Building The Ultimate Patient Experience With Dr. David Moffet

David:

They can’t just stay where they are because staying where you are is actually going backwards because everybody else is moving forward, like a running race. You stop, everybody goes past you. And so you’ve got to be in motion. You’ve got to be moving.

Sliman:

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen to the care frontiers podcast The show where we bring healthcare professionals to share with us their own experience running a successful medical business. Joining me today the creator of the ultimate patient experience. And the author of the best selling book, how to build a dental practice of your dream, Dr. David Moffet, doc. Welcome to our show.

David:

Sliman. Thanks for having me on your program.

Sliman:

It’s my pleasure. I’m honored to have you on Doc. So Dr. Moffet, tell us a little bit about you and your background and how it all led to what you’re doing right now.

David:

Well, Sliman, I am from Australia. I was born overseas. But I came back to Australia I was made in Australia, but I was born overseas. My father was in the Air Force came back to Australia when I was two lived all my life in Sydney, except for my last few years now that I’m retired from dental practice, but I went to high school became a dentist and spent 35 years on the tools as a dentist. But I realized that dentistry is a garage by people don’t go to the dentist because they they wake up and say oh, I feel like going to the dentist today I’ve got a bit of extra money, I might get my teeth done or no, they’d much rather take a holiday or buy themselves a new car or new clothes industry is like buying tires, really, you know, you you run them down until the rubbers almost worn through. And people go to the dentist because they have to. So I worked out that if I wanted to build a business out of dentistry, I needed to do something to attract people to come more than just the need for the dentistry. And so I looked into what was working for me. And I found that what was really working was building relationships and knowing the people who I was treating, knowing a little bit more about them, and really getting into what they were like, you know, their personal lives, what they, what their family was like, what they do for a living what they did for recreation, and you know, what their aspirations were places they wanted to visit, where they wanted to retire to things that are trying to do and, and in so doing that I’ve built a very successful business in a in a, in a working class part of Sydney, where people go lived in average homes and drove average cars and, you know, had average incomes and working average jobs. But we were able to charge a higher price and do very well because people wanted to come and be treated like a human being. So that’s the background to to what I did I, I built my practice app, I sold it after 20 years and then worked on it for another seven, seven or eight years, and still kept growing it based on the principles of customer service that I applied in that business. And I left there when the business was on sold to a second purchases or the first purchase and sold it to another purchaser and they had a different idea about what dentistry was about and I left. And at that time, I realized that I had some pain in my hands that was osteoarthritis, and kind of restricted what I could do for dentistry. So I branched out into consulting and coaching dentists on how to build dental practices based on on what I did. And that is treating people nicely getting them to come back and and then getting them to refer.

Sliman:

So doc from what I can gather, you wanted the people to come to you not because they wanted the clinical expertise, but they just want it to come to you just to see you. So from this I can see that you prioritize the patient experience more than anything. So can you tell us a little bit about what are the pillars that make such experience? And how can dentists start overhauling their patient journey from start to finish?

David:

Well, Sliman there’s one thing that is paramount and you can’t have a business based on customer service if you’ve got a lousy product, okay, and then I know what business you’re in your product has to stand out on its own. Because if you just got a bad product, people are bringing a bag and it’s failing all the time. So you still have to do good dentistry to build a dental practice. But there’s got to be more than just the good dentistry. And we learned, or I learned in my business that patients were leaving my treatment room saying things doctor was really great. And then they weren’t coming back. And I’m going, why they’re not coming back. And finally, I realized that the people that I had working at my front desk, taking their money scheduling them, their appointments, were really very rude to my patients. And that was overriding the quality of the dentistry and the experience they were getting in my treatment room. So I realized that I had to change the behavior of the people in my front desk, or I had to change the people that my front desk. And that’s what I ended up doing. And when we replaced those team members that were, we’re not customer service focused with, with team members who were customer centric, we were able to, you know, eliminate that leakage point, such that my business really exploded. But getting back to those pillars that you mentioned, you know, every business needs to be built on three pillars of success, the pillar of quality, the pillar of customer interaction, and the pillar of being able to go above and beyond the expectations of your customers. So those three pillars are very, very important. So let’s look at a quality briefly, you’ve got to have, as I said, a product or a service, that is standalone, you’ve got to have the expertise to be able to deliver that product and deliver that service, you can’t just be open up a brain surgery clinic if you haven’t got the expertise to be a brain surgeon, you’ve got to know the technicalities of the business. Same with auto auto repairs, car workshops, you’ve got to know the cars that are coming in so that you can fix them and so you’ve got to know your dentistry. And you’ve also got to have the operational skills in your quality. So you’ve got to know the sequence of what has to be done from start to finish for everything that your customers want, when they come to visit you in terms of customer interaction, the second pillar you’ve got to be able to trick people hospitably you know, you’ve got to be able to welcome them you’ve got to make them feel welcome, make them feel appreciated, and make them feel valued. And if you’re just rude like running a post office or a tax office, we just taught people lining up because they’ll go to jail if they don’t pay the tax bill or if they don’t put stamps on their on their letters.

