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How Can Dental Practices Use Marketing to Build Patient Trust Before the First Visit?
Dental practices can build patient trust before the first appointment by using authentic marketing that shows patients who they will actually meet, what the practice values, and what the experience of receiving care will feel like.
That means dental marketing is about more than attracting new patients. Done well, it can become the beginning of the patient experience.
In a recent episode of the Kinda Different podcast, Dr. Matt Allen spoke with Jaclyn Nona, CEO and founder of Clever Dental Co., about why dental practices may be overlooking one of their most valuable marketing assets: the people already inside the practice.
Their conversation explored how authentic content, social media, team communication, patient feedback, and a clearly defined practice identity can build trust long before someone sits in the dental chair.
Why is trust so important in dental marketing?
Dentistry can be an unusually vulnerable healthcare experience.
A patient may be worried about pain. They may be embarrassed about their oral health. They may be concerned about cost or afraid of being judged. They are also entering an unfamiliar environment where they may soon be reclined in a chair and unable to easily communicate.
Traditional dental marketing often focuses on credentials, technology, procedures, or promotions. Those things can matter, but they do not necessarily answer one of the most important questions a prospective patient is asking:
What is it going to feel like to be cared for here?
Authentic dental marketing can begin answering that question before the appointment.
When prospective patients have already seen the dentist explaining their philosophy, watched members of the team interacting with one another, learned what the practice values, and gotten a sense for the personality of the office, they are no longer walking through the door as complete strangers.
They have already begun forming a relationship with the practice.
What makes authentic dental marketing different?
Authentic dental marketing reflects what a patient will actually experience when they interact with the practice.
That sounds simple, but it creates an important test for every dental organization:
Does the practice patients see online match the practice they experience in person?
A beautiful website, strong Google reviews, and polished advertising can attract a patient. But if the tone changes completely when that patient calls the office or arrives for an appointment, the practice has created a gap between its brand promise and its patient experience.
The strongest brands minimize that gap.
Your website says you are compassionate. Patients experience compassion.
Your social media feels welcoming. Your front desk feels welcoming.
Your marketing says patients will be heard. The clinical team actually listens.
Marketing and patient experience should reinforce each other.
Can a dental practice do its own marketing?
Yes, at least part of it.
Jaclyn is careful to point out that outside dental marketing agencies can still provide significant value. Her own practice works with outside experts for areas such as website development and Google advertising.
But there are important parts of dental practice marketing that an outside agency cannot easily reproduce.
An agency is not present for the everyday moments that define your organization. It does not experience your team lunch, community event, morning huddle, patient celebration, or the countless small interactions that show people what your practice is really like.
That creates an opportunity for internal teams.
Rather than choosing between completely outsourcing marketing and doing everything yourself, practices can ask a better question:
Which parts of our marketing require the expertise of an outside partner, and which parts are more powerful when they come directly from our team?
How can social media help dentists build patient trust?
Social media gives prospective patients an opportunity to become familiar with a dental practice before they need care.
That is a meaningful change from the traditional patient journey.
Years ago, many patients first encountered the people inside a dental practice when they arrived for their appointment. Today, a prospective patient might watch a dentist answer questions on Instagram, see an assistant in a short video, read patient reviews, look through photos of the office, and follow the practice for months before scheduling.
By the time they arrive, parts of the environment may already feel familiar.
That familiarity can be especially important for a patient who feels anxious or vulnerable about dental treatment.
Social media therefore does not have to be treated simply as an acquisition channel. It can also be a trust-building channel.
What should dental practices post on social media?
Dental practices should create content that helps prospective patients understand the people, personality, values, and experience of the practice.
Examples might include:
- Short videos featuring dentists and team members
- Answers to common patient questions
- Behind-the-scenes moments from the practice
- Community events
- Explanations of how the team approaches anxious patients
- Stories about why team members chose dentistry
- Introductions to the people patients will meet
- Real photos of the office and care team
- Examples of the practice's values in action
The goal is not simply to generate more content.
The goal is to reduce the uncertainty a patient feels about choosing and visiting your practice.
Why aren't technology and clinical expertise enough to differentiate a dental practice?
Clinical quality and modern technology matter enormously, but they may not create meaningful differentiation on their own.
Many practices can say they use advanced technology. Many can point to highly trained clinicians. Many can make similar claims about comprehensive or high-quality care.
Patients may have a difficult time determining which of those claims truly separates one practice from another.
Your people and culture are much harder to duplicate.
