the word convenience when you're scheduling. Tell them we want to find a convenient appointment for you. It's Tuesday at 3, convenient.
When you say convenience, you're working for them, not for you. A lot of patients feel like you're shoving them into spots. Oh, by the way, when you shove them into spots, you know, appointments they don't want, they no show anyway.
So you end up. not getting great customer service and hurting practice production at the same time. So those are your 10 steps toward likability. But remember, patients will judge the quality of care by the way they're treated. Customer service is a system and likability is a major, major factor.
So we're going to move on to customer service strategies, but I'm going to give you a few things before I give you 10 ways to achieve five-star customer service. As I said, I try hard to be practical. But these were the companies I studied, which I've already mentioned to you.
So we'll move forward through that quickly. And then understand that this is not a webinar about good customer service. It's a webinar about outrageous customer service.
I know I love customer service, so I'm biased. But anything I would do, I want to give outrageous customer service. It will differentiate your practice.
Below average service is going to hurt you. Average customer service will simply do nothing for you. Above average will help you a little bit, but if you want great results, you want outrageous customer service to create radical growth, or another way to say it is five-star customer service to increase production every year. And customer service is the foundation of marketing.
We can get you lots of patients, but if you're turning them off right and left because your service isn't there. and many businesses do this then you just wasted all that money so if you want referrals you can get them if you want positive reviews we can get them if you want to become a practice of choice you still have to then keep them which means great customer service okay so five-star customer service you think you have it but let me tell you it's rare i would say and there's no real data on this but I would say it's around 5% of all practices. So I'm sure 95% think they're in the 5%, but they're not. They're in the 95%. You're probably three or four star, not bad.
I'm not criticizing, I'm not denigrating. Three and four star isn't bad, but you can become five star and that will change your practice, your life. And if I'm an office manager, that is a big part of my job.
and teams that give service are happier teams so let's go see how we're going to do that because i want you to become outrageous so here we go 10 steps 10 principles principle number one We start with an outrageous greeting. And by the way, the Ritz-Carlton teaches this. This is not minor. This is not light. Don't underestimate any of these 10 principles.
Patient walks in, give them a big greeting. So often, front desk stamp, barely or don't look up. And if you're on the phone, big wave, something. Get off the phone, take the time to get up and greet people. Over-the-top greeting with great enthusiasm.
And there are practices that do this magnificently. You want to be one of them. Okay.
Number two, building powerful relationships, which I've talked about. When you get that first new patient phone call or any phone call, take a moment, look for something personal. If you know the patient, you know, ask them something about themselves or follow up on something.
Talk to them. If you don't know them, you know, find out why they're calling the new patient. Get to know something. Now the golden 10, we don't touch a new patient when they come in until we've learned 10 things about them. That.
builds powerful beginning relationships. And then, of course, every time they come in, learn one new thing and keep a log. Okay, number three, an extreme positive atmosphere. We now teach the concept of culture. Well, we've taught culture forever.
But what we now do is we tell you what your culture should be. And the answer is the culture of positivity. Everyone in your practice needs to be upbeat, positive. you know scheduling is a job it's not customer service collecting money is a job function it is not customer service all those functions can be put into systems and be done at the highest level within about 90 days instead you want to create this positive upbeat atmosphere and office managers it starts with you if you're not upbeat your team will not be upbeat if you are tough on your team they will be tough on your patience if you are positive they will be positive, especially if you drive the culture. So you develop certain guidelines.
Bad moods are not allowed. If someone's in a bad mood, we don't do that here. Okay. We don't do that here.
I love those words. You might've done it somewhere else. We don't do that here. Don't talk negatively.
Don't tell people what you can't do. There's a great customer service expression. People don't pay you to hear what you can't do.
They pay you to hear what you can do. You don't say, well, you can't come Tuesday. you say how about wednesday at three o'clock and people pay you for great customer service treatment take care eliminate their problems remember this expression whoever makes it easiest wins whoever makes it easiest wins number four make your patients your friends this is a mantra you hear at living group all the time from our consultants make your patients your friends why Friends like their friends.
