Enhancing Patient Confidence with Dental Warranty Plans

welcome to the automatic patient podcast where we help your dental practice create a kickass recurring Revenue model here are your hosts Mr Jordan and Justin comto this podcast is powered by boomcloud create manage and grow your dental membership program schedule a demo on boomcloud tocom [Music] what's up everybody and welcome to another exciting episode of the automatic patient podcast I'm your co-host today Jordan comto with me as usual Bentley folkman our director of marketing what is up Bentley how you doing man I am excited for

our guests today I have done nothing but think about the steak dinner that we had uh a couple weeks ago yeah um man those Texas staks they just hit that they hit that different um my belly is not the same so um I'm also excited for the conversation we're going to have too yes Bentley and I were in Texas for the uh Dental success Summit by Dr Mark coses and we ran into some old friends Jared pente from Dental warranty Jared what's up and welcome to

the show brother how's it going guys definitely see you out at the success Summit and uh good to catch up again here yeah that's always a fun event to go to especially when it is in Texas with great barbecue as Bentley mentioned at the beginning so um Jared for for our listeners that may not know who you are why don't you introduce yourself walk us through through how you got involved into Dental warranty and in in dentistry in general like I always like hearing that story

first so the floor is yours brother absolutely you mean that the part where I fell into the window I I never would have imagined getting into into Dentistry actually this Healthcare generally um but uh haven't been able to to step away ever since so been involved for for a number of years um different performance bats have a history and in Medical Aesthetics the whole world of plastic surgeons Med fods and and that kind of thing and that was my first foray into cosmetic dentistry actually so

I had co-founded a company uh where we come up with a h plan for consumers to save and get exposure to a network of qualified practitioners that provided really good services and and options for them um aesthetically and so we had uh dove into growing a roster of Cosmetic Dentists and um from there I had gotten involved with some Consulting and and the marketing side of these practices and uh eventually a lot more of the internal operations and scaling practices and and um and uh that's

where I run into this concept of of deal warranty and um uh which is fascinating first of it's kind and uh as I got involved um in in uh in this group uh first in marketing and and kind of growing the busf side of this um I had the opportunity to to take the helm as CEO about eight years ago and uh have been have been working at growing it ever since um but uh yeah I think um you know I always managed to to find

my way into some of the most complex types of issues that are out there I can't I can't help myself but um sure this is one that was is super unique it's uniquely positioned and um I really see it at like the Forefront of uh where you see opportunities to reduce friction and create a better patient uh you know practice uh experience better relationship um and better Solutions all around uh for everybody and so uh yeah it's been it's been a ride and uh lots of

lots of ground to go but yeah yeah notes for you I'm a huge believer in what you guys do over there at Dental warranty because uh years ago I used to manage my dad's dental lab so we saw how many issues and remakes and patient frustrations um happen uh often in the patient experience of the crazy world of restorative dental care right you know so uh I definitely appreciate what you guys are helping out with in the industry and I think every dental practice uh and

possibly Labs should have some type of Dental warranty so let's let's get started uh we got a couple questions I want to ask you um and then at the end we can share more information on Dental warranty and you know Enlighten our audience on what you guys do and and some more information there so what do you see changing the most in in patient care today so this is something that we're going to eat B SLE day in and day out and that's that's patient practice

relationship and just the speed of which you know things are changing in this the new science of of loyalty and service matched with really good quality care this Collision kind of a consumerism meets it meets Healthcare and it's fascinating to see um you know just the the nuances of it and to be you know the opportunity that we have to to influence it in a in a big- Time way so you think about your own life the expectations uh you have as you buy um you

know products or you or you uh kind of enlist services uh just think about how much that has shifted uh in the last 10 years and and so uh really the same thing is happening on the healthcare front the same expectations we have in every other area of Our Lives yeah that's flooding in right and that's creating just new hurdles and and things to to overcome and so there's actually um some really fascinating research and data put out by Gardner um that talks about uh the

the number one thing that that uh influenced is um loyalty between a customer and a business and we see this in the on the healthcare side all the time and and that that one thing is effort they defined it as the effort the amount of work what it feels like um whether that's in reality or whether it's perceived perception yeah um exactly um how hard or easy it is to to do business with you or to you know receive your services or to communicate uh whatever

