An Invisalign Clear Aligner Appointment Gone Wrong - How Miscommunication and a Lack of a Customer Obsessed Culture Leads to Lost New Patients, Revenue and Referrals

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How an Invisalign Clear Aligner Delivery Appointment Mishap and a Whole Foods Meat Market Mishap create poor patient and customer experiences. Can a single miscommunication cost you a loyal patient? Uncover the secrets to creating exceptional patient experiences that not only retain existing patients but also turn them into superfans. We share compelling real-life stories, like a miscommunication involving a patient's clear aligners, to illustrate the undeniable impact of internal communication and consistent service. Learn why shifting your focus from attracting new patients to enhancing the experience of current ones could be your most powerful growth strategy.

Discover actionable strategies to master customer experience from start to finish. From heartfelt handwritten apology letters to personalized selfie videos, find out how these small yet impactful gestures can make a big difference in patient relations. Through continuous staff training and role-playing, we explore how mastering effective communication, gratitude, and trust can help transform challenging situations into positive outcomes, driving significant business growth without the need for extra advertising.

See how every interaction contributes to your brand image and influences business growth. Personal anecdotes illustrate how negative experiences can erode customer loyalty and emphasize the importance of conflict resolution, body language, and effective communication training for your team. By prioritizing a people-first approach and focusing on non-clinical moments, you'll learn how to turn satisfied customers into passionate brand advocates, leading to more referrals, five-star reviews, and increased social media engagement. Join us to uncover insightful strategies that will elevate your practice and achieve exceptional growth.

New Patient Group - 
Transforming culture, training and digital marketing practices by implementing life changing experiences for you, your team and your patients. We believe experience is the key to increasing new patients, sales, conversion, compliance, cash flow, referrals and more. We believe experience is the key to reducing stress, chaos, advertising costs, employee turnover and more. Whatever it is you want, whatever it is you desire, we believe experience will help you achieve it. 

We are the patient experience company and we revolutionize practices by transforming their culture, their employees and their digital marketing. By combining these three services together it creates a powerful force that works in harmony to achieve what you want by delivering employees and patients more than they would have ever expected. 

Choose any service individually or become a private client and achieve your best year ever or your money back .. Guaranteed. Private clients combine all three services (Leadership & Culture, Team Training, Digital Marketing) together to take over their community and leave their "competition" in the dust!

Trusted by the Best Doctors: Jep Paschal, John Graham, Regina Blevins, Alyssa Carter, Jamie Reynolds, Stu Frost, David Boschken, Donna Galante, Boyd Whitlock, Bob Skopek, Bryn Cooper, Sean Carlson and Many More!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody, brian Wright here and welcome into another edition of the New Patient Group Podcast. Before we get started today, I want to let you know in the description below there is a Calendly link and if you click that link it's going to allow you to access my calendar and in that I am giving away three free business consultations, the very first three people that sign up. It's a little bit of a scalability issue. I can't take really any more than that, but if the first three people that sign up for that, I'm going to give you a 15 to 30 minute business consultation and we can dive deep into your practice. I'm going to give you some assignments to do, to go back, some numbers to find and just some different ways we can help you, your team, your business and your practice. Okay, so take advantage of that. Again, the very first three people that take advantage of that are going to get to meet with me for that 15 to 30 minute consult. All right, now let's dive into another edition of the new patient group podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:49

Welcome aboard the new patient group flight deck. Less chaos Check. Less stress. Check Less advertising costs Check More personal and financial freedom. Ah, check, all right. Business checklist completed. Let the takeoff roll begin.

Speaker 3: 1:11

Welcome to season seven of the new patient group audio experience, a podcast dedicated to forward thinking doctors wanting to learn innovative ways to run their business today so your practice can achieve new heights tomorrow. And now your host. He's the founder and CEO of New Patient Group, managing partner of Right Chat and a trusted motivational speaker for Invisalign OrthoPhi and others, brian Wright.

