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Thomas Giacobbi, DDS By Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine

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Success is in the Details



Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD
Editorial Director,
Dentaltown Magazine

What challenges do you face in your office? Please send me an e-mail (tom@dentaltown.com) and I will address the issue in a future column. Your privacy will be respected. Send me your problems and I will help you find a solution. 		I am a student of great service. When I visit restaurants, hotels, airports and stores, I take the time to evaluate the service I have received. I notice what they did well and what could have been done better. These days, I see there are more examples of poor service than great service. Great service is easy to provide: minimize the number of little mistakes you make throughout the day. Sure there are special things you can do, but your practice does not need to be a dental spa to provide first-class service. It’s all about the details.

At our last team meeting, I asked team members to take turns sharing a story of their most memorable service experiences. One team member talked about the local Costco, where the a clerk remembered her name on a return visit more than a week after the clerk met her the first time. Another team member described a visit to a local grocery store where the manager took the time to help her through the self-checkout, and completed the entire transaction with her. Both stories are not particularly earth shattering, but that is precisely the point: they illustrate attention to a simple detail or two and they became memorable.

Next, I asked the team to share examples of the things that we do to generate patient compliments. Some of the responses included: remembering details about the patient such as vacations or recent births, use of the intra-oral camera to demonstrate problems and cable TV in each operatory. Once again, these are examples of how a few small details can create a memorable experience.

The challenge of running a successful dental practice is that there are hundreds or thousands of small details that must be attended each and every day. Many of the details are out of patient view, like X-rays that miss the apex, or running out of impression material tips, or breaking a diagnostic model while removing the impression tray, but forgetting those means an experience your patient might soon want to forget.

I would like to make it easier for you to broach this topic with your team, so I have provided a letter to post on the refrigerator in your break room. The tone is a bit tongue in cheek, but it should serve to help them appreciate why you are occasionally in a bad mood.
Dear Team,
I’m obsessed with details. Not in a bad way, but in a way that says I have a respect for the difference a small detail can make. In dental school, I was trained to fear the millimeter. Tiny discrepancies in the treatments we perform are often the difference between success and failure. It is probably no surprise to you that, outside of the oral cavity, I share the same commitment to details.

I am sharing this letter to ask for your assistance with the details of each work day. Each detail that we miss affects the flow of the day and has an impact on the patient perception of our service. Here are a few examples of details that should not be overlooked throughout the day: when we sit down to start a procedure and materials are missing from the room; or if a diagnostic model breaks, which requires the patient to return for a repeat impression; or if a patient is in the office even though the lab case has not arrived; or when we schedule two composite patients at the same time; or when a hygiene patient needs a filling adjusted and the materials are not ready in the room; or if we accept X-rays that do not show necessary diagnostic information; or we forget to have consent forms signed; or even when we jot down phone messages that are incomplete; etc.

If we deliver the details consistently, our patients will comment on our smooth running practice and come back again; we will stay on schedule and the team will be happy. Let’s work together to get the details right.

Sincerely,
The Dentist
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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