Why are patients lost in the dental office?
The dentist provides the best service.
There are two primary reasons why a health care professional loses his or her patients: 1) for material or tangible reasons, and 2) for personal reasons, which are the capabilities of each, i.e., the dentist's service to his or her patients. The service has a lot to do with the feeling left for the patient who enters the dental office; this can be a good or bad feeling, depending on the service you provide as a health professional.
There are the following levels in the service:
1. Basic: buying and selling, that is, when the patient requests treatment, and the dentist focuses only on performing it. Here there is no review beyond what the patient requests; consequently, the dentist does not realize if the person requesting his health services needs any treatment beyond what he asked for. This translates into low income in the office by not offering anything beyond what is asked for from the dentist.
2. Expected: in this case, the patient expects that the dentist will not deceive him/her and that the care and materials used are recommendable.
3. Excellent or delight: it happens when the patient's expectations are exceeded; it is a service that the patient does not expect and will not find in any other office.
This last service is the one that every professional should offer because you must keep in mind that patients do not know if they are with the best dentist, but they do know if they are with the one who treats them best, and that is something they do not change for nothing. Therefore, the dentist who offers the service called excellent or delight will never need to give away the consultation or offer meager costs because, with a service of this quality, patients will gladly pay for the consultation.
As already mentioned, the tangible elements of the service are those that refer to materials, and the intangible ones refer to personal and sentimental issues. Usually, when a complaint is received about the service, it is because the patient is dissatisfied with the treatment given and not so much with the lack of capacity of his or her dentist. A patient who has felt that he was mistreated will look for even the slightest defect or error in the treatment given to him to complain about something; this is a consequence of a negative feeling caused by lousy service. Conversely, if the patient finds deficiencies in the material service to complain about but the personal service is good enough, he is likely not to complain. Therefore, the dentist must remember that the competitive advantage will always be oneself.
The following are the percentages of the reasons why patients stop being patients in an office: 1% is because they died, and in reality, death does not lead to bankruptcy in an office; 3% have changed their residence, which also does not affect them considerably; 5% change their habits, an example would be when a patient who has always used removable prostheses now wants to have implants, and the office does not offer that service, it is logical that they look elsewhere, but even this percentage is not significant enough to say that it affects the office to a great extent; There is a 9% who decide to leave because of the price offered elsewhere; there is a 14% whose reason is the poor quality of the products; the remaining 68% of patients who lose an office is due to dissatisfaction with the wrong attitude of the staff, and this can lead to the bankruptcy of a clinic or office because they do not have empathy with the patients.
Summary
All aspects of an office should be taken care of. Still, the most important thing is the service provided by the staff: controlling character, having a pleasant tone of voice when talking to them, explaining procedures in detail, and being friendly from the first consultation to the end of the treatment. It is essential to remember that you are dealing with human beings who have feelings. Finally, I leave you with this question: what feeling do you want to go in thegetatients who request your services?
