Motivational Moments with Eric Vickery: Prevent appointment cancellations with value-driven communication and strategic scheduling.
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About Eric Vickery
Eric holds a degree in business administration and brings a strong business and systems approach to his consulting. His initiation into the field of dentistry was in the area of office management. He managed dental practices for over ten years and has been consulting over 250 offices nationwide since 2001.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
Hello friends, welcome to your weekly motivational moments with Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. This week, I wanna talk to you about cancellations. This is probably a 14 part series that we’re gonna put in two parts. So I’m gonna give you some prevention stuff today, and then we’ll talk about handling the call next week. So listen, I can’t go into everything in a…
00:29
three to five minute video here. This is an hour long coaching topic, but I will say this to you. There are some things you really don’t wanna say. Things like at the end of the appointment, clinically chair side is, all right, you’re all set, we’ll see you next time. Do you wanna set up your appointment? Those are the things that don’t add value or create any sort of awareness from the patient of what’s important for you and them to keep their appointment.
00:57
You see there are two reasons why people cancel their appointment, I believe. Number one is they don’t have value, right? Lack of urgency, we talked about that with objections last week. So, lack of urgency, and you hear that things like they’ll say, oh, it’s just a cleaning. It’s just a cleaning. Go ahead and move it out. So if I can wait six months for it, I wait seven months for it, eight months for it, nine months for it, some of you aren’t booked out even six months. The second reason why people,
01:28
cancel their appointments, they don’t understand how your schedule works. And so they say things like, on the answer machine, yeah, it’s 7.15 in the morning, I have an 8 a.m. with Virginia for my hygiene appointment, I just wanna give you plenty of notice that I’m not gonna be able to make it today so that you can put someone else in my slot. They just don’t understand how it works. They’re thinking like all the doctor’s office visits they’ve been to before. So we have a new rule, teach them how to treat us. You’ve heard this saying in your life, you teach people how to treat you. So.
01:56
We have a four step system that helps prevent cancellations. So, reason for return, reservation, not an appointment. Be the massage therapist, not the chiropractor, and atomic habits. I go through and teach you all those again in a much longer series. We can help you with coaching on that. But here’s how it sounds. You know, Ricky Bobby, I’m really concerned about the inflammation on the upper right. I’m assuming you’re concerned about that as well. Am I right? Yeah, okay.
02:25
Therefore, I’m recommending that we see you no more than six months from today. How about we go ahead and get that appointment scheduled so we can stay on top of this? He says, great. All right, I’m gonna be reserving an hour of my time just for you. The reason we do that is so that you have my undivided attention, meaning I see eight patients a day, an hour each. We wanna provide you the best quality possible, and that’s why we do that. So I need your help. I need you to also reserve an hour of your time just for me and your schedule as well.
02:55
Does that sound fair? Wonderful. Keep in mind that I’m scheduled right now three to four months out. Meaning, to get you scheduled in six months and to stay on top of this, it’s essential that we schedule this correctly today. So there’s no chance of you ended up going nine or 10 months in between appointments. Does that make sense? Wonderful. Let’s get your appointment scheduled either or scheduling. Atomic habits at the end. I say, Ricky Bobby, I see that you’re scheduling this in your phone. I’m putting you in my system here.
03:25
To make sure our softwares are saying the same thing, share with me when you’re gonna be here for your appointment. Have the patient repeat back to you when they’re gonna be there. They’ll say something like, oh, I’m gonna be here March 3rd at three o’clock. Great, that’s exactly what I have as well. Then you do your transfer, you go up front and transfer them to your admin if you’re scheduling chair side. All right, so remember, cancellations begin at the last appointment. How do you prevent a future cancellation? Following the four step system. Next week,
03:54
we’ll talk about how to handle the cancellation call. All right, if you want more information, just go to alls There’s plenty of free information there. We have a whole dashboard of training on cancellations, hours and hours and hours of training that can help you guys prevent cancellations. All right guys, have a great week.