There's a likability factor. Friends trust their friends. There's more case acceptance, more belief in the doctor and the clinical skills.
Friends buy from their friends, and friends refer to their friends. So when you make your patients your friends, you are on target for greatness, and we want to go from good to great every single day. We want to work on that.
Be super convenient. Give people convenient appointments. You should already know the favorite appointment time of every active patient. Do they like 7 a.m. if you're open then?
Do they like 4.30 in the afternoon if you're open then? Do they like middle of the day? Do they like Monday or Wednesday?
Imagine saying, Mrs. Jones, I know you like Tuesdays at 10. How about Tuesday at 10, November, whatever? They love that. Have convenient payment plans. Care credit is a favorite of mine. They have 80% of the market in the United States.
They've got multiple options. Well, care credit or patient financing is customer service because you're making it easy for a patient to afford and pay for treatment. So tell every patient, don't just put a sign up, you have, we use these words all the time, we have interest-free financing available, and you will do more dentistry than you've ever done before. And of course, run on time, that's a repeat. But if you're not, if you don't run on time, you are not convenient.
That's why I put it in there again. Number six, demonstrate above and beyond caring. Whether you're sending out birthday cards, you're calling somebody who didn't feel well later in the day just to see how they're feeling or sending them a text, you hope they feel better.
Team members should be sending out texts throughout the day to patients. It was great to see you this morning. That went really well.
Let me know if you need anything. This is like caring about people. This is being better human beings, but it's also great.
customer service. If they have insurance and insurance is so confusing, especially to elderly patients, let them know you'll help them. That's customer service. That's not a burden. That's like, oh God, here we go.
She never understands it. No, I'm here to help you. That's what I do.
And again, checking in with your patient during treatment to see if you can do anything to make their visit better. Warm towels, pillows, blankets, whatever. you can give them. One office we work with gives out stress balls to every patient.
They can have it during the appointment. They can take it home. There are a million things you can do.
Number seven, the patient is always right. Let me say it again. The patient is always right. There's never a problem. Stop using the word problem with your team as an office manager.
They're only solutions. So instead of saying we have this problem, say we need to come up with a solution. There's only one goal. fix the problem and satisfy the patient. I know some patients are off the charts difficult and maybe there's a patient once in a while you should, if you don't, let me say it this way, I'm interrupting myself.
If you look at a patient and think they're so horrible that you can't satisfy them, they shouldn't be in your practice because they'll also bring down your attitude. Your goal with every patient in any challenge is find a solution, satisfy the patient. And finally, your attitude about problems should be, we love problems. They give us a chance to be creative, not, oh God, here we go again.
Some of you, when you're counseling your teams, your faces are just so depressed at the moment that people see it. They read into it. We don't want that.
You've got to have an enthusiastic, upbeat, positive approach to solving problems. Because guess what? By being an office manager, it means you deal with problems most likely every single day. So embrace them, solve them, and enjoy the opportunity to be creative. So number eight, talk constantly about success and progress, both with your team and with the patients.
For your team, they're making progress. You did that well. Recognize, appreciate, and compliment.
Recognize, appreciate, and compliment. R-A-C. Recognize, appreciate, and compliment your team as much as you possibly can. And then for the patients, you tell them. You're doing great.
They come up to the front desk. Wow, your smile looks fantastic. Oh, I'm so glad it was comfortable. You know, keep telling them during the appointment, after the appointment, calling patients at night. I'm big on that.
That's in my book. You know, we've been talking about it for 39 years and about 2% of offices actually do it. But you make that call at night. Those patients are yours for life.
They love you for it. Number nine. There it is. Compliment, compliment, compliment. My favorite of all 10 of these.
People love to be complimented. Why not just develop a life where anyone you see anywhere in the world, you give them a compliment. You know, be nice to people.
Give them a compliment. Find a reason to compliment. There are very few people and very few interactions where you can't give someone a compliment.
