Ep 163: What Patients Really Want

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Dr. John Meis (00:01.613)
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis with my partner Wendy Briggs. Hey Wendy, how are things going?

Wendy Briggs (00:10.062)
Amazing, amazing. I'm so excited about our topic here today.

I know, I love this. And the topic is gonna come from a a a book that you read about a company that I really highly admire. So tell us about the book.

Yeah. So, you know, as you know, Dr. John, as our listeners probably have heard before, with our consulting clients, we choose a book to focus on every quarter or so that has some really great takeaways and principles for dentistry. And I started reading the one that we were considering for this quarter and I I got one chapter in and I was like, This is it. Like this is the book we're gonna focus on. It's got so many crazy valuable lessons. Right, right.

Nice. So you threw away the book and you never finished it. No kidding. Yeah.

But it's little counterintuitive because the book is called Fans First and it's by Jesse Cole and it's the story of the Savannah Bananas. And so you might think, what does that really have to do with dentistry and/or business? You know, this is a a minor league baseball team that's kind of taken the country by storm. But I love all of the lessons that they share in this book about how they did it. But there's some really awesome people.

That's awesome. For those of you who are not familiar with the Savannah Bananas, it's a minor league baseball team. However, they formed their own league and they created all these different rules to make it more entertaining. And it's super fun. Every year they play a couple of games here in Phoenix, and I've wanted to go every year, and they're always sold out. They sell out way ahead of time. They play in the Cubs Spring Training Facility.

And they're always sold out and the tickets are just really tough to get. And so I want to hear what what is the principle number one that made you say, this is it.

Yeah, well, the first thing that they talked about is, you know, when the when Jesse and his wife bought the team, they were struggling. They were a typical minor league baseball team that had almost gone under. And so when they bought the team, they the first concept that they decided to do was to do the opposite. And they rejected all traditional industry standards and they sought out the friction points that customers hated and did everything they could to eliminate them.

And so again, for for the Savannah Bananas as a part of their story, this meant removing all convenience fees and offering all inclusive ticketing and eliminating corporate billboards and just doing everything differently from that standpoint. And it was a huge risk, right? So I love that because when it comes to dentistry, I think we could use some shaking up. I think we could use some, you know, thinkers, some different thinking, and we really could look at all things patient experience and do the opposite with a lot of those things and it would probably do us a lot of good.

Yeah, no, it's so true. There's this kind of conventional wisdom in dentistry that this is the way you do it. And patients.. it leaves you very little room to wow patients. And the idea of doing the opposite is really clever. And you know, what what's a good example of doing the opposite in dentistry? I've got a couple, but go ahead.

Yeah, yeah, I've got a couple too. I, for me, it starts with everything. You know, the even the title of his book, Fans First. Like too often we make decisions based on what the team or the doctor wants, right? What would change about our patient experience and our practice retention and our practice growth if we made this commitment to always think about patience first? Like every decision we make should revolve around patients first.

For some people, I think that they wouldn't want to do that at all. You know, they're so heavily dependent on what's best for me or what's best for the doctor. This is how the doctor wants things. This is how, you know, the team wants things. Often we look at hygiene. Classic example is we look at what systems are happening in hygiene. And sometimes the office manager and the doctor don't even know what we're doing or why we're doing it that way. It's just that's the way it's always been done, but that's the way the hygienists want it to be done. So very little thought is put into how to structure things to always put patients first.

Yep, I love that. I.. it reminds me of a past client of ours, his name is Dr. Roger Abbott, not Roger Rabbit, Roger Abbott. and he just was a super fun guy. And, he had a large group practice in the Atlanta area. And often you see somebody who is the founder of a large group practice, and they are the producer, they're going, going, going.

And he says, I'm not the producer. I'm the maître d'. I'm the person, I'm the concierge, I'm the person that makes sure everybody has fun and everybody gets, you know, gets exactly what they want, that everything's all customized, and I do all those all the setup for that myself so that people are entertained and happy throughout their entire dental experience. It's just doing something different.