How your team communicates, how patients are welcomed, how clearly expectations are set, whether patients feel listened to, and the personality of the organization create a much more distinctive experience.
That does not mean practices should stop talking about clinical capabilities or technology.
It means those features should support a larger story about the experience the patient will receive.
How are dental marketing and patient experience connected?
Marketing creates expectations. Patient experience determines whether the organization fulfills them.
That makes the two disciplines deeply connected.
If marketing promises warmth but the patient encounters indifference, there is a disconnect.
If a practice promotes convenient care but scheduling is frustrating, there is a disconnect.
If messaging emphasizes listening and partnership but patients do not feel involved in treatment decisions, there is a disconnect.
The goal is not perfection. Every practice will have opportunities to improve.
The goal is greater alignment between what you say about your organization and what patients actually experience.
Can better dental marketing improve patient retention and referrals?
Authentic marketing can plausibly support retention and referrals because it strengthens familiarity and trust, although the episode does not provide a controlled study establishing a specific causal effect.
Jaclyn's argument is straightforward: a patient who already recognizes the team, understands the practice's values, and feels comfortable with the organization arrives with a different foundation than someone entering as a complete stranger.
That foundation can carry into the broader relationship.
But attracting a patient is only the beginning. The in-office experience still has to fulfill the promise marketing created.
That is why patient feedback becomes so important.
How should dental practices use patient feedback?
Patient feedback should help organizations find gaps between the experience they intend to provide and the experience patients actually receive.
Sometimes those gaps are large. Often they are small operational moments that teams simply have not noticed.
A handoff feels awkward.
Communication is inconsistent.
A patient does not know who someone on the care team is.
An otherwise excellent appointment feels disorganized.
The value of feedback is not simply knowing that an issue occurred. It is using that information to prevent the next patient from encountering the same problem.
That moves patient feedback from measurement to improvement.
What is the biggest takeaway for dental practices?
Your dental practice already has a brand.
Every phone call, social post, Google review, team interaction, treatment conversation, community event, and patient visit contributes to it.
The opportunity is to make those pieces more intentional and more consistent.
Show people who you really are.
Help prospective patients become familiar with your team.
Tell a story that is actually true when someone walks through the door.
And then keep listening to patients so the experience continues getting better.
That is where marketing becomes more than promotion.
It becomes part of making dental care more human.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is dental practice marketing?
Dental practice marketing is the combination of strategies a dental office uses to attract, educate, communicate with, and build relationships with current and prospective patients. It can include websites, search marketing, advertising, social media, reviews, community engagement, patient communication, and the practice's overall brand.
Should a dentist outsource marketing?
Some dental marketing functions can benefit from outside expertise, particularly technical areas such as website development, paid advertising, and search strategy. Practices may still benefit from creating authentic content internally because their own teams have direct access to the people, culture, community, and everyday experiences that make the practice unique.
How can dentists make their social media more authentic?
Use real people, real environments, and real stories. Introduce team members, answer actual patient questions, show what the practice values, share community involvement, and let prospective patients see what interacting with the practice will really feel like.
How does dental marketing build patient trust?
Dental marketing can build trust by reducing uncertainty. When patients can see the people they will meet, understand the practice's values, hear clinicians communicate in a compassionate way, and get a realistic picture of the experience before visiting, the practice becomes more familiar.
What is the relationship between patient experience and dental marketing?
Marketing establishes expectations about a dental practice. Patient experience determines whether those expectations are met. The strongest dental brands create consistency between what patients see before their appointment and what they experience once care begins.
About Jaclyn Nona
Jaclyn Nona is the CEO and founder of Clever Dental Co. She has spent nearly 15 years working in dentistry and combines a background in marketing and communications with hands-on experience inside a growing dental practice. Clever Dental Co. provides educational resources designed to help dental teams develop their own marketing and communication capabilities.
Listen to the full conversation with Jaclyn on the Kinda Different podcast from DifferentKind.
Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of Kinda Different Dental Podcast, where we talk about innovation in dental care. We talk about how we can make dental care more human, and we connect with people that you absolutely should know in this dental industry of ours. I'm Dr. Matt Allen, CEO and co-founder of DifferentKind and your host for Kinda Different.
Super pumped to be joined today by someone who I met recently, and I think has a really interesting angle on something that I think a lot of dental practices experience and go through, and certainly something that I'm passionate about in terms of how we tell better stories in dentistry. I'm so really thrilled to welcome to the podcast today, Jaclyn Nona. She is the CEO and founder of Clever Dental Company, which she will tell us a little bit more about here.
