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Howard Speaks: Efficiency Isn’t Everything by Dr. Howard Farran

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Categories: Practice Management, HR and Accounting;
Howard Speaks: Efficiency Isn’t Everything 

by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, publisher, Dentaltown magazine

Professor Albert Mehrabian, a researcher of body language, began researching the components of face-to-face conversations in the early 1960s. In 1967, Mehrabian determined that effective communication consists of 55% nonverbal elements like facial expressions, 38% vocal (tone of voice) and only 7% the actual meaning of the spoken words. He called this the 7–38–55% communication rule.

For example, think of how many different ways someone could say the word “maybe” and what each could convey.
  • Spoken with a smile and a rising tone: optimism and enthusiasm.
  • Spoken with a furrowed brow and a falling tone: doubt and disbelief.
  • Spoken with a furrowed brow and a rising tone: uncertainty and confusion.

Hard facts about soft skills

Don’t underestimate what you probably think of as the “soft stuff.” Think of the experience you have when you order food in a drive-thru vs. ordering at a counter or having a waiter come to your table. At the drive-thru, you’re speaking into a microphone and the person on the other side of the conversation might as well be on the moon, the way you’re speaking back and forth—tinny audio that cuts out, weird pauses and interruptions. At the counter or at a table, the face-to-face communication automatically brings things to a friendlier, more conversational level. If you have questions, you can get a better sense of who’s giving you the answers, and the back-and-forth can be more immediate.

The drive-thru maximizes efficiency, but it practically eliminates every component of the customer experience besides efficiency. That’s not what patients are looking for from dentists. They want to feel like they’re getting sit-down service—which makes sense, because after all, they are sitting down in your chair!

(Tangent: Sometimes, drive-thru service isn’t going to be the most efficient option, either. Many times, I’ve pulled up to a Starbucks where the drive-thru already had eight to 10 cars lined up, but when I walked inside, there were zero customers in line at the counter so I could walk straight up and order.)

It starts with the first call

So many dentists—even ones I went to school with—still ask who I recommend for marketing and advertising. My first response is always, “Who’s answering your phones?” If your front desk team is putting callers on hold, you might as well throw in the towel for your marketing efforts because you’re losing those potential patients as soon as they call.

In most other businesses, whoever takes care of calls is a member of the incoming sales team and whoever is making the calls is a member of outbound sales. In most small companies—business of 25 employees or less—salespeople are the highest-paid employees, but in dentistry, they’re often the lowest-paid, least-trained people on the team. Think of all the money that could be going through their hands if they were properly trained empathetic communicators!

Find and keep people who, when they’re asked what they do, say, “I work in incoming sales for Today’s Dental” instead of, “I work at the front desk.” Those are the people who are trying to close the “sale” by converting calls and visits to scheduled appointments, and they’ll make your patients feel special and valued instead of like just another car in the drive-thru.

Learn more about providing better patient service
with Dentaltown’s online CE
Dentaltown’s online CE lineup includes more than 100 courses on practice management, HR and accounting.
Start with Fred Joyal’s 1.75-credit course, Creating a Remarkable Dental Practice: Communication and the Patient Experience, which covers the most important moments in a service transaction, the most effective words to use in key situations, how to add moments of delight to the patient experience and the most powerful ways to increase case acceptance. To view the course, click here.
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