Customer Service Module: Getting Started

Customer Service in Dentistry offers a dual opportunity to train and enhance the customer service skills of the entire dental team in improved service to all patients.  The following may easily be employed as a guide concerning issues of customer service within the practice, or printed out in its entirety as a thorough and complete customer service manual, ready to present to the team.
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CUSTOMER SERVICE IN DENTISTRY 

INTRODUCTION

With so much competition in today’s consumer services market, providing exceptional customer service is no longer an added benefit; it is a necessity.  Customers (in our case patients) who are not satisfied with the way they are treated can easily take their dental needs elsewhere.  From current research, we know patients pay attention to how they are treated.  They are buying more than our services.  We know consumers will often drive farther, wait longer, and inconvenience themselves to have their wants and needs serviced by a company that appreciates them.  Providing exceptional service will build the bond that keeps patients coming back time and time again.  Patients may first come into our office because of our services and our affiliation with their insurance plans, but they will decide to keep their appointments and return based on how well they are treated.  Plain and simple: if they are not treated properly, they will go elsewhere and find another provider.

Customer Service in Dentistry 

Delivering exceptional customer service is accomplished by positively interacting with patients through effective communication and relationship building.  Learning how to treat your patients exceptionally well will bring about an unexpected result: your patients will become a marketing tool for our practice.  Patients talk.  Whether you provide great customer service or poor customer service, the patients with whom you do business are going to tell others how they are treated.  When potential patients consistently hear good things about our practice, they are more likely to choose us as their dental provider. 

Who will benefit from this training?

              I.      Your patients will definitely benefit from the customer service training you are receiving.  They will come away from their visits feeling they have been respectfully acknowledged. They will feel they have been treated exceptionally well.  They will feel they have been treated fairly and professionally.  Most importantly, they will feel that you and your team members appreciate them.

           II.      Your entire team will benefit from this customer service training.  They will take more responsibility for their patients and for their work.  They will care more about their jobs and about our practice.  They will gain more job satisfaction and feel good about coming to work.  Absenteeism and turnover may even be reduced.

         III.      Management will benefit from this customer service training.  After everyone completes this training, you will all become more focused.  Frontline team members will know how to handle a variety of situations to your patients’ satisfaction and to the overall satisfaction of our practice.  You will not all have to devote valuable time to handling patient problems.  When everyone on the team effectively does their job, then you will be free to effectively do yours.

        IV.      Our entire practice will benefit from this customer service training.  You will achieve increased efficiency and effectiveness.  The entire team will develop cooperation, caring, teamwork, and cohesiveness.  You will see improved loyalty and commitment to your patients and to our practice.

Why is this Customer Service Training Manual important?

The answers are simple:

§         Providing great customer service costs much less than providing poor service.  It costs more to gain new patients than it does to maintain existing ones.

§         Patients will be more loyal when you treat them well.  Simply put, a satisfied patient is more likely to maintain an ongoing relationship than a patient that is dissatisfied.

§         The most important benefit of customer service training is increased productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness.  It is less expensive and faster to do the job right the first time. 

§         Finally, after completing this Customer Service Manual you will understand the importance of achieving customer satisfaction…even achieving “patient loyalty”…where patients enjoy their appointments, keep coming back, and tell everyone they know about their positive experience at our practice.

GETTING STARTED

Why Should I Read This Manual?

At the outset, let us define the customer as the person who pays for the services you provide.  Throughout the text, you will see “customer” and “patient” used interchangeably.

There are hundreds of thousands of books written about customer service.  On Amazon.com alone there are over 70,000.  Suggestions are everywhere, such as: smile when you talk to a customer on the phone; try to make eye contact.

One basic truth about customer service: the person who interacts directly with the patient determines whether that patient feels he or she has received poor, mediocre, or excellent customer service.  Since you serve patients directly, you have the power to affect their perceptions.  Positive perceptions lead to positive expectations, and to positive dental experiences.

When you provide service to patients, your words and behaviors are the tools you use to create a positive perception of you and our practice. Whether you are a new employee working with patients or an experienced dental professional, what you do and say will affect how patients see you. Patients will form opinions either way, so you might as well create positive impressions. But you need to know how to do that.  That's what this manual is for — to teach you about the primary techniques you can use when interacting with patients so they will walk away with positive perceptions (feelings) about their experience with us.

The techniques you’ll learn in this manual will fit your needs in our practice.  You will learn exactly what to do and say, and how to say it.  It will provide you with numerous real examples so you can use these customer service techniques effectively.

The Customer is Always…

Before going any further we need to address the single most popular false idea about customer service. No doubt you've heard the phrase, “The customer is always right." It's a great slogan.  Unfortunately, most often it is wrong and misleading.  Experience teaches us that clearly the customer is not always right. Customers make unreasonable requests and sometimes have unreasonable expectations.  Patients may not understand what you realistically can and can't do to satisfy their dental needs and wants.

Practically speaking, you can't operate under the assumption that the customer is always right. No matter how you try, you may not be able to give each customer what he or she asks for. So, here are two short phrases that describe how we should treat our patients:                                                       

• The customer always deserves to be treated as if he or she is important and his or her opinions, needs, and wants are worthy of being heard.
• The customer deserves to receive maximum effort on the part of the team members serving him or her, even when the patient's expectations, wants, and needs may be impractical.

Since the customer isn't “always right" and it's often not possible to give the customer what he or she wants, what are the implications for customer service?

It's simple. Customers have additional important wants and needs. Even in situations where you can't do what the customer asks, you can contribute to the customer's development of a positive impression about how he or she is treated. We need to focus not only on what we provide to the customer, but on how we provide it. That's the key to realistic excellent customer service. To do that, you need to understand these other wants and needs.

Understanding What Customers Want

The key to customer service is to be able to choose the right techniques and to use them effectively at the right time.  Knowing the patient’s wants will help you select the techniques you'll be utilizing. Below is a list of the ten most important customer wants. When you address them, you create positive customer perceptions about you and our practice:

• Recognition/acknowledgment
• Feeling a sense of importance
• Someone to take ownership of their problem
• Effort on your part to understand
• Presentation of choices and options
• Having their problem solved
• Affordability of services
• Added value
• A reasonably simple solution…quickly
• Confidentiality

Most importantly, patients want to be acknowledged and have their problem solved by you or a co-worker.  They want someone, hopefully you, to take ownership of their problem.

However, it's not always possible to give the customer what they want, which is where the rest of the "wants" come in.  Even if you can't solve this specific patient's problem, you can create positive perceptions by addressing the other, less obvious customer wants.

Patients expect that you and our whole team will make an effort to address their problems, concerns, and needs…even if you can't give them what they want.  Patients often pay attention to your effort “above and beyond the call of duty.”

Patients need the sense that they are important. Listening to and acknowledging them demonstrates that you believe they are important. Much of the knowledge, specific phrases, and techniques you are going to learn in this manual tie directly to providing effort “above and beyond the call of duty” and helping your patients feel important.

Let's get started!

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