You just have to get in the mindset. Tell every patient how glad you are they're in your practice, how much you appreciate them, and how glad you are that they chose your office if they are a new patient, and that you will go out of your way for them to have a great experience. And finally, number 10, don't be afraid to ask for feedback. You'll get some negative feedback.
It's okay. How else do you learn? How else do you get ideas?
Things don't always go right. This conference last couple days was very high level. It was incredible. but I was asked for feedback and I honestly had to tell them I can't think of anything they could have done better but if I did I would have told them because that's how they get better and that's how next time I go next year I'll have a better experience this was off the chart so I'm coming from I'm coming from two days of great customer service to lecture on great customer service ask how their visit was as I've mentioned if it's not superior apologize and have a doctor call them that night that that kills problems right there.
That's a solution. And you let the patient know, I'm so sorry. I heard that you weren't happy about ABC.
We're going to do our best to never let that happen again. And I wanted to reach out to you personally, and they will be so appreciative of that. Okay. So I'm going to give you a bonus one as we finish up our webinar, and then I'll take, John may have some questions for me. A huge goodbye.
Don't underestimate saying goodbye. It's the last. thing they will remember.
It seems simplistic. It's not. It's powerful.
You only get one chance to make a great first impression. Well, that's at the beginning. But you only get one chance to have an enthusiastic goodbye.
You want every patient to leave your office with more energy than when they came in. There's so much negative in the world today that when you bring positive and enthusiastic feelings to patients, they will leave with more energy. And thanking them for coming, telling them you appreciate them.
and you're looking forward to the next visit goes a long way. Now, there were about 20 ideas in here that you can go run with. I've identified well over 100. You can't do them all. It would be a little crazy to do them all. But you want to constantly bring new customer service thinking to your patients.
And when you bring that new thinking, it can be amazing. I was in the airport this morning. Nashville actually.
has gone from a dump of an airport to a beautiful airport. I'm delighted. I sat down to have, I was very early because I want to get back here.
So I found a restaurant to get breakfast. The waitress, I mean, she couldn't have been lovelier. She kept checking in, are the eggs the way you want it? I mean, this is an airport.
We're talking about an airport where, you know, services is not always at the highest level. This was great. I mean, I had a great experience and I will go back there the next time I'm in Nashville. It's already I got a mental note that that's where I will eat when I go back to the airport.
Does it matter? I'm just one customer, but I've already now told you Nashville has a great airport. I don't remember the name of the restaurant. I apologize.
I know where it is. I can find it when I go back, but it's great to be treated well. I like it. I didn't expect it, but it makes me feel good, and it makes me feel happy.
And then you've got organizations. I came home on Southwest Airlines. Well, Southwest is a cheap...
no frills airline it was much better for me flying before baltimore where i live is a big southwest city so i saw i fly southwest a lot uh and what did they build their reputation on fun and friendly and it worked because there are books written about it it's their case studies at harvard business school uh that i've read through and and been exposed to so you know you can do great things if you bring five star customer service Let me end by saying this, you got to have your systems, yes. You got to have your strategies, yes. You have to access who can help you or what can help you, yes. But in the end, you also have to have the right attitude.
The right attitude may be the biggest foundational factor to provide five-star customer service. And on that note, thank you. I hope I gave you some great ideas. I hope you're loving being an office manager. I hope you're always working to reach your best potential.
And I am thrilled, just thrilled to have spent this time with you. Roger, always great. Always great. I think we'll get pulled up here in a second.
Can you hear me okay? Perfectly. Yes, absolutely.
Okay. All right. Well, I'm just going to, so I have two things.
Well, first of all, thank you. Big, big thank you to Crestor will be. uh, for bringing this to, to a domination today.
And, uh, it's kind of like a tradition with Roger and I, that I share with him one big, I mean, there were tons of takeaways, right? Tons of notes for all of you today. I would encourage you to share this with any of your other ADOM colleagues.
