Every new patient arriving at your dental practice arrives with some degree of trepidation.

And why wouldn’t they, after all?

They are going to the dentist.

And a new dentist this time, for the first time.

They have very little idea of what is about to unfold for them.

It’s kind of like on the first date, turning up to the house of a girl you’ve just asked out, and meeting her parents for the first time?

Or is it scarier than that?

For these new patients, they are about to meet some people for the first time in a place that they’ve never been before and allow those people to do unspeakable things to the inside of [part of] their body?

And then pay them for the pleasure?

So as a caring professionally behaving organisation, how can we make a new patient’s first visit to our dental office be truly amazing and forever memorable?

That’s simple.

It’s just four simple words:

Be Ready For Them.

Be ready, be prepared well in advance for the arrival of every new patient coming to your dental practice.

Your business’s objective is to make that new patient feel as if everybody in the practice has been looking forward ALL DAY to that new patient’s first visit.

And the two simplest things to do to WOW that new patient on arrival are these:

  • Be standing, waiting, ready and prepared, for the moment that new patient walks in the door.

You do not want to be doing paperwork, or be on the phone, or be dealing with other patients, at the moment that new patient arrives.

The arrival of a new patient to your dental practice should be as significant to you as the arrival of important dinner guests to your home. Everything must be in order and be ready.

And when that new patient walks in the door, your key team member must BEAT THE GREET with that arriving patient.

And by this, I mean that your team member must greet the arriving patient before that arriving patient has the opportunity to speak and identify themselves. [By the way, this BEAT THE GREET should be something that your team does for every arriving patient at your practice. Be that a new patient or an existing patient.].

  • The greeting for the arriving new patient must be this:

“Hello, you must be Betty. Welcome to Active Dental. My name is Jayne, I spoke with you on the phone. How’s your day been?

The purpose of the greeting is to identify the new patient before they have time to introduce themselves.

We already know who they are because they have scheduled an appointment to see us, and we have their name, and the time that they are due. If we are logical, it won’t be too difficult to figure out that someone who you don’t recognise who is arriving through your dental office front door just before 2pm has a fair chance of being the new patient you have scheduled in your book at 2pm.

And the new patient arriving is going to be WOWWED by what they just experienced because in their mind they probably thought that they were going to have to go up to an unmanned front desk counter and ding a bell and then wait for someone to appear and serve them up a clipboard?

When your dental practice gets these two things down pat it will have immediately set itself up in the eyes of the arriving new patient as being truly different from anything else they have ever experienced anywhere ever before….

And isn’t that the feeling or the memory that we are trying to create for our customers and patients, each and every time?

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Dr. David Moffet BDS FPFA CSP is a certified CX Experience coach. David works with his wife Jayne Bandy to help SME businesses improve their Customer Service Systems to create memorable World Class experiences for their valued clients and customers. Click here to find out how David and Jayne can help your business