David:

You know you you really need to be welcoming people greeting them when they come in. And and feel willing them although those nice things building a relationship getting in, as I said, knowing you know what, what they what they families like what, what they do for a living being able to talk about that what they did they play golf on the weekend, did they go to the movies on the weekend did it how’s their jigsaw puzzle guy and all that sort of stuff, connecting with them on a personal level and really personalizing it as well, no point asking the questions. If you can’t give them something back, that is familiar to with what you do that in what they do, you’ve got to be able to show an interest. And they say that, you know, the best way for people to think that you’re interesting is if you’re interested in what they’re telling you about. So no point in asking them. In fact, my wife went today, looking for tiles, we’re doing an extension on our house. And of course, we’ve got bathrooms and floor tiles that needs to be done. And she said she went there and the lady, she got a 22 year old girl who probably never had to build a house herself. And the girl just goes, alright, puts a folder under hand and just walks away and my wife has to follow.

David:

And my wife turns up with all these plans rolled up and she says my wife says Would you like to see my plan? She goes, Oh, no, I don’t need to see your plans? Well, yes, she does need to see the plans because you got to know how big the rooms are, how many rooms there are. It was just there was no personalization in that in that customer service there. Above and Beyond is where you differentiate your business. That’s the third pillar. And that’s where you differentiate your business, from your competitors businesses. You’ve got to exceed the expectations of your clients so that when they tell a story to their friends, their friends will say my dentist doesn’t do that. And then that’s when you have your win because you’re doing things that they don’t expect, and you’re doing things that they will talk about.

David:

So you’ve got to look for those opportunities, but you’ve got to be proactive in doing that. And in doing that you really need to to map out what the patient’s visit is from the moment that they make contact with your office by what sort of referral they get, or whether it’s marketing material, how they how they communicate with your office bid via web forms, verify the phone, Id via email via via via SMS, via a bookkeeping situation, you’ve got to know every step and you’ve got to look at it in the reverse, not from your business’s point of view, but from what is the customer wanting? And what are they going to expect out of out of that interaction that’s going to make them want to come sooner and be excited about their visit. So it’s about giving the above and beyond is about giving your customers your patients the unexpected. So they just go, Wow, how did these people know that paper tape, you’re taking notes, and sharing those notes around so that other people in your business understand what this patient has been through, and he’s going through, and they get Wow, they’re talking about me in a nice way, they really care about me.

David:

So there’s a lot to those three pillars. Sorry, that’s, that’s the short version of it to slay man, yeah, that this, this is something that we can, when we work with our clients, this takes months to build this out and ingrain it, but once it’s ingrained in a team, you can’t, it’s just like, you know, it’s just like, you know, accidentally, you know, seeing a relative in the bathroom, you can’t forget that memory, you can’t forget the customer service that you learn it is it is just one of those things that becomes permanently with you, you become a disciple for customer service, you become a addict of great customer service, you become a missionary for great customer service.

Sliman:

So, Doc, you mentioned a lot of touch points, when you start talking about how you can reverse it like reverse the cost of the patient experience and things like websites, marketing collateral on businesses, and there is a lot of touch points. patients go through before they even met you. So how do you ensure consistency throughout the whole journey and communicate your message directly to them with optimal consistency?

