Communicate from your heart for greater connection and understanding.
Dr Fern White
Principal Dentist @ Beacon Cove Dental, Melbourne Keynote Speaker, Coach and Mentor for Dental Women ????
So we’ve all that situation before…When the patient is clearly lying.
They’ve admitted to wanting something, then when it came time to have, perhaps, their bleaching done, they decide to cancel on the day or not rock up to their appointment. They swear that they didn’t book that in - they didn’t want that!
But you know for a fact. You were there for the conversation. You know for a fact that they are lying.
So what do you do?
Do you get on the defence? Do you exert an uproar or an attack? So that it escalates and becomes huge?
And then the patient is of course left disgruntled…
Or do you just roll over? And let them do what they want to you?
So, what I would advise in these cases is to seek first to understand.?
Assume good intent.?
Assume that they are not really manipulating and that they had a misunderstanding.
We think its a lie but if we put ourselves in their shoes maybe it was a misunderstanding in their eyes.
Then we can tone ourselves down a little bit…
Is it more important to be RIGHT here? Or have PEACE in your clinic?
Because a disgruntled patient can do so much more damage to your business and reputation than you think.
Listen to the patient! Empathise with them. Say to them “Look, Mrs Jones, you are absolutely right to feel this way.” - because you would be! If you thought you were right and had someone saying that you weren’t, you would be angry!
But that doesn’t mean that you just succumb and roll over. Use the sort of language that assures them that you understand how they might feel this way.
Then, when they have calmed down, you can communicate with them. Don’t condone their behaviour of course. “Look, you know, unfortunately this has been a little bit of a misunderstanding. We’re sorry for the part we played in that.” Especially if they blasted your front desk though, let them know a bit of the impact of their behaviour, “Hey you really upset Lee at the front desk. She was a bit upset by your tone…”
Try to connect with them human to human. Heart to heart. Rather than coming up against their defence. You will get a MUCH happier relationship long term. That will pay dividends to your trust!
And now you can put in their file…Beware - This patient has a tendency to misunderstand.
Then of course, like anything, you can learn so much more from this than everything going smoothly. You really learn from these big mishaps about how to communicate.
About 90-95% of the challenges we face in our clinic all come back to communication issues. And it can all be resolved!
Love,
Fern
P.S. See me LIVE in person teaching a full day event in Ottawa, Canada!!