Mystery Patient

“We know your time is valuable, we are here to ensure that it won’t be wasted.”

What a great motto and what a philosophy to live up to! As a patient this is a vision that I could fall in love, why? Because it says so much; that you care about me, that you know my time is valuable, that you won’t keep me waiting.

I recently spent a fascinating afternoon with the management team of an international company and the focus was their customer service and naturally we dipped into the area of a visit to the dentist. What was sad was the looks of disbelief on their faces that there were any Practices that were working hard on customer service. The unanimous complaint of those around the table was that they were always kept waiting but if they forgot an appointment or turned up late they were fined, told off and refused treatment. “Some customer service that is” was the cry and I agree with them. Waiting is one of those irritating little things that people almost never mention directly to their dentist but which they will never forgive.

The question of whether to fine patients or not is a thorny one that has troubled practitioners for years. Often the Practice has a policy but more often than not this is applied on an ad hoc basis.  Therefore Fred gets fined for failing to show and his best mate Pete doesn’t, and when they discuss this over a pint at the pub more than the two of them get to hear which Practice fines its patients -  and where not to go.

My personal view is that fines are not appropriate for any Practice, which purports to care about customer service.

If you want to clean up this area of your Practice if no shows and late arrivals are a problem then the first place to start is by looking at yourself. Do you keep people waiting? How often? For how long? You need to know this and not just to have a gut feeling but hard facts. Anyone with a good clinical computer system will be able to obtain this information quickly; otherwise I suggest that you start keeping a manual record.

Expecting patients to arrive on time to be kept waiting is discourteous and shouts a loud message about customer service. Even worse are those dentists who are also prone to routinely have reception call up and cancel their patients at short notice. If you start respecting your patient’s time more, they will respect yours too.

Action Step 1

For the next four weeks, for each fee earner in the Practice have your receptionist note down how long patients are kept waiting.

Action Step 2

Having established the facts decide what action to take. If you routinely run more than five minutes late it is time to revisit your timings and appointment book management. E-mail us for our timing sheet if you want some help. Then make the changes and recheck for the next four weeks that it works.

One of the Practices that we work with had always prided themselves on running to time but by the time we started working together this was no longer so and patients were upset at being kept waiting on average 15-20 minutes. The dentists revisited their timings and realised that because of the advanced courses they had been on in the past 18 months that they were taking longer than they used to for certain procedures. Changing the appointment times ( and the fees) sorted out the problem and made for a happy dental team and happy patients.

It is also too easy to forget that the time cost of cross infection control has grown immensely over the past few years and needs to be factored in to the amount of time reception need to book.

Having looked at and perfected the timings and restructured the appointment book now, and only now are you ready to tackle lateness from the patients.

Once you have your house in order, how can you ensure that your patients arrive on time? Please remember if you have been running late for many years don’t expect miracles overnight. However a few well-chosen words from your receptionist can work wonders. “Mrs Brown just to let you know we have made some changes here and Dr Smith is now running to time. We look forward to seeing you at 10.30am.”

For those persistent failures should you fine them or not? My belief is that if you are a believer in customer service and are working at it then to fine people is so far removed from concept of service as to be offensive. Far better I think to invite those patients who continually turn up late or fail their appointments to find another Practice. This may sound scary and often at first mention of this dentists look horrified. “What if they tell all their friends and they leave too?” Experience shows that this won’t happen. If they don’t respect your time and don’t value their dental health that highly, they are not worth having as patients. They are taking time that could otherwise be offered to patients who do care and do appreciate you.

And if by chance on the odd occasion you still have to keep a patient waiting, have a system to deal with it. Explain immediately and apologise and offer some refreshments. However there are also some strategies that you could adopt to help them feel like their wait is less than it is. For example ask them to complete a patient survey. If they have children provide gameboys and puzzles so that they don’t bug their parents highlighting how long they are waiting. Have a patients comments book so that they can read all the positive things patients have said about you and perhaps finally stop calling it a “Waiting Room” after all what do we expect to do in a waiting room if not to wait?

Written by Rachel Kendric      Published in Private Dentistry magazine

Our patients are our focus

South Bar Dental is a lovely private practice set in the heart of Banbury. Tom and Pauline Donnelly established it 25 years ago and aim to keep their patients’ needs and desires at the very core of the business. With this in mind, they held their first patient focus group a couple of months’ ago, to find out exactly what people loved, see where any improvements could be made and generally get some direct feedback from a cross section of their client base.

The results were great and, perhaps surprisingly, have saved them a lot of money.

