155: Merging Technology with Remote Teams

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott. And today we have Brenda McNulty and Callie Ward from Support DDS on with us. And we're going to be talking about probably the hottest topic, which is how do we overcome inflation? I think a lot of the marketplaces now looking at recession. And I'll be honest, as someone who has multiple locations, I kind of welcome a little bit of recession to bring some pressure off of this workforce. I'm much more concerned about the inflationary environment. And there's a lot of talk around, and I'm probably one really waving this flag of needing to figure out how to implement more technology. But right there with it is how are we going to centralize and offshore workload, and how did these come together? So we wanted to talk today with Brenda and Callie a lot around. How does technology and this offshore inshoring type work, insourcing type work, work together? What are some of the misnomers that go with that? So with that, you know, Brenda, if you want to just kind of introduce yourself and Callie, give a little bit of background for our listeners and then we'll dive right in.

Of course. So as you said, my name is Brenda McNulty. I'm the dental group director for Support DDS. Work for Support DDS. Oh, gosh, almost three years now. But I have about 30 years of dental experience, and I take great pride in the fact that we're trying to help our dentist work so smarter, not harder. I know that's an overused term, but I also want them to make the most out of all of their money that they're producing. I would like to see that they can cut their costs and that we can solve problems. So Support TDS is the perfect fit.

You know, it's interesting because those concepts used to be a little bit more, like, aspirational, like, okay, how could I put a little more frosting on the cake. And now it's becoming the cake. Right. It's becoming critical in running a good business. Kelly, you want to give us a little bit of your background?

Absolutely. Thank you so much. My name is Kelly Ward. I have been in the dental industry for 30 plus years and I have recently joined support DDS. So I have been with this amazing company since July. And I think the thing that feels so good that I think is really impactful is what an amazing solution it is for, for our clients, what an amazing solution it is for our employees and how it's really making an impact on this world in a positive light. I think that there's, you know, we talk about inflation, there's doom and gloom, but there's also how can we make something positive come out of a negative? And I think this kind of a solution definitely does that.

Yeah, there's definitely a global connection here that could actually help solve a lot of different things. Callie, where were you before Support dds?

So I was a consultant with Productive Dentist Academy and have worked with many different types of clients and was really impacted by the turnover that we were seeing. The great resignation that we saw post Covid all of those challenges and just was not seeing the caliber of candidates that were excited to show up for work and willing to do a job. And that's sometimes a thankless task. Making those recare calls are not always, you know, the most fun. But we found a solution that these candidates have just been so overqualified, so excited to have an opportunity to work and eager and it fills that niche for the dental practice so that the team that they do have can be present with their patients and somebody else is working proactively on the practice. I think that's the shift where we were just surviving. We were just doing bare minimum to take care of the patients at hand. And we weren't proactively calling unscheduled treatment, we weren't proactively calling recare. We have some technology that was able to do that in the background, but that does not replace the human interaction. For me, that relationship is something that I coached massively with my doctors to build relationships and with the teams. And so this solution gives that opportunity of building those relationships and they're your team members.

