The Dental Practice Accelerator programme is fully underway for winner Hannan Saleem and his practice – hear more about the recent training day with Shaz Memon and Ramin Semsar.
Having won the Dental Practice Accelerator, Hannan Saleem and his practice London Dental Centre are looking forward to reaping the benefits of the programme. Dentistry caught up with Hannan and his team during a training day with Shaz Memon and Ramin Semsar designed to help them hone their social media management and customer service skills.
Attracting the patients you want
Shaz Memon, founder of Digimax Dental, kicked off the training day with a focus on social media management, giving the team tips on harnessing the power of Instagram to make people feel connected to the London Dental Centre brand.
Shaz effectively helped the team to see things a little differently, he explained: ‘Instagram can build our brand. It can give us a captive audience of people who follow us and like our messages and like us for who we are; a bit like the patients that you gel with right now. There’s never been an easier time to leverage social media to get whatever we want in life, especially the kind of patients that you want.’
By sharing with the idea that underneath it all, most of us are simply interested in everyone else’s business, whether we like to admit it or not, Shaz helped the team to unlock different ideas about the content they could create to tap into this. Using the things that are individual to the practice, such as location, hobbies and personalities, they can build on the ‘behind the scenes’ posts, stories and reels that people really want to see and engage with.
This resonated well with Hannan Saleem: ‘It was a lightbulb moment for me when Shaz was talking about building the rapport before the patient even enters the practice. A lot of the work is done before patients even arrive as they have seen our dentists on our Instagram or on our website.
‘It’s also really important to make sure that all of the imagery on our social media is personable and relatable. I think that’s something patients
really appreciate.’
Delivering a five-star experience
The London Dental Centre team were then treated to the superb insight from Ramin Semsar, one of the trainers at Clinics, on delivering five-star customer service. With a wealth of experience working in guest relations for luxury hotels and training the hospitality industry for more than 15 years, Ramin has plenty of insight to share, so the team were in for a real treat.
Ramin gave the team advice and practical tips on giving their customers a fantastic customer service experience every time, in all areas of the practice. He explained: ‘It’s all about the customer service experience. We tend to forget that customers are not technical and the product is not the key, it’s the experience they encounter. How do we make them feel? How do we treat them? What do they walk away thinking about us as a business and the experience that they’ve had? For me, that’s always the main focal point.’
Setting the tone
Hannan was delighted with this element of the training, telling us: ‘Ramin showed us that it’s not only about giving patients the standard minimum expectations but it’s about setting our own standards, how we carry ourselves and how we interact with patients. I think it’s really important to reaffirm that to the team, and for me it’s important for the system of managing expectations of patients and to really set the tone of future interactions.’
Dr Ioannis Plastargias, one of the dentists at London Dental Centre, commented: ‘The training has changed my approach in many different ways. The way we communicate with patients, the way we communicate with the members of our team – everything is going to improve. I think we’re taking further steps in enhancing both ourselves, the image of our practice and everything that our practice has to offer both the patients and the community.’
An exciting future
At the end of the training day, we spoke to the team about their key take-aways from the day. Hannan shared: ‘A crucial moment for me during the branding session was learning about meeting the patient at eye level and really taking control of those interactions and those conversations. We’ve never had too much formal training on customer service so it brings a fresh perspective on how we should be interacting with patients.
‘Levelling up our online presence will help the business because the patients will know what they can expect when they come to the London Dental Centre, which can essentially help to make it a seamless journey. It really helps the patient experience if they know they will be greeted by the front of house staff once they enter, then they will see a dentist who they’ve seen on social media or on our websites. In this way, a lot of the work will be done before any treatments are even carried out.’
‘We are only going to enhance further’
Dr Ioannis concluded: ‘The dental practice has been fantastic since the launch of the Dental Accelerator Programme in October 2023. I think it has brought about significant improvements in the practice. Staff management has improved significantly, as has communication between members of our team. The practice has purchased a new Itero scanner, which is very helpful for Invisalign cases – I think we’re always trying to improve now and we are only going to enhance further.’
Shaz was thrilled with the reaction from the team on the day and told us: ‘I’m really hopeful that the next time I come to the London Dental Centre and Hannan’s team they are going to be creating some amazing content and really opening up to the world and sharing their story, more behind the scenes, more real authentic content and doing away with the generic content they’ve been putting out so far.’
If you would like to accelerate your practice and clinical growth, Align Technology can help you get to the next level, leveraging the Invisalign system, Itero intraoral scanners, and the Align Digital Platform. For more information about its education and growth support programmes visit www.invisalign.co.uk/gp/become-a-provider.