But Jaclyn, thank you so much for joining us today. We're thrilled to have you on the show, and yeah, please tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Thank you for having me. So a little bit about me. I have been in dentistry for, I cannot believe we're going to be going on about 15 years here.
Got into it totally by accident. It was not my plan. My degree was in marketing and communications.
I thought I would go into publishing. I thought I'd be in a skyscraper somewhere. I got married to my lovely husband.
He was active duty in the Marines at the time. So we moved to the middle of the desert. There were two choices for me to work.
There was either a night shift at a hotel on base, I should say three, a McDonald's or a dental office. So I got into the dental office and I never left. And then we moved back home.
I've been in my home practice here for just over 10 years and founded Clever Dental Co with our two owners slash wonderful doctors and our practice manager. So the four of us started Clever Dental Co together and we worked together every day.
Awesome. Well, certainly I don't know if I've heard a story quite like that of like, hey, my choices were, you know, night shift at the hotel or McDonald's or dental, you know.
I chose right, I think.
I think you made a good decision. Yeah. Interesting.
I love that. It's always funny to hear where some of that stuff starts. And I feel like it's pretty normal to have it kind of be like dentistry found me.
I didn't go searching out dentistry.
No. And you know what? If you would have told me when I was in high school or college that you're going to be borderline obsessed with and in love with dental marketing, I'd be like, that sounds so boring and not possibly true.
But here I am. I love it. And this will be my career for life.
There you go. I love it. That's great.
Well, let's dive in. Let's start with innovation. Obviously, you're, I think, like I mentioned at the beginning, I think doing some really innovative things and at least thinking about a problem that is pretty common in dentistry differently than I've heard of in some ways.
So tell us a little bit about how you're innovating at Clever and what you hope the impact will be based on that innovation.
Yes. So we've actually, we've created something that, to my knowledge, no one else in the industry has. So it was all born from looking for our own resources for in-office internal-led marketing, and we couldn't really find any options other than either not really marketing at all, which I know some practices do, or kind of gutting through and trying to figure it out yourself, or the most common option would be outsourcing all your marketing to a large agency and spending thousands of dollars a month to have them run your social platforms, maybe your meta ads, your Google ads.
So we spent about 10 years gathering knowledge on the do-it-yourself route, and then we founded Clever, and it's a whole educational platform full of courses, guidebooks, quizzes, certifications, and you're the first that we're gonna announce this to, where we're about to make an exciting change on the platform. So it has been for the last year and a half subscription based. You could go through a full trial, and then you joined as a member, you paid a monthly fee and you had access to all the courses.
And we are just about to flip the script on that and change that. We are going to turn it into a shop. There's 30 courses right now.
And no, excuse me, offices will be able to get exactly what they need. So let's say that you need help with your social media. You could go and buy a social media bundle and get those courses.
Let's say you've been doing great on Instagram, but you need a little help engaging with your community or with your reputation, or maybe you need help with advertising. We're going to make it all a la carte, more accessible.
Great, sweet.
And my hope for all of this, my real hope with Clever is that it teaches your team in office, how to have a more authentic, more human connection, bring more humanity to dentistry, bring more joy to dentistry. It can be a scary place for a lot of people. So I want to teach your team how to be as authentic and communicative as possible.
Love it. Well, I mean, like you said, I mean, yeah, I think there's a lot of dental marketing agencies out there, of which we know many and are friends with many and think that they're doing a wonderful job, and it might not be for everyone, right? And so the idea of teaching people how to fish, instead of bringing them to fish themselves, I think is a really interesting one.
Tell us just a little bit more about kind of some of the results that you've seen in terms of like, all right, like, are teams able to grasp this? Are they able to really feel like, okay, cool, like, I'm not a dental marketer, so maybe I am tempted to just outsource that and be like, you know, somebody else's job now, right? What have you seen in terms of teams that are like, who's the right fit for it?
And then like, you know, give us some examples of like teams that have run with it maybe.
Sure. So I think what I want to say first of all, is that I'm not knocking agencies. There's definitely a place for agencies.
Obviously, I run the marketing inside of our home practice, but I still work with a great website development team. I still work with a company that handles our Google ads because they're so complex. What this is going to do is teach your team how to do everything that an agency can't do, right?
An agency is not at your Christmas party, they're not at your staff lunch, they're not walking around the building during the day. So I really believe that your brand as an office is every single thing and every single person that a patient can come into contact with. So let's say you have an amazing website, you have great Google reviews, but when they look you up online, they're expecting one picture of you.