So much of the dso, we'll call it the Growth, the entrepreneur side of dentistry has been somewhat benchmark on how many locations or a new associate or that kind of growth. And I've always felt like growth can be external and those are great measurements because that's ultimately how many patients you're able to have impact on, et cetera. But the internal growth, the personal development all the way through the, you know, in those four walls, what are we doing to make things more efficient, more cost effective? Better impact, better experience for the patient is also growth. And I think we're going into a time where as entrepreneurs, we're going to need to measure growth on how well we're creating efficiency for this long term environment. Now, Brenda, I'm curious. A myth that we were talking about just before this is, you know, I'm pretty aspirational when it comes to technology. An entrepreneur friend of mine said, you know, Emmett, this would be really easy if we could get rid of the employees and the customers. The human part is really difficult. You know, when I whiteboard something, when I have this vision, man, it looks so clean, I can even throw it into a spreadsheet. It looks beautiful. When I go to execute, the human component is really difficult and super messy. And it's not just within DSOs, it's not just group environment. Individual practices are struggling with this. I was talking, I was up at ada, which we've created this amazing bridge and relationship with adso, ADA and now all the other dental associations. And I was talking to some of their leadership who have individual practices. And he had hired a practice manager, had offered her a good amount of money and, and because he was struggling to get somebody in. And Friday confirmed everything's good. Monday, she no shows. And that's kind of become a new. I don't know, it's an unprofessionalism, frankly, but it's kind of the new environment. And so, you know, my first place is like, so how do we get technology to do this? How do we get. But technology first off is pretty far from, you know, automating everything. And number two, I don't know that it can. Well, I know it can't completely eliminate that human interaction. So curious your thoughts on that, Brenda? You know, where have you seen the technology been helpful and where is it, you know, been overthought?

I absolutely love technology in the dental workspace. I think that it has come a long, long way since way back in the day when Callie and I started and when you started in it, it's definitely come a long way. But what we know is although I can go online and I can schedule an appointment, I'm doing nothing to build the trust like, and confidence of that relationship with the patient and the office. And if we don't have someone picking up the phone, which you know, 75% of people will not a voicemail. And of those 75, 85% of them will never call you back. Now, people are spending a ton of money on marketing, and I know that they want to showcase the beautiful people that they have on the telephones, the beautiful people that can say, you know what? You are going to love our office. And this is why. So although we can replace the scheduling click, we can even replace the confirmation. But think of the red carpet experience with actually calling that new patient and not saying, hey, we're calling to remind you you have this appointment. No, we're calling to know what it is that we can do to make this a wonderful experience for you on Thursday. We've reserved one hour of our time specifically for you. And people want that extra touch. And you know as well as I do, dental offices are popping up everywhere, everywhere. So if you don't answer that phone, they're going to call the next person on the list or the person that spends more money on technology and has the Google Ad that pops up before and after your listing when they go and search you. So, I mean, you do need that, but you also need that personal touch.

You know, an interesting statistic, I don't know if everyone knows, is 35% of phone calls going into a dental office on average. So sometimes worse aren't answered. So to your point, when I talk to a Gary Bird or I talk to Amber Nish, Chief Marketing Officer, Community Dental Partners, one of the biggest things is they work with other people, is they always see this, hey, what marketing idea can I do? And what clicks would work well here? And what about this strategy? And what if I did this? And most of the time in that funnel, there's lots of dollars going in, in the top, and then they're leaking out, and the confirmation and the scheduling, et cetera, it's almost like someone's spending a ton of money on marketing for a restaurant. Someone comes in, sits down and like, there's no menu. You know, like they can't execute on actually buying stuff. And that's what we've done in dentistry for so long, we're almost used to it. It's the blessing of having a high margin, high demand business. But times are changing. Not necessarily on the demand, but definitely on the cost and the margin. So we have to be more efficient. We just can't have some of that leakage anymore.

You know what, it goes the opposite way, too. If I am looking up a dental office and I'm having a hard time finding them online. I don't see any social media presence. I don't see any use of technology. I'm going to think that they're probably still going to have me spit in a spittoon and be putting in the silver amalgam fillings and not be able to do an implant. So I get the relationship that we need to have with technology. But there definitely is that personal touch that needs to come into play too. You can't just replace it.

Are you all able to work with practices? Let's say somebody has never centralized before. They're used to being in everybody being in four walls. Are you able to teach them how to do kind of this more in sourced, outsourced solution?