it may be whatever part of that relationship um how hard or easy it is to effort um and so much so that they they've got it dialed down they've got a measured where where every for every interaction you've got uh with the business there is a 4: one ratio of that interaction driving disloyalty over loyalty with the business so would you say like crazy would you say like convenience is like we mentioned the word effort if it to too much effort to schedule an appointment for

example that that is a a detractor for being a loyal patient is absolutely so like yeah I I know this very well at least for how I am trying to schedule appointment the other day for uh a a medical type office right and they made it so hard I went on the website number one I couldn't see who works there or you know who the people I want to I'm going to go see on their website couldn't see see it uh made it really hard for

me to schedule online um so I had a call and I'm busy just like you are Jared like it's crazy everyone's busy and everyone doesn't want to spend time to call an office up and be like yeah what time too much back and forth too much effort so the the key word today I would imagine would be uh convenience making it super convenient for your entire patient experience which I'm a huge believer in because I will not go to a dental office or any type of

office if if they make it too much effort to schedule an appointment is that kind of what that what that report um at least from my perspective that's what it sounds like it's talking about AB absolutely definitely that that is a piece of it but it goes a little bit further to to talk about kind of the anecdote right where it's like um you know what's how do you how do you how do you counter this how do you reverse that that four to one right

and so one of the things that we suggest that I suggest was we teach this stuff is that you take inventory of effort in the whole patient journey and so you brought up an awesome example the convenience factor how hard easy it is to schedule appointment right that's one example right you tell all those things up you figure out right and then so so you once you're able to label and identify some of the potential uh you know spikes in in effort um uh we recommend

mapping out what you would call um Next Issue avoidance so sometimes it's a matter of answering you know the things that aren't necessarily coming up right then and there so unspoken or unasked questions the things that are kind of you know the patients are thinking but they don't doesn't surface until later when it's more of a potential issue and and so having routines systems and things in place tools um at the ready whether it's just in your talk tracks and the way you present certain things

um and then again back to your example a much better more convenient way for for them to to SP an appointment all of those things are great examples of having a system having a tool um that is easiest kind of like plug in in your GPS perance to get to where you're wanting to go um and that's that's what we recommend is just having a full stack of those things for each one of those um potential spikes in in effort so from my perspective I I

I agree with you 100% especially with our patients making sure that they're effort is maximized for for their for their care first and foremost but also for their experience um but also being on the Tactical side of this and if our office managers in particular who I'm thinking about that are listening to this when they when they hear about oh yeah we got to have a million ways for patients to find us and schedule appointments and make this process easier and that process easier and this

experience better all they hear is job three job four job five job six job seven so so from your experience like what challenges come from adding all of these things that make the effort of the patient easier but add to us and then what can they do to fix that you know you got to update your systems time to time and that can take you know continuous work but anybody you know who who um has experience in in running you know well structured businesses we'll say

it's it's it's front-loaded work and the idea is that it makes everything in between that much e so if you designed it right and you take the time to plan and put those things yes it's upfront that you got to put that structure in place but then it's done for a while and it keeps from you know all the all the kind of chaos and the unplanned unforeseen stuff it keeps a lot of that at Bay um doesn't always you know play out perfectly like that

you're going to have say that didn't work the way we thought you have to go back and kind of rejig it but the idea is when it's done right you're you're creating more consistency and you're creating a lot more of a a um a uh predictable day um and you're and you're preventing a lot of other issues that are going to be a lot of work and a lot more exactly so that would be one thing I would I would recommend as far as taking on

those things um and then another thing that I'll throw out there that's really interesting related to some of that Gardener research is um another study that they did that uh kind of talks about the whole like white glove and bells and whistles approach to your to your experience and um and not saying that you you know that you shouldn't consider those things the whole Ritz Carlton experience and going over to the top like how are we different how do we do all these sure these nice

kind of you know Thrills and stuff um those are those are merited but to a certain degree what they found is that truthfully those have a relatively low impact point after a certain extent to really increase your loyalty and to grow a fan base and and customers and in reality covering your basic and the simple part of your experience and making sure you get those things dialed in to the te um have way greater impact on keeping customers around than trying to do everything and be

