Relationship — The Currency Of the New Economy
(in Dentistry)
by Allison Watts, DDS
This week we’ll talk specifically about transformational and relationship-centered dentistry.
As you know, everyone is connected now through cell phones, social media and the internet. To succeed in business today, we need to realize that relationships are much more important than transactions. In today’s market, if you are not providing excellent service, people find out quickly. Take care of people, provide excellent service and be grateful for their business and they’ll tell everyone. If you don’t, they’ll tell everyone (and go elsewhere).
I hear dentists talking about the effects of the economy on their practices and so many practices have shut down… closed their doors for good. The practices that will prosper in this economy “wow!” their customers and create customer loyalty. One study showed that customers are willing to pay 5-25% more for superior customer service (even in a down economy—especially in a down economy).
Our best marketing in this economy is excellent customer service. We have to truly care. It’s important that the dentist and his/her team are committed to customer service and that they have gratitude for their customers. If the leader, i.e. the doctor, sets the tone and authentically treats people as the most important thing, so will the team. We must treat our team with love and appreciation and then trust them to take great care of our patients. Give them the power to make frontline decisions to go the extra mile such as sending gifts and gift cards to patients and when necessary refunding money.
In order to do this, we may have to shift the way we think and the way we conduct our businesses. Marketing is harder now because customers have very short attention spans. If we’re not giving them what they want, they will go elsewhere and probably will tell a bunch of people. We need to remember that our patients are truly the reason our practice exists and we are dependent on them for our success or failure.
Patients are looking for providers who want to develop and sustain a relationship with them. To be able to consistently do this, we need to become masterful at relationship-building and marketing.
Our patients want a pleasant environment and experience as well as excellent results. We want to give them all of these so that we have the chance to help them have the smile of their dreams and maybe even change their lives!
I have a patient who shared with me many years after her new patient experience that the questions we asked her in that process changed her life. By asking her what excellence would look like dentally and in her overall health, it caused her to look at what excellence would look like in her entire life (as a mom, a wife, etc). Because of this process, she created a vision and goals for herself and her family and it changed their lives. It literally had nothing to do with teeth! Cool, huh? I’m sure we’ve all had things like this happen.
We have so many opportunities to “wow!” our patients. Here are some:
1. On the phone
2. At their new patient experience
3. Each time they come in for dental treatment
4. Hygiene appointments
5. Any time we can have authentic communication
We can design the systems in almost every area of our practice to support a relationship-based philosophy. The only way this will actually improve our practice is if we believe in what we are doing. The philosophical assumptions and beliefs of relationship-based practice are as follows (from Dr. Lynn D. Carlisle’s wonderful book, In a Spirit of Caring. I have edited them to make the article a little shorter):
~The patient is a respected and equal partner in the healing process and is a responsible collaborator for his/her own health.
~People have an innate drive toward health and they have within them everything they need to become more healthy.
~Illness is a disharmony of a person’s physical, emotional and spiritual development. Both illness and disease can be generative and lead to growth and change.
~Health is more than the absence of disease. It includes many factors working together.
~Human beings are each unique and have unique experiences of health and illness.
~The doctor and team’s attitudes and ways of being can either help or inhibit healing for the patient.
~The doctor is in the “business” of affirming life and supporting growth and change for the persons they care for. The context of a person’s life is a factor in his illness or disease.
~A dental team that is committed to the core values of the person-centered approach is essential to its application and helping the clients heal.
~A caring doctor/team-patient relationship is the keystone to the success of the person-centered model. This relationship builds on the belief that a respectful and compassionate caring with the intent to help the patient grow and heal is foundational to dental care.
The spirit of caring comes from the hearts of the doctor and team. It provides the opportunity for the doctor and team to give of themselves and to feel fulfilled in the practice of dentistry.
I love Dr. Carlisle’s book and found that it helped me understand many facets of our relationships with our patients. Most successful dentists genuinely care about their patients. We’ve all worked hard to build solid, win-win relationships with our patients and community. We have not necessarily done it to market ourselves, but it is true that if we truly take care of our patients, they become raving fans, come back and recommend us to their family and friends.
Again, I want to leave you with some questions to ponder:
1. What are you and your team doing to create transformational (rather than transactional) experiences for your patients? Go through each transaction point and look at how you can make it more transformational—an experience rather than just going through the motions.
2. What experiences do you create for your patients? What do they feel when they’re in your office? What do they say when they leave? Do your patients know that they are the most important thing to you? If not, what can you do to change that?
3. What are the beliefs that your practice operates under (spoken or unspoken)? Are they supporting a relationship-based culture? If not, take a look at Lynn’s fundamental practice beliefs above and rethink your own beliefs and culture. If we want something different, we have to do something different. (I believe to do something different, we have to believe something different).
Go out there and wow ‘em,
Allison,
Thank you for the reference to my work and book In a Spirit of Caring Revisited.
I am impressed with how you are using it.
Lynn Carlisle