Absolutely. One of the first things we do is we go to the client and we say, gather your team up. Let's see where they are in their headspace. Ask them, what are you doing right now that you think is below your skill level or you don't enjoy doing? Because we know team morale plays a huge part in case acceptance and everything. So once you get that list, say if we were to take those things off of your plate, what could you be doing with your time? And that's when you'll find out some of the things that aren't being done that you thought were being done. And then that is how we sit down and we find out. Okay, so if we were to utilize insourcing and we were to get these remote team members, now we know what type of tasks it is that they're going to be doing for us. What else can we do to kick it up a notch? We've even done where we've had discovery calls with somebody with a large DSO and they say, I think my new patient call is going fairly well and we'll do a call with them on it and they'll go, no, I did not want the call to go that way. How would your team do it? We say, well, it's different because we don't have people coming in and checking in and out and phones ringing. We just have that new patient phone call that we get to focus on. So yes, we can roll out the red carpet. We can ask those hard questions. And what we have determined is when we are deciding, okay, we want to do a call center. It's not necessarily a call center. It is, what can we do to kick up what we're already doing up a notch? What can we do to represent our mission and vision that's up there on the wall and get us closer to that? Not Farther away. And then we.

It's really having division of labor, though, having them dedicated to one task at a. At a cost ratio, that really makes sense. You know, one of the things that drove my team, some of the different departments who've used Support DDS is frankly, they just got tired of the entitlement they were getting in the interviews or the lack of interviews they were getting in America. Right. So they just said, man, I'm getting. And I'm curious if this is still the case. I'm getting tons of applicants with Support dds. They're eager, they're hungry. You know, not all of them are equal. So you want to interview them, find the right fit, et cetera. But the difference between that eagerness versus, frankly, somebody onshore who was, you know. Well, I don't. Well, half of them don't show up to interviews anyway, so it's really hard to judge them. But. But then even making. I mean, this is the weirdest thing to me is just making the offer, people accepting them. I'm seeing it even in six figure positions, them no showing. So is that something that's driving people to support? I mean, are you still seeing that, by the way? Or is it now with Zimbabwe and others the same? Or do you still get a nice list of applicants who are very eager to work?

Well, Kelly and I can both tell you that they are amazing candidates.

Incredible.

The best thing about it is the office tells us I'm looking for this, this, this, this and that in my new remote team member. You could put an ad in the paper and you would might get some people apply and you might get somebody to show up to the interview. But what Callie and I and the rest of our team are doing is we're really delivering your perfect fit on a silver platter and say, which one do you want? And it's as if you're in a very fine dining restaurant and the three desserts come out and you're like, I couldn't go wrong with any of those. Which one is going to taste the best?

Well, if you're me, then you end up getting all three.

Yeah, that's true. But Callie and I have both. I mean, Callie's had two people that were going to get one and ended up with all of them. Right, Kelly?

Right.

And.

And I think that's exactly why I made the shift to Support DDS was that I was seeing with my clients the lack of team showing up for interviews and knew that this is a huge gap and it affects, you know, they were in. They were I was consulting with them and we would go backwards with all the success that we had met made when they would lose team and they couldn't find or replace that team. And so I saw this huge need and then to sit in on these interviews and to see the caliber of candidates, it's been mind blowing. Super qualified, overqualified, in fact. And yet what you talked about is the eagerness, right. Their perspective, their initiative, the level of engagement and desire to learn and to perform is hands down more than I've seen in the last 10 years in dentistry. I mean I.

Go ahead, go ahead. Well, can I ask, like you guys keep saying, overqualified, can you give us just some tactical stuff like what's a typical qualifications that they have?

Well, at least a university education.

Wow.

They, they all have a four year college degree. We've had people that are masters of law, we've had dentists, we've had electrical engineers, biochemical engineers, you name it. That is the large pool.

These are people who know how to learn and how to consume data. How is the English component perfect?

English is their first language. It is a British colony. They hate it when I say this, Emmett, but you can attest to it because you've spoken to our team members. I think they sound like you took somebody from England and somebody from Australia and you squished them together. They say, no, we sound like we're from Zimbabwe. And that is absolutely right. They sound like from Zimbabwe, but they have this royal sound to them. If you think about it and you call the Ritz Carlton and let's say you call the Ritz Carlton in the Deep south. You're not talking to somebody that sounds like they're from the Deep South. Somebody that you know is sitting in a boat in there with their fishing pole. Somebody that other people can relate to. You're sounding, your person is going to sound like somebody that is from the UK because it's associated with that high level of customer service. And that is what our team members.

