Practicing Extreme Customer Service

Heather-Dawn

I have a fabulous guest here today. Her name is Laura Nelson, but I'm not gonna tell you about her. I'm going to throw the microphone to her and allow her to tell us a little bit about herself. Welcome, Laura.

Laura

Thank you for having me. I'm super excited. We've been connected through people for years, but this is great for us to talk. I'm Laura, as you mentioned, and I'm the founder of Front Office Rocks. I have been in the dental industry for over 20 years and I have been an Office Manager for a very long time. About 10 years ago, I started an online training website called Front Office Rocks. So, that's how you and I have kind of gotten connected, which I'm sure we'll talk about during this time. But that's who I am!

Heather-Dawn

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing a little bit about yourself. Tell me just a little bit about Front Office Rocks, if you will.

Laura

Yes, for sure. My background prior to dental was in business, organizational development, sales, marketing, management, and all of that. I married a guy who went to dental school at the University of Maryland, right down the street from you. Then he graduated and was an associate for a couple of years. He decided to open his own practice. He asked me to run the front and he would be in the back. That's how I got thrown into dental 20-some years ago.

I spent many hours, years even - time - learning everything I could about dental because I didn't have dental experience. Over that time I also talked with a lot of dentist friends of mine who went through dental school. We talked about how to build a good practice and a lot of people wanted me to be a consultant, which I didn't want to do. We had built, at that point, two practices: one on the East Coast and, when we moved to the West Coast, one in San Diego.

I knew that the front office team specifically was my focus in the beginning and that it was needed. Consulting is great, but I didn't want to do it.

I felt the thing

that was missing

in our industry was training.

 

I talked to my dental friends and I would say, you know, you don't have to hire somebody with dental experience in the front office, but you need to hire someone with a good personality and we can teach them dental. Their response was always, well, who's gonna teach them the dental? Like, somebody has to teach them dental. So, that's where I came up with the idea for Front Office Rocks. I don't just teach dental, but I teach everything that the front office team member needs to know, who has never worked in a dental office before. I teach more customer service, case acceptance, and all of the things that I have from my background.

I started filming videos 10+ years ago with the idea that a few of my friends would use them. It grew! Now we've trained thousands and thousands of team members across the country. That's kind of my evolution into my part in helping our industry and helping team members be successful in dentistry and be successful in the front office. 

Heather-Dawn

Well, you know, as a dentist, Laura, I can tell you that dental school trains us to do the nuts and bolts things but it does not train us to be entrepreneurs. It doesn't train us to be leaders. So, people in our industry who train or who support us in training our team members are absolute gold. Thank you.

Laura

You're welcome. I knew, being married to someone through dental school, that dentists get no business experience. As a dentist, when you're running your practice, you know what the assistant should do, what the hygienist should do, that's clinical.

A lot of dentists would go past their front desk and know what they're doing isn't what they should be doing but they don't know how to fix it. They don't know how to train them. I knew that they didn't teach that in dental school.

For you to truly be a leader of your organization, you should know what every role should do.

You don't have to do it, just like I don't have to be a dentist. You don't have to do the schedule, but you should know how to build a good schedule and how to answer the phones. So, one of the things I'm finding is a lot of dentists now are watching my videos and a lot of assistants are watching my videos to cross-train. They're there and accessible so that at least you understand what should be happening, which is great to have the availability for that. 

Heather-Dawn

I'll go one step further. Not only do they not know, but in the office there's no time. So, to have someone come in or to be able to watch videos during downtime during that hour of lunch is just such a good thing because here is somebody who knows what they know. They can pour into us. We can make the decisions as to how we are going to customize it for our office. So thank you. I have a quick question to ask you, Laura. You know, I saw something recently that said people were willing to spend more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service.

Laura, how important is that data to the dental team?

Laura

That's a hundred percent one of the foundations of what I speak on in the sense of a patient doesn't know if you're a good dentist or not. I mean, you don't see patients walking around going, "Look at the margin," you know, showing their teeth, "Look at the shade match!" They don't. They might know if they're in pain, they might know your bedside manner, or if you've done cosmetics. But overall, patients only really know the experience when they're in your office.

Customer service is the way to give the patient an amazing experience.

