In any consumer experience, we all expect a warm welcome – whether it is the waitress taking our order or the booking agent at the airline check-in desk. The front-of-house experience is, essentially, the ‘shop window’ of any business.
Relationships are made or broken at this initial introduction. The first greeting in a crowded and competitive market needs to be a positive one. Indeed, with an increasing number of patients remaining dentate for longer, and a widening number of them electing to have cosmetic dental treatment, choice is very often based on first impressions.
The reason patients choose a dental practice is not always based on price alone, so there is a need to sharpen up your ‘welcome’ alongside your clinical skills and dental tools.
A practice’s front desk team should be encouraged to employ a coherent approach to welcoming patients and, whilst this team may not necessarily be clinicians, they should be able to answer commonly asked questions about the treatments on offer. Practice owners who invest time and money in training their whole team to hone their interpersonal communication skills reap benefits, not only financially but also in the practice of risk management. Good communication awareness means teams will be more effective at identifying patient dissatisfaction, thereby quashing any potential for escalation.
Good communication skills at the front desk can also monetise that all-important successful patient experience – word-of-mouth recommendations remains the cornerstone of new business. Let’s take a look at some more ways to keep your practice welcome warm, friendly and on point…
Role play
Add some fun to your team meetings and invent some scenarios to put your front desk team to the test. Invite positive feedback from other members who make up the audience and problem solve together.
Self assessment
Devise a questionnaire for staff members to privately fill in so they can reflect on their own behaviours and habits. Remember to include questions that encourage them to think about their non-verbal as well as verbal communication skills.
Do they actively listen? What distractions are in the waiting room that might challenge the way they interact with patients? How do they rate their negotiation skills? Are they good at problem solving? How efficient are they at decision-making? Are they assertive when need be?
Be prepared – and expect the unexpected
Good reception teams should be organised, have a good working knowledge of the treatment a practice offers as well as the means to pay for them, i.e. the dental plan. They should also understand any key dental terminology, be au fait with the online booking system and, lastly, be prepared to expect the unexpected. The clinical team should always brief the front desk on anything out of the ordinary regarding patient appointments – those who have longer sessions booked, for example, or those who suffer extreme dental anxiety and may arrive with jangled nerves.
The front desk team needs to understand which patients will be seen and when and what treatments are planned on any given day. There is nothing more off-putting for a patient than to be asked who they are and why they have attended when that information is already in place.
And some final reminders…
Good customer care at the front desk also requires your team to:
- Welcome the patient to the practice with a smile and a positive attitude
- Explain to a patient what to expect and the need to fill out any forms and so on
- Empathise with patients, understand expectations and respect their needs and nerves
- Seek feedback from the patient and request consent to use it in your dental marketing if needs be
- Identify and deal with dissatisfaction and complaints, ensuring you handle them openly
- Help patients understand costs and dental plan payment arrangements
- Make the journey from initial enquiry to clinical treatment as seamless and fully informed as possible for every new patient.
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