No, that is a reality. That that accent's one that. Yeah, you always sound more sophisticated with that accent. So on a tactical basis as well, like if I'm sitting here listening to this and I'm thinking, okay, you know, obviously I can't have him be my dental assistant. Right. Arms don't quite reach that far. What are some tactical things? And kind of start with the most obvious ones and then we can work out from there. But what are like the no brainers where you're having, you know, lots of people utilize Them and then maybe we can talk about a few of the more innovative fringe ideas.

Well, the no brainers are the things that the office hates to do. Insurance verification, claims follow up and last minute filling of the schedule. Confirmations are not normally something that they don't like doing, but they think it's below them. So we oftentimes do that. The new approach, and I'd say what we're getting a lot of people asking for is that director of first impression, somebody who takes those new patient phone calls. They are able to spend as much time as they need to to build that relationship. They send the doctor a summary of that new patient, they confirm the call ahead of time, and then they even call the patient two days after to make sure that we met their expectations.

Are they getting the initial call into the practice?

Yes.

How are you doing that from a technology perspective?

Great question. If they have a voiceover IP program, it's very simple. We program it as a soft phone. If they do not, then we can put in place a call forwarding system or they can send phones over to Zimbabwe for their team members to use and they can program it however they want to. Maybe they want it to be first two rings go in the office, third one goes to Zimbabwe or they flow over.

Yeah.

And what we have found is our offices and the patients in those offices have really loved it. The offices love the fact that when the doctor walks in the room, they know that Callie's coming in. Kelly's missing a tooth on the lower right and she's interested in implants and white knee and you know, she has $622 remaining on her dental benefit.

So the ability again to divide and conquer here for them to spend the time because they don't have the next patient walking up, they don't have the consent forms to scan and whatever it might be. Right. So they're able to capture all that data, drop it into the practice management software, et cetera. Yeah, that I'll tell you too, as a customer, if I do have to call you, you better answer because I'm not calling a second time. Right. I mean, it's just the reality is like I've got five minutes of free time. I'm going to make this call. Hopefully. I know it's 12 noon. They're probably at lunch. Whatever it is. Let me ask like hours of operation, obviously they're on a totally different time zone. Are they working our hours?

Absolutely.

Can they even, can you even set it up where maybe like they do? Because a lot of People will call like after work and so forth. Can you do it where it's either before or after? So even after you closed, you have access if you want to have that?

Absolutely. We have clients that have team that are working Sunday through Wednesday or whatever your needs are when you want those lines covered. So sometimes we're first on on the phone, sometimes we're the backup, sometimes we're the rollover. But it's a human being. And just like you had said that how many offices that you can call and you don't get to a human being and you don't receive a call back in a certain time of time frame. Right. I've been a new patient recently, I moved. And that experience, when you actually call multiple offices and are trying to become a patient, it's almost prohibitive. I mean there are so many challenges to the, to the patient to get to a human being to just ask some questions. And having the combination of the technology and the human being there is what is the next level. So it's a melding of what we have in front of us. We have technology and we have humans and we do want our team who are in the office present with the patient. But we also want somebody being proactive and that really allows best practices to be implemented. You're getting the best of both worlds.

Are you seeing that the cloud based PMS systems are getting in advance? I mean it's just simpler than having to RDS in. And I say this being someone who's on open dental trying now to look at tab 32, look at ascend, look at Denicon, look at Caresat. You know, I'm interested in trying to figure out, but as we talk about technology, as you start to go global, it feels like having to RDS in remote desktop, in it's not the end of the world.

