670: Part 1 - Top 10 Phone Skills for Tackling the Toughest Patient Questions! - Miranda Beeson

Join us with our resident expert Miranda Beeson in this 2 part series on improving phone skills to improve a consumer experience and ultimately improve your business. Learn how to provide the kind of experience that makes people feel safe, secure and excited to visit you. It’s all here in Episode 670 of The Best Practices Show!

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Main Takeaways:

Enhancing phone skills enhances the practice. 

If you’re answering the phones, you are just part of the practice, you ARE the practice. 

Provide the kind of experience on the phone that makes people feel safe, secure and excited to visit. 

Trust is one of the most important things in dentistry. 

Sympathy is great, but Empathy with patients is what makes the difference. 

Your attitude should be “Yes, we do!”

Mirror a patient’s communication style. 

Quotes:

“It’s the first piece of interaction that someone has with our organization. So enhancing phone skills is just going to enhance our customer service level. New patients, really important. In the first moments they’re learning about who we are. Continuing to grow and trust with our existing patients, building loyalty and then slowly practice growth over time. To be equipped to deliver excellent phone skills, we have to have tools…You’re only going to get better if you have the tools.” - Miranda (2:02—2:51)

“If you answer the phone in the dental practice, you don’t represent the practice. You are the practice….Admin team members…they are the most under trained segment in all of dentistry” - Kirk (3:14—3:41)

“The administrative roles are sometimes the only roles where someone could have no dental experience and come into the office. So it is really important for us to support them. And a big piece of it is feeling confident. If we aren’t confident then we aren’t going to guide that patient properly and deliver that experience that takes our care to another level…There is a statistic that 60% of new patient calls don’t convert to appointments and a lot of that comes down to the receptionist or the administrative team member on the other end of the phone not having the confidence or tools to know how to close that call.” - Miranda (4:18—4:58)

“Patient perception begins with ‘Hello’ . It's in the first instant. If you said no other word than hello, they can tell on the other end if you’re smiling, if you’re happy, if you’re frustrated. And let’s be honest, there are 17 million things going on in the front office at all times and sometimes we are a little frustrated that we see the phone ringing and we have to pick it up. So we have to know, foundationally, from a mindset perspective it is the most important thing you’re doing because within fractions of time you’re creating an experience for that patient that’s going to live on forever in terms of the lifespan of them in your practice.” - Miranda (8:41—9:19)

“You should be getting regular compliments. People should be reaching out to you. Talking to you. Texting you going ‘Hey, I just want to let you know that person, they’re good.” - Kirk (12:30—12:53)

“If we think about the majority of the people who come to the dentist, most of them are not super duper excited about it…but if we can provide an experience or an environment that starts on the phone with them feeling comfortable, confident, safe, secure. ‘These people sound like they’re going to take care of me. They sound so nice. Ok I’m not quite as scared as I was before.”  - Miranda (13:33—14:09)

“Imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to be on the other side of your phone call. And think about what it is you're trying to create as an experience for the caller and for the patient and are you delivering that?”  - Miranda (16:20—16:32)

“Trust is one of the most important things in dentistry. We know that without trust we will not maintain patient loyalty, we’re not going to have case or treatment acceptance, we’re not going to have referrals…in general, everything is based off of trust. Like we said before, it’s a vulnerable place to be. It’s not everyone’s favorite place to be…Trust starts way before the patient gets in the chair. So one of the key phrases that helps someone feel welcomed and builds rapport right off the jump is ‘That is such a great question. Thank you for asking.’ Because it allows for them to go ‘oh ok.’ A lot of people are nervous about getting on the phone…so if the first thing you respond with is ‘I’m so glad you called. How can I help you today?’ and they ask a question and you respond ‘That is a great question. Thank you for asking,’ they’re going to be so much more willing to trust in you and open up to provide you with more information.” - Miranda (17:09—18:29)

“Active listening is when you’re listening to truly understand what is going on. So you’ll hear people say ‘You heard me, but did you listen?’ Sometimes we are going through the motions. We’re just checking the boxes…we’re not focused on active listening with the patient that’s calling us. There are 3 A’s to active listening that are a nice, easy go to. The first one is attention. You have to give your full focused, undivided attention to the caller. They can tell when you don’t. If we are dividing our attention they can tell. They can feel it. They can hear it. And that’s going to be a fail immediately, in terms of rapport. It’s going to be the first break in that link of trust. So finding a way to give your full and individual focused attention to the caller. A quick tip from my own experience: have a little notebook that sits right next to and when that phone rings you write down what you were doing and then when the call is done you can come back.”  - Miranda (19:31—21:07)

“You have to be able to adapt or shift gears to meet the patient where they are. It’s not about our agenda…this call is going to sound different with every patient. Now you might hit the same high notes through that call with that patient, but if we are actively listening to where that patient is wanting to go on the call and what their needs are, we’re adjusting our attitude to make sure we are there to serve them. Then we need to also be able to shift gears and go down the path that we need to go down to get them where they need to go.” - Miranda (24:47—25:30)

“We are there to serve. We are in the health care service industry. So ultimately when they call us they’re looking for support. They’re looking to hear I am so sorry you’re in this situation but I’ve got you. We’re going to take care of this. And again, when we talk about sympathy and empathy: sympathy is looking down in the hole and saying ‘I’m so sorry you’re in that hole.’ But empathy is like climbing down in the hole and giving them a hug and going ‘Dude it really sucks that we’re in this hole. But you know what? I know how i got down here so I can help us climb back out.’ So if you climb down in that hole and you really put yourself in their shoes for a moment to understand where they are coming from, not to create bias with how you move forward later to help them, but to say ‘I get it and don’t worry we’ve got you. You can lean on me. Let’s do this.’ - Miranda (27:17—28:13)