Now, customer service directly translates into case acceptance in my mind. If you were expecting a patient to pay more, they're expecting more of a value. They don't like paying for drills and needles. They don't like paying for crowns. They're paying for the best we can do for the experience.

We can't take the drills and needles away, but we can make the experience great.

One of the things that really needs to be defined for every practice is customer service. What is it for your practice? Your practice is gonna be different than my practice, you know? It depends on where you're located. It depends on your team and your patient base. Customer service is a vague term. It really needs to be defined in your practice. Does it mean standing up, greeting the patient, shaking their hand, greeting them by name, welcoming them back, or giving them a hug? Every practice is different.

For the leader and for the dentist,

it's important for you to

define what is that for your staff.

What do you want them to do? That patient experience is one of the reasons I focus on the front office. They're the first and last impression of every appointment. You could be an amazing dentist, but if I stink at the front desk and I'm not nice and I don't collect their balance and I don't schedule them, that experience is ruined. It doesn't matter how great you are as a dentist.

Heather-Dawn

It's true. They may not even get a chance to experience us because they're turned off before they even have a chance to step through the door. You're absolutely right. Laura, I've heard you say that the most important thing we do is take care of our patients. Can you share a little bit more about what you mean by taking care of patients?

Laura

The longer we get into dental, I used to say it was dentists. Now I say it's the entire team. The longer we're in the dental industry, the more we get into a dental box. What I mean is the more we're focused on insurance, the more we're focused on pro overhead production, collections, the schedule, the numbers, the insurance - which is all part of what we do every day - but when we start focusing on only the dental box, we forget about the business box. The business box is our patients. They pay our bills. Our patients are the reasons we all have jobs. If there's a patient in your chair, if there's a patient in your reception area, or if there's a patient in front of you.

I understand we have to be efficient. We need to turn over rooms and we need to do insurance, but we don't need to do it in lieu of taking care of our patients. You know, we really need to put our patients first and recognize that for the front, for the assistants, for the doctors, the longer our patients sit there not being taken care of, it's very easy for them to find a way to make an excuse not to come back to our practice.

We do that long enough and we're not gonna have jobs or patients to take care of.

Heather-Dawn

I agree with you a hundred percent, but I'd add a little bit more to that, Laura. One of the things I try to do in my practice is call patients after hours, especially those who've gotten anesthetic to see how they're doing because if they're having a challenge, I want to know early. That is something that whether you work at the front or whether you work in the clinical area, you can do as value-added, you know? The patients are like, "Oh my God, can you believe they call me after hours?!"

I think that what I would say, in addition to what you've said, is that taking care of patients is anything that is above and beyond for people to feel. It's not just about the filling, but it's about you going above and beyond to make them feel comfortable, and supported, to make them feel at home.

Laura

One of the things that I teach is that our team members have to make decisions on an hourly basis. We have to decide, "Do I need to do this for the patient? What is that? What does that look like?" So, my basic level is if you would want it done for your mom, your aunt, or your grandma, do it for the patient.

If it means you see it's raining outside and they're walking in from their car, you can go grab an umbrella and walk them in. Would you want someone to do that for your mom? Then, do it for the patient. As you said, you would want a doctor to call your mom after a procedure to see how your mom is doing. That's the basics of customer service. For me, it's in how you'd want to treat a family member. A family member you like. That's who we wanna keep in our mind when we're trying to decide what do we do.

Heather-Dawn

Oh, Laura, what are some things that a dental assistant can do to provide amazing customer service?

Laura

I'm going to tell a secret here. I don't say this very often because the name of my business is Front Office Rocks. I'm all about the front office. But my secret here is, I actually think the dental assistant is the hardest worker in the practice. I think the dental assistant is the most unappreciated, hardest worker. The dental assistant has a really hard role. You are run by the schedule. You have to keep the doctor happy. You have to make sure that the procedure is efficient, and you've got a person in your chair who many times is afraid of the dentist. They don't want to be there, they don't like the experience there. There are fears and all of that. So, there's a lot to balance.

The number one thing

I would think of for the dental assistant

is just remembering that the person in the chair.

You know, people don't like to wait. People don't like to be in fear. People don't like the unknown. They like to know what's happening next. What am I waiting for? Where's the dentist? What do I expect? You need good communication, putting yourselves in their shoes. The longer we're in the dental industry, the more we forget how much people don't like it because we are used to it. We're used to the drills and the needles and all of that.

