Episode #357: Mastering Verbal Skills – Part 3, with Jenni Poulos

  Cancellations will always be a part of your practice. But wouldn't it be great to reduce or even prevent them? And that's exactly what Kirk Behrendt and Jenni Poulos will teach you how to do in the final part of Mastering Verbal Skills. If you communicate the value of your dentistry well, your chairs will be full, and patients will keep their appointments. But when patients do need to reschedule, there are good and bad ways to handle it. To learn the best practices for handling cancellations with “A,” “B,” and “C” patients, listen to Episode 357 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

• Your tone, your words, and your body language matters.
• Filling chairs starts with communicating value to your patients.
• Don't place the onus on your front desk staff. Set them up for success.
• Cancellations and rescheduling shouldn't be easy for patients.
• Learn how to respond to “A,” “B,” and “C,” patient cancellations.
• Have excellent note-taking practices to record patient information.

Quotes:

• “The words we use matter. The tone that we use matters. How we lean in and how we listen, it matters. As humans, our brains are hardwired to read into specific terms, to read into specific words, to read into nonverbal communication. And whatever we say to someone, they're already writing a story in their head based on the preconceived notions that they bring with that piece of language or with that tone. So, how we deliver things and the words that we choose are really, really important.” (3:10—3:43)
• “I gave you an action item in the very first [episode] to start making a “say this, not that.” I want you to pull out that list, and the first thing I want you to do is put “cancel” and a circle around it and strike through it. We change appointments. We reschedule appointments. We don't cancel appointments.” (6:21—6:35)
• “People pay for things that they value. They show up for things that they value. So, if we, as a team, are really good at communicating the value of the treatment, the value of the appointment to the patient, the likelihood of their changing the appointment, not showing up for the appointment, is dramatically reduced.” (6:53—7:11)
• “We talked about before that I don't want you to confirm appointments. There is a little caveat there. When you schedule appointments, I want you to tell your patients, ‘We consider all appointments confirmed when scheduled. We’ll give you a reminder call, but this time is reserved specifically for you. It’s confirmed in our books. So, we’re putting it in Sharpie in the book, and I want you to put it in Sharpie in the book too. Don't just pencil us in. We've got you confirmed. We've reserved the time for you.’” (7:55—8:28)
• “The story that I bring with [using the word] “confirm” is that I can change it; it’s not yet confirmed. I like to remind someone of the time that has been reserved specifically for them. It carries a different weight.” (10:13—10:28)
• “You don't want to make it easy for people to change their appointments. And if you do have to change your appointment, there's a legitimate reason, I want to get you reappointed immediately. I don't want my admin team to be spending time chasing you down, going back and forth, to reappoint that. I want your after-hours message to state very clearly, ‘We do not accept any changes to the schedule via message. We only accept changes to the schedule during business hours.” (13:45—14:19)
• “The RFR (reason for return), what it is doing is it is letting people know we have listened to them, we have heard them. We are creating that trust and that safe space. So, this one item is hitting on so many of these key concepts that we talked about in the first webinar.” (21:11—21:29)
• “You need to have excellent notetaking practices. If you don't know how your software works about breaking appointments or changing appointments, you need to know this. You need to learn how your software works. You need to have diligent notetaking, and everyone needs to know where the notes go and abide by these agreements. Because if you don't do this, you cannot efficiently execute this system.” (21:38—22:01)
• “I can't get what I don't ask for . . . What I would like the outcome to be is for the patient to keep their appointment. And I'm not going to get there if I don't ask for it. And it’s shocking how many people will say, ‘You know what? Actually, I think I can move something around. I'll be there.” (26:58—27:27)
• “If an “A” patient calls and they do need to change their appointment, it’s valid, they do need to move it, do not violate your ideal day for them. Do not put them into that new patient block that you need to hold because it’s an “A” patient and they're rescheduling. Yes, it’s an “A” patient — but we need to honor our ideal day.” (30:41—30:59)
• “This concept of the VIP list, it’s really important. People do like to be on a VIP list. It holds weight. Being on a short call list means “meh.” But being in a VIP list makes me feel important. And putting that out there at the beginning, I'm setting the expectation that I may pull you forward. So, it makes it a little bit easier for admin team members to make that phone call to pull someone forward, even if it’s a day or two, because I've already set the expectation that it could happen.” (31:01—31:36)
• “This is a limiting belief that a lot of people have, that it’s not okay for me to call someone and pull them forward, even 48 hours. But if I've set the expectation ahead of time, ‘Hey, if there are any changes in our schedule, I've got you on our VIP call list. Of course, that time is reserved for you, but I'll give you a call and let you know if there's an opportunity to come in sooner.’” (31:36—31:58)
• “The process [for handling patient cancellations] always starts the same: having good notes in there, and putting them on hold, and looking at the history. It’s always going to start similarly. And I'm going to get back on and I'm still going to follow that process of, ‘I want to know what happened. Share with me what's going on.’ Pause, and listen. But my response is going to be a little bit different next in when I'm going to offer them an appointment. If someone has shown that they aren't really respecting and honoring my time, I don't want to tell them that it’s okay to continue to do so and I'm going to make that easy. So, after I ask you to keep the appointment and you tell me no, I'm not looking at my first available appointment for you.” (36:57—37:40)
• “I am still going to encourage you, this creates a little bit more work, but I also am thinking long-term about I am training a patient’s behavior. I'm not going to give them tomorrow. I'm going to offer them an appointment down the road in a month, when the “B” patient opening is, and I'm going to still put in a little bit more effort to fill that with one of my “A” patients on my VIP list that is deserving of it.” (40:05—40:38)
• “I may end up calling back that “B” patient later and saying, ‘Mrs. Jones, it is your lucky day. I had a change. And if you can confirm 100% that you can be here tomorrow, we can see you.’ But there's a big difference between me giving them that appointment immediately and me giving it to them calling them at the end of the day for it.” (40:38—41:04)
• “This is one that's really scary for people. Scary when you tell someone, ‘I don't want you to reschedule them.’ You're not inviting them back to the practice, essentially. You will be surprised, the impact that it will have. Oftentimes, just by telling someone, just like asking if they can keep their appointment, telling them, ‘I'm not going to reschedule you right now. I'm not going to reserve another time for you,’ is shocking to most people when they hear it. And they may completely change their tune and show up in 10 minutes.” (45:21—45:59)