Right. I also think about, I don't know Brenda, in your experience, but so many offices that you go into and they have all these technology pieces. So I'm using one, one piece of this technology, I'm using one piece of this technology. I'm halfway using my practice management system, but nowhere near what its capability is. And if we look at, if you're going to spend the money and invest in a system, it's really advisable to have team who actually know how to use it and implement it to its fullest capacity. So, you know, maybe that's one of our remote team members who becomes your expert in your open dental or your tab 32 like whatever that is, somebody who actually has the time to spend diving into it. What are our goals with switching to this? What are, what are we looking to implement from here and how could they help you use that so that you're really seeing the ROI on that shift as opposed to we're just switching software and you kind of hope we're using it. Right. And yet you go into their, their insurance plans and there's multiple like yeah,

I thought about that using a centralized individual as a dedicated subject matter expert. Right. That would be interesting. It would take initially some training, I mean, but let's say right now I'm looking at switching to tab. If I got someone that support ddsa. Okay, I need you to work with tab. I need you to work with open dental. I need you to understand the nuances and you're going to become my help desk.

Yeah, yeah.

For that solution. Right. Because it's so hard. I mean I'd love to take some of my key people and do that but frankly they don't have the time and energy with.

And that's it. That's exactly it. And so the end up, you know, we kind of play with the new program and we kind of get a little, a few little tricks. But think of the time spent by that subject matter expert into it and then having maybe a team meeting with your assistants and what are you guys needing out of this program? And let's dive into that and then somebody who has the time to do that research. I mean it would be next level of really getting that ROI from that change and are we utilizing it to the best capacity?

And Emmett, going back to your original question. Yes, it is a lot easier for remote team members to use the cloud based software. You don't have the added expenses of having those computers that they have to remote into if they're working multiple locations. And that's one of the myths. If I hire one person they have to work in one location and that's not it. They can work out of five, six different locations, whatever it is that you'd like, but they have to be able to access it. So if you are not cloud based then you have to have a computer in each location for that remote team member to, to access. It also matters which cloud based you choose because there are some that when you do go cloud based, if you're not in the right location, it's going to be slower than if they remote into an actual workstation. Really we have probably about 50, 50 whether they're doing cloud based or going into a remote workstation. But what I can tell you for sure, for sure, Emmett, is do not jimmy rig it. There are many offices that say, oh well, we're not technically on the cloud based, but we put all of our offices that use this software on this type of cloud so we can do this, this and that and all it does is cause issues. Do I love cloud based? Absolutely. Our IT integration is like that. Security measures, super simple. But we do still have the old school and the remoting in and there's nothing wrong with that. The software is working just fine.

Anything else on the tactical stuff that we should cover? I mean, I think you've given a nice layout here and hopefully, you know, listeners. The. The main thing is you're thinking through, okay, how could I utilize this tool to either upgrade, which I really loved your focus there. How can I upgrade the patient experience? And then I'll just be more, you know, candid is like, how can I just get somebody to do the task? Because, you know, for some of us we're at that level. Depending on the practice, we might be at that level. I think also being very honest about how much leakage you have on your phone system, not doing an insurance verification, well, whatever it might be. And then the other thing you called out, which is interesting, is how many friction points are happening with the dentist and others because you don't have someone dedicated to getting this information into the practice management software. I mean, part of the reason that you have high turnover is people don't feel like they're successful. And when you have all these friction points and all of this noise and black holes going on, you know, people just don't feel like they understand what's going on or how to execute well. So I think from a dental support organization and DSO perspective, this is really interesting to me on how could I support my dentist better by having more information in the practice management software spun up, ready to go so that they could execute well? And how do I get more steps accomplished where they've already done the treatment planning, how do I not let that leakage go out? Right. I've already had them in the chair, I've already had a dentist see them, I've had a dental assistant there, they walk out. How do I get them back in? I mean, those are dollars ready to be executed on.