Every day try to put yourself in the patient's shoes and - yes, we have to be efficient, yes, we have to turn over rooms, and yes, we have to help our dentist - it means putting your hand on the shoulder of the patient and saying, "Are you doing okay? Can I get you anything? I'm here with you." That just goes the extra mile for the patient.

Heather-Dawn

I think we're on the exact same page, Laura. I agree with you, we undervalue many times that dental assistant, who I say is the glue. Once I've left the room, the dental assistant now has to really decipher what the doctor just said.

Laura

Exactly. Right. So, the patient looks at that dental assistant and says, "Do I need it?" They're, you know, they're confirming or not confirming what's needed.

Heather-Dawn

Yes. That is the person who they're gonna say, "You think I should do it?" It's very relational between the dental assistant and the patient. I do respect the front desk, but that dental assistant really is the connector between our clinical area and our patients, and then back to the front desk as well. So thank you for that. I heard you say once that patients can hear and feel far more than we know. Can you elaborate on that, please?

Laura

Well, so many times we think if the patient is facing one way, they can't feel or hear what's being said behind their head. There's a thing called culture we all have in our businesses and culture, there are many ways to define culture, but I define culture as the energy that is in your business.

You can feel the energy of any business when you walk in. You know, are they happy, are they not? Is this a great place or not? Do they love working here? That is what patients feel when they're not looking at us, but they're behind us. So, there's no reason that we should be saying anything in our practices that you can't say in front of the patient.

If you've gotta vent a little bit, go out for a glass of wine at nighttime with your girlfriends and do it there. That's the energy, first of all, it's the energy we feel. Right? Then we start not liking going to work because we have people not getting along and whispering, instruments being slammed, and all of that. Remember the patient experience. The patient deserves a good experience. When we are whispering, even if you and I know something about the patient and they're in the chair and you're the doctor, there's no reason I need to go behind the 12 o'clock cabinet and whisper to you that the patient doesn't want to do the crown.

I should be able to see that right in front of the patient. We can have the conversation with the patient because think about when you were a kid, right? When people are whispering, what do you assume they're talking about? We don't want our patients to feel that way, right?

We want them to like our environment, the culture, and what's being said.

Heather-Dawn

So, okay, so now I'm putting the pieces together. That's what you mean when you say #StopTheWhisper.

Laura

Stop the whisper. There's no reason to be whispering in the dental office because here's the thing. Here's what I tell everybody when I'm teaching. The number one thing we can do is smile. Just smile, right? You could be in the back operatory and I could be at the front desk and we can see each other. We could know that's that one patient that drives us all batty. It's gonna be a long procedure and we could just look at each other and smile. We know exactly what that means. We don't have to whisper about it. We don't have to. We can read each other's energy. There's no reason.

If there's something going on in your practice that needs to be addressed, we need to address it because the patients feel it and that's the experience that they're getting.

Then we wonder why patients have another reason why they don't want to come to the dentist. Well, if it's not a great place to go and they're putting drills or needles in their mouths, of course, they don't wanna go.

Heather-Dawn

I hear you. I have one last question for you. This question, I think, everybody's interested in. Can you share some strategies that will make it more likely for the team to finish up, to leave the office on time? Invariably, it becomes almost a war zone. When somebody's dragging their feet and everybody else wants to leave, it can be a little, let's say, ticklish.

Laura

It really starts from the beginning with training. When we bring on new employees, one of the places we drop the ball is training in the dental office. Anybody listening to this put yourself back to your very first day at your dental office. It was like getting thrown to the wolves. You know, here's where we keep everything. Here's where everything's stocked. Here's how you answer the phones. Here's what the doctor wants. Here are the insurance companies we belong to go.

When we don't train our employees well, they don't know what's expected from them.

They don't know necessarily how to do things well. It makes some people less efficient than other people. So some people have to pick up the slack. We want to look at our onboarding. First, is just the training.

The second thing is then to regularly cross-train. If a dental assistant comes up to me at the end of the night and I'm buried doing insurance claims and calling next-day appointments or whatever, and the assistant asks to help, I don't have time to train the dental assistant to do it exactly, because I'm in the thick of it. I'm stressed and I'm trying to get out of there. Now the dental assistant is sitting around waiting for me to finish instead of being able to jump in and help so efficiently and effectively cross-training so that if I'm done in the front, I can run back and help turnover rooms.