Speaker 1: 1:56

Hey, new Patient Group and Right Chat Nation. Welcome inside the broadcast booth. Brian Wright, you too, thanks for following us and give us a nice five-star review on iTunes or wherever you may be listening to the podcast on Going to be diving into one. Today we're coming off a two-month series around customer service what it actually means, the importance of having a definition and understanding or making sure your team and you are on the same page of what you're trying to carry out, and signs of how you're getting there the pinnacle of customer service. But then we just came off a series teaching you how to accomplish it and wonderful feedback. I hope all of you really took to heart what that definition actually is and why we go about things the way we do here with New Patient Group. And if you haven't had a chance to listen to that series, go back into May, listen to May and June. You're going to get a lot out of it. Today we're going to be diving in and actually, as I do this podcast today, I'm just coming back from Whole Foods in our area in Colorado Springs and there's something that propelled this podcast forward to doing it right now, and I'm going to be able to tie that story in with another story that happened, and I think both stories you know stories make things powerful, so both of these stories are going to make it even more powerful around the message today, all around the existing patient experience.

Speaker 1: 3:11

It is very hard a lot of times to convince a lot of you out there that your employees are not experts in customer service, hospitality, these things. It's not an insult, but the reality is the fact. All of you trust people when you're not looking to carry out your brand in a way that represents you in a great, wonderful way, in an unexpected way, and is always advancing your brand forward. It is really scary that a lot of times, you don't see more value in making sure your people are receiving the ongoing training required to handle all the scenarios they're put in. And today the reason why I wanted to move this up the list because this whole food scenario is again it's the perfect thing that we talk about is that all of these consumer interactions they have nothing to do with healthcare, orthodontics, dentistry, really at all.

Speaker 1: 4:02

And the other day we were on with a customer and we'd been together for for a long time, a great lady, like her a lot and we're talking uh, coach Eric and I are on a on a zoom call with her and we're talking about. You know, we've been working on new patient experience stuff for a long time now a couple of years and now we want to transition slowly into the existing patient experience. So, after people sign the contract and what's going to take them into a super fan to go out there and refer to high level and interact with your social media channels and making sure that your customer is treated in a way that is unexpected, just like that's what it takes to get new people to buy from you at the highest level. It's the same way with your customers, your patients. And she was sitting there and you could tell. You know it didn't really get her excited and she didn't know she wanted to move into that yet Maybe we need to work on the new patient experience longer. And didn't even know she was going to do it. And while we're talking to her and her office manager, there was a front desk girl or a girl in the office that came in and said, hey, I need to talk to you. And you know the doctor and om were like, hey, could you hold on? Like sure, so girl talks to her, they come back and what happened was and this was right in the midst of me describing to this practice how important it is because of all these interactions and they couldn't see it, you could tell. And this girl comes in and what happened was is a patient showed up to pick up their clear aligners and the aligners weren't there and and I kind of chuckled, not because that's a situation I wanted to have happen to them, but the fact it happened right in the middle of me talking about the importance of this was awesome, because this, everybody, is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, right One, the breakdown and communication internally with the office, and nobody even notified this customer, this patient and this person.

Speaker 1: 5:56

Whatever they could have taken off work, they could have rearranged their day, right, a lot of it and this is topic for another time A lot of you have to understand. You know your 10 minute appointment for you, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, guess what? It's a couple hours for the person you're having come in and and that's what you have to remember in this scenario, right, they're just coming to pick up their, their aligners, but they could have rearranged their entire day. Heck, they could have moved meetings to another day because of this to come get their aligners. Well, they show up and they're not there. So, one, we have a breakdown of communication internally and then a breakdown and communication from that to your customer, to your patient. That's paid you high dollar, right? So that's one.

