Auditing Your Image

How do prospective patients, current patients and members of the general public perceive your dental practice? You may think you know the answers, but in reality, the truth may startle you. Building and maintaining a successful practice requires you to take a good, honest look at the image your practice is projecting to the marketplace, and make periodic adjustments that enhance that image.

Complacency Can Kill

It’s no surprise that the hectic pace of modern dental practices leaves little time for long-term strategic planning. But an excessive focus on day-to-day administrative activities can actually become a danger within your office—it facilitates the rapid colonization of an unwieldy virus called complacency. Service levels slip, courteous manners are replaced by cantankerous behavior and employees begin to take patients for granted. Your staff may automatically assume that management is addressing any troubles, when in reality, the calamity may have already caused irreparable damage to your business.

Keeping complacency at bay requires a continual commitment on your part to view your practice from the vantage points of prospective dental patients and existing patients. If you or your colleagues are unable to assume this objective stance, you may need to periodically enlist the assistance of a third party that can perform this invaluable service. In any event, positive change can take time to implement, so don’t delay in getting started with planning your image audit.

First Impressions Matter

Just like a first date, the initial impression your dental practice makes upon a prospective patient has a direct impact on the odds of forming a lasting relationship with him or her. Your dental practice is unquestionably a “people business” in which the first 30 seconds of interaction can make the determination between a sale or no sale at all. For this reason, it’s absolutely essential that you proactively manage the introductory process for success.

For example, the manner in which your office telephone gets answered can make or break a patient relationship. While some larger practices opt to employ formal telephone scripts for handling routine communications, a few simple lessons in basic phone etiquette can make a tremendous difference at a smaller practice. In particular, younger employees may lack the necessary experience required to project an appropriate tone over the phone and may need some extra direction to perform up to your standards.

Does your office décor convey the impression of a modern, clean, well-kept environment, or is your waiting room full of threadbare furniture from decades long ago? By opening your eyes to basic space-planning considerations—or even by hiring a qualified interior designer—you can help to ensure that each and every visitor forms the desired impression of your dental practice.

Spies Like Us

Larger companies concerned with maintaining high levels of customer service often hire outside consultants to probe and evaluate interactions with prospective clients. These private investigators—often known as “secret shoppers” or “mystery shoppers”—make unscheduled visits and phone calls to businesses and report their experiences back to the consultant. The consultant then analyzes the collected data and makes recommendations to the company.

While your practice may be too small to warrant the hiring of an outside consultant for this purpose, you can still conduct your own “mystery shopping” expedition to get an idea of how your employees are interacting with the public. Before embarking on the task, be sure to take the proper time to identify specific measures that can easily be quantified or qualified. For example: How quickly is the phone answered? Does the staff convey a helpful, empathetic demeanor? How easy is it to make or cancel an appointment? Can your staff answer basic questions about the practice’s areas of expertise, insurance acceptance policies and billing procedures? Can your staff successfully convert an initial informational inquiry into a booked appointment?

Who’s Minding the Store?

We’ve all heard the adage, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” It’s an expression that should make any business owner just a little bit uncomfortable. But it gives rise to a critical question you must face: Are your employees consistently performing to the same standards whether you’re in the office or not? You may never know the answer unless you set and manage expectations with regard to professional behavior and service delivery.

Communicating and reinforcing these quality standards to your employees can serve as the core of an office-wide, morale-building program. For example, “Less Than Three = Quality” could serve as the name of an internal quality improvement program to ensure that the phone always get answered before the third ring—even if that means the phone occasionally has to be answered by someone who’s not normally responsible for the task. “When In Between, Clean” could serve as a positive reminder for staff to utilize occasional periods of downtime to remove clutter from the office and to straighten up the waiting room.

You Don’t Say

In addition to monitoring interpersonal communications between staff and patients, you should also conduct a rigorous assessment of your practice’s printed and digital communications to ensure that they convey the right image.

What emotions are you attempting to evoke from prospective patients? What key features and benefits of your specialized services are missing from your marketing communications pieces? Have you unintentionally omitted a key piece of information that could easily convert a prospect to a patient? And when was the last time you updated your practice’s Web site with new, relevant content?

Unfortunately, printed marketing materials can quickly become obsolete if not tended to periodically. Are you still using dated brochures that reflect either a colleague who’s no longer affiliated with your practice or a previous office address? These sorts of small oversights could possibly convey a careless attitude or a lack of attention to detail.

Maintaining the Big Picture

Any image audit of your dental practice should embrace as wide a perspective as possible so you can see the full scope of how the practice is perceived by others. Furthermore, the audit should be repeated at regular intervals so you can track change—both positive and negative—over time. It’s an investment that can pay big dividends toward the health and longevity of the practice you’ve worked so hard to build.