And then when they call and maybe get that person at the front desk, the vibe's not the same. You know, maybe it's a little shaky on the phone. Maybe the assistant isn't super great at communicating.
There could be a lot of problems along the way that kind of break down that chain. So our program is designed to have one person leading and capturing all the content and helping everybody along. But it's designed to bring your whole office together and better at communicating and better at representing your brand.
And also doing the things that an agency can't do. An agency is not going to show up at a trunk or treat event in your community for you. So these are guidelines and resources for you to really nail down the local communication.
I always think that, you know, last time we were talking, you said something about how a really well run DSO could be like the Starbucks of dentistry. Everybody wants to go, everybody's familiar with it, you know you're going to get a good product, you know they're going to do the job right. So if you're operating like a Starbucks, my program and my resources would come in and make you not only the Starbucks of your town, but maybe the really great, chic, boutique coffee shop, that is not only wonderful at what they do, they're really good at the dentistry, but the vibe is immaculate.
I love going into an office. I love when our patients come in and our front desk is like, Matt, so good to see you. How are the kids?
How is your wife? How's work going? And it's not a very sterile kind of, what's your name?
What time is your appointment? There should be a curated human vibe there, and that's what we're trying to teach you how to do.
For sure. Well, I mean, I think one of the things that I see often, is we see stock photos on websites and we see things that are just, don't represent the office at all. And then, yeah, we see plenty of folks who are like, you have great Google reviews, but we know because we're collecting the data on some of this for our own customers, right?
Where it's like, what we see, what the external brand perception of your office is, meaning before someone has set foot in the office, doesn't necessarily match what happens when people get into your office. And that's a problem because if you can't follow up with what you've promised someone when they go to your website and when they start doing the initial research on you, from the moment that they then have to start interacting with your office, whether that's on the phone or whether that's when they come into the office, because maybe they booked online because you're thinking about that and doing that kind of stuff for patients, right? You know, then it really, it's harder actually, right?
Because you're not being consistent, right? And I think that congruency is really important for practices, just like you're talking about. So huge advocate of that, huge fan of making sure that the internal marketing, let's say, is just as effective as the external marketing.
Absolutely. And I think that, I mean, it's all true. Everything you said is 100 percent true, but the opposite is also true.
I could get on my soapbox for the rest of this episode about stock photos. I have such a hatred for them. But one of your questions that you sent me was, let's talk about technology and innovation.
Yeah.
So if you're thinking about dentistry, 30 years ago, we're all on paper charts. There's no way for a patient to interact with your office before the first visit to your office, right? So they're walking in and they're meeting you as strangers.
But with technology now and with social media now, especially if you have someone in the office every day able to capture content, you have the ability to put yourself out there, meet your patients where they are, which is scrolling on their phones at night. You can appear there, they can discover you, they get to know you prior to meeting you, which is a huge advantage. Then it's good for the patient when they're in need, when they need a doctor, they already have you top of mind to go to, they already have a built-in trust with you before they meet you.
It's good for you because why are you in this field? You want to help people, right? Now, you have the opportunity to help someone who needs to be helped because you've already connected before they even open the door to your practice.
It's a huge advantage with technology.
Totally. Well, I think we've seen some, well, at least I'm familiar with some, I'm sure you are as well. I'm sure most of our listeners will be too.
They're like, how do people find you online and all that stuff? So it's like someone's website, instead of being optimized for like, let me show you who we are, it's optimized for SEO or AEO or something like that, where it's like, what is a dental root canal? You're like, yeah, but they can just ask Chachabi to do that.
That is not necessarily there to help your patients, that's there to be like for SEO and we can all know that. I would much rather see like you're saying, hey, this is who we are, this is what we care about, this is the kinds of things that we stand up for. I think what we're talking about here, and so to the point of technology too, I think we, I see tons of dental websites that are just like, hey, we are super graded technology.
We have all this advanced technology in our office. But so does the office down the street and so does the office down the street. So does the office down the street.
What is setting you apart from the office down the street?
That's not a differentiator. But I think what you're saying is like, here's who we are and if you are by yourself, a unique and hopefully getting on the road to self-actualize human, that will come through in how you design your website, what content you put on there, what you put on social media, all of those things. And so I think oftentimes people try to differentiate on something that they might care about.
Like look at our new CBCT and it's like, I don't think a patient cares. Who cares? I honestly don't think they care.
