Let’s Talk Customer Service
Let’s Talk Customer Service…
I’m amazed at how many dental practices pay little attention to learning who in their patient base may have received poor service. I am a believer in surveys and listening to your patients. We are seeing patient retention at 50% to 60% in practices which means 40% to 50% of patients are not coming back. That’s not good.
If every practice is getting new patients every month and there are 175,000 dentists in our country, that is a lot of people changing dentists every month. Why?
Every team member needs to be trained to know what to do if they hear a patient complain or express a less than pleasant experience in the practice. This should be a top priority.
I’m not sure where I first heard about HEAT many years ago, but it stuck with me.
H = Hear
A dissatisfied customer wants to know someone is willing to listen.
E= Empathize
The customer wants to know that someone heard them, understands and really cares.
A= Apologize
The customer wants to hear and know that you are truly sorry they had a bad experience.
T= Take Action
Have an action plan to follow the apology. What are you going to do to turn this around and fix the problem?
If you have an upset patient, take the heat. That is better than having them go on social media giving you bad reviews. It’s always better to have friends, versus enemies.
If you are firing a lot of patients, take a close look within your own four walls.