If they're in the back, they can run up front and help call patients tomorrow, or whatever the case may be. This then leads to the third thing, which is really having a process outlined for throughout-the-day procedures. I actually learned this from my daughter who was a dental assistant for a little while. She worked for her dad, who's a dentist, and I asked her the reason for being on top of everything she does throughout the day. What's your goal? She said her goal is to get out of there on time at night. Her whole goal each day was to get out on time. It may mean taking out the trash in the middle of the day because it makes sense or helping to stock the rooms throughout the day. We don't have to wait until the end of the day to do everything. I'm not trying to say that everybody should be rushing to get out at five o'clock. But if we all understand, what needs to get done, the time frame, and the roles, and if we all jump in and do it with the right attitude, we're all going to get out of there at the end of the day together.

Heather-Dawn

I love that, Laura. I think that we need to recognize that every member of the team is equally important and of equal value. If every team member sits down and can speak among each other and decide who can do what, based on your strengths and how efficient you are with various things, we can collaborate.

The thing is, many times we don't have a cohesive team. Right? And as a result, there are challenges. You made a very clear point. If someone feels burdened because the other people around aren't as up to scratch yet because they're learning, then somebody can feel stressed out or overwhelmed. In many offices, it's training on the job that occurs.

So things like Front Office Rocks, like that really can provide that cherry on top, right? So that people can begin to sharpen their swords. They're working during the day, they can improve themselves in the evenings. And I think that's a win-win situation. Don't you agree?

Laura

I agree. And I think the one other thing too is the more you're in your job - this is what I try to do when I was doing my training - the more you've been doing it, as long as you've been doing it, the less you remember what it was like in the beginning. When you work in a dental office, it's like going to a foreign country - the language we use, the procedures, the codes - and so having some training available for new employees or new team members that starts with the basics, because we have to learn a gradient. Many times they shake their head, yes, they understand, but they only understand 50% of what you just told 'em because we've been doing it for so long.

We're allowing them the ability to learn the basics. Then, it can grow from there and then we've got a high-performing team where everybody understands the foundation, but when we throw too much at them in the beginning or we don't train well, we don't succeed.

One of my big things is starting with why. Why is this important? Every task that you do in the dental office, if I were to say to you, why do you do this? It shouldn't just be because we've always done it this way, right? You should be able to tell me it's for patient experience to make sure our practice is efficient, to make sure we're OSHA-compliant, whatever your it.

There should be a why

to everything you do.

If your team member doesn't know that, you have to go back to the basics. Ask why it is important. We do this every day, so training's a big thing.

Heather-Dawn

I would put an exclamation mark after that statement. I agree with you a hundred percent. We're on the same page. We are definitely on the same page, in the same book. As I come to the end of my podcast, I always have a quote. Now, sometimes my guest provides a quote. Sometimes I provide the quote. Do you have a quote that you'd like to share with us today?

Laura

I do. So I talk to dentists all the time who say to me, "Well, Laura, if I invest in my team members, and then they leave, that's a waste of money." There's a quote by Henry Ford that said I'd rather train somebody and have them leave than not train them and have them stay. That's exactly it, right? Because you've got people on your team that need training, and I'd rather have somebody trained and only be with me for a year than somebody never trained and around for 20. So, that's my quote from Henry Ford that I love.

Heather-Dawn

I love it. Listen, this has been awesome. I have one request to make of you. Drum roll. At some point in the future, you'll come back and share with us again. This was awesome.

Laura

I would love it. I'd love to have you to California sometime and I'd love to come out to Jamaica and visit your practice or come speak at one of your events one day.

Heather-Dawn

There you have it. Extreme customer service. Oh, Laura had so many pearls, but here's just one or two I wanna leave with you. How do you know that you are practicing extreme customer service? Think of treating each patient the way you treat your mom or your grandmother. Look, it's raining. Hold an umbrella.

Whatever needs to happen to make that person feel supported, right? And remember to smile. Hey, we are in the smile business, so we ought to lead the pack when it comes to smiling, no whispering necessary, right?

The most valuable team member is one who is cross-trained.

Listen, life is better when we live, learn, and grow together.

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