242: Increase Treatment Acceptance by 30% With This AI Tool in Your Dental Practice

We were down at nuvia and their CTO and they said over the first three months their sales have increased 48%. Those small minute changes really do make a difference.

I can only imagine having a case acceptance go from 40 or 45% up to 80 or 80%. I mean, that would be magic for most of my practices.

Hi, I'm Emmett Scott, and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started.

Welcome back to the DEO podcast, your go to place for the business side of dentistry. I'm your host, Kendall, and today we are exploring how AI is reshaping the way dental practices interact with their patients, especially in consultations. And so welcome, welcome, welcome. Patrick Johnson, who is the head of customer experience at rilla, which is a speech analytics platform that's revolutionizing how in person conversations are tracked and really improved in real time. And so Patrick brings a unique mix of charisma and strategy, thanks in part to his days as a leprechaun at Notre Dame. Right. Go Notre Dame. And he has an obsession with his audience and the that's translated beautifully into helping dental practices really find and scale ROI in their consultations. And so, Patrick, welcome to the DEO podcast.

Kendall, thank you so much. I don't know who sent you that bio, but they were lying, I'll tell you that. But I don't know about charisma or strategy, but yes, I was the leprechaun at Notre Dame and found myself here in the AI sales world.

I love it. Well, let's jump right into the big picture here. Share with our listeners what are some exciting uses that AI has been bringing to this world? In the world of dental leverage, how is this, how is this turning out for us here?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, AI, the way I think of it is it's another tool in your tool belt. And we have seen businesses adopt it in so many different ways. Right. That they'll adopt it in the call center. Right? Someone calls in, they want to schedule an appointment. You might have a csr, right. It could be with the CRM or, you know, you're trying to organize all the patients that you're trying to see. Here at rilla, it's AI Coaching, Right. So it gives you full visibility into your appointments. The idea is, you know, you have an app on your phone with really a speak to patients just like normal. You press start using the Rilla app. It records, analyzes, transcribes your consultation performance to give you feedback. So it's a pretty wide variety of options here. We're seeing adoption push more and more.

That is so cool. So focusing on in person conversations. Can you walk us through? I know you briefly just kind of gave us, you know, you press record, it's going to walk you through. But can you kind of walk us through how this actually works inside of a dental practice at really? You guys have kind of coined this term virtual ride along. Tell me a little bit about like where, where this concept came from and how you've adopted it into this world of dentistry.

Absolutely. And I think maybe less virtual ride along, more like virtual consultation with dental practices and dental implant offices. But a patient comes in and first they probably book an appointment via the call center. They come in and the TC will walk in, they'll press start using Rilla. They ask them a couple questions, lead some discovery. What's the vision for your perfect smile? Doctor might come in, do some X rays, some tests, and then from there a TC will come in to close basically presenting options and what they're qualified for. They press done, that's uploaded to the cloud so they can go back and interact with it. And the idea is that they have a process. They go, okay, what did I miss? Oh, well, you never asked the customer's budget, right? You didn't ask, you know, what they were willing to spend on their new smile. Or maybe you wanted to better communicate and connect with the customer. If you're talking about something as heavy as a smile, you got to make sure you empathize and listen. Going back, looking at that conversation, maybe I could have explained things better or talked less or handled objections differently. So there are a lot of use cases as far as better connecting with the customer.

That is fascinating. I absolutely love that. Second opinion, right? Really, for our treatment coordinators, you get to listen to yourself live. I know sometimes as a speaker speaker, you say small words and, or you say things with a certain tone and then you hear yourself speaking and you're like, I sound horrible. Why did I say that?

Right?

So it's so cool that you're actually able to bring this into a dental practice and, and allow the treatment coordinators and people that are presenting cases to not only hear themselves, but to be able to get live Real time feedback on how that consultation missed or what they could do slightly differently to take it forward for the next conversation and consultation. So I absolutely love that. Now, AI sometimes can feel a little bit scary, right? I know a lot of people, especially as a coach and a consultant, they're, you know, not certain with AI, they're like, oh, this is this new big gimmick kind of thing. Who knows if it actually really does what it does? And so AI, like, and that world of, you know, being a bit scary when it comes to something as personal as a consultation. What's, what's your take on that?

