Michael Bentley for Extreme Business 100

Speaker: Michael Bentley

Michael Bentley: Hello, my name is Michael Bentley. I'm a dental business coach and I arrived in dentistry in 2001. I started my work as a practice manager for Boots Dental Care in Birmingham. And since then, I've spent that entire time working in practice and then later as a dental business consultant and a coach. Now, throughout my time working in dental practice, I started at Boots Dental Care where I was, as I said, the practice manager for five years. And after that, I moved to an independent practice and I for a lovely practice with three dental business owners called JM Dental Care. And I worked there for 12.5 years within those 12.5 years. Not only did I have the role of practice manager, but I also trained to become a treatment coordinator in 2005, a role where I absolutely relish and absolutely love doing and so much so that led me on to becoming a registered dental nurse to allow me to add stability and weight to the role as a treatment coordinator. For me. That's something that I felt was important because I was doing a lot of clinical conversations and I was providing a lot of information to patients and also supporting with Invisalign clinics, whitening clinics and various other roles within the practice as well. So I decided to do my dental nursing and become part of the G DC register. I then got an opportunity to speak at an event for practice plan and I spoke in front of many of my peers, my pra fellow practice managers um from the wonderful world of practice plan. And on that day, I met Laura Horton and she said that we needed to have a conversation which we went on to do and we decided that I would start working alongside Laura. And that was my first venture into doing dental coaching and consultancy. Um Alongside that practice plan also offered me a consultancy position, one that I still hold even today and providing them with um consultancy sessions for their practice across the whole of the United Kingdom, doing half day events and also regional events as well. And I have been known to do the workshop tour a couple of times as well. And I did a recent one called Nourish and Flourish, which was uh last year, which I absolutely loved doing. I have worked in a couple of other uh situations as well. So through COVID, I decided to go back into practice and I worked for a corporate for a little bit, uh It wasn't the most amazing experience. If I've got to be honest, uh, I call it a little bit of my Adele album. Uh, I'll tell you more when I see you. And, but what it did do is, uh, allowed me to work in dentistry in a time, which was very, very difficult and it was good to be on the floor, uh, being subjected to what everybody else was going through at that time. And I felt it was really, really important. I then found a new home at Highfield Dental Clinic in Edgbaston, uh where I resided for 2.5 years as a patient experience manager and also the hr manager and did quite a bit of treatment co ordination within that practice as well. I then decided to move to Norfolk and I now reside in a lovely private practice called Long Sutton Dental and uh I am their treatment coordinator and I work there two days a week on a Monday and Tuesday alongside now doing my coaching consultancy for my own business called New Beginnings, which I launched about three years ago now and I do membership consultancy and I also do training events in practices as well uh alongside some city club work and, and various bits and Bobs. I love dentistry and I think that's enough about me as a small introduction.

Michael Bentley: The day is a reception master class. And well, I suppose a reception master class is an interesting title. But for me, most of you within the Barrow 100 club are going to have a fair grip about your brand presence and how you would like the reception team to deliver the experience that you want to be formulated throughout the whole of the patient experience so that it reflects the clinical work in surgery. And for me, the day is designed to complement that work. I know firsthand how difficult it is to work on reception, the challenges, the demands on you at the front of house, you are the first person, the patient meets and greets. You're the last person that the patient says goodbye to. And that touching point is so important. The role of the front of house is to make sure that patient is definitely happy. There's something that I talk about quite a lot, we say to each other, you know, how are you? Are you? Ok. And we're very flippant with each other and we go, yeah, I'm all right, thanks. How are you? You know, and we're doing that cover of Yeah, we're absolutely fine. And the role of the receptionist is to not only do that welcome and goodbye experience, but also to make sure that the patient really is ok and they really are happy with the experience that you are providing. So with all of that in mind, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be looking at the brand power in your practices and how we can utilize that to master the creation of the everyday experience for the patients. New patients are vital for every practice. We do need new patients, but we also need to balance that with our existing patients and the experience that every single patient is getting every single day that you know, they come into the practice. Also remembering that within the practice, some patients only touch base with us every six months, maybe even once a year. And therefore that experience has got to be one that the patients go. I love this. This is what I come here for. And this is why I'm a patient of this practice and why if I'm asked, I will recommend them to friends and family that I need to go. Do. You know what I'm with an amazing dental practice? And let me tell you why we're going to do a lot of communication skills that I've learned over 20 years of being at the front desk and also as a treatment coordinator and also really starting to blend what verbal skills work really well. And why the challenge here is making sure not only are the verbal skills fit for purpose, but also the person delivering the verbal skills definitely wants to be doing it and also is fully engaged. And that's looking at the body language and that's also confirming what type of personality they are and how they're going to blend their personality with a load of different personalities that they're going to embark and come across every single day with that in mind. We're going to look at uh we are going to look at new patient triage. We're going to look at how patients are contacting you as a practice and how to deal with those new patients in a really effective manner. We're also going to look at treatment plan handling for me. This is a really important area of the practice and I'm going to teach you a verbal skill that's very important to me, which is confirmation and understanding. Last of all the desk are the area that take on feedback, have the opportunity to garner feedback to ask for Google reviews. But also they are going to be the area that come in contact with patient complaints. So I want to talk through that with you and give you some sound robust tips and advice and scenarios so you can move your way through uh how to handle patient complaints in a fantastic way with the front desk doing the handling to start with before it comes to other areas like the practice managers and the owners of the business to decide the fate of the complaints and which is the best direction for them to be handled and the learning points moving forward as well. So a very meaty day, it's going to run very, very quickly. It's going to be fun and very entertaining as well. Um, I like to engage, make you laugh, tell you funny stories to make sure that you're also with me, but making sure that we've got lots of content too.

Michael Bentley: What am I most looking forward to at the event? Well, I'm looking forward to meeting all of Chris's brilliant extreme business practices. I know you're an absolutely enthusiastic group of dental practices looking to be the very best of what you can be. And I'm looking forward to personally meeting you all, spending some time with you all. And yeah, having a great day to together of, as I say, laugh to fun, but also a day of learning as well. So for me, I'm looking forward to meeting the owners, the practice managers, but also do send along those reception team members. They will get so much out of the day. They are definitely worth bringing along alongside treatment coordinators would also get a lot of insightful information from the reception master class as well, which I think would blend over really nicely. So I think my main thing that I would say is that I'm looking forward to not only meeting the owners and the practice managers, but also key members of your team that drive the front desk experience and should be part of the reception master class with you