Uh, but, uh, I always like to share like one observation. And one of the things that really struck me that you shared today, Roger was learning how to fall in love with solving problems. I'm hearing this more. I think it's a very important mind shift that you mentioned because like you said, there's been such a negative connotation with problems.
And I think if we flip it upside down on our head, like you mentioned it, and people can start to actually embrace, or in the case of a service business like dentistry, you fall in love with the problem, a huge takeaway. So I'm glad that you mentioned that. And then the last thing I just wanted to ask you before we wrap, especially because you just came back from this conference where there was a lot of AI, is...
What is going on in your customer service brain between like AI and technology and customer service and what that future looks like? Maybe that's for a future live cast for ADOM Nation, but I just wanted to kind of get your thoughts on that. I'm sure as you were on the plane and thinking about all the great things that you shared today in regards to relationships and customer service and this emergence of AI and what that's going to look like.
So maybe kind of the last thing to share. Okay, so I'll put all that together. First of all, I want to also thank Crest Oral-B for sponsoring this, for giving me an opportunity.
I love to educate. For me, it's an honor. And I've done a lot of education with them. And, you know, I just... greatly appreciate as someone who wants to help our profession, others that are making a big difference in our profession.
And they're an incredible example of customer service, in my opinion, in our interactions. So I thank them. To your question about make problems positive. You know, I've been studying human potential my entire life. I've been studying the science of success, not necessarily because I wanted to be successful, but because I wanted to understand how to grow, how to achieve, how to reach my goals, just like I recommend to everyone else.
And I think that there are just, I like to simplify things. I know somebody might say this is too simple, but complex doesn't get done. I think the two kinds of people.
They're people that look at problems and they're debilitating and they're upsetting and they're annoying and they're depressing and they're mad at people and they wish it didn't happen, which is pretty unrealistic. Life has problems. You know, there's a, it started in German, but there's a brilliant expression, man plans and God laughs.
You can have the greatest plan for your day. You walk in at 830 and the whole thing falls apart. The first patient doesn't show up. The second is not happy.
The dentist is in a bad mood. The lab didn't return the case. The, uh, and the power went off in your office three patients called to have their x-rays transferred this is life and you can go through life as that negative person because you're going to have problems and you can be mad at your team all the time and you can denigrate them and some office managers even make the horrific mistake of gossiping about some team members that'll kill a practice or you can get up every day and simply say when's the first problem going to arrive because it is going to arrive whether you like it or not oh i'd love a problem free day too most of my days are fantastic but when a problem comes i look at it as an observer i don't internalize it emotionally and i say okay here's the problem how do we go about solving this problem and i can actually give you a formula to approach this because you need to shift your mindset which is i'm an office manager i'm here to solve problems that's what i do and that's that's the sport i'm in and winning means i solve the problem so you can follow a series of steps when you have a problem.
Question number one, is this a problem? Because not all problems are problems. They're people who make a lot of their own problems.
They're not problems. Number two, do I have to deal with it? I mean, that's a huge question. How many problems are there out there where you really don't have to do anything? If you don't do anything, nothing happens, nobody gets hurt.
You didn't solve it, but you don't need to. So, number one, is this a problem? Yes. Number two, do I have to deal with it?
Let's say yes. Number three, how big is the problem? Is this a big problem I've got to deal with right now?
Can I deal with it later? Is it something, a permanent change we need in our practice? Or is it a one-off that if I solve it, I don't have to change my systems at all?
And then number four, what are the best options? Don't limit yourself to one solution. Come up with two or three. And I mean, you know, one could be I don't care what the patient thinks. Well, that's not a very good option, but it could be give money back.
It could be give them appointment on a different day. It could be send Uber to pick them up if they're running, if their car broke down. It could be a million different things.
And then after you evaluate a few options, then you ask question five, what is the best option? And then you go with that option, but there's a question six, how did it work out? A lot of times problems keep coming back because we don't follow up. and make sure that we took care of that problem if it's a one-off we took care of it but we may need to it's called endemic e-n-d-e-m-i-c it's an endemic problem it's going to happen again and again if we don't change something permanently so you want great systems but your systems have to be updated regularly and change in terms of ai john the one real peace of mind i took away and i am not in any kind of ai expert i'm reading about it but only at the academic theoretical level.