I mean, drills are scary, right? Like saliva injectors are scary. Like, we work with a lot of scary stuff. I mean, it's very intimate business. So I would push back on that and frame it differently in that it is a tool, it's a highly powered tool. And like anything, tools are as good as you use them. And a lot of folks, they hear AI, they might not fully understand it, or they look at the breadth of possibilities and go, where the heck do I start? And especially to the patient. Like, one thing we found is a lot of practices I'm worried about using Rilla, like, maybe the patient will feel uneasy that they're being recorded. Trust me, I promise you they won't because it adds a level of transparency and trust to the consultation. If you go to a patient and say, hey, you know, Mr. Mrs. Patient, just so you know, I have an AI notetaker that I'm going to run. It's to make sure that I get everything right, I don't miss anything. I'm giving you 10 star service. And the last thing that I want is to have to ask you to come back to the office. I promise you they will be delighted.

I love that. So what do you see as the biggest gaps or problems in dental practices today that are using speech analysis or perhaps that you really think that AI can help them solve?

Yeah, and a lot of them are really minute things that make a big difference. I've worked with shoot five or six dental practices just over the last few months. And a big thing that we found, especially when using Rilla, was that a lot of them weren't asking for the business, they weren't setting the next steps or asking for the treatment, which is something that's pretty solvable, I think STCs, they're so focused on, you know, making the patient feel comfortable and giving them a high level of service and answering their questions and understanding their needs and wants. But when it comes Time to close the deal. They feel a little uneasy. That was a change that we were able to track by using Rila, a change we were able to implement with the TCs. And we saw a huge boost in performance. Like, for example, we work with Nuvia, Nuvia Dental. And this is just a piece of anecdote, but we were down at Nuvia and their CTO just happened to chat with our team, and they said over the first three months, their sales have increased 48%. Just a piece of anecdote, something they tossed offhand. We're like, wow, those small minute changes really do make a difference.

I can only imagine having a case acceptance go from 40 or 45% up to 80 or 80%. I mean, that would be magic for most of my practices. And I think that this is so unique because case acceptance does play such a huge part in the world of dentistry.

Right?

Especially when it comes to ensuring that we have roi.

Right.

Like, we're always here at DEO striving for that return on investment, making sure that we're producing and collecting the way that we should. And, you know, if our doctors and our clinical team, they're doing all the work in the back to, you know, quote, unquote, educate and make sure that patient truly understands the value of that treatment, and then we hand them over to a treatment coordinator, that treatment coordinator has the opportunity to, you know, make or break the case type of thing, you know, especially through their language, their language and their verbiage. And so in being able to have exactly like you said, a tool that not only can they analyze their own performance, but maybe have an office manager or an operations manager, a coach be able to step in and continue to tweak and refine, you know, the systems and the processes. I think it's such a, an important part of dentistry. And so in the world of, of numbers and ROIs, I know that you said, you know, 48% was Nuvia over there. What type of, of return on investments are your clients seeing? The ones that are using real Rilla. Are there any other examples perhaps that you might be able to share with us?

Yeah, absolutely. I would say the biggest thing is once you have the tool, making sure that you use it. You're consistently, you're coaching, you're pressing the record button, you're looking back. We view really, really here as, as like game tape. You know, athletes will watch game tape to prep for the next game. That way they know what their, what their opponent is doing, what plays they're going to call. So it's kind of like when it comes to the world of objections, it's like playing a game against your customer. This one is really interesting. I'm happy to bore you with numbers. But also, just like the small things, one of them is that with Rilla, we can see how we're actually speaking within the appointment, within the consultation. That we can see like the talk ratio versus the customer. Ideally it's a 50, 50. I was working with one dental practice down in Kansas City and they found that their talk ratio was like 75, 25. So the TC going through the process, right, they're saying this and that, leaving every stone uncover. They weren't really asking questions or letting the customer speak. So I think it'll also, yes, you'll absolutely see an increase in sales and average ticket, but also in the way that you communicate. Because I think that's what's really most powerful about Rila. Another quick anecdote is a pain point that I talked to some of the TCs about is during that second phase when the doctor comes in and they, you know, they examine the patient. They said that a lot of the doctors have a tendency to downsell. There are three options. They go, oh, don't worry, Mr. Patient, trust me, just go with the dent. The dentures, it's the cheapest option. I'm telling that's what you want. It's a perfect fit for you. Patient might not want the dentures. PC probably doesn't want to, you know, accept the dentures. They don't want to close the dentures, though. The. Some of the doctors started using Rilla to look back at the way they're speaking to patients, the way they're communicating, and found a huge gap between what they thought they said and what they actually said.

Ooh, that's magical. I love it. So is that like a back end platform where they go and they log in and they listen to their pre recordings. Is this an app? How do they, you know, quote, unquote, download this information to be able to analyze it?

Yeah.

What does the platform look like?

