Are Morning Huddles Really Worth It In My Dental Office?

We get this question often and I suppose the answer really depends on how well they are done!! I listen to dental office morning huddles all across the country and some are awesome and some not so much. I will compare and contrast both extremes for you here!

I was in an office in the midwest a bit over a year ago listening to a huddle with a brand new client. For the hygiene portion of their huddle, they simply read the scheduled procedures for that day. It sounded like this:

Mr. Jones, prophy, exam, bitewings
Mrs. Anderson, prophy, exam, bitewings; etc.

You get the idea, simply reading the items on the schedule. Have you ever gone to hear a presenter who read their slides? Yes this was that bad. No value and no enthusiasm at all. As you can imagine, not a productive office, sadly.

I personally think the dental office morning huddle needs to be broken down into 3 categories: Motivation, Organization, Hand off of Information.

1. Motivation- If you aren't regularly motivating your team, they will starve much like if you don't feed them regularly. This leads to discontent and overall lack of satisfaction and of course poor business performance. I heard recently about a doctor that stood up and did a cute dance exclaiming how awesome his practice and team was. Guess how well they do?

2. Organization- This is pretty straight forward and hence I won't spend much time here. Do we have the stuff we need to complete the procedures? Let's not find out we don't have Mr. Jone's crown while he is standing in the office!

3. Hand off of Information- There is a very long list of items here and the episode of our TV show is mainly on this topic. This is your opportunity to build great relationships with your patients and quickly, if done correctly.

What do we know about our patients that if our team and doctor walk in knowing will wildly impress our patients? For example, let's assume someone hears a baby crying in the background and you ask if the baby is teething. How impressive would it be if when the doctor walked in, she offered a solution to the patient for a teething baby? Wildly is for sure the answer!
Have you ever had a patient in the doctor's chair and after they left you realized they were overdue for their hygiene visit? I have sadly, called a patient myself when trying to fill the hygiene schedule only to realize that person had left the office a few hours earlier. How handy would it have been for the patient and the office had we just moved that patient from one room to the next?
Have you ever taken a patient back to seat a crown only to realize later they had a significant balance already that was unpaid? How handy would it have been to handled that balance before they walked out and added to it? Of course the right answer if to always collect their portion at the time of service!

There are many other examples such as these 3 that we covered within our show. Great preparation and execution is the key. Taking a few minutes to plan a great huddle will make the day run much more smoothly and profitably!

 To learn more watch the video below!

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