Episode 669: Earning Your Reputation

 … you need to EARN a 5-star review! In this consultant-takeover episode, Tiff and Tina share what makes them want to leave a 5-star rating and review for any business they interact with, and what the right pieces look like.

Remember: It comes down the feelings you leave your patients with, so start there.

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Transcript:

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0:00:05.8 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast. I'm your host Kiera Dent, and I had this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, scheduler, filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants where we have traveled to over 165 different offices coaching teams. Yup, we don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress and create A Teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team Podcast.

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0:00:49.4 KD: Hello Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and you guys I'm so excited for consultant take over. Guys, that was me attempting to sing into this microphone for you and I hope you loved it. Today consultant take over, grab your pens, grab your notebooks, bringing in the heat today, and as always thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.

0:01:10.4 Tiffany: Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Tiffany. And you are here on the Dental A Team consultant take over where the traveling Dental A Team consultants take over the mic and share tips and tricks from hundreds of offices nationwide. Today we have myself here with Ms. Tina. And Tina, I am so excited to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining me and for hopping on, I know it's been a busy busy Friday when we were recording this and it's been a little hectic. So I truly appreciate you hopping on today to talk with me. I thought it would be fun... I thought it would be really fun to talk about five-star customer service. We've done some recent review podcasts and talking about how to get reviews and how to ask for that five-star. But I thought before you ask for a five-star, you should probably be delivering a five-star. So I thought it would be fun to get your point of view on it as well as mine and just kind of chat a little bit about what that looks like. So first of all, how are you? Welcome to the show. How are you?

0:02:10.2 Tina: Thank you.

0:02:10.3 Tiffany: How's Tina today?

0:02:12.6 Tina: I am good, and it is a good Friday. I love that it's been busy and productive and we accomplished a lot as a team, so I'm really excited. This is a great way to wrap up our Friday too.

0:02:23.0 Tiffany: You're right, actually. Yeah, I was... This morning, I was like, "Dang, we did... I don't know why I put podcasting at the end of the day, we're gonna be exhausted." But I actually think I have more energy right now than I did this morning, so I think it's working out. I think it's working out well. Yeah. Good.

0:02:37.1 Tina: Yeah, it's a good day.

0:02:38.7 Tiffany: Yeah, I agree, I agree. So, I think you and I are probably pretty similar in some points of views and probably go on a tangent a little bit about these five-star patient experiences and customer service. And I think it's gonna be great, but for me, I really think everything comes down to feelings. And that relationship piece, and if a patient or a person going into any kind of business feels a certain way, that's gonna depict how that service is portrayed. And I feel like if you walk into a business and you're like, you're not recognized, you're not noticed, or it's confusing, you walk in, I hate walking into a hotel and not understanding where I need to go, if it's not intuitive, if the counter's not right there, or nobody's at the counter, and I'm like, "This is... Now, I feel awkward." I'm like, "I don't know what to do in this situation." And to me, that is two or three star customer service.

0:03:32.8 Tiffany: So I like to think of those situations and how do I feel in certain situations? What would I rate that as? And then translate it into the dental world. And for me, I don't know Tina if you agree, I feel like it really comes down to the feelings that you leave somebody with. The impression that you made on them and the relationship that you created and the amount of time that you had with them. But for you Tina, what is that five-star customer service? How do you get that five-star? What do you think it is?

0:04:00.2 Tina: I love the vision that you created as far as walking into the hotel, and it's like no one is even there to greet you, you have no idea what's going on. So I think that it's that piece of how they feel when they leave? But we also tea ourself up to make that easier on ourselves when they're greeted in a way that it just flows. And so I definitely am looking at that five-star patient experience or just customer service experiences. How are we greeted? From the moment they walk in, do they have the feeling that we want them to have and does that continue throughout the whole experience up to when they're leaving? And did we really work with them?