Snippets:

• 0:00 Introduction.
• 2:34 Why language matters in your practice.
• 4:04 It starts with communicating value.
• 7:35 Appointments are confirmed when scheduled.
• 10:02 “Confirm” versus “reserved.”
• 12:26 Don't make it easy to change appointments.
• 18:01 Responding to cancellations, and RFR (reason for return).
• 23:02 Verbal skills for responding to “A,” “B,” and “C,” patients.
• 24:15 Getting “A” patients to keep their appointments.
• 29:18 Other things to say to “A” patients.
• 33:50 Communicating with late “A” patients.
• 35:42 When “B” patients cancel.
• 39:47 If “B” patients say, “What if I have an opening in my schedule tomorrow?”
• 42:55 It’s okay to shock patients just a little bit.
• 46:42 How late is too late, and for what appointment?
• 49:31 Do you charge patients when they're late?
• 51:32 Conclusion.
• 55:14 Last thoughts.

Reach Out to Kirk & Jenni:

Kirk’s email: [email protected] 

Jenni’s email: [email protected] 

Jenni’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenni.poulos 

Jenni’s social media: @actdental

Resources:

ACT Dental: https://www.actdental.com/

The Best Practices Show Episode 355 & 356: https://www.actdental.com/podcast

Jenni Poulos Bio:

Jenni brings to dental teams a literal lifetime of experience in dentistry. As the daughter and sister of periodontists and a dental hygienist, she has been working in many facets of the dental world since she first held a summer job turning rooms and pouring models at the age of 12. Now, with over 10 years of experience in managing and leading a large periodontal practice, she has a firm grasp on what it takes to run a thriving business. Her passion for organizational health and culture has been a driving force behind her coaching career. She has witnessed firsthand how creating an aligned and engaged team will take a practice to levels of success that they never believed possible!