New Patient Wrangler (Part two)?

Enthusiastic referrers can be hard to come by and one never knows in advance which new patients will eventually turn out to be "Champion Wranglers". It happens that it is my basic nature to enjoy interacting with my patients and love it when they leave happy. I like to do good deeds and they are not always rewarded, but sometimes  ... Call it good Karma , they are....

 A year ago new patient came in because she had read a blog post of mine and when interviewing her, she blurted out that she had been to four dentists before and was "so glad she found me at last!".  Now when a patient tells me something like this a red warning light comes on in my brain and I hear over an imaginary loudspeaker "Warning-You'll be next!"

It was immediately apparent that this new patient really wanted to be listened to and I decided to schedule more time than usually needed for her appointments. If an appointment should take an hour , maybe she needed an hour and half (or even two hours).  I should add that she came to my office during a "slow  period" in which I usually had an hour or two each day of non booked appointments.

I wasn't particularly hopeful that our interaction would turn out better than her other  previous dental experiences, but it wasn't going to happen due to my lack of effort and it would make my days more interesting. Her teeth were sorely in need of some TLC and althoug she was extremely talkative, she seemed like a nice lady. If I was patient with her, I hoped that I  could help her  a great deal.

I started slow and did a cleaning and an examination and by initially  by fixing one tooth at a time. I thought it would be a giant mistake to jump in to renovating her mouth with both feet. Instead I scheduled longish appointments and took baby steps. I did a crown on one tooth that badly needed my attention and I was surprised how happy this made her. The rest is history... She has been coming for treatments for almost a year now and has enthusiastically referred her entire family and written 5 star reviews across the internet. I'm not sure how long her "love affair" with my practice will last and probably, if as so often is the case and history repeats itself,  she will eventually become disenchanted with my care, at least for now I am pleased to be able to help her.  She brings my staff and Ibagels and other goodies each time she visits.  We try to schedule her on days when we don't have a hygienist so I can give her my undivided attention and so far this recipe has worked well. Treating people nicely and with respect is never a bad idea, and sometimes it turn out to be extremely rewarding !




from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2018/02/new-patient-wrangler-part-two.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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