Yeah, great question. So it is an app. It's an app and it works on an iPad or an iPhone. I know most of the practices have iPads, use iPads every day, press start, you run an appointment, it gets uploaded to the cloud, processed, and then you can look back either within the app or the desktop. But what's really magical there is that we have an assistant sales coach. His name is Rick AI. You can go back to any appointment. Sure. You can see how you did on the process, you can see how much or how little you spoke. But Rick AI is your assistant coach or chatbot. You can ask him literally anything. So one thing that I found was fascinating. I was working with some TCs. I think they're based out of Vegas. They're saying we love using Rick AI because we can tell when we're speaking to a patient and something is not connecting. It's not making sense. So she went back and asked Rick AI, you know, based out of these three options that were presenting the patient. This patient is a mechanic. He doesn't know a lot about teeth, but he knows a lot about cars. How can I best explain to him the three options, sort of in car terms? Car parts. His mouth is a car and was able to close it. The patient accepted the next steps. They moved on in the process just by making that small tweak and meeting the customer where they were at.

Very cool AI and, you know, like adoption, I'm assuming, you know, the AI that I looked at four months ago is not the AI that I'm looking at today. It's like it's moving and it's grooving. And so, you know, the next evolution of Rila is there. You know, do you. How do you see this kind of evolving for the dental practices? Is there going to be a Rick 2.0 Other things that you're going to be bringing in?

You're actually not that far off. So AI is such a weird, crazy industry. Like you explained, you're like, the AI we have today, four months ago was totally different. Like, AI is a winner takes all industry. What I mean by that is you got the first movers. They have had that much more time, R and D development to work on their software. So you're looking at AI platforms. Look at the industry leader. That being said, what we're working on here at Rilla, yeah, we're really excited. So two big things coming to play. They're launching this month and next month. First thing is Rilla Live. So Rilla Live, the idea TC is meeting with a patient. The coach could go in, give feedback to that TC Live and say, oh, you asked this discovery question. You forgot to ask what their vision for their perfect smile is. The timeline, whatever that is. But the magic do coaches can coach them live. They can also go back maybe when the doctor is speaking to the patient. In phase two, they can get feedback from Rick Live so they can ask questions. The customer's pretty price sensitive. How can I make sure that this is urgent? I explained that their teeth are in critical condition. What should I say? That's one. The next one is, we call it Rilla intelligence. But the idea is that you're out there, you're speaking to patients every single day. There's a lot of information there. Real intelligence is basically business intelligence software where it is cross conversational analysis. So you would be able to go back and say, hey, based on the last 200 conversations, what are my patients objecting to? Or on the other hand, what are they responding really positively to? What do they really like about what we're doing? What are those things that we're doing so great that customer delight. You can ask literally anything. It's pretty. It's pretty neat. I think it really allows you to see the unseen.

That's awesome. I love that. Do you notice that the offices come up with any barriers? Is there any common challenges that you see when practices are bringing in tech like Rila? How do they overcome them? For instance, if you are noticing any.

Yeah, one thing, I would say adoption. And it varies from culture to culture. What I mean by that is some people, we announce Rilla and we're like, hey, this is your coaching tool. It's here to make you better, here to make you more money. And they got a little scared, they got a little nervous, felt like people were watching them or listening to them. I would say the big thing is reminding the TCs, the doctors, this is not performance based. We're not looking here to Gotcha. Oh, you missed that thing. Gotcha. It's here to make you better. It's here to improve you. It's like having a coach on the sidelines every single time. So I think one thing is really driving that home with the TCs.

Okay, now I have to ask this question because, you know, I'm a patient too at times, and so I have to touch just on ethics. Just a moment. How does Rila ensure patient confidentiality and handle concerns like HIPAA when we're recording in person conversations?

Got it. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, in any market that we enter, we always talk to lawyers, right? So we made sure we received the green light before we started working with dental practices. Obviously, that's the first big barrier. But what a lot of folks do at these offices, they put it in the intake form, they disclose the recording, they say, hey, just so you know, this conversation will be recorded, data will be processed by rila, and the TCs tell them just like how I said earlier, it's like, hey, I got an AI note Taker. I do it for my conversations because I don't want to forget everything. I'm committed to best serving you.

Amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. And I love how you talk to the smart guys, the lawyers in the

room, smarter than me. They're good people, man.

Absolutely. Looking ahead, what trends are you seeing that are emerging in the next three to five years in AI and in person patient experiences?

Yeah, that's three to five years, he said, huh?

Yeah, lots going to happen in three to five years.

