CATEGORY 112 AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST Dear Dr Toni, I’ve heard marketing people talk about “touch points”. What does that mean for us in dentistry? Dr P Great question! To give a bit of context to my answer below, we at Momentum believe that marketing is a preventative activity and that it’s always important to focus on growing a patient base of the types of patients you really want to treat. In order to do that, it’s more cost effective and more efficient to get your internal marketing right before spending time, money and energy on external marketing. This brings me to your question of touch points. The principle behind touch points is identifying every part of your practice that “touches” patients and making sure that it’s what you want it to be. Start with your vision, mission and values (VMV). Are they clear to you? If not, clarify them for yourself. Then ask: are they clear to your team? If not, introduce them to the team and get their buy-in. Then, work with the team to create a continuous improvement process whereby every single one of the ways you “touch” the patients is consistent with your VMV. The team needs to have ongoing responsibility for helping get results. One place to start in identifying the actual touch points is with your online presence. Are your VMV clear, for example, from your website and social media? Would a potentially ideal patient who’s looking at those think “Yes! This practice sounds perfect for me!”? If not: what actions are you going to take to change that? Next, consider your first point of contact with the practice, which is usually by phone. Would your ideal patient feel great after ringing and speaking to your front desk coordinators? If not, what do you need to do to change that? E.g. do you need a better hiring or training process for the team so that they can behave more consistently with your VMV? Also, if your BEST PRACTICES Q&A BESTPRACTICES Q&A with Dr Toni Surace 4 Dr Toni Surace BDSC (Melb) Managing Director, Momentum Management Mentor, coach and international presenter. It’s always best practice to develop business skills, systems, techniques and industry knowledge that could impact your practice. BEST PRACTICES Q&A is a forum allowing you to ask the tough questions to Australasian Dentist columnist Dr Toni Surace. usual first point of contact is online, how can you make sure that online enquiries are handled as well as can possibly be expected? Do you have the right scripts, and are teammembers using them? You can run a similar business diagnostic over every other point of patient contact with you. (Hot tip: I often actually physically walk through the choreography of each step to make sure it’s to my standard.) This includes: u Patients’ first entry into the practice. What do they see/hear/feel/smell? u Patients’ first face-to-face experience with your front desk team. What impression does it create? u The patient lounge. How does it look, feel, smell? What sounds do patients hear? And how long are they waiting before being shown into the surgery? u Patients being greeted in the lounge and escorted to the surgery. Who’s doing this, and are they creating the right impression? For example: it should be warm and welcoming. It should be purposeful without being rushed. My personal preference is to guide the patient to go first, so patients need to know where to go if there are multiple surgeries down the corridor; is everyone doing that? Also, if the patient is passing a lab, or steri, or storage areas: are those spaces well-presented? u Introductions in the surgery. Who’s introducing whom, and where do people stand for this? u Seating the patient. Is it clear where bags or coats are placed? What else do we need to do to make sure that the patient’s needs are being met and their expectations exceeded at each point? u Everything that happens both clinically (e.g. explaining stages of the process to patients) and non-clinically (e.g. the debrief ) in the room also needs to live up to the VMV and making sure patients feel great about their decision to come to you. This includes making sure that all clinicians and all DAs are operating consistently with those standards, so check if you’re not sure this is happening. u Handover to front desk. Who’s doing this? If the FOCs are busy, how is the handover conducted? If there isn’t privacy at the front desk, how is this handled? u Checking the patient out and rebooking them. Is this handled consistently with your VMV? As you can see from this list, there are multiple touch points with any given patient. If you’re serious about internal marketing and customer service, walk through each of them and develop actions and areas for improvement. Notice also that the details are important; “near enough”: is NOT good enough! And if you’re shortstaffed, here’s a challenge for you: ask “How could we make it work while we’re shortstaffed?” rather than waiting until you’ve got the ideal team size. Dear Dr Toni, Our DAs sometimes disagree about correct steri procedures. How can I make sure it’s being done correctly? Dr AR Regardless of where your practice is located, it’s obviously essential to have infection control that’s consistent with the latest standards, and to make sure that your team is trained in the correct ways to do things. No-one wants to risk patient safety! There should also be a mechanism in the practice whereby any updates to infection control guidelines are received and disseminated. It’s not uncommon to have DAs with different views about infection control. I notice that sometimes DAs argue about infection control because one of them has been certified more recently than another, and the guidelines have changed since the first one did the course. Sometimes arguments occur because one DA thinks that extra processes should be done tomake “ “
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