0:04:34.3 Tiffany: Yeah, I love that. I think you're right. I think you're right. It really is that whole piece, and even before that, I guess if we were to back track, right? It's like I had to reserve... Make a reservation with the hotel, so I had to reserve my hotel, that had to be easy. And let me tell you, I'm reserving a lot of hotels. And so if it's not easy to do or the website keeps breaking down, or it's not the price I wanna pay, I'm moving on very quickly, so I think that's the same for patients calling dental offices. If it's not easy, and if they're waiting on hold for a long time, if they're not getting a good greeting or they don't feel welcomed or it just feels difficult, they're moving on to the next one. If we're not answering, if we don't have some sort of a situation where it's like if we're not there, they can leave a message and we'll get back to them right away, they're moving on to the next practice fairly easily, just like I would with a hotel. If it's not easy...

0:05:30.5 Tina: Yeah.

0:05:30.8 Tiffany: If I have the call to do something. American Airlines wants me to call to use my freaking points, and I'm like, "Great, I'm probably never gonna get to use my points because calling to use my points is so outside of easy for me. I'm gonna totally forget to do it." But it's those kinds of things that it has to be easy. So even before I get to the hotel and I get greeted, there's a reservation process. And I think there's a reservation process for new patients or patients in general, especially returning patients, and that's gonna leave me on a tangent Tina, but I think...

0:06:01.1 Tina: Yeah.

0:06:01.6 Tiffany: I think we put so much emphasis on our new patient experience and making sure that our new patients feel welcome, and what's our new patient verbiage and how do we obtain the information from our new patients, that sometimes our patients that we already have they kinda get forgotten. And what does that experience look like? So I think it's an overall patient experience, and my patients that have been with me should get just as good of treatment, if not better than the patients that are coming in that I haven't met yet. So making sure that that greeting is just as stellar, that they're getting taken care of, they're not being put on hold forever.

0:06:37.5 Tiffany: I know I've seen it and witnessed it and probably done it myself in office where I'm like, "Oh, this is a returning patient, so you're gonna have more patience with me. So let me put you on hold while I wrap up this other thing." But if it's a new patient, I'm like, "Let me drop everything to get you on the schedule."

0:06:52.1 Tina: Yeah.

0:06:52.7 Tiffany: That doesn't seem fair, looking back.

0:06:53.5 Tina: Yeah.

0:06:53.9 Tiffany: I know I've done that and it's not fair.

0:06:57.2 Tina: Yeah, right. Well, and I'm always just thinking about it from their perspective. So everything's just what is this experience from their perspective? And then it becomes easy. I feel like we over-complicate things, and it's just breaking it down to a simple process of, "Okay, if I was greeted this way, how would I be feeling? What would really catch my attention? What would make this an elevated experience? And then how can we as a team just deliver this consistently too?"

0:07:22.1 Tiffany: Yeah. I love that. I love that. So let's break it down. Let's make it easy for them, right? 'Cause we know what it looks like, and I think the hotel situation or whatever makes it... Puts it into a little bit different perspective, it paints that picture, like you said, so think about those pieces. And I think everyone taking notes from today's podcast and taking this back to your team or creating a new protocol, look at all of those steps because your five-star customer service starts at the beginning. It starts with the phone call, or it starts with the patient walking in to make that initial appointment or that returning appointment, and I think take inventory, what are you doing now? I always like to look at this when I go into practices. What are you doing now that's working really well? Okay, how can we make that even better?

0:08:03.7 Tiffany: And then what are you doing now that's not getting the result that you want? So is there something within your experience that isn't turning the result that you want that you can change, you can manipulate it to create a different result? So take inventory of what's working really well, what's not working well, and maybe even what does a five-star experience mean to you? Because...

0:08:27.5 Tina: Yeah.

0:08:27.6 Tiffany: What I think a five-star experience means could be different than what you think a five-star experience means, right, Tina?

0:08:33.1 Tina: Yup, yeah. Exactly.

0:08:33.9 Tiffany: To me it's feelings to somebody else, it could be totally different. So I think, inventory, what are you gonna do, right? What are you gonna do to change it? And what are those expectations? What's a five-star expectation? So Tina, on that line, like expectations, what are some things... How can we quantify that for them? Help me quantify, what are some good expectations for a practice owner to have to say we have a five-star customer service experience? What do you think?