I’d like to start with the practice mission statement, in their own words:

‘At South Bar Dental Practice, dentist Dr Tom Donnelly is dedicated to helping people achieve a sublime, exquisite smile, giving them the confidence they deserve. South Bar Dental Practice offers an uncompromisingly high standard of private dentistry, focusing on the needs and total satisfaction of each patient. We love what we do and it shows. An established dental practice for over 25 years and built on firm foundations, we are a renowned private dental practice for excellence in client care and making the ultimate in dentistry affordable. Realising you expect and deserve the best, we are constantly striving to maintain and improve our levels of service. See the results you are after at South Bar Dental Practice.’

This really encapsulates the decision to conduct a focus group. They’ve been around a long time, but strive constantly to evolve to meet patients’ changing needs. Their ultimate aim is to do what patients want them to be doing rather than just do what they think patients want.

The format

Tom, the dentist, was not involved at all and the group was kept to six patients. There was a mix of ages and also a mix of patient types . . . a new patient, a long established patient, someone who attends just for facial rejuvenation, an implant patient, a patient who attends for general dentistry.

There were five key questions which they wanted answers to, but Mystery Patient (who conducted the survey on South Bar Dental’s behalf) explained that these would have to be woven in so that the participants didn’t ever feel uneasy or uncomfortable about what they said. They wanted to achieve a natural conversation, where everybody felt comfortable about being honest and were more likely to give them the most useful feedback.

The feedback

What came out loud and clear is how much patients love Tom. How professional he is, how much information he gives during a consultation and how he avoids any nasty surprises by pre-empting all eventualities with advice at the time of treatment.

The first surprising result was about the facial aesthetics side of the practice. Most of the participants knew that they offered it, but had no idea it was the dentist who carried it out. Tom and Pauline were about to kit out a separate beauty room for facial rejuvenation procedures. This was going to cost a significant amount of money to do, but they felt it would add value to their existing setup, so that was simply an investment they were prepared to make. Interestingly though, the participants said “no thank you”. They said that they would prefer any treatments to be carried out in the dental surgery, as it made them feel safer. So not only great feedback, but a real cost saving too.

A tool for all patients

Pauline & Tom had recently created a new questionnaire, which asks 12 simple questions about how happy you are with your mouth – shape of teeth, colour of fillings, gum condition, smile, breath, etc. It also manages to reveal quite a lot about a person’s general health, as well as their dental wellbeing. This questionnaire was designed initially for completion by a new patient just prior to seeing Tom. But what came out strongly from the focus group is that this is just as valuable for established patients as it is new ones.

Some of the older established clients weren’t aware of how much treatments have changed over the last 20 years and asked for a menu of options with guide prices. This has now been created.

Participants like the signage and the advertising the practice has created. And, interestingly, one of the things they like most is that it is very individual. They were adamant that they didn’t want a “corporate dentistry” feel of any sort to creep in. This turned out to be another real cost saving for Tom and Pauline, who were thinking of buying matching uniforms for the team, but would have been a negative feature in the opinion of those present. They were also keen to stress that they didn’t want the option of seeing any other dentists; they want to stick with Tom.

A revelation

The whole session was recorded on video to enable them to watch it back, revisit when they want to refresh their memory of it or simply pull out specific points for promotional purposes. At the end, something completely unexpected and really fabulous happened. The participants asked “what can we do to help you grow this business?”

So what’s next

They receive many testimonials from patients and are obviously keen to harness the power of these to grow the patient base by word of mouth. Mystery Patient suggested putting these on YouTube to capitalise on the massive numbers of people who use this medium now for information.

(* Mystery Patient by CPL Services is a customised service, tailored to a practice’s exact needs. It includes mystery shopping and customer satisfaction research, plus training to fix any issues thrown up by the results. It teaches you how to make more profit and get more referrals.)

Did you see Mary on BBC 2 advising a Fosters, greengrocers in the Wirral? Fosters was a long established business that had lost its way and was suffering from a declining turnover and less and less customers. They knew they had a problem but were too close to the business.

Mary comes from a completely different business sector, fashion but she knows that the principals of giving your customers what they want are the same.

You need to understand what your patients/clients are saying about you, what they are interested in at this moment in time and how that affects your business. Social media is a fantastic, quick and cheap way of tuning into this – email us at info@cplmysterypatient.com for more information on how you can use this to help your business.

The other key thing that Mary does is she goes out and asks the customers and potential customers what they think of the business … this is a toughie because none of us like criticism and try as hard as we like it’s difficult not to take it personally isn’t it? But it is key. Often it’s far easier for a client to be honest with a third party than they would be with you face to face and using an expert who knows how to focus the questions means you will get to the heart of the issue …. And that’s what we can do for you, drop us a line at info@cplmysterypatient.com and find out how.

Do you know what your patients/clients are saying about you? …. Trully?