Stop Last Minute Cancellations
Eric Vickery, President of Coaching at All-Star Dental Academy and Mastery Coach, Karen Raymond discuss handling cancellations by empathizing, emphasizing urgency, exploring solutions, and reinforcing patient care over policy.
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About Karen Raymond
Karen Raymond graduated from Indiana University with a B.S. in Health Information Management Administration in 1977. She began her career at the I.U. School of Dentistry as Director of New Patient Admissions, where she also developed and implemented a new dental charting system. In 1981, Karen began her position as Patient Relations Administrator in her husband’s dental office. She and Dr. Raymond quickly realized the importance of empowering their team and attended numerous seminars and workshops on team building, trust and leadership. Karen became a passionate presenter for the Dental Boot Kamp Masters Program and inspired doctors and team members to set their office and personal goals and vision. Karen particularly enjoyed teaching enhanced communication skills between the dental team and patient. Including transitioning a new patient from the initial phone call and subsequent appointment to accepting their treatment plan. She is excellent at coaching teams on becoming insurance independent by handling patient objections and offering various financial arrangements.
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. And with me is my fellow coach, my longtime friend, Karen Raymond. Hey, Karen, how are you? Hey Eric, so good to see you. Good to see you too. Our topic this week is how to stop last minute cancellations. So I know you have a lot to say about this. What do you say to those out there who are getting last minute cancellations?
00:30
Well, first of all, we do have a system in place that we hope prevent this. When we make an appointment, All-Star Dental Academy has a great system in place to prevent these from happening at the last minute. But if that doesn’t work, then I know what it’s like to get a last minute cancellation, nine o’clock call and they want to cancel the 10 o’clock call. And your heart drops, your stomach drops.
00:59
our system is. I’m going to say Jenny calls. Hi, this is Jenny. I know I have a 10 o’clock appointment, but I can’t make it. First thing you do not say is okay. No to okay. No, okay, because that is so natural, because we want to be nice and go, okay, well, that’s the last thing we want to do. So what we’ll do is Jenny, gosh, Jenny, I’m so sorry to hear that. Let me put you on hold so I can pull your chart.
01:29
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to get on my computer and I want to find out why is Jenny coming in? What is the reason for her coming in today? And two, has she done this to us before? Yeah. So I found out why she’s coming in. So I’m going to say, Jenny, I noticed the last time you were in, Dr. Raymond found two teeth that had deep decay.
01:56
and we are going to start your crowns on those today before you get into pain because they are getting really close to the nerve. I am concerned because I don’t have anything like this type of appointment for at least four weeks now and I hate putting you out that long. Is there anything that I can do to help you keep your appointment?
02:25
in the hospital and I have to go. And I mean, there are certain things that you’re not gonna keep pushing. But we’ve actually had patients that their kid was homesick and they could call their mom to come and babysit or their car was broke down, they called a friend. I mean, when you’re really sincere about him for a minute. And another thing I often add at that point is I know Dr. Raymond will be very upset and concerned because of the way
02:55
that your teeth are looking right now and to put it off for four weeks is something that he will not want to do. If they absolutely say no there’s nothing we can do then we are going to make an appointment out for four weeks. At that point we want to make sure that we train them about how we’re going to make that appointment. We have to train patients.
03:22
that we’re in control of the schedule, that they’re not. So I’m going to make it very sincere and I’m going to say, okay, Jenny, in four weeks, I have a Tuesday, I know you told me your mornings are usually better for you. I have a Tuesday at 10. Is this some, and you’ll be here two and a half hours. Is this something that will work on your schedule? Yeah, yeah. She says, yes, I’ll say great.
03:49
Okay, I’m confirming you for 10 o’clock July 14th for two and a half hours. Now is that on your calendar too? Great, okay, I’ve reserved that time with Dr. Raymond and you and I will really look forward to seeing you. If they’re as top patient, and I can tell she’s very upset about this and doesn’t wanna put it off, I may go to Dr. Raymond.
04:17
And I will say to her, I’m going to check with Dr. Raymond to see if there’s any way we can work in before that. I don’t know that we can, but I will check with him and if it’s okay, I will call you back tomorrow and let you know. I think that’s key at the end. A couple of things at the end there, so many good things. I’m typing all the good stuff, but willing to see you is that verbiage at the end. So we don’t call back and say, hey, we had another opening. We had another change in our schedule. All it does is validate that they were okay in canceling in the first place. Instead you say,
04:46
I talked to Dr. Raymond, he said he’d be willing to see you tomorrow at two o’clock, because that was so important. I know that was important to you, he was concerned about it, and he moved them earlier. This has been really good. Thank you so much, Karen. These are just really, really good points. There’s so much to go on. We can spend an hour talking about this. This is your weekly reminder, your weekly motivational moment to go out there, and when that call comes in, don’t just say okay. And the goal that you’re trying to get to is, is there any way you can keep this appointment today? Connect them to it.
05:16
Don’t get into policy and threatening of fees. Focus in on their care and keeping the appointment. Thanks again, Karen. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Eric.
Questions? We would love to connect with you!