It's great. You should amplify that you have the top technology in your office, but it's not what's making a patient walk in. And I'm not a doctor myself, so I may have a little bit more experience on the new patient side.
I communicate with them a lot more than maybe the clinical staff does. But think of the difference between someone walking in off the street who has no idea. They chose you maybe because of proximity, maybe because you're close, and it's vulnerable, right?
Dentistry can be vulnerable. Maybe they're afraid of pain, maybe they're in pain, maybe they're scared of cost, maybe they're afraid of judgment. And the experience of walking into a place where you're about to be laid back in a chair, maybe you're not going to be able to talk, you don't know anybody, you know, can be pretty frightening.
But compare it to someone walking in who's been on your Instagram, been on your website, been looking through your reviews, is watching 15 second videos of your doctor. And as soon as they walk in, they recognize the receptionist because she was just online, and oh, I know that assistant that's coming to grab me, and I've heard that doctor talk about compassion and dentistry, and I feel safe. Not even the tremendous difference in experience, but who's going to be more likely to return?
Who's going to be more likely to refer? Who's going to be more likely to accept treatment? It's never ending benefits, and so easy.
Totally agree. Totally agree. I think about this a lot and kind of think about the hospital space, in terms of like, well, yeah, all of that is great too, right?
But you go on the Cleveland Clinic website and you can see a lot about the actual care themselves and just the idea of transparency, of like, hey, here's who we are, here's how we're doing, here's where we want to get better. All of those things, I think that, again, those just create differentiation. I think people are just scared of it because they're like, well, what happens if someone sees something that they don't like?
And it's like, great, that person is now filtered out, right? Like, they're not for you and you're not for everyone and everyone is not for you. And so I feel like the idea of being able to really know who you are and again, just kind of like be able to put that out there to the world in a number of different fashions and formats is just super important.
Yeah, you have to be able to connect at the end of the day. I mean, I think that's why you and I got along so well, is it's all about bringing humanity back to dentistry. It doesn't have to be such a sterile place.
Love it. Well, so you're doing a lot, right? You kinda like, hey, you're in this practice for a long time, you're seeing all these problems, you start Clever, like, all right, cool.
We're like doing some cool stuff. You're making changes based on what you're learning. So what are you kind of working on?
What are your goals for this year, kind of personally, professionally? Like, what are you hoping to achieve? We're still relatively early on in the year, so we're curious to like, hey, what are you chasing after this year?
Well, number one, professionally, I'll start there. Clever's kind of restructuring is very exciting to me. I think it's going to make all of these materials a lot more accessible for clinicians, so I'm excited about that.
And then our home practice is also in a chapter of expansion. So we just opened a second practice, Who's to Tell, What's in the Future. We just hired our sixth doctor.
So for us, that's very fun, and I'm having a lot of fun kind of handling the marketing and branding side of that. We're about to do a remodel on the second office, so I'm really looking forward to that. That's just fun for me.
Totally. You're taking on a lot right there, right? Just even on that part without like Clever at all, so that's amazing.
But you know, it's fun because I work with the same people in both companies, so we're together every day, and we can strategize about both, and that's a good time. Personally, on the other end, speaking of taking on a lot, I kind of just want to slow down, which is difficult. We have three kids that are 11 and younger.
We have a very rambunctious golden retriever, so the house is full and noisy all the time. But my husband was actually very, very ill last year. He had a big health scare, and he was hospitalized for a couple of weeks, and that kind of situation will force you to slow down if you're not even keen or open to slowing down.
So it can be kind of hard for me to shut off when I get home and to stop working and stop thinking, but that's my personal goal. When I go home, I want to be home and do the mom thing and do the wife thing and kind of leave that at the office.
Yeah, 100%. Well, I mean, I think the idea of just being able to be present and be human and be connected, right, like whether you're at work, whether you're at home, you know, is just being at that presentness, I think is such a gift, both when you're at work and when you're at home. And so I love that goal and I think it's a very worthy goal.
It's hard, isn't it? I mean, do you find that you have to kind of try to detach?
For sure. It is not easy, you know? I don't think for anyone.
And so yeah, just being intentional about it, right? It feels like the first step, feels like the first way to go about it. And, you know, I am firmly convinced that we are in the first comings of like, not that technology is going away from our life, but that there will be like a proper place for it, right?
That will, you know, especially with all the stuff around like the Anxious Generation and the Jonathan Hyde book that came out a couple of years ago and social media in general, you know, we're talking about social media, but like that there will be, you know, kind of a especially for younger kids, right? And even for ourselves, right? Because we're super guilty of it as well.