“Most of the time what I hear with teams is ‘Sure. Let me get your insurance. When was the last time you had a visit? It looks like you were in in October…All of that stuff is great information to have before someone comes in but the most important information you’re going to gather from someone is what is their concern? What are they needed and wanting and how can we support that? Again, it’s not about my agenda. It’s about theirs. They have something in mind when they’re calling and we have to identify it.” - Miranda (28:31—29:10)

“I talk a lot about the buying cycle. We are selling a service. We are selling our practice and our doctor’s skills and abilities. In any service, before a purchase, it starts with the consideration phase. And so there is an awareness that happens first. Before anyone goes into consideration, if I’m going to buy a new washing machine I don’t just say I think I should buy a new washing machine. My old one had to have broken…or something that created this awareness in me that I needed to start investigating and finding a new washing machine. People don’t wake up excited to make a dental appointment…usually there is an awareness that has occurred, so I often use the example, because I’ve heard it so many times from patients ‘I’m out to dinner with my friends last week and it was really tough because they were all looking at the menu and they were so excited about what they were ordering and I was actually getting a little nervous because I didn’t see anything I could eat on that menu without having discomfort…and I decided in that moment that I needed to do something.’ And that awareness is the trigger. And if we don’t find out that awareness piece, that emotional buy in from our patient and what their concern is.”  - Miranda (30:21—32:00)

“The key phrase here is ‘Yes We Do.’ We want to try to say yes as much as possible. Sometimes you can say yes even when it’s no. We have to figure out how to get around that but we want to say yes we do. ‘Are you taking new patients?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Do you work with my insurance?’ ‘Yes and I’d love to explain to you how that works here in our practice.’...’Yes we do’ in an immediate phrase that’s going to help build confidence. And if you say it with confidence, it’s not just what you’re saying, it’s how you’re saying it.” - Miranda (32:19—33:11)

“So maybe someone is calling you and telling you they’re looking for a new practice. They were with their last provider for 40 years. He was the nicest person…and you are going to go ‘You are going to love Doctor Awesome. He has such a strong relationship with all of our patients here. He even attended a patient’s son’s wedding last year.’ You want to tie it in to what it is that they’re looking for in a provider.”  - Miranda (38:02—38:35)

“The top 3 things when you’re on the phone with a caller. I often relate this to a new patient call, but ultimately it can be any call: I need to know who I’m talking to, so first off ‘What’s your name?’...Get their name, so you can use it, get their number because things to do happen. You get busy, you get going with your call…and then the key is going right into knowledge. Not knowledge about their dental history or knowledge about their X-ray history or about their insurance plan. Knowledge about who they are and what their expectations are for a visit with you…just something open ended that helps you identify that concern. What was the awareness? What’s the motivation for their call? Something aside from those logistical components that we usually jump right into. It’s that emotional buy in piece that we are looking for here.” - Miranda (39:58—41:47)

”We need to use clear, concise language. Really important to mirror their communication style and speed. I talk about this often and love incorporating DISC and personality styles into how we communicate with patients. But if you aren’t trained in DISC, if you don’t even know what I’m talking about right now when I say DISC, one of the easiest things to do modify how you communicate to your patients in their style is just listen to how they’re communicating with you.” - Miranda (43:58—44:26)

“[Using someone’s name repeatedly] Part of what ties into number 1, where the name comes in first, introducing yourself so they know your name and then learning their name and using it throughout the conversation, it customizes and makes them feel so important and so special. You don’t want to do it so excessively that it feels awkward but we do want to say again, ‘Joe, as I shared such and such,’...The more we use that name and customize, they don’t feel like just a number.” - Miranda (47:06—47:51)

”An open-ended question is something that cannot result in a yes or no answer. So it’s going to start with something like ‘What’ or ‘How’ or ‘Why’. ‘Tell me more’ is such an easy phrase that leaves an open end for them to extend the paragraph of whatever it is that they’re telling you. So it’s really important to have. As I mentioned earlier, the first question you may ask ‘What are you expecting out of your first visit with us?’ THat is a wide open question that can go pretty much anywhere. And they’re going to say something and you’re going to say ‘Tell me more.’  - Miranda (49:53—50:31)

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

1:44 Improving phone skills.

4:16 The administrative role. 

8:11 #1 First Impressions.

17:06 #2 Building Rapport.

19:31 Active Listening.

24:47 Adapt. 

26:29 Empathy and Sympathy. 

32:19 #3 “Yes We Do”

37:43 You are going to love…

39:58 #4 Top 3 Things to Say on a Call

49:16 Ask the right questions.

Miranda Beeson, MS, BSDH Bio:

Miranda Beeson, MS, BSDH, has over 25 years of clinical dental hygiene, front office, practice administration, and speaking experience. She is enthusiastic about communication and loves helping others find the power that words can bring to their patient interactions and practice dynamics. As a Lead Practice Coach, she is driven to create opportunities to find value in experiences and cultivate new approaches.

Miranda graduated from Old Dominion University, and enjoys spending time with her husband, Chuck, and her children, Trent, Mallory, and Cassidy. Family time is the best time, and is often spent on a golf course, a volleyball court, or spending the day boating at the beach. 

Send Miranda an email miranda@actdental.com

Follow Miranda on ACT’s Instagram https://www.instagram.com/actdental/