0:09:03.7 Tina: I think it's really drawing out what that... Like winning that looks like. And when we're thinking about it, I like how you said, what I'm gonna describe that as, it's gonna be different than what you are. And so how as a team will we know if we did it or we didn't do it? What does that actually look like? So kind of a little bit of any time that we're implementing something new, it's, "Hey, here's what we want to create?" But then that debrief afterwards of like, "Okay, we've been trying this and is it working? Is it not working? What did that look like, and did it meet expectation?" Because I might end the day and be like, "Yeah, we totally won this. All of our patients five-star... That was definitely, yep, all the way." And then you're over there thinking, "Wait, what? Did you hear what you said on the phone? Did you see how long it took that patient to get back? Did you see how you... "

0:09:50.3 Tina: I saw three people ask them what their name was like... And so really debriefing and going, "Okay. So now taking a step back and looking at this, what is it that we could improve on?" But also breaking it down for team members, 'cause I think sometimes we get to the point where we're like, "Okay, I'm gonna have a five-star patient experience and we add in 20 new things for everyone to be doing and you're not gonna hit that." So instead it's like what one thing can we focus on that will elevate this the best and then start to build off of that? Now we got that one thing done in Q1, let's go to Q2, what's one more thing that we're adding on?

0:10:23.7 Tiffany: I love that, and I want you guys to take that away. Your focuses, right? Tina said, take one thing... What's one thing that you can change? What's one thing that you can make better right now, because if you take on too many, you're scattering what you can accomplish. So your efforts are being scattered over the top of multiple things or you could take all of your efforts into one thing, make it really great, and then move on to the next. So I feel like in my brain, I see mediocre. I see all of these pebbles we're trying to cover with this water, and we've got only a certain amount of water, but we've got this pile of pebbles and the pebbles can only be covered so much by the water that you have. But if we spread out those pebbles over the ground instead of this giant pile, you're gonna cover more of the pebbles with that same amount of water than you would have if they're all stacked on top of each other.

0:11:20.3 Tiffany: So if you take one pebble at a time and you take that pebble, and you implement that pebble, you track it, you debrief on it, you make sure that that pebble is working and that it's covered with the water, all of your efforts are going towards that one thing instead of that pile. I think that's brilliant. I love that.

0:11:36.6 Tiffany: So take inventory of what you're doing. What's working really well? What can you make different? What can you change? What do you need to change? And what are your expectations? And then choose something, choose one thing to work on, do it for a while. She even said, you know, a quarter. Take a quarter, take a month. I like at least six weeks. So six weeks to a quarter, you guys, to make a change, nothing changes shorter than that. It doesn't stick, we've proven it. So take six weeks to a quarter and get something to stick and then add on top of that. I love it. And let's hear about it. I wanna hear about your five-star customer service experiences. Get those reviews, get them for you guys, review us so that we know right in. Let us know what's working for you? What your expectations are? How you translate those to your team? Let us know. I'm super excited.

0:12:23.3 Tina: Yeah. I want to hear it.

0:12:23.7 Tiffany: So I love that. Kudos, Tina. I know right.

0:12:26.1 Tina: Yeah, you're welcome.

0:12:26.9 Tiffany: I love hearing from our guests or from our listeners and share these podcasts. You guys, if this is something that's working for you, and you're like, Holy cow, that hotel analogy really changed... Share it with your friends. You guys, we put these out there so that everybody can hear it. We don't put it out there so that you, this one specific listener that's listening, you get to have this mega office that nobody else can touch. I want you to have a mega office next to other mega offices. I want everyone to have a mega office, and I want you guys to be accomplishing the goals that you set out to do.

0:13:00.4 Tiffany: So make sure you're sharing this information. Sharing is caring, we're one giant community, and get those freaking five star customer service expectations put into place and let us know how it goes. Tina, do you have anything else that you wanna add into their action items? Did we miss anything?

0:13:18.0 Tina: No, I love it. And I definitely feel like when the action items should be writing and letting us know how it's going, but I think that you covered that really well, just taking all those steps they'll be there, ready to go.

0:13:30.6 Tiffany: I love it, I love it. Go take inventory, go see what you're doing now, and how can you do a little bit better, and then take one pebble out a time, cover it with that water and move on to the next pebble. Can't wait to from you guys. Hello at thedentalateam.com and pop us a review 'cause we really love seeing those, you guys. We like to know when we're doing well. We like to know what you like to hear, let us know.

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0:13:53.3 KD: And that wraps it up for another episode of the Dental A Team Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.

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