But that there will be some reckoning, you know, over the next 10 years of like, oh, this was like the, you know, when it came out that like cigarettes were really bad for you, or fast food was really bad for you. There's like this initial like, whoa, like this is so cool. We couldn't do this before.
And then people are like, well, this is actually killing you.
And, you know, I kind of feel the same way about smartphones and, you know, just it's, it's so, it's so fascinating as a parent to see that in my girls. Because I started, obviously social media was not like huge when I was in college, kind of got big toward the end of my college career. And now I work in it, I'm in it every day.
And our oldest just started middle school. So we got her like, a not smart smartphone. So she can text us when she gets to school, we know where she's at.
But watching her kind of walk around the house with the phone in her hand is making us look at our patterns. Like, how often are we sitting here with the phone in our hand and where is she picking that up from? And she's 11 and she's already been asking me, like, my friends have Snapchat, my friends have TikTok and I'm like, not for you.
And I think she thought I'd be an advocate because I'm in social media every day and I'm the opposite. I'm like, no, you don't need to be on any of those platforms at 11.
Totally. Well, it's like, you know, all the folks who run those companies, right? They're like, their kids go to some classical education school where they're not even allowed to have any sort of devices.
And you're like, yeah, it's definitely one of those, like, you know, don't smoke your own supply type of thing, right? Where it's like, hey, like, you know, so yeah, for sure. We just got a dumb phone.
We got like a landline. So my kids can like call their, you know, grandparents and their friends and, you know, whatever that have dumb phones too. So yeah, it's pretty fun to like, oh yeah, look at you just like chatting on this old device that we all grew up on.
So you have to be in the kitchen, corded to the wall.
It could be, but we do have the cordless versions, you know. But yeah, I mean, I think there's something to that of like learning how to communicate with people, learning how to talk with people.
Right.
Like we remember that of like sitting on the phone with like two hours with your friend talking about stuff. You're like, yeah, you're learning how to communicate. You're learning, you know, what, what this world looks like.
So I think it's important. But yeah, I'm certainly not handing my kid a smartphone or even their own phone at this point.
So it's a balance. And it's hard when their peers have it, you know, when she's telling me like my friend's on Snapchat. And I'm like, oh, sorry.
I know you're not going to be.
It is. And that's the I think, yeah, the kind of Jonathan Haidt, like it's a, it's a community problem, right? It's not an individual problem because you can't be the only one.
And it has to be like a shared solution amongst many people. So I think we'll get there, right? I think we've seen that in schools and whatever.
We are way off of dental marketing right now, but hey, it's okay. I think we're talking about human connection and that's what matters, right? And so absolutely love it.
Well, let's reroute back to human connection, making dentists are more human. Obviously, you're super passionate about that. You mentioned your husband having this health scare.
I think it's always fascinating to be a patient. And obviously, I'm sure given that it was high impact for your family. I'm guessing you probably had some moments where you're like, oh, wow, here's how this feels as a patient or here's as feels not as the patient but as the spouse of a patient.
So when you think of yourself in that role, what were some things that maybe that care team did well or didn't do well? How can that care team build trust with you or how should they have built trust with you? And how do you then take that and help your team operationalize that in your office and beyond?
I will say one of the best things, he was in the ICU for almost two weeks. One of the best things that they did for me as a wife, as a spouse was just being accessible. So I could be with him from, let's say, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. But at a certain point, I have to go home.
I have to get the kids in bed. I have to get them to school the next day. And it was very nice just to have access.
I think when somebody's scared or referring to dentistry, if someone is calling you because they're in pain, I think the worst thing that you can do is make them wait. You know, if you're getting the emergency voicemails, if you have the weekend messages and you're not returning them, every hour that goes by that that patient's waiting is breaking that connection down a little bit more.
Totally.
So the team was fantastic. They were super accessible with me. I could call them when I woke up in the morning.
I could check on them before I went to bed at night if I wasn't there. But I always think of two different experiences that I've had as a patient in healthcare that kind of stand apart for me on the spectrum. So one was during my last pregnancy with my daughter.
I'm sure you went with your wife or you know from your wife, but when you're pregnant, you're at the doctor all the time.
All the time.
You're going once a month and then you're going once every two weeks, and then you're going weekly at the end. Every time I showed up at the OB, they still were checking me in very clinically and cold. Like I said before, what's your name?