Doing something different. And you asked for a specific example, and one that I can think of right away is we always get the question, "Where do you see the new patients first, doctor or hygiene?" You know, and too often we have this rigid, set way. Our new patients have to see the doctor first. You know, it's state law says the doctor has to assess first. And we're like, yes and no, right?

Exactly.

I mean, there's there's certainly laws that we have to follow, but there's different approaches that you can take, even if the state law says doctor needs to see the patient first, you can still schedule the patient where the patient prefers to go. Right. And have systems that support that each way. You know, so that's another that's just an example of ways of where we really could you know do the opposite.

Absolutely. Yep. So being opposite is having the flexibility to see the patient where the patient wants to be seen, rather than having some rigid, pre-formed idea that you have to, you know, try to get try to pound these square pegs into a round hole, and it just doesn't work.

It doesn't. You know, so I think that principle of, you know, what do patients really want and how can we give them more of it is really, I think, integral to doing the opposite. You know, what do patients want? Let's not think about what the doctor wants first. Let's think about what patients want first. And then let's try and figure out what that looks like in today's world. And Dr. John, we've studied this for years and we've talked about this and we've taught about world class patient experience for more than 15 years now. And I can tell you that what patients want today is different than it was ten, twelve, fifteen years ago.

Absolutely. Yep. Absolutely. So we developed a tool a few years ago called the "No Eliminator".

Right. So figure out what are the things that patients are asking for that you're seeing saying no to. And I've seen consultant after consultant after consultant say, okay, we need to try to find a way to tell them no in a way that's not gonna make them mad. No, well let's think about it differently. Let's think about well, let's find a way to say yes to that. What would we have to change and what would the impact be? If we found a way to say a true yes.

Right. And that's the key. So I think, you know, there's a lot of really other fun lessons we can learn in that book from doing the opposite that I think are timely for dentistry. And then, of course, the book goes on, and every single chapter is as amazing as the last. And the next principle that he talks about was fans first and entertain always. And, you know, as I mentioned before, that's the name of the book. And the key here with this concept is he encourages all business owners, practice owners to shift their focus from the product, which in his world was like the baseball score, to the experience. And every employee should be empowered to create spontaneous moments of joy. I loved that. You know? Create spontaneous moments of joy. Yes.

I love that. You're a huge Disney fan, you know, and Disney does this really, really well. You go to a ride, there's a line. They can't help there being a line, because sometimes there's more people there than others, some weeks and some weekends or whatever are more popular. They can't help but have lines. But they build in all different kinds of things to make those lines more entertaining.

You know, they don't let you see what the length of the line is by the way they design to design the line. And then they'll have TVs, they'll have you know, stuff painted on the wall, they'll have roaming characters, all kinds of things to entertain while you're going through the line so that you aren't irritated by it.

And there's all different kinds of of lessons. You know, there's many companies and people that we look to when we look at, you know, world class patient experience. But, you know, one of my favorite Disney examples is, you know, while people are lined up and waiting for the parade, you know, every employee is empowered to create those moments of joy. And so we had one guy come by that was, you know, picking up trash, but he started this impromptu, what seemed to be impromptu. And after about a few minutes, I was like, this is not impromptu. This is completely staged and planned.

But he started like his own little mini version of Stomp in the middle of the road while everyone's lining up for the parade. He's not the parade, he's not the entertainment, but he's just the guy picking up trash. And then he's like, I'm gonna put on a little show like Stomp. And all of a sudden we got four or five people joining him, and they're all making music with their trash can and their, you know, all their implements that that they do their job with. And I was like, this is awesome. And it probably was their idea. How can we entertain while people are sitting here, you know, waiting for the parade?

So those spontaneous moments of joy in dentistry, there's so many opportunities that we could do the same thing if we cared. You know, Dr. John, you mentioned on a call we did with our doctors not too long ago about how when people leave a dental practice, often it's due to indifference. You know, and if we were really focused on creating these spontaneous moments of joy, I don't think any patient would feel as if the team or the doctor or the practice as a whole is indifferent to them and their experience. I think that really, really helps drive patient retention at the same time as improving patient experience.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I totally agree. Absolutely totally agree. So what's another one of the principles, Wendy? Let's hear it.

