A friend of mine who helps dental practices with their finance for purchasing new equipment once told me a story where on this particular day, a dental receptionist that answered his call had literally slammed the phone down in his ear with such force, and with such hostility, that my friend was truly shaken.

What my friend said to me about this incident was quite interesting.

My friend asked me whether he should tell the dentist whose practice he had phoned about this incredible behaviour.

Because the dentist had no idea that this woman was REPRESENTING HIS BRAND in this manner.

I see this all the time…

I phone dental practices for a living.

And I ask to speak with the dentist.

I introduce myself, I find out the name of the person I am speaking with, and I ask if I can speak to the dentist.

If the dentist is with a patient, I make a point of not disturbing the dentist and simply ask the person answering the phone to pass on a message to the dentist, asking the dentist to phone me back when they [the dentist] have a couple of minutes to do so.

You’d be surprised…

You’d be surprised that there are dental receptionists who still feel that it is ok for them to be rude to me when I politely and courteously ask them to do this.

These rude receptionists really don’t realise the flow on effects of  behaving so rudely to non-patient phone calls. After all, the caller  could be a maven who might happily be a recommender of their dental practice.

But now will not.

Because they [the receptionists] have been so rude.

And with our clients….

Sometimes when listening to phone call recordings in our client offices we occasionally hear an employee speaking rudely to a non-patient calling the practice

And like I said above, just because the caller isn’t phoning to make a booking, doesn’t mean that this caller won’t know someone in the area who might need a new dentist, or know someone who is a patient of that practice that could be thinking of changing dentists.

The best referrer at my dental practice..

At my dental practice the person who was the best referral source for me was a real estate agent [realtor] who referred one of his tenants to me… that tenant was a dentist who was retiring who was going to close his practice.

As a result of this referral, the retiring dentist gifted me his patient files, and diverted his office phone to my phone, and that referral ended up being worth over $880K worth of dentistry to my practice over the ensuing four years… all from a realtor.

Imagine how different that story could have been if someone in my practice had decided to be secretly rude to that realtor?

Who is representing your brand?

Is everybody on your team truly representing your brand?

Do all your team members lead with their best foot forward, all of the time?

For my friend the financier, his experience was not a one-off experience.

In 1998, I had to make the decision to let a long-term employee of my practice go, because her behaviours with patients in isolation from the rest of the dental team were not in the best interests of the dental office.

We never looked back…

*****

Author

  • David Moffet

    Dr. David Moffet is the creator of The Ultimate Patient Experience™ – a simple, effective way to increase your practice production and profitability, without working longer hours and without increasing stress levels.

    David was a very successful dental practice owner for 28 years, and has been coaching dentists all over the world on how to run successful practices for the past twelve years.

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