Patients have never had more options for dental care. They can do a quick search on the internet or spin up a quick post asking their friends for recommendations on social media. This means that learning how to run a successful dental practice all comes down to hitting some key areas in the overall patient experience. Therefore, keeping you top of mind for annual cleanings, aka recurring revenue, and empowering them to be your best advocate for patient referrals, aka net new revenue.
With so many ways to increase a patient’s satisfaction with your practice, we decided to help by giving you 15 tips.
Tip #1 Engage your Employees
The most successful dental practices all have something in common, they focus on the details. You have an opportunity to provide a great patient experience through every interaction, even down to those micro-moments.
What is a micro-moment? A micro-moment is a tiny almost unnoticeable engagement between a patient and an employee. It’s a smile from the front desk as soon as a patient enters the room; it’s a quick joke to make someone who’s feeling uneasy, feel a little more comfortable.
These aren’t things you can’t necessarily add to your employee training. It all starts with you and how you engage with your team members daily. Create the micro-moments you want them to create for your patients.
Tip #2: Embrace Office Culture
Creating a happy and healthy office culture ripples into the patient experience. Do you have a mission to provide the best possible patient care? What about a mission providing the best possible employee experience?
Some of the most successful dental practices have found a way to create a vibrant culture. Employees want to be proud of the work they do and enjoy coming to work every day. Some ways you can build this is by holding regular team-building outings or exercises, holding 1 on 1’s with key staff members to inspire through leadership and help them with their career goals, or creating an internal culture club.
Tip #3: Expand your Dental Team
Determining what key hires to make next can be tricky. There are some formulas you can use to determine a few key hires like front desk and dental assistants.
Front Desk Formula: hire one individual for every $350,000-$400,000 of production.
Dental Assistant Formula: hire one individual for every $250,000 of production.
There isn’t always the perfect formula for staffing. You may have the perfect ratio on paper, but still, feel understaffed and overworked. This is more common than you might think.
There are many different ways to improve productivity. Most likely these are due to poor business systems like outdated practice management software, poor employee onboarding experience, no continuing education plan, and others. Your current staff members could be working more effectively, as long as they are given the right tools.
Tip #4: Train your Dental Team
When was the last time you thought about having your team brush up on their skills? Or what about your employee onboarding experience?
Incorporating continuous dental staff training is a key component to happy, productive, and effective employees. Investing in training shows your investment in their careers and can go a long way in promoting a healthy work environment that breeds success.