David:

Well, we’ve worked with the teams to help them reconstruct their processes Sliman, into what really has to happen is that you have to work out what everybody in the office is doing now, in each of those situations that the patient goes through and work out what are the things that we’re going to keep? What are the things we’re going to build on? And what are the things that we need to amend? And so let’s let’s have a look at something simple. Like when the patient calls up, a new patient calls up on the phone. And we my wife and I, you know, we coach dental practices. So she’s listening to a lot of phone calls that are recorded, she listens to the recordings. And here’s what the patient what the caller is asking. Here’s what is being said. And the number one problem that we’re hearing is that the caller says something, but the person answering the phone is focused on putting that person’s name into a whitespace on a computer, and their job is done. And they don’t listen to what the caller has said. They don’t listen to what the caller is asking them to try and solve the caller’s problem. Somebody brings up the here’s an example. Somebody rang up and said, a man rang up and he said, Look, my wife has had some chemotherapy, and she’s got to have a couple of teeth. As a result of chemotherapy. She’s got to have some teeth removed. And the the the dental receptionist who answered the phone was all about making an appointment, two or three weeks down the track.

David:

She never asked. She never asked how is your wife? How is she in pain in her mouth? How is she going with the chemotherapy? What you know what, you know, we know she has the chemotherapy been successful? You know nothing about you know, is she gonna leave? Yeah, it was just like, are you doing extraction? Was it just horrible? Another one we heard somebody rang up and they said I’ve I’ve not been there before. I’ve been recommended, and I need to get five crowns done. When can I come in And they said, We can’t see you for two and a half months. Now, if you deconstruct what that person has said, they they’ve said, I’ve got about, you know, $12,000 in my hand, that somebody has said, I should spend that your business and that and they’ve been told two to three months, like I would be saying, look, I haven’t got anything this week, but I can probably get you in at the end of next week. And I wouldn’t give them a time that was imaginary, even if there was somebody else in that time. Because I know that between now and the end of next week, somebody between then he’s going to change an appointment. And then I and I would say this person, I’ve got you booked in for Friday, next week. But let me tell you this, Bob, if somebody rings and changes their appointment, I’m going to be calling you and I’m going to get you in sooner. Is that okay? And Bob goes, Yeah, that’d be great. And so all of a sudden, I have us permission to call him up, and just putting into the first vacancy, and my boss will be happy because it’s a I’ve got this guy, Bob, he was recommended by, you know, Joe Brown, and Bob needs five crowns, he’s been somewhere else. And he needs five crowns, and he wants you to do them.

David:

And my boss is gonna say, well done. Instead, the boss doesn’t even know, two or three months down the track. Bob’s booked in Bob might go somewhere else. And nobody ever knows. And that’s not they’re not listening to what is being said to them. They’re saying, I’ve got where’s my next space? Where’s my next one? The other one, they ring up that multiple dentists at the practice somebody rings up and they say, who do you normally see? Like, hello, you’ve got a computer in front of you look up the patient’s records and find out who they’ve been, Oh, you’ve been seen by Dr. Jones, over the last three months? Yeah, oh, my God, hopeless. So it’s easy to reconstruct. Now, just to tidy up what you see, when we reconstruct, what we do is we know, we know the kind of, you know, customer service portfolio that they need to build of procedures, we just help them create it, but we help them think that they’ve created their own. Yeah, it’s very similar to other practices. But there are little

David:

things that are unique to certain practices. But if we help them build it, as opposed to say, this is what works in 95% of practices, you need to do what’s in my book, nobody will do it. But if we build it out, and as they build it out, they own it. And when we did that, in my office in 2010, it was the most fun time it took like six months to build it out. But some of the meetings were really crazy with some of the ideas people came up with. And, and people say, if you’re doing that down there, I can work on that up here and add to that experience. And so you know, sometimes people don’t know what other people are doing in the office. So we need to, we need to, you know, we need to make it an exercise as opposed to, you know, these are our new policies, this is what we’re doing now. And that’s where that’s where a lot of businesses fall down. They say we need customer service. And the boss said, He’s the manual, and the boss isn’t even bought in. So we’ve got to create the culture that runs through the whole organization.

Sliman:

This is just crazy how such things can happen. If you don’t really take a look back on your customer service. Again, I’ll ask you though, how often this problem is prominent When you work with your client?