Yeah. This one kind of is similar to the last one, but I loved a lot of their stories about it. This is the next principle was to create cravable moments. So to design extravagant emotional surprises that turn casual buyers into pr passionate brand evangelists. And so the bananas achieved this by they created an all-grandma dance team. Right.

Mm. Yes.

So they have the granny bananas or something like that that come out and dance, which is completely the opposite of what you would expect. You know, I think I saw a few World Cup videos, you know, those things have been going viral here lately, and it's been fun to see them. But somebody, one of the fans from Europe, was just blown away by the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders that they had flown in for one of the teams, or, you know, they they had them performing with the USA team and they were just shocked. That's what you expect.

Love

When you see a dance team take the stage or come out onto the field. But the bananas have this grannies, these granny bananas, and that's awesome. They have players on stilts. They have it you mentioned they changed all the rules to speed up the game and to keep it more entertaining. And so people just love it. And these characters, these people that are on the Savannah Bananas teams, they aren't the best baseball players, but they are entertainers who can also play ball.

That's great.

And so it's really, really fun to watch that. So these are, you know, emotional surprises that turn these people into brand evangelists. And you mentioned it's super hard to get tickets. They have this draft. They also have rules where you cannot transfer or sell your tickets or your band. And so, you know, they're carefully controlling all aspects of the customer experience, which I think is awesome.

Yeah. And it's so funny, it's an athletic contest, but nobody cares who wins. Right? 'Cause they've had so much fun along the way that they don't even care who wins.

Right. It's about the game. Yeah.

Right. And so we've seen practices do this too. You know, we when we talk about world class patient experience, we'll talk about these moments of delight as we often call them legends. You know, you want to create these moments that become legends in the practice.

Things like, you know, Will Godar, we learned this concept from him years ago when he heard some people, he runs a five-star Michelin, like the highest ranking restaurant in the world in New York City. And he heard one of his customers at the table saying they had they've had a wonderful time in New York. They're leaving to go to the airport. But the only thing they didn't do is they didn't get to have a New York City hot dog. And so, you know, that was a legendary moment that they took advantage of. He sent somebody out to get a hot dog from a street cart and they prettied it up and put it on a plate, and the people were just blown away. you know, that's a legendary moment. This moment of surprise that created those brand evangelists.

And so we have we have dentists doing similar things for celebrating birthdays with patients. We have practices that have, you know, well thought out gifts that they can they can share with patients if they've been kept waiting. Or we have one one group that will actually find out when the when the braces go on, you know, what's the thing that the teenager's gonna miss the most about having braces, whether that's, you know, caramel apples or whatever it is. And then when the braces come off two years later, they have that waiting for them. That's legendary.

Yeah that is that's awesome. And you know, for entertainment value, you mentioned New York City. We've had multiple practices, clients in New York City that have it's not unusual for theater people to have day jobs and be in the theater at night. And of course, theater work is intermittent, let's say. so they'll have these very talented people and one of the practices that we're aware of, their team members made a super fun video about Invisalign using a song that was very popular at the time. And it was edgy and I show it in lectures sometimes and the audience is always like, my god, I can't believe they did that. But that stood out, it was entertaining and people really recognize that as being different.

Yeah, and those moments can go viral, right? And viral awareness, you know, I would say most dentists don't want to be viral. It's not something that we need to grow the practice, but it does help you leverage your name in your community, right? When you provide these legendary moments because it drives a much higher level of reviews, because you've created those, you know, brand evangelists, it creates referrals, jump up.

When we're when we're focused on creating some of these moments and certainly new patient numbers jump too when people can't help but talk about the experience that you're providing.

And what one of our practice clients in Florida, their social media, they say it helps them get patients. But the big thing, the big impact it's had for them is it attracts team because they demonstrate on their social media posts that it's a fun place to work, that everybody gets along, that everybody has has you know fun and a little bit of seriousness and a little bit of silliness in the day. So they really have mastered it.