Speaker 1: 6:36

Two, I ask all of you out there if this happened to you. Right, your patient walks in and they're talking to make believe name Betty. Do you have Betty repetitively trained in a way that you know for a fact that that situation, right, that unpleasant situation, is going to be handled in a way that advances your business to the next level, right? Is she going to say you know, mrs Jones, I am so sorry that we inconvenienced you and we value you so much as a patient. It means the world to us because you know you have choices. Without people like yourself, you know, I wouldn't even have a paycheck. So we're going to make this right. Whatever we can do, ma'am, you know, tell us what we can do, right, we are so sorry that this situation happened.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Next time the aligners come in, I tell you what. We're going to go right to the office and we're going to mail those to your house and make sure that convenience of that happens. Or, you know, we can hop in a car and I can drive them to you and make sure they fit Right, and of course, I'm just I'm off the cuffing here. But what all of you have to understand is is this is probably how that was handled. You know sorry, the aligners aren't here we need to reschedule, right? That's the extent of probably how it's handled, right? Are you thanking people for their business? Are you thanking people for their trust? Are you apologizing when things happen? Are you saying what can we do to make this right? Are you going the extra mile, maybe to make the next appointment even more convenient? And I understand, right A lot of times why they have to come in. There's, there's processes you need to go through. I totally get it. But what you have to understand is is is that right? There is a trained person on how they would respond.

Speaker 1: 8:15

At some point I'm going to have a podcast that talks about the new school way of customer service versus the old school and how a blend is the most beautiful way to create unexpected experiences that drive results in your favor, and I'll give you an example that's taken from. I haven't shot that podcast yet, but I'll give you an example of one that that I'm talking about A lot of times. You know we're big on videos and QR codes and you know, instead of you visiting all the dentist office, if you're an orthodontist, you know, just get a nice piece of marketing with a QR code and do the video and have the video play off your YouTube station to all the dentists and all the doctors you want to refer. One tiny example that's New School. That is a convenient experience for both you but also the people you want to advertise to and get to know your brand. Or, if they already know your brand, keep your brand on their mind to and get to know your brand. Or if they already know your brand, keep your brand on their mind. And. But there's also and that's obviously one of a million different ways of going the new school way One of the old school ways that still works beautifully and I know it because a lot of our practices do it are handwritten notes that are mailed to families' homes, and the impact that those have are so powerful and can't be underestimated.

Speaker 1: 9:31

And the way my mind works and we talk existing patient experience here. Right, this is on the topic of outside after they sign the contract. This is where old school customer service comes in. One, teaching people how to speak and apologize and thank people for their business and their trust. And if it weren't for people like you, I wouldn't have a paycheck Like. There's an art to that, and that art does not come from the idea. The art comes from practice and role plays, practice and role plays, practice and role plays. And I'm saying it over and over again because that's the culture you need to create.

Speaker 1: 10:07

If you truly obsess over your customer, this is where your mind always needs to be right. This situation happened. Now, what can we do? And I'll tell you what you can do. One, all we've already talked about it right, the verbiage. But also afterwards, doctor office manager, one of you two needs to immediately do a handwritten letter that day, mail it and get it to their house as fast as you possibly can. On top of that, in case they go out of town, they don't see the letter, whatever it is, put your face on camera, do a quick selfie video and text that to their cell phone. It doesn't need to be more than 30 seconds, 50 seconds, 5-0, 50 seconds at the most, and there's a series of events and that's where the existing patient experience comes in Series of events of one.