We can have AI five years ago. What's going to happen five years from now? Robot dentists maybe, Maybe robot dentists. That would be neat. No, I think it's, I think AI and these tools are going to be much, much more commonplace. Reason for that is because it's so easy to save time. I mean at these offices like all we want to do is delight customers and make money, right? I think that's very. All you want to do is see more people, fix people smiles, make them happy, give them that 10 star service and make them hopefully not want to come back, but refer folks. So I think with the time savings is such a huge aspect. I mean I talk to these TCs and the coaches and they're always like appointment, appointment, appointment, appointment. Oh, I can't, I can't talk right now. I gotta talk to this person. So I think it'll actually far improve customer service. You meet with them for the next appointment. You remember everything that you talked about. Oh, Mr. Mrs. Patient, how's your dog? How's Rover doing? Oh, you remember my dog's name. I'm a professional so I really think it'll help build that gap and that trust with customers.

I totally agree. We're seeing it more and more just in the world of phone answering and RCM services. And now we're seeing it in the world of consultations and it really is coming back into making sure that we are at the top of our game, offering the best opportunity in the world of customer service and saving time. And that's really where the ROI comes into place. Because when we're able to save time, then we're able to give that, you know, on the court customer experience that they're looking for, that personalization, that handholding that you know, they need and it sometimes we'll cut out the fluff in those consultations. I know, you know, as a previous treatment coordinator myself, you can have a consultation that lasts for seven minutes and then you can have a consultation that lasts for 45 minutes. And if you, if you're using the tools to be able to tailor your conversations to make sure that the information that you're sharing is landing and then you're, you know, constantly tweaking it and working to make those conversations that much better. Sounds like a huge win. Win for me. So I love that. What about our community leaders that are listen today that are curious but perhaps hesitant? What's one small step that you would recommend that they take if they want to explore this world of speech analysis?

Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good, very good question, I would say before committing to anything, if you're excited, get a demo, see how it works, understand if it's a good fit, like anything. Change management. When deploying a new tool, talk to your team about it. Just like I said earlier, remind them that any tool you have is there to help, not hurt them. Yeah, I think the best way I can explain it, get a good look at it, understand it, ask questions.

So good. Patrick, this has been incredibly insightful. From ROI to coaching to patient experience. Experience. It is absolutely clear that tools like RILLA are really changing the game. So any final thoughts or advice you'd like to leave our DEO audience with?

No. I mean, well, I'm. I'm curious from you, Kendall. Like, you've been at TC in the past. Like, how do you think you would use rilla? And, you know, if you had a couple extra. An extra hour, hour and a half in each day, what would you spend it on as a tc?

I mean, for me, I'm like, oh, where was this when I was a tc? I think that's a game changer. I. The world of dentistry, we're always growing, we're always evolving, and really good team members are trying to push themselves to that next level of growth and being able to have a tool that I could have listened to, to have a got on the court feedback, asked what I could have said differently in that conversation so that maybe I closed the bigger case. Listening to myself. Like I was saying, you know, sometimes you listen to yourself and you're like, oh, why do I say that word all the time? Or why do I sound like that? Right. That feedback is valuable. And unless you have your office manager who has their ear at the door that's standing there kind of all creepily looking.

Yeah.

You know, you don't get that feedback. And so being able to have somebody that can, you know, a tool, I should say, not necessarily somebody, something that can give me that feedback would have been huge. Again, I think that sometimes in our world, we don't know what we don't know. And so whether it's we're speaking too fast or we're downplaying the treatment plans or we're always saying we can send off a pre op first. You know, some of those things that are not always helping us in the conversations. I think that rilla, for me and my teams across our organizations would have been such a powerful tool. And so, yeah, I'm kind of sad that we didn't have this, you know, eight, nine years ago because we definitely would have been all over there now. Exactly.

Here. Now we're here. Absolutely. And it's so interesting you say that because that what gets inspected gets respected. Before I worked at rilla, I was a stand up comedian in New York for shoot four years. How you get better, you film yourself, right? Like, you take little notes. Like, this joke didn't land. My inflection was weird. You make those tweaks next time you go up, you're 5% better, 5% better after that. And it was very interesting. In New York City comedy, there's a culture of you're not filming yourself. What do you stink like, you're not trying to get better. So I think any tool that gives you an edge and helps you compound interest get a little better each time, each at bat you get, I think it's valuable.

Absolutely. Absolutely. All over it, my friend. Thank you so much, Patrick, for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yeah, absolutely. DEO listeners, if you're curious to learn more about Rilla, check them out@rilla.com and don't forget, if you're enjoying the DEO podcast, be sure to subscribe. Leave a review, share this with your colleagues. And so, until next time, my friends, keep leading, keep innovating, and as always, keep smiling.

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