David:

Customer service is like, he’s like that perfect golf guy. It can never happen. You know that you’re the you know, the path for a golf course is 72. And I ultimately the best score on a golf course would be for hauling ones on a four par threes. And then every other hole, a two which would be either an eagle or an albatross. albatross because you can hit the ball far enough and you don’t you you can hit the ball straight in the hole. No panic. Okay, so what’s at 14 is 28 plus 432. Now, what’s the best they’ve ever shot? 59 that’s the best anyone’s ever shot. 59 because it’s impossible. Perfect Customer service is impossible. It it’s but doing better than average is really easy, because the average is really bad average.

David:

There is really bad service. And there is average service, which is not so good. And so you’ve just got to be better. You’ve just got to create some consistency. But if you’ve got if you if you have a problem with your systems, it’s like a football team. If there’s one person who can’t tackle enough in a rugby team or American football team, the opposition got to run at that guy all day long. It doesn’t matter how good you were you got Tom Brady thrown passes. If If Tom Brady can throw enough passes to score enough touchdowns more than that, this week, guy in defense is letting people through, you know lose the match. And so we’ve got to look at that you can beat this one. Was my problem, I had great dentists great experience in the treatment room, lousy experience out the front, I have no idea what was going on there. And so we’ve we’ve got to be able to, to plug the leaks, and know that everybody is working together and you can’t hide your weaknesses, you’ve got to strengthen your weaknesses. And, and so knowing that, and, and, and everybody has the, everybody has the right in your organization to, to report and to judge each other and say, you know, what, the experience that you gave me or the experience that you gave our customer that wasn’t up to what we are trying to do here? And and if we look, if we look at the history of general business out there, so in Starbucks, great example, coffee, like 25 years ago, coffee was just, you know, how many sugars? How much milk milk? Well, no, no, that was it.

David:

Now, people are paying like $10 for a coffee that costs 10 cents to make 1000 different types. And they and they and they can sit around all day drinking it and sipping it. It’s the experience. That’s what keeps people going to Starbucks, you can buy coffee, and you can buy coffee and take it home and drink it. You know, from from the supermarket, if it’s about the money, but it’s about that experience. And that’s what we want with with without dentistry. And my practice, we used to find patients would turn up half an hour before, they’d have half an hour in the treatment room. And they’d be there for half an hour. 45 minutes afterwards, chatting and talking with the team. sometimes they’d be having more conversation. If we if we had a conscious thinking of one patient Rita, she’s the interview, just an interview. What do you leave for?

David:

What do you leave for? She’d be out in the in the client lands, asking people how long have you been coming here? What if you don’t know how good these guys are? Yeah, she would just be like, as almost like she was a paid plant. to stir up interest in what we were doing that that’s the kind of thing that we wanted, we wanted, we wanted our dental practice to be, you know, the place where people know they can go, they can relax, and they can be looked after and not be sitting there waiting. They can call me next time. They’re gonna call me next year, and not be ignored. Because sometimes a dental practice, they ignore people, they come in first visit, they sit down, and they’re ignored. Yeah, someone’s sitting behind a high upstand desk, and then a big computer. And they ignore that and they hear stuff on the phone and they go, you know what, I don’t care how good this dentist is. I’m just gonna get in get out. And I’m never coming back.

David:

Now, you said, How common is it? It’s very, very common. And because dentist is like the mechanic under the car, he doesn’t know what’s going on out the front. And so yeah, he doesn’t understand that, that that damage is being done. And he said, and so you know, they say I she was probably a price shopper. She wasn’t a price shop, but she’s waiting. She’s She’s already spent that time getting there. She wanted you to be her dentist, something that was done, let her they let let her down. And so we’ve got to, we got to close those loops.

Sliman:

Ah, yeah, I can imagine how focusing more on the experience will make for your dental practice more of a premium service, especially like the example you said with Starbucks. So I can see how focusing on the experience will transform all of the practice that you’re running right now. And I think the wicked problem with this is that these issues are easy to miss, if you don’t proactively look for them. So this is why I like your coaching programs is when you when I first read about them, so you try to reverse engineer all of the whole journey. So you can touch on these little issues that may have a big and great consequences for the actual experience.

Sliman:

And also I think this, this, taking more attention to the to the experience contributes to something that you often talk about, and that is retaining existence patient. And I, I know that you’re big on retaining the existing patient base, rather than acquiring new ones. Why do you think that this strategy works better than just patient acquisition?