Speaker 1: 11:04

Culturally, it starts with obsessing over your customer. If you don't obsess over the patient, the customer, your mind will never be in this place because you don't think this way. And this goes back to every business on the planet needs experience training. Everyone. There isn't one that exists and the ones that are famous get it. Right, they get the training because they're obsessed over their customer, which is why they become famous.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Right, so it starts with culture. One. Two, it's stating your expectations and how you want things to go and having meetings about it and role-playing with your team and putting them into scenarios. Right, so it starts. Two, with your training. Right, it goes from culture, mindset, leadership to then how you train your people. But then all these ways to where, if something does happen, how do we handle it? Okay, we've got the verbiage and presentation skills down, which, by the way, that verbiage never happens If you don't have a culture that obsesses over the customer and works on things to make the experience better.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Next, you've got to go deeper. Right, front girl Betty again make-believe name handles the situation. Hopefully she nails it because of the training and the culture you have. Now you've got to go deeper. Leadership team, you must be involved. Right Handwritten letter to go out to that patient apologizing, right, maybe you send them an unexpected you know, $50 visa gift card. I had a podcast about that, about United at some point. Right, so you've got unexpected experiences. That really what does it do? It drives results in your favor because they are never going to accept.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Look, businesses suck at handling situations like this. They're terrible. For every one you get that blows you away. There's hundreds and you can all relate to this. They're terrible. For every one you get that blows you away. There's hundreds, and you can all relate to this. Your dry cleaner messes up your clothes how do they handle it? Your hair cutter messes up your hair how do they handle it? The restaurant messes up your food how do they handle it? And time and time again, it's nothing special. Some do it better than others. One may have a smile on their face Meanwhile, the others don't, but there's still really nothing special about it. Why? Because very few companies see value in obsessing over their customer like we're talking about today, being a people over procedure, people over service, people over product operation. And, by the way, when I say people over procedure. I owe Dr Rob Schaefer for that line because I'm going to use it for the rest of my life. I heard him say that at our last on-site. So props to you, rob, love you, dude. I don't think I gave you props when I said that people over procedure before, so I promised him I would do it now, right.

Speaker 1: 13:40

And then so you got some old school customer service there with the letter handwritten. But then you got some new school with the video, right. And I would argue, even if they don't get the letter, the video is powerful. If they get the video and not the letter, the video is powerful. But if they get both, that's the ultimate situation right. So you've got a little mini choreographed journey, starting always again with culture there. Then how you train your people right, use a little digital marketing in there. Right, got some videos in there. Then how you train your people right, use a little digital marketing in there. Right, got some videos in there. And then we got some old school hospitality with writing that hand letter, and that's how you must look at everything. That's the series we're coming off of.

Speaker 1: 14:15

One of the reasons why I want to do it today is again, handling that situation and turning it into a positive that works in your favor is, again, never about one thing you getting what you want while delivering unexpected experiences along the way to help drive. That is never about one interaction. It is an ongoing journey. That's a commitment to obsessing over your customer and if you just think this way, it is amazing what can happen for all of you as practices out there that charge five, six, seven, $8,000. You know, if you can just add a few starts a month to that, you have your best year ever. And this is a way to not have to advertise, because you're turning your customer, your patient, into the advertising for you by going inside your doors. Now, today, we're in Whole Foods inside your doors. Now today we're in whole foods and and for those of you who follow me a lot, podcasts, see me speak customer, whatever it may be, or all the above.

Speaker 1: 15:16

Uh, you know I like to cook, right. So what a big pet peeve of mine is whenever you're going to cook fillets and you go into places and this. This could spin off in a 10 podcasts, um, on you, 10 podcasts on how to showcase things to make more money and blah, blah, blah, but it just blows me away when you look in the window at meat places or the meat departments in grocery stores and you see cuts of meat that look like nobody cares. They don't know what they're doing. There's slits in the middle, there are all kinds of different sizes. They just look like nobody cares. They don't know what they're doing. Right, there's slits in the middle, there are all kinds of different sizes. They just look like crap.

Speaker 1: 15:51

And if you know anything about cooking, especially at a high level, you're never going to buy those because you can't cook them at a high level. If you have one that's four ounces, one that's six, one that's nine, one has a slit down the middle because there's a part of you know, there's a part where they get that meat from the animal and in that portion of the animal it has little slits in it so it cooks unevenly and it just comes out a mess. So if you know what you're doing, you are never going to buy that meat. So today at Whole Foods I asked the guy so those are unusable. You've done this for me before. It's usually a headache, but you could go cut. I need three equally cut eight ounce fillets from this part of the animal and that's what I need in order to cook tonight. And this guy looked at me like and he actually said the words just in a little bit different way Like sir, that is such an inconvenience Like, these are what we have in the window. We're trying to get rid of these first before we cut into the new mag. This is what he's saying to me Now. He didn't say you're inconveniencing me, but that's what he said with his words. We're going to get rid of those, those who find these fine. We're going to sell rid of those. Those who find these fine. We're going to sell it to those before we cut any more.

