A short excerpt from a YouTube video (Wes Read CPA, CFP®) discussing how dental offices can improve customer service during staffing shortages by reallocating administrative tasks away from front-desk staff so they can act as concierges and spend more time with anxious patients. The speaker argues shifting tasks increases customer service without needing more time if non-customer-facing tasks are moved elsewhere.
If you've got staff tied up doing those kinds of tasks, then that's less time they can spend on customer service. Now, I give the analogy, somebody walks to a dental office, they're a little nervous, a little anxious, not thrilled about going to the dentist. And the person at the front desk looks like they are an air traffic controller. They're on the phone talking to this one, talking to this one, very busy. What if that person was really more of a concierge person and all those other activities were happening someplace else and that person at the front could take the time and go sit with this person, talk to them for five minutes? I mean, customer service, that goes through the roof if you're doing that well. Now, people say, well, we'd love to do it, but we don't have time. You would if you weren't trying to do all those other activities at one time. So that's. That's on my list of things that you can do to overcome the later labor shortage.