David:

the existing patient is more that you’ve already built the trust in, in establishing an existing patient and sometimes it does take you know, 24 months, two years to build this trust and have people accept you and accept your opinion and accept your recommendations unconditionally. But when you have this unconditional trust, it’s very powerful, you know, you know, the mouth is a very hostile environment, you know that nothing in there is going to last forever. It’s gonna last a long time if you do it fairly well, but you’ll be surprised how how people can break feelings, they can break teeth, they can chip teeth, they can chip porcelain off crowns, the there’s still work to be done. But when your patient trusts you, they they accept the diagnosis, and they get it down because they don’t want to lose their teeth. Now, when you’ve got a new patient, they don’t know who you are.

David:

So back to what I was saying before, you’ve got to build trust. So you can’t just come out with a very expensive treatment plan, even if they need it. If they have no idea that it’s really, really bad down there. So building trust takes time. It’s It’s common in all businesses, that the cost of acquiring a new customer is way more than the cost involved in keeping an existing customer. Because every time you lose an existing customer, you’ve got to spend the acquisition cost. And then you’ve got to spend the money on building the relationship as well. So there’s a double costs. We found that we were able to grow the dental practice very, very quickly, by just plugging the Linux because it used to worry me, I’d go to dental meetings and dentists. So I get, you know, 100 new patients a month and I’m gone, were they going you don’t even have a hygienist, you know, you’re not keeping them you got 100 coming in 100 going out, or maybe worse, you know, you really should be building your practice. So the history of my practice was when I started it, or when I bought it, the guy bought it off, he actually went and work near his home where all his friends were. So half the patients just left then. And I didn’t know that I thought he was retiring. So I only got half a practice. So I would walk out on a Saturday afternoon, and that my book would be only a quarter full for the next week, I needed to build that practice up. But if you build and keep as opposed to build and lose, you will grow a practice. So we went from one chair in 1987, to seven chairs in 2007, when we sold the practice, seven chairs went from a turnover of 10,000 a month in 1987, to a turnover of 3.4 million a year in 2011. So that’s over a period of 11 and 1324 years, that we were able to grow the practice on top of itself, because we had those people coming back regular people coming back, we knew the value of what a new patient was worth, we knew the value of what an existing patient spent on average, every year as well.

David:

And you’ve got to know those numbers. But yeah, you can’t have people leaving and saying I went there. But now I go here, that’s not good for business. You want people to say yeah, I go there might be a little bit more expensive than you’re used to, but it’s worth it. And that was my motto, if I could get people coming back, and people who couldn’t, who who’s who, who, by their lifestyle by their not by their lifestyle, but by their the way they work and how they lived. You would say those people can’t afford that they prioritize it dentistry as being important as part of their health. And they’re willing to pay for that experience. Because they valued it. And that was a treat people how you would like to be treated, treat them like you would treat your family in a personal manner. And those people will keep coming back.

Sliman:

Absolutely. Dr. Moffet by now you have a wealth of experience coaching multiple and 1000s of dentists over the globe. Can you tell us a little bit about your coaching programs and how it can help practitioners achieve the practice growth they want? Just give us a little bit of teaser for your coaching programs the listeners might be interested in them.

David:

Yeah, well, Sliman we coach, my wife and I, we coach dental practices in seven countries across four continents, if you consider United Kingdom as one country or whether it’s four, I don’t know. But so there’s United Kingdom and Ireland. That’s Europe. Now we’ve got North America with USA and Canada. And then we’ve got New Zealand and Australia, in Oceana and then Singapore and Southeast Asia as well. So that that’s that’s where we coach but we do our coaching virtually and like you and I are talking now. We do our coaching using zoom meetings. And this is something that we had been developing before COVID close down the airport and and locked up the borders. So we’ve been doing this for some time and he It’s, it’s interesting because we coach dental practices, but we’re just yeah, some of my some of my colleagues in the speaking profession because I am also a certified speaking professional with the National Speakers Association, and have said that if you took my book, how to build a dental practice of your dreams and cross out the word dentist and you read the word, chiropractor, and then you did it again and read the word, doctor, or you read the word, physio therapist, you could have that it applies across the board. In fact, even a friend of mine, who’s whose business is selling carpets, and floor furnishings, says, you know, the principles in your book apply to all businesses, treat your customers nice, and they will, they will speak highly of you, and they’ll recommend their friends.