you know all these things that are that are outside the normal of just coming to the dental practice to take care of your oral health does that make sense um yeah so what you're saying is all those Dental practices that are offering free mimosas in the waiting room and stuff that might be Overkill it it it could be not bad idea again like you know I'm not saying take the soul out of of everything you want to do to make your patients feel special and to

go above and beyond it to be different you want to do those things but it should not be um uh you know at at the um just take care of your Basics just make sure that you're not basic at the expense of the basics exactly yeah no that makes sense because yeah there there's certain expectations that patients may have when going to the dental office and it's like oh cool the Freeman mimosas are awesome but they didn't solve x or they made it hard to do

y right I mean that's a great idea Bentley I mean I more practice should be doing that well maybe I'm joking maybe maybe that could be a disaster too who knows um but no I'm I'm also big on on processes Jared you you you mentioned the truth is the processes and systems that run a practice run everything and if you get them right and maintain them and yes you're going to have to maintain them and somebody has to own it the job role right whether it

be the office manager or some other skill person on the team that you know the owner of the the the practice decides somebody's got to own that because the patient experience process is the number one thing and the number one killer I remember talking to a practice that wanted to start a membership program and he struggled to get his membership program off the ground but then when you looked at his patient experience reviews they weren't good right and you could tell that they were just they

weren't following a process and if they did have a process it was hurting the patient experience and that happens a lot of times in practices where they're like well this is part of our patient experience process and like let's let's let's say they have a financial process that can be you got to treat that delicately right when you're talking finances with patients and they they it felt like reading the reviews they're a little bit more Cutthroat or aggressive with it and they got a lot of

bad reviews from it and I'm like well that's why you're not growing your loyalty program because uh your patient experience is kind of uh is is not honed in to where it should be right so I'm a huge believer in that uh as we run a membership program for practices which is a loyalty program right yeah so I love that um all right Bentley what's our next question here I lost track of where we're at oh yeah so I I have a followup to that as

as we dive in sorry I was letting Jordan go off on his rant there for a minute yeah yeah sweet it's a good it's a good rant yeah so what I what I love about this is to kind of summarize where we are at this point is it's it's easy to identify like how to make it easier well maybe not easy is the right word but we we identify that effort is the key to to success for a practice and the the more that effort from

the patients perspective can can be used to create value and I would say it doesn't mean that they have a zero effort experience it means that their effort Prov is is is value based right because I think there is times where you want your I mean they need to brush their teeth so they don't get cavities you know uh despite what my my son will continuously tell me um he wants braces by the way and so we're using that holding that over his head saying well

you know you get braces you're not going to have teeth left if you if you're not brushing regularly right yeah so the basics so there has to be some Basics and that and that leads into that right it goes into okay start with the basics make sure that the effort you're providing it as as a practice as a clinician as an office um is is Meeting those basic needs and creating the the best value with with your core operating you know uh initiatives and then you

move from there into you know the the amount of effort to to make yourself special beyond that H and my question is what effort would you suggest or what tools or or challenges should an office tackle you know let's say they've got the basics down they they've got great patient care their their patients love them they've got loyalty but now they they want to tackle that that next step what would you suggest they they do you know this one's not going to be a news flash

at all but I mean it's all all centered around your your case presentation your treatment planning and presentation process I mean that right there is going to make or break you know just about everything from there because if you're not able to to you know deliver that information in a way right that that is going to be clear understood not not too much because we all know right it's a delicate balance um yeah in in matching up with kind of the dental I and understanding so

you're not overloading patients um but you're not under selling uh what it is you're recommending for them and what they need to do to make sure they're taking care of their health um so that process um is is is essential um it's a lifeblood of everything you do and your your ability to continue providing you know dental care or or less of it um you know if you're not able to communicate clearly during that process um and then you know this is a bit of a