Yeah. So the last the last thing was to leverage constraints. And we talk about this a lot. They said for them, the lack of a massive budget forced creativity. And the most viral and unique ideas were born out of just sheer necessity because they had no money for traditional marketing. And we hear that a lot from dentists. You know, right now dentists are being squeezed and they feel like they've got, you know, constraints with cash flow that are beyond their control.

Yeah.

And some of them probably would appreciate some strategies to help their marketing budget, their marketing dollars, go farther and have a higher level of impact. And so I think, you know, understanding that if we completely do the opposite, we be creative, we create these moments. just like we said, the impact helps those marketing dollars go farther because we're getting we're getting traction outside of the usual mailers or social media ads or whatever that can can really be costly.

So, you know, I think as well, practices will say, gosh, you know, we just don't have a budget for all these fancy things. Well, having these legendary moments doesn't always mean that we have to spend all of this money. You know, we've seen really resourceful creative teams do a lot with a little, but it has a tremendous impact if you're putting patience first. That's the key.

Yep, for sure. And you know, like you said, a little bit of creativity can go a very, very long ways. And one of my early marketing people that I was really learning a lot from said, well, if you if you're putting out a piece of marketing and what's on your marketing could be true for any other practice, that's a really crappy marketing. You've got to be more creative than that. And once you get creative, you stand out. Once you stand out, you stand up.

Yeah, and I love that too. That principle of removing constraints is critical for us too. You know, a number of years ago, probably 10 years ago, we came up with our, I think it was at one point like 65 new patient experience checklist. And now it's probably more than 75. You know, we keep adding things to it. You know, we've added AI to the to that list. You know, are you using AI with radiographs and all those things? And the whole purpose of that was to view every single touch point as a part of the new patient experience through the patient's eyes and have the patient actually.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I guess experience, you know, rate ourselves. How are we doing through the patient's eyes? How does the patient truly experience all of these really important elements in our practice? And I can tell you that as you look at each of those things on the checklist, a lot of them are about removing constraints, you know, making things more seamless, making things easier, even down to the the simplest things of what does the patient see, hear, and smell when they walk into the reception area for the first time.

You know, those are things that are really important because it creates that emotional reaction that the Savannah Bananas realized was so critically important to their overall success.

Yep. And before anybody gets overwhelmed by a 75-point checklist, let me say that simplicity is one of the core values of TTI. And you can look at that 70-point list, you can put it on the wall, you can throw darts at it, you can throw three darts at it, you can pick out three things, and if you made those three things special, you've just come a long ways. You know, if you make those three the opposite of what everybody expects, if you make it entertaining. If you make it so that it's removing a constraint, you can just change three things and it really will have a big impact on your patient experience.

Yeah. And if you're looking for some additional guidance and support, our podcast listeners probably know that we have quarterly practice growth retreats. We actually have one coming up in Boston. And the entire topic of that retreat is excellence at every touch point. And that's actually going to be my lecture. I'm going to go into a deep dive on that patient journey checklist, and we're going to create a map out of it. And we're going to talk through how to be more excellent in many of those touch points.

Dr. John, you're gonna be digging into what patients really want in today's world. And you know, the entire theme of this retreat is all things patient experience. So if you are a member, I'm hoping you've already registered. It's gonna be fantastic. If you aren't yet a member, we've got a couple things for you. On our podcast homepage, we will actually have a PDF of the current draft of that patient experience checklist that you can download.

We also will have a link there as well if you'd like to have information about joining us as a guest at our retreat in Boston on July 17th and 18th. We actually only have a few seats left for guests. We're running out of of space. It's it's a very, very high, highly demand location. Boston's a beautiful city in the summertime. And we have a few seats left. So if that's something that piques your interest and you you love all things patient experience like we do, go to the podcast homepage and get that information.

Yep, we'd love to see you there. Again, there's only a handful of guest seats left, but there is some left. So all right, very good. Well, Wendy, that's it for another episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. We'll see you all next time.

See you next time, everybody.

Ep 163: What Patients Really Want

Ep 163: What Patients Really Want

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