David:

And so that’s what we do, dentist by profession tend to be very technical about, you know, what materials they’ve got, how strong those materials are, have closed their, their margins on their fillings. And they forget that they’re actually treating not just a toothache, treating a mouth treating a human being with, you know, with a heart with a brain with feelings, somebody who’s you know, raced across town to get your appointment by five o’clock. And you know, you go you’re a minute late, and you don’t know how, what sort of day they’ve been through. And if we can get that message out, where we we treat our, our patients, as clients and customers and we value them as people, then we can build any business.

David:

And so not only my wife and I coaching, dentists and other healthcare professionals are actually being asked by the people who coached us in customer service to help them coach other businesses in customer service as well, which is really exciting. So it’s, as as I said earlier in the interview, customer service is something that one you can’t achieve perfection, you can strive for it. But the other thing is because it is so addictive, that once it becomes addictive, it is something that you need to refresh all the time you need, you need accountability, and you have to have the systems in place. So it’s an exciting world to live in. Because everybody wants everybody to be successful in that in that in that way. So I love sharing the message even though I can’t drill teeth anymore. I can now spend a lot of time talking to a lot of people about customer service. And it’s it’s, it’s something that that I have a great passion for.

Sliman:

Yes, absolutely. The things that I agree with you the most is that What are you just sharing with the audience and what you write about in your books and ultimate patient experience are industry agnostic, so meaning the concepts are universal and can be applicable to anyone really. So Dr. Moffet you have can you please give us a like a takeaways or final tips for the listeners?

David:

Yeah. Sliman. What I what I’d like to remind people is that sometimes they’ve got to look at what a great philosopher Yoda said, in the Star Wars movie. The Empire Strikes Back when he was training Luke, and he said, Luke, you’ve got to learn to trust the force. Because Luke did not believe that he could beat Lord Vader, and was only when he trusted the force was he able to gain the powers and train the powers that he needed to defeat Lord Vader and Abraham Maslow, the great philosopher, this quote came up on my Facebook feed today and it was just so appropriate, because he said, no one can choose to go back towards safety or forward toward growth. Maslow said, growth must be chosen again and again, theme must be overcome again and again. And when I’m talking to clients and prospective clients, that’s what I have to tell them. They have to trust the force, that they can’t just stay where they are. Because staying where you are, is actually going backwards because everybody else is moving forward. It’s like a running race. You stop, everybody goes past you.

David:

You’re driving your car, you stop, everybody goes past you. And so you’ve got to be in motion. You’ve got to be moving and sometimes you don’t know sometimes you’ve got to just believe and you’ve got to choose, even though you’re fearful that you are going to be okay. And that’s that’s what that’s what that’s what I coach because I think Did this you know, I, I built this practice and the principles of customer service that I learned back in 2010, I refined what I was doing to create a perfect system. And not only have I built it, but I’ve been able to coach businesses, and dental practices and other businesses on how to do it as well. So I know that this works. But I know that there’s people who, who have missed the opportunity. In my book, I talk about my client, Dr. Rachel Hall, who had a glass ceiling, and her practice was doing $60,000 a month. And within 20 months, we had a practice doing $150,000 a month, we two and a half times that in less than two years. And that was Rachel trusting, trusting the force. So if you Yeah, if somebody is interested in what I do, they need to have a chat with me because you probably got a solution that’s going to be very inexpensive to create great results for them.

Sliman:

Thank you so much, Dr. Moffet for taking the time it’s been a pleasure talking to you.

David:

Thank you Sliman for having me.

Sliman:

It’s my pleasure.

Sliman:

If you want more from Dr. Moffet and your listening now and you want to reach him out to you know, want to know more about his coaching programs, visit www.theultimatepatientexperience.com . And if you’d like to reach him out personally, all of his social media handles and all of his contact information are in the show notes below. Doc, do you have anything you want to add?

David:

No. Sliman. Thank you for the opportunity of talking to you. As we said before we started and during the interview, I work across many time zones, English speaking countries, and I’m very flexible in in helping businesses North America, United Kingdom area, as well as down here in Australia and in New Zealand and Singapore, the English speaking countries really. So thank you for the opportunity of sharing my message with your audience. I really appreciate it.

Sliman:

It’s my pleasure, Doc. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that was Dr. David Moffet.