Patient experience in the dental office
The patient experience reflects the customer service that the patient receives. In this blog post we’re going to look at what you can do in your dental office to ensure patients want to come back.
Tips on building a customer service strategy for your dental office
It’s important to put a strategy together of different policies in the office in order to deliver
the ideal patient experience.
1. What does the ideal patient experience look like?
What does that ideal patient experience look like?
From how should patients be greeted when they arrive to the operatory experience and
through to finishing up with the receptionist before they leave. What should that all look
like?
2. How should patients be treated?
Serve the patient in a way that we would want to be treated. Or the way you would want your family to be treated.
Think about your dental office’s values, office culture and the systems you have in place.
Your customer service policies will help influence that patient experience.
And it’s the vision and the values of the doctor, as well as the beliefs of the dental office team that’s going to help build the culture in the office.
3. Be able to adapt
You can build different customer service systems to fit those values and the culture. When presenting treatment, you want to be sure that it doesn’t come across as being too pushy or too salesy.
Because when we’re providing a valuable service for the patient, we really don’t have to sell anything.
The biggest thing is going to be our relationship with the patient, and that’s what’s going to build the best patient experience.
Focus on patient’s needs to create the best patient experience
You really need to continue to focus on the patient’s needs. This will then naturally make your office that patient’s first choice.
We just need to continually listen and focus on the patient’s desires, and then at that point, the patient’s going to see our office as the priority for receiving care.
Formalize and focus on the process of patient care
We just always need to connect with the patient’s hearts as much as their minds.
Part of that’s going to be getting the right people on our team, and then we need to look for ways to train them, to help cross train them, build certain systems into place.
The more formalized your process is, the easier it’ll be to achieve your goal.
The right customer service produces the ideal patient experience
A lot of new businesses don’t succeed their first year.
Most often when franchises start, they have a higher degree of success because they have great systems in place, and they can offer consistent experiences. Which is usually because everybody is on the same page: head in the same direction.
The ideal patient experience in the dental office
That’s your goal. To get these systems in place that can consistently offer that positive patient experience that will continue to build the positive reputation of the office as well.
Always keep in mind that a bad experience will be retold by the patient much more often than a good experience. Keep the right focus on our systems and customer service to give the patient that positive patient experience. And they will keep coming back as well as become a source of word-of-mouth referrals.