Shameless plug for us but conceptually it's it's super important it's making sure you expectations dialing correctly and there are things that you should absolutely be paying attention to whether or not you're going to lean on us uh you know Dental warranty as as your partner to provide a protection plan or a warranty to go with that treatment plan the timing of that is is a pretty essential piece yeah so walk us through like what Dental warranty does and how it can help with the patient experience

because I know like I said at the beginning I know the problems in dentistry really well um especially in restorative care and a lot of it I remember I remember a specific case where the patient got a crown and something went wrong my it's been too long for me to remember the details of what went wrong but something went wrong and the patient had to come back and get you know all all the work done and that was such a poor patient experience for for that

that particular patient uh and the practice and us right as the as the lab that's restoring restoring the the patient smile what from your customer base Jared what is so beneficial of having a dental warranty program in place sure so you know at face Valu so you a lot of practices that come to us and are like hey you know uh isn't that kind of weird me proactively talking about this kind of thing will this put these ideas into my patients heads that that they they're

going to need some kind of backup or protection plan because we perhaps don't do good right but that couldn't be further from the truth the reality is there's there's so much that can that that does go on that happens that's way outside of your control I mean you could be the best practitioner of the world and and and things happen there's so many variables there's so many absolutely yeah tons tons tons so this has really just taking all that off the table and planning for for

a good experience no matter what because stuff happen right and so you're literally you're literally making something that's going like this every day right against each other like come on it's not a TV exactly and that's just a basic you know starting point right there just tons of stuff that can go on so it really has has hardly anything to do with it at that point it's more or less just saying look we do amazing quality uh work here we do we provide quality care and

we provide a plan uh that keeps that service experience for the patient right up there with it no matter what uh you know curveballs are throwing your way and so um and not to mention you know as you're going through the the case presentation process setting the right types of expectations and encouraging good healthy habits and routines it's just one other way that you can leverage this to be sure patients understand what their part is to keep their their um you know their smile healthy coming

back in for their hygiene appointments on a prescribed basis to keep their protection plan active keeps things both fair for you social loyalty mechanism absolutely it is and it's the right thing it's the right for the patient um and it it keeps things um it keeps things fair in terms of what you're going to do to stand behind uh the treatment that you provide yeah I love that that and I often ask whenever I talk to you I'm like man why does why do insurance ppos

and insurance companies exist when all the practice needs is a membership plan and a dental warranty program it's pretty straightforward to me we kind of got it covered I know I know I think about that all the time I'm like man why do patients keep going and buying these these horrible po plans when there's there's services like what both of our companies do for practices it just kind of boggles my mind so here's a question for you Jared why wouldn't a practice Implement a dental warranty

program is it like an ego thing they're like oh I don't want to like I want to I want to stand by my work without a warranty why would they say no we don't want to do this doesn't make sense to me oh absolutely and for the most part we get over that pump um you know with some good dialogue and helping to kind of broaden the view um but but I would say that's the number one concern I think that that folks will come to

us with is just uh it's patient perception or feeling like you know I just don't need it things don't things don't happen I'm perfect um right right and but the reality is when you really look back and you measure and you track and you start to look specifically there's a lot more uh when it's accounted for than you might have have realized um and then it's just the whole patient perception thing will this make patients feel like we're doing substandard uh you know treatment we're offering

substandard care here and once again when when pres presented the right way which we coach on how to do and it's actually very simple verb coaching exactly and it's more to do with the right time um this isn't an after you know an afterthought this is right alongside the the care the treatment that you're presenting is when this needs to be made available um because it's part of the whole thing that you're investing in it's it's not only are you are you going here for quality

care but a really awesome experience that's like a warm you know cozy blanket with it uh no matter what life throws your way um and the fact that it's uh it's Nationwide follows the patient wherever they go if they move away or travel it's just a whole different level that yeah if something happens if something happens to the patient they're traveling they could the so it's a it's a win for the patient because they can go like oh I'm I'm in Texas eating barbecue with Bentley

and Jordan and Bentley busted his tooth because he was eating steak too fast I don't I don't know um if Bentley had a dental warranty plan he could go to any dentist in in the San Antonio San Antonio area where we were and and and get it fixed or get a temporary or whatever it may be exactly and that includes if you need to go see a specialist um the value of that is is transferable um you know an easy example of that is if let's

say you got a crown that's protected and it breaks off of the gum line you looking at an extraction an implant let's say um the value of that original treatment can be put towards getting that implant place so it's very flexible and helps to accommodate for all the things that we know can have yeah yeah that's interesting back to I love that go ahead Bentley yeah go ahead um I was I was going to say you don't eat steak too fast either so sorry well I