Speaker 1: 17:10

Right, this is a place and I've had other podcasts in the past about this stuff and I already have a podcast recorded, pre-recorded coming out I don't know when that tells another story about this at Sprouts, which we'll never go back to. Sprouts is a farmer's market grocery store by our house in Springs. So now I'm sitting here going, okay, where the hell are we going to go? So we looked up. We found a butcher. It's like 20 minutes away. We went and got a beautiful cut of filets. That's what I'm going to cook tonight as I do this podcast.

Speaker 1: 17:35

And again it goes back to it's the same thing, right? How that guy needed to be trained. He even said to me, you know, I guess, in this tone, I mean I guess I'll go in the back and ask my manager and see what we can do like that, like, basically, middle finger sir, like how could you inconvenience me like this? And a lot of your employees out there do stuff like this with body language or you know, they're wearing a mask whenever they're trying to communicate something so you can't see facial expressions and the facial expressions may be a smile but you can't tell, because the mask just comes across differently. There are so many scenarios like this meat scenario and like this clear aligner scenario, and thought about every single scenario that your hourly employees are put into every single day, every single week, every single month, every single quarter, every single year, and are you really comfortable with how your brand is being represented in all of those scenarios? Have you placed people in those situations and made them role, play their way out, given them feedback, coached them on how to handle that situation?

Speaker 1: 18:47

We call it conflict resolution and when I was still umpiring, professional baseball, this is stuff you would go through hours upon hours upon hours of rigorous training and role plays around psychology and body language, posture, verbiage, tone, around psychology and body language, posture, verbiage, tone, what to say, when to say it, how to say it, what never to say, right, and these are things you know that, again, we do inside practices Like this is one example of many, but this one example is actually hundreds of examples that we take, you know, and we say, okay, a patient's upset, they can't get an appointment when they want. Go Like, how do you handle that? Right, and we see how they all handle it. And every practice handles those situations like this one. Joe shows up to pick up his clear aligners and people, just like the new patient, call, if you called and mystery called you guys have heard me say this a thousand times on here If you mystery call 100 practices, ask them the same questions, every receptionist responds the same Right, which makes all of you the same. Whenever I'm shopping and calling five practices.

Speaker 1: 19:57

You have a framing effect issue, period, you Period. You have a value proposition issue with the inability for your team to be able to speak in a way that sheds value and light on why you're unique and different and why me spending two more thousand dollars with you as opposed to two thousand less with the other two places. I've been why it's worth it, right, but if you're able to convince people of that, then you've got to back it up after they've signed the contract and these interactions everybody. I cannot tell you how much it moves your brand forward. And this is back to the infinite versus finite-minded people, right? There's very few people out there that when they think about growth, they think about the scenarios I'm talking to you today as a way to grow, right, meaning that the way this was handled one by that practice, two by Whole Foods like you're never going to be able to put your finger on that, like you can your Invisalign bill being yanked out of your bank account. But I will tell all of you it costs you more money. Like that person with a clear aligner scenario is never going to send a referral to that practice period. That's a $6,000 if that's what you cost on an average case fee.

Speaker 1: 21:13

That's how you have to look at this, with the inability to create a fan, right? Creating a satisfied patient is not a referral source. It's not somebody that turns into your sales force. It's a satisfied patient, just like a satisfied customer right what you're trying to create out there. Everybody is a fan of your business, just like your fan of your practice. Those are two different things, and the non-clinical interactions will determine whether or not they're a satisfied patient or a super fan of your practice period.