Who are you here to see? What time is your appointment? I'm thinking in the back of my head, I've been coming here once every two weeks for nine months.
I feel like you should know my face when I walk in the door, or at least you have a little bit of a cheat sheet in front of you in the schedule. You should be able to say, oh, that's Mrs. Nona, she was just here two weeks ago. So my practitioner was great, but that connection never really happened.
And then on the opposite of that, about a decade ago, we were looking for a new pediatrician for the family, and one of my girlfriends recommended doctor in town. So I go to him and met my first appointment with my daughter, and he says casually, you know, how did you hear of me? I said, oh, my friend told me about it.
And he goes, oh, yeah, oh, she's great. She works at the hospital. How is her son?
What is it, Parker? And just off the top of the head, the fact that he knew who I was talking about, knew where she worked, knew her son's name, told me within two minutes, like, all right, you're going to be my doctor forever. Still his patient 10 years later.
There you go.
I'm not, the kids are. But when my husband was sick, he switched all of our appointments to virtual. I didn't ask him to do that.
He said, would this be easier for you if I made the appointments virtual? So just the thoughtfulness there, that's the kind of relationship and experience that I think patients tell their friends about. That's what gets you referrals.
I cannot tell you over the last decade how many moms I've referred to his practice. Just because of amazing connection.
Yeah, right. Like that, it trust that, that effort, that little bit of extra effort goes so far and really creating, I think those kind of zealous advocates, right? The disciples, you know, versus when we kind of think about the NPS, like, yeah, you're somewhere in the middle, maybe, you know, like, it's fine, I continue to go here, but like, I'm not, I'm not that, right?
It's whatever, it's just a dentist.
Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't often take that much, but when you can really connect with folks that way.
No, and if we've put it into play at our practice, like if someone just heard the story about the pediatrician and thought, well, no way that can't be me. I can't possibly remember every patient and their kids names. We work it into our clinical notes.
So we have like dental history, medical history. We also have a social history where we may know, you know, patients expecting or their daughter is going to have a baby in May. And then, you know, when they come back to the next visit, you can ask, oh my gosh, how's your daughter?
How's the new grandbaby? And it kicks off that relationship. Even if you kind of have a cheat code in your notes, it's beautiful work for you be able to look at your note from six months ago and give yourself a refresher on, okay, I know where this patient works.
I know about their family. I know about their kids. They were going on a cruise.
I'll ask about that. That should all be worked into your clinical notes.
100 percent. And it doesn't take a lot, right? It just takes a little bit of training.
Like, here's an idea, I think, for folks as well, right? Like, asking great questions is a part of then figuring that stuff out, right? If you're just like, if they come in, they're like, hey, how's your mouth feeling, right?
Like, you're not going to get anything about that patient, right? But if you're like, hey, you know, we don't have a ton of time to talk about this, but I would love to know one thing in your life that you're just like super stoked on right now, you know? Like, what's one thing that's like really getting you out of bed in the morning or making you jazzed right now?
And it's like, cool, like, then just write that down, you know? And be like, oh, last time you were here, you mentioned, you know, yeah, doing this thing or you were starting this business or whatever it is, right? It's like, but you have to be intentional about asking the question.
Yes.
And, you know, yeah, you probably don't want to be like, hey, what's the worst thing going on in your life right now? Like, that's still a very deep question. But probably not, not important for the dental office, right?
It's not a therapy session. So, you know, like, phrase it in the positive way, like ask them what they're excited about. And yeah, then you can you can write that down, whether that's their kids or, you know, whatever.
So just the ability to like ask the right question and kind of step back from like, okay, cool. Yeah, I have to do all this other stuff. But if I do this one thing, it's going to be important for like our relationship.
And it doesn't have to take a long time. That takes 20 seconds.
You know, we have one hygienist that comes up every time she grabs a patient. You know, a lot of them will say, like, how are you today? You know, go ahead and come back with me.
She always phrases it as, what are you excited about today? What do you have going on today? And I can hear them when they leave the waiting room to go back to her operatory.
And across the board, personality wise, you know, little old women to teenage boys, the conversation starts with like, oh, well, this is what I'm doing after I leave here, and this is what I have going on tonight, and then next week. And I'm watching her in real time, build this incredible rapport before they're even completed, before she's taken an x-ray or put on a bib. And the reviews we get mention her by name, like, she's incredible, she makes me feel so good.
And I'm like, that's done in one question. What are you excited about today?
Yeah, totally. It's amazing. Phrase the question right, and you can crush it, right?