I do um well it depends on who you ask if if you ask my wife I I inhale food I don't eat food um there's there's psychological reasons for that going back to my childhood but um I think for what I like most about story I I what I like most about this is Jared when you guys offer these plans from a from a from a Prov a provider or practitioner or clinician's perspective I look at this as a way for me to build trust and

loyalty in the event that something does happen right like a crown can crack you can you know some you know you can chew ice or do something that you're not supposed to and have actually soft bread yeah and it's always something like that right and and I'll be honest so I had that happen to me um oh I don't know probably five six years ago I had a crown fail and it's probably because I was pretty hard on my on my teeth and I'll be honest

I was mad at my dentist for for not giving me a permanent solution right I'd had the crown for maybe a year and it cracked and failed and whether that was justified or not at the time I went to another dentist to go get it fixed and so what I think is interesting about this as well is if I would have had the the warranty plan with that with that Crown I would have went right back to that dentist and said hey this happened I think

it it builds transparency in the medical profession and and dental and all these places I think patients get this idea that we're miracle workers and that we're going to make the patient bulletproof and we we don't do that and I think giving them this idea and communicating it the right way that this is a warranty that sometimes this stuff fails because it's our fault sometimes it just happens um sometimes freak accidents happen but when that occurs you can come back here and I'll take care of

you I think that's a great way to build loyalty with patients and to set the expectations where they should be that hey this is a partnership between the two of us when these things happen you come to me and I take care of you we uh we had a saying at the dental La my dad my dad always said this he's like you're you're needing to get a crown for example because the tooth that God gave you failed and you're expecting a human tooth to not

fail a human made tooth to fail so my dad would always say that which is true right it's like hey naturally your teeth are going to have problems because of maybe you're eating too many Jolly ranches I don't know um and those your natural teeth will fail and the restorative tooth you know remake H you know has issues too nothing is perfect and that's okay like so we used to say that the dent lab I always got a kick out of it my dad would always

say it so God's tooth on so know but Val makes some really good points I mean that's that's it's the perfect way to to to bring all this to the surface and make it all part of the expectations ahead of time you know reducing those questions as like they're investing a lot in that um in that work in that care and uh they can know walking out of there that okay yeah you know I'm not going to have to um I'm not GNA have to do

it again if something weird happens yeah yeah Jared here's this why would a patient say no to getting a a dental warranty plan you know it's hard to say right I mean it is a it's it's an investment and everyone's got their own value you know structure I guess I think the important thing for for practice to understand offering this is is is just that don't put your own on on patients offer consistently simply the same way every time and allow them to decide say all

of our treatment is included with Dental warranty basically is the best way to go around that it's the simplest way of doing and we've got a few different variations that work uh for different practices depending on whether you're po or fee for service and you know different things we can help coach on but um nonetheless it's it is that simple each time um and allow patients to decide and you know we see on average if you're if you're offering it the way we coach right around

half um of your patients should accept it if not more and if your if your treatment presentation skills are totally dialed in we see you know 70 80% enough acceptance all the time so patients like it and not a whole lot of need to worry about you know will they won't they let them decide and just make it available sure well that's awesome I love it no this has been a useful uh episode on our podcast what so where do where do uh our listeners find

you guys online uh yeah you could check us out at Dental warranty corp.com and um is Ryan being recording do we have a do we have a specific page setup for for uh the boom Cloud family yet I can't remember if we do or not but we can get you a link to put in show notes if we we uh yeah you guys a good deal yeah we'll put a link in show notes yeah I appreciate that and I'm sure listeners do as well no I

I'm a huge like I said at the beginning and multiple times drought huge believer in this concept of of patient experience for your uh inside of your practice as I said there's a lot of variable problems that have happened over time running my my dad's dental lab that you just can't control sometimes you know uh so offering a dental warranty program is one of the smartest things you can do in my opinion from a business standpoint aside from uh patient membership programs oh they work hand

in hand uh they work hand in hand um I'm a big believer in it so Jared I appreciate you love seeing see you out when we go on the road it's always fun hanging out with you and your team you guys are awesome and I would imagine that you're your customers love working with you as well as much as us getting Stak with you um in Texas so okay so go to Dent there we go Dental warranty corp.com we'll leave some uh resources in the show

notes as we get them from from you guys so with that said we hope all of our listeners have a rocking day [Applause] he