Speaker 1: 21:43

You have to see value, especially for those out there listening, which is the majority of our following that want to be a high-end brand. If you want to be a high-end brand, it's even more important to teach people how to speak from those that have bought from you than it is to teach people before they buy from you. And this is such a different message Like when's the last time you went to a you know an event and people up there talking about this? No, it's a bunch of advertising crap. Marketing, more of this, more of that, more of this, more of this, more new patients, pay-per-click, more, more, more, more, more, more, more. Then all of you wonder why you're chaotic all the time. When, if you just slowed down and looked at marketing as everything, every Marketing as everything, every interaction your team has with each other, how you have it with your team, how your team has it with you, how you all have it with people you want to buy, how you all have it with people that have bought it is so critical, right, like the sprouts. Whenever that podcast goes live, you'll see it then.

Speaker 1: 22:42

But right now, as Whole Foods, whole Foods lost their business forever. Now can you get away in certain, you know, in certain situations. Yeah, like the clear liner scenario, like it's not, like that guy's going to want his money back, right, but how it was handled leaves a sour taste in people's mind and it's unfortunate. But how we're built as humans is, you know, if I have 20 interactions with your business and 19 of them are really good and one of them suck, that's the one people remember and that's why it's so hard to be an unbelievable brand, because that's what you deal with is that you could be great time after time after time after time and all of a sudden, one thing takes away from the immersive experience. One employee ruins it for the other 10 that interacted wonderfully. And this is why the culture matters so much, because everything I'm talking about here again goes back to a culture that obsesses over your customer, obsesses over your patient, a culture that's infinite-minded, that says what can we do today to be more innovative, more convenient, better for the patient better for the customer than we're doing today. This is the mindset and this is a perfect example we're doing today. This is the mindset and this is a perfect example.

Speaker 1: 23:47

When many of you think of growth, you immediately think pay-per-click and train my TC and why. All of that can help, of course, and that's all stuff that we do, except for the pay-per-click. We don't want to do it because we teach everybody put your money somewhere, else you're going to get a higher return. Don't use a Band-Aid. Fix the wound, pay wound Paperclip. If you have to do it, band-aid to the wound of what's really going on. Every dime all of you out there, by the way, this is off the cuff spend on paperclip. You should cut it off tomorrow and invest it inside your doors and train your people the way I'm talking about, and it's hard work, but it will produce both a short and long-term result that paperclip can't do, long-term result that pay-per-click can't do.

Speaker 1: 24:26

Everybody, you got to see value in this, and an exercise that I have for all of you is I want you to sit down and I want you to brainstorm and think about every single scenario that your team has that interacts with your potential customer and your customer, your potential patient and your patient, and ask yourself is your brand being moved forward every time right? Or is it leaving these little sour tastes here and there? Because, again, it's not a criticism, but for those out there that think that your assistants are nice, your people are nice and that means your experts in hospitality, you're missing the mark, just like the last two months of what we did. The reality of the situation is that unless you are training and receiving training from people that have deep expertise in this stuff, you are losing opportunities like you cannot believe they're everywhere in your business, just like this clear aligner scenario. You will never be able to put your finger on the loss, but it is there if you have the right mindset as a leader.

Speaker 1: 25:35

Hope everybody enjoyed today. All right big lesson this is from our existing patient experience and teaching your team how to train in a way that moves your needle forward. If you're interested in the existing patient experience because it goes far beyond what I'm talking about today make sure when you click in that Calendly link and set up a consultation with me, remember the first three people. I am offering it to the first three people. If you're interested in what I talked about today. Make sure to put existing patient experience in there and, if you're not, put whatever you're interested in to get started.

Speaker 1: 26:08

But this is such a big way If you want to skyrocket referrals, skyrocket five-star reviews, skyrocket interactions on your social media channels, your YouTube station, this is what will do it. Transform that existing patient experience, do it right. Transform that existing patient experience. But this message everybody, it happens in every business. It is a people-first business, just like all of you. Move your brand forward by getting your people trained on how to handle scenarios and turn negatives into positive outcomes. Thanks everybody, we'll talk to you soon, bye-bye.