So love it. Well, let's finish with one question here, hopefully a good one for you. When you like, so as it relates to marketing, especially, right?
Like, obviously, it's DifferentKind. We're super deep into patient experience, like, you know, across the board from the whole, you know, from from first kind of ideation of the patient in your head to like, hey, re-care. But what's one thing that you think is super important, maybe overlooked and how have you kind of operationalize that?
I will go back to, I think something that's overlooked is the vulnerability that the patient's going through. And that's not unusual. I think anybody at their place of work is thinking about what they have to do to get through their day.
But I think what you could do a little bit better is put yourself in the patient's shoes. Once every few months, we like to walk into our building and assess it as a new patient would. And that is we do who come and go every single day.
But we have conversation starters around the lobby. We have bobble heads made for each doctor. Every single person wants to talk about that.
We have, they're great. I highly recommend that for practice. We have a digital frame going of like pictures of people from the office at our holiday parties, or we have a summer pool party, or just makes a little bit more homey.
We have good music playing. We make sure the room is clean, the magazines are put away. We have a QR code so they can get on and scroll our social media while they're waiting, if they're waiting that long.
But really curating a comfortable vibe. Like I said, your brand is so much more than your logo, than your colors, than the paint on the wall. Your brand is every person they come in contact with, and everything they come in contact with.
So you should be thinking about the entire appointment start to finish. How's reception? How's the assistant?
How's the hygienist? How's the doctor? What's it like checking out?
Is the bathroom clean? Is the bathroom well-stocked? How do your rooms look?
How does the lobby look? I think it's important, minimally quarterly, to walk into your building that you're so familiar with with fresh eyes and go, okay, what is a patient seeing around here?
Yeah, I love that. Absolutely love that. Yeah, I feel like it's one of those things where, yeah, I mean, it only takes one part of that experience for everything to be ruined, right?
Whether that's one interaction with somebody who's just having an off day or, you know, one little thing. We hear and see it all the time, right? And feedback of like, you know, hey, this small thing, like we had somebody recently talking about, like, I had a long appointment and there was no parking, you know, like it was in a big city.
And so they're like, I had to leave to go like, feed my meter in the middle, you know, or whatever. And it's like, oh, wow, like, that's not something that we even think about necessarily, right? But it's like, only takes one little thing for a patient to be like, wow, this-
Yeah, what a disconnect.
Yeah, like I wasn't, you know, not that they weren't trying to, but it's like, oh, we overlooked that. And so then it's like, cool, now you can close that gap. Now you can close that gap.
Now you can close that gap. And we're never going to be perfect. But like, once we're aware of those things, how can we close that gap for folks, I think goes a long way in helping keep patients and create those zealous advocates for us, right?
Yeah, that's a great point. You should definitely, I am a big fan of taking feedback in that way. Like, sometimes we'll think of that if our staff needs work.
We had an experience not too long ago where our practice manager needed some work. And she was paired with an associate doctor and a kind of new assistant. And she got out of the appointment and she's like, the dental care was great.
Appointment was a little clunky. She's like, we're going to have to rework who's working with who until we get a little bit more training on board. And it's like, great, I love to know that.
I don't want to find that out from a patient and their first experience. I'm really glad that you said something. And then we tweaked it and then it's better going forward.
Yeah, I think the CX World Red is like the next issue avoided, right? You're like, cool, now that won't happen again. Like we've learned it and now we won't have to deal with it again.
And so yeah, just being open to that, I think is huge. So I love it. Well, Jaclyn, I love the conversation.
Obviously, I think we agree on a lot in terms of where dentistry can continue to root itself. And I use that word intentionally to root itself in the things that matter most about humanity when it comes, especially to health care and to dental care. If people want to learn more about you, if they want to learn more about Clever, tell us where to go.
Sure. The website is cleverdentalco.com, cleverdentalco.com, and we're by the same name on every platform you could think of. So you can find us on Instagram, you can message us there, you can find us on Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn.
If you're looking for me personally, I would suggest my LinkedIn page. Just how we met.
That is how we met. There you go. Love it.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. I really appreciate you coming in and sharing some wisdom. I'm excited for the launch that you have and excited for the impact that this will have on offices hopefully throughout the country, right?
They can take it and say, great, we might not be fishermen now, but we're about to learn. We might not be Fisher people. We're going to teach you.
We're going to, yeah, you're going to learn, right? So that's awesome. Cool.
Well, I hope you have a great one.
Thanks so much.
Thanks so much, Matt.
