Complaints…should we welcome them?Emma John, business manager and director of Absolute Dental, multi award winning practice, and Absolute Dental Training, a very successful dental training consultancy. Emma's passion is providing outstanding levels of customer care and has trained numerous dental teams through out the UK. We pride ourselves at Absolute Dental on our outstanding customer care and we do encourage our patients to give us feedback to help maintain these standards.
Emma regularly writes articles for the publication Dentinal Tubules and has had the following very interesting article published:
With the compliance required by CQC the ever important complaints system is going to have to be more robust and transparent than ever
This in itself could present a problem as we live in a society where people (including our patients) are more stressed than ever. They want more for their money and if they don’t get it, well the complaints are just waiting to happen.
The complaint of course is a two way thing. As a consumer I feel I should be able to present my grumble, it may not be important to them but to me it has a huge amount of relevance.
Am I as receptive when I am on the receiving end?
It takes a huge amount of training to be truly empathetic and understanding to a complaint or feedback and it is only too easy to be encouraged to lose your temper and be reactive.
Is your team really prepared to deal with a complaint? They are probably aware of the complaints procedure beautifully written and safely stored away in the practice manual. But would they really know how to handle and diffuse the situation?
The skill of listening to the complaint and then acting on it could be valuable to your business. It just might be something you can act on and improve. A real opportunity to impress and excel in areas where other retail and hospitality businesses fail time and time again.
Patients (our customers) do discuss their experiences with friends and colleagues and they can and will always try and focus on the bad. We need to give them a different story to tell.
It is our job to listen and allow them to tell us exactly what is wrong.
Make sure that we stay calm, with positive open body language, thus encouraging the conversation
Continue to listen
Ask what you can do to help?
Continue to listen
Take notes, as the patients concern is important to you
Continue to listen, assure them you will look fully into the situation, and keep them informed. Thank them for taking the time to speak to you; they may just have notified you of an important hole in your management system.
Article written by Emma John
