Class 4: Patient Experience
Start With Why
Start with why. Here is a quick story:
Two gentlemen dig holes. They keep digging their holes deeper and deeper. When asked the first man says he is digging this hole since it is his job to make the hole deeper into the ground. The second man is digging his hole since he wants to get out of jail. Who do you think is more motivated? The one that sees the bigger picture.
How can we build loyalty to our brand? How can we inspire our staff? How can we create a unique culture within our business? It all starts with why. Why does the company exist and why should anyone care? Inspire your team members and staff. These are the people interfacing with your patients daily - if they are excited about your business the patients will be too.
Patient Flow
There are multiple ways to conceptualize how patients will flow through the dental business. One way to look at this is as a funnel. We know that about 7-10 potential patients will view a website and only one will make a phone call. Out of the patients that do call, how many will make an appointment? Then, of those patients how many will keep their appointment or be converted to doing comprehensive care with a new patient exam? We also know that only 1/3 to 2/3 of active patients will actually complete treatment recommended by their dentist (case acceptance rate). Beyond this there will be a percentage of patients that get treatment, yet do not go back for their bi-yearly recall appointments.
As you can tell there are many opportunities to lose a person as a patient. We will try to briefly review some reasons for this and provide guidance to minimize the loss of patients and capture more initially.
What is marketing?
Marketing is a set of activities that creates, communicates, delivers, or exchanges offerings that will add value. Marketing encompasses a large portion of what companies do on a daily basis. In the dental office we focus on our internal marketing - providing outstanding customer service to build long-lasting relationships with our patients. These relationships allow for patients to be more comfortable, less price conscious, and better serve the needs and wants of our patients to name a few benefits.
What do patients primarily need/desire from a dental office?
1) Avoid pain, odor, etc
2) Gain health / cosmetic smile
3) Prevent pain / embarrassment
These would be the initial needs/desires, however there are a host of other intangibles that patients also require prior to spending their money for dental services. The value proposition of a dental service for a particular customer must exceed the benefits versus the cost of the service.
So, how do we as a dental office offer utility (satisfy consumer's needs/desires) to our patients?
1) Form utility: providing a product that the customer wants.
2) Time utility: providing a product when the customer wants it.
3) Place utility: providing a product where the customer wants and providing accessibility.
4) Possession utility: transferring product ownership to customer through payment plans or ownership documentation.
Marketing Plan
Formalizing a marketing plan is beneficial to an organization because it will allow identification of the goals, develop a plan to achieve the goals, work through the resources needed for the plan to be achieved, provide alternatives should the initial plan not be achieved, and learn from the process.
Like any goals, the marketing objectives should be realistic, measurable, and attainable. These objectives will be based on the business mission. You can find some examples of mission statements for organizations here: https://www.missionstatements.com/
Identifying the target market is one of the steps in the marketing process. If you are interested in viewing examples of demographic information here is a website that compiles various demographic data: https://www.city-data.com/
The marketing process is important to understand. Please click here to see examples of what this might look like and share your ideas.
Class Question:
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Dental Pricing
There are multiple pricing strategies. Three of the major strategies are:
1) Cost based: Set fees according to cost to provide the service.
2) Competition based: Set fees according to competition. To access the ADA Survey of Dental Fees.
3) Value based: Set fees according to customer perceived value and how the service is able to deliver the desired value to the customer.
Digital Advertising
There are multiple forms of advertising, of which digital advertising is one.
Digital advertising involves a website, search engine optimization, digital paid advertisements, digital branding (as part of overall branding), and other reputational third party websites (google reviews / yelp).
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Marketing Regulations
There are multiple documents that explain the ethics, rules, and regulations of marketing in a business and as a dentist. The ADA's Principle of Ethics and Code of Professional Conduct provides ethical guidance on a dentist's role marketing. One key principal is that the public does not have enough specialized knowledge to discern if a claim is incorrect. Therefore dentists should not misrepresent facts, omit facts, avoid unjustified expectations, or imply superior quality of services. Both justice and veracity sections relate to marketing.
The Texas Administrative Code reviews rules associated with truthfulness in communicating with people, avoiding deceiving the public, avoiding using price disclosures on marketing material to the public, general practitioners should avoid language that implies specialist status, avoid representing copyrighted material and presenting as your own, responsibility falls on the dentist for any advertisement to the public, cannot offer gifts/money to 3rd party for new patient referrals, and must keep all advertisement records for 4 years following the most recent release.
HIPAA has already been reviewed in Class 2, however keeping in mind that other dentists have violated this in disclosing patient information on social media in reviews. So, please avoid this behavior!
The Federal Trade Commission Act regulates business conduct. The FTC has the authority to bring an administrative proceeding should a business be deceptive or have unfair practices. Section 5 of the FTC Act reviews false and misleading advertising that includes (1) misinformation or omitting information to deceive a reasonable customer and (2) unsubstantiated claims.
Patient Communication
Patient communication is important for new patients, just as it is important to retain loyal patients that return year after year. Patient satisfaction is perceived service minus their expectation. Each patient has different wants and needs, for us to provide exceptional service we need to tailor our communication and services to add value to our patients.
As a small dental office in the competitive landscape of larger dental organizations that have price and resource advantages, smaller dental offices can focus on their particular competitive advantages. One advantage of a smaller office is the personalized patient communication and potential to have quicker response times.
Case Presentation
To improve case presentations patient-dentist communication play an important role. This is the first step to having patients understand and be willing to accept treatment. It is simple yet difficult to master.
Generally, when a consumer has arrived to the dental office they are likely to have recognized they have a need and have done enough informational searching to find the dental office.
During the case presentation the patient will need to be educated about their dental problem, understand/own their problem, and accept a solution. At the same time the dentist initially needs to establish rapport/relationship with the patient, learn the patient desires, and offer an a reasonable and agreeable solution.
The decision to pay for a service for low cost, frequently purchased involve a low-involvement purchase decision. This would be the routine prophy or fillings. Consumers are less likely to price shop / seek second opinions (seek alternatives) and brand loyalty is more important.
The decision to pay for a high cost, infrequent purchase involves a problem solving purchase decision. A purchase like this at a dental office would be more complex or costly dental treatment. In these instances a patient is more likely to consult with friends/family or research second opinions. This would be normal, health consumer behavior to research alternatives. The next step will be for the patient to make a purchase decision (rational or emotional). Next, the patients will evaluate the service at completion and it is helpful for the dentist to follow up with care to ensure that patient perceptions were adequate and if not correct problems as soon as possible. Therefore, the patient will have a positive postpurchase evaluation
Self-Assessment
Please use this self-assessment tool to see your understanding of the material. Click on the answer that you feel is the best. If you choose the incorrect answer you can use the arrow on the upper left or click "try again" to go back to the question.