Exactly. And you think about that, that the ROI on the time spent trying to capture the treatment that was already diagnosed. I mean, think how much of that is sitting there that nobody is working. And the other, the other thing that I, we didn't Address but I think is a real need right now is the team that you do have are oftentimes overworked. They're, they're trying, they're, they want to be successful. They, they want to make those calls but they don't have that time and

they're covering down for so much turnover too. Right. Those who stay in are covering for everyone who's not.

Yeah, exactly. And if we can support them in a way of having them have a go to person to help them, them out man, we're gonna, we're gonna ease their stress, we're gonna allow them to be more present with their patients and they're gonna, it's, it's repeatable because the reality is there's so many team right now that it's not repeatable. Like we, they're there and they're showing up day in and day out and they're exhausted. I mean there are I don't know how many Facebook groups about the front office and Right. Man, their desire is there and they love their job, they're passionate about it, but they feel you hit on that. They feel like they're not being successful because there's so many things they're not getting to and it's hard for them. And so if we could get them a team member and now you're integrating the technology and you're integrating their direction and this person shows up to work every day and is excited to learn. It's incredible.

Hey, has anyone done this? This might be pushing the envelope, but has anyone seen set up a screen yet at the front desk and said I'm going to have support DDS be my front desk?

Yeah. So let me tell you a little bit about that, Emmett. We do have a client that cannot hire to save her life. There's nobody applying, there's nobody even out there. Nobody's answering the phone. So she has multiple team members in Zimbabwe including her office manager who does all the write ups of the assistance and does performance evaluations, pays all the bills, everything. Everyone's in Zimbabwe. There's a screen that people check in. She's utilizing technology to the fullest. Before they even leave the office, they're being sent a text to pay and they click that they pay. Then they get released from the office. There's lots of follow up involved and we even have several offices that do all of their treatment plan case acceptance is done through Zimbabwe. They go into a room, they sit down, the team members there, they have the X rays up and if you follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook. You will see that we have a team member by the name of Malcolm who sold, and I mean sold, scheduled and got paid for $106,000 worth of treatment in the month of September.

Wow.

So the sky is the limit as to what they can do. Look at your team members strengths and weaknesses and then let us fill in the gap and let us.

I think it's easy to underestimate. You know, you talk about the degrees they have and so forth. A lot of these individuals I've talked to have worked for other large American based companies. You know, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Walmart, whatever it might be like they're sophisticated individuals. They're limited by the fact that there's 80% unemployment rate in Zimbabwe. Right. So they're having to. They were doing Zoom before Zoom was cool. So they've been doing this for a long time. It might be interesting to have some of your customers who've really pushed the envelope on some of this and done innovative things to have them on this podcast. Because we talk about merging technologies, I'd love to drill down with them. Like, what technology are you using to execute on that? What's going well? What's not going well? Like, what would be the ideal solution? Because if we can keep pushing these two concepts together, get the technology better and then leverage really great individuals globally, we can provide this incredible experience. Because with the birth rate and the immigration rate where it's at, every economist says this is the best it gets on the labor market. So if you're not innovating, if you're thinking, well, we'll just wait until the recession, everybody will come, it's not going to happen. Right? Like it's just mathematically it's not going to happen. Demand is so much bigger than supply on the labor market. So thank you all so much for being on. I think continuing to look for innovative solutions, that's what DEO is about. That's what DSO Secret's about. We've really got to not sit back and wait for the world to change for us. But we really have to innovate. So appreciate you all being great partners. If people want to reach out, what's the best way to contact y'?

All? Go to www.supportdds.com. you can schedule a discovery call. You can learn more about our services and you can see something that we didn't even bring up a lot is our 51%. As a company. We are committed to not only solving your problems, but helping make this world a better place. And we donate 51% of all of our profit back to changing the world as it is. And to us, that's just as important as finding you the right team member is. What can we do to make the world a better place?

Well, Brenda, Kelly, great having you on. Thank you all so much. I appreciate it. For those who are listening, if you want to come, check us out on our Facebook page at DSO Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling.

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