Do you speak your patients' language?
As a dentist, the words and body language you use to explain concepts to your patients can leave them feeling more confused than informed. How does that happen?
During DSD Residency 1 courses, Christian Coachman acts out a humorous scene between a dentist and patient to illustrate this point. The dentist tells the patient what will happen in a procedure using dental terms and hand gestures - the more he waves his hands about, the less the patient understands. It gets a lot of laughs from participants every time.
The key? Treatment explanations have no impact when you don’t show the value the treatment will bring; only then do you truly speak the patient’s language. This is what the Emotional Game is all about.
DSD Residency Tip #10: The Emotional Game Experience
Christian Coachman often explains how in a dental office, every little detail a patient experiences makes us gain or lose emotional ‘credits’ in their mind. Negative experiences lose us credits while positive ones earn us more. You serve great coffee while they are waiting? You gain a credit. Boring music playing in the office? You lose a credit. They fail to understand what you are explaining about their treatment? You lose a few more credits.
The Emotional Game is an exercise Christian Coachman created to help you evaluate the impact of every single experience a patient has in their journey with your dental office.
Because while we may believe a patient says yes or no to treatment simply because they liked the treatment plan and accepted our fees, in reality there are hundreds of subconscious reasons that all play a part in their decision.
And not only does every detail count - every detail has a different value for different people. Just like we all have different likes and dislikes, we all place more or less importance on certain things. That’s why if you want to level up the experience you provide, it’s crucial to define the ideal type of patient you want to attract, and really understand the things that matter most to them.
How does the Emotional Game work?
- The vertical axis ⬆️ shows how motivated your patient is to go ahead with treatment and the horizontal axis ➡️ is the timeline of all the experiences they have with you.
- We have a green zone 🟢 and a red zone 🔴. The green zone is our goal: it shows a patient who is motivated to go ahead with dental treatment. The more positive experiences a patient has, the more likely they are to be in this green zone.
- There is a line that separates the red and the green, and this line can go up and down. Why? The more complex and expensive a treatment is, the more emotional credits you need to help a patient say yes.
How to apply the Emotional Game in your own dental office:
The Emotional Game is an exercise that’s most valuable with the input of your whole team. Here’s how to play:
- Explain the 7 moments of the patient journey
- Explain that every detail counts when it comes to gaining or losing emotional credits
- Explain the Emotional Game graph and how it works
- Focus on each moment of the patient journey in turn and list every detail you believe may be important to generate value for your clients
- Based on the ideal patient that you want to attract, brainstorm and prioritize the most important improvements you can make to generate positive credits
We believe that everything in life can be analyzed as if we were in this Emotional Game. Major decisions in life are usually emotionally driven, and the experience you offer your patients in your dental office will have a big impact when it comes to the moment that you present your treatment plan.
Learn the smart strategies that elevate patient experience at DSD Residency 1
At DSD Residency 1 courses, Christian Coachman explores a new dental office model that is beneficial not just for dentistry, but also for your dental business.
A key part of this are the smart strategies that will help you to improve the emotional experience you provide for patients at every step.
Want to learn these strategies? We have DSD Residency 1 courses taking place in exciting locations around the world in the second half of 2022. Schedule a call with one of our sales reps to learn more about DSD Residency courses.
