I know it is quite unbelievable, but during a recent phone call to my medical doctors’ office I was given the following instruction.
I was inquiring about some test results coming back into the doctors’ office. I was told by the doctors’ receptionists that I needed to phone them because they get a lot of enquiries each day at the doctors’ office and it is more likely that I would remember to call them, rather than them remember to call me.
The person I spoke to was not making any effort to really help me. She was in no way making it easy for me and she was not serving me.
If you ever hear your front office say this to a patient it may be time to say goodbye to them.
Our duty of care to our patients is to serve them well. I use the word “serve” not as a servant master relationship but because the word “service” comes from the word “serve”.
There is an exchange. If someone is using your business you need to serve them and provide them with your service or product and in exchange you are given something, often money!
If a patient calls you do what you need to do to provide them with World Class Service if you choose to run an exceptional business where you help people.
The golden rule is you NEVER tell a patient to call you back. You ALWAYS call them back. Often a patient will say “It’s OK. I will call you.”
This is never how you want to end a phone call. “Don’t call me I’ll call you.”
Most of the time the caller will NEVER call back and a potential patient will disappear and probably see another Dentist.
You want your Phone call to ultimately end with an appointment being made or a time frame for when you will call them to make the appointment. Keep these two endings in mind and one of them will be achieved.
Once you lose control of the call the caller will end the call by not making an appointment, need to think about it, and “I will call you” when they are ready.
In a nutshell this means you were unable to get the caller thinking and addressing their dental concern while they were on the phone with you so they are not ready to make an appointment before they hang up.
If you need to follow up the caller with another call, be very clear as to when you will call and what will happen when you call.
You will make an appointment for them.
This blog will feature simple practical ideas that are easy to implement tomorrow in your Dental Office, impacting immediately on your Patients’ Dental Phone Experiences, and ultimately, improving your practice profitability.
At present I have availability for two new private clients. For more information on how I can improve your Dental Office’s Phone Numbers contact me, Jayne Bandy at jayne@theDPE.com