But I was with some really smart people who've been in it. They're highly experienced. They've been in it since like 2018. Because think about it, AI has been here for 30 years, but the AI we're talking about is fairly new.
And the one thing is I want everybody to calm down because we are just at the beginning. Now, when you read the business literature, you would think if you're not all AI today, you're a dinosaur. Not true. The internet did take a few years to get... Practical AI is impractical so far for most of us.
It'll get more practical in the next few years. We go on to chat GPT the first time we get a silly answer. We don't want to go back. Like one example they gave is somebody asked, how do I add more minerals to my diet?
And the answer from chat GPT was eat rocks. So, you know, it's it's not always perfect, but it's getting better and better and better. A lot of it you won't have to see.
It will be. embedded into the product or the technology. It will be integrated.
When you get your new refrigerator that calls the company when it needs service, you don't have to know how that works. You just have to know that it's there. And then you get a call from the company. So what's the answer to your question? AI and dentistry will certainly have its clinical place, of course.
I think the biggest factor, because I'm on the business side of dentistry and management and You know, we want to be leading edge for our clients, not bleeding edge. If you get too far out there, you spend a lot of money and you don't get much. But I think the biggest thing that I'm going to be looking for is how do we use AI to improve the patient experience? Okay, a better composite doesn't improve the patient experience. You know, a laser versus a drill, maybe a little bit, you know, but an ultrasonic scaler didn't make the scaling and root planing a better experience.
It's a better way of doing it. But I'm looking for how AI will help us one-on-one to know our patients better, understand them. I gave the example of knowing that Mrs. Jones likes Tuesday morning at 9 o'clock appointments. Well, AI will now tell you all the patients who like Tuesdays at 9, who likes to pay by cash, who likes to pay by credit card, who likes to pay by check.
It's going to tell you who needs care credit or patient financing. In periodontics, it will prompt you to know that this patient needs, you know, I freely admit I love Crestoril-B because they got a range of products. I use them. So that's proof of that.
And this patient should be using this product, this toothpaste coming in every three months instead of every six months. I think AI is going to allow us to build models for each individual patient and follow that model. And it's going to increase production.
I'm not starting with how does AI make us more money. but the more I looked at it, I said, AI is going to increase production, which we need to increase every year because we're going to know our patients better, their needs better. We're going to, AI will tell you, you need to call these six patients today. They're now 30 days overdue for an appointment.
You've got a chance of losing them forever if you don't start contacting them. And this patient likes to be called and this patient likes text and whatever else we eventually figure out happening in the world. That's where I see AI. We're nowhere near it yet, but I'm...
I'm radically excited because I hope to do this for a long time, that we will be at Living Group. We're not going to build AI, but we'll be building AI models that practices can use to really know every patient one-to-one, to know who's more likely to refer. That's powerful information. Who's likely to no-show? Yes, front desk people know some patients that might no-show, but they don't know all.
And then that unfilled chair time gets filled. Who can we call right now that could be here within three hours to take an appointment because they will do that for us? That's where I see AI going on the business. And, of course, it'll help us with our finance and our systems, our business systems. And it will also eventually create great scheduling systems that are automated and help you optimize your scheduling and things like that.
So it's going to be, don't be scared of it, office managers. It is going to be a great world with AI. and you won't have to learn ai you have to learn to use tools that have a ai already in them so basically roger for any office manager out there that had kind of like ventured into learning how to do a pivot table in excel don't worry about it because that's obviously in a sense kind of what ai is doing right it's like spreadsheets on steroids uh but love the message embrace it there definitely would be a lot of aspects where i can improve customer you know service and all that great stuff well roger thank you so much thanks for spending a couple extra minutes uh to always answer great questions thanks again to crest orlb and as always a domination we appreciate you we appreciate what you do and uh thanks for watching so until next time we'll see you soon thanks roger