Reasons Why Guided Conversations are Frequently Not Used

We established that most dentists have heard about guided conversations (scripting) and have a sense of why it can be valuable. Yet, it remains highly unused in most practices. What are the reasons behind this?

1. The practice does not have excellent systems in place. Guided conversations are an adjunct to excellent systems and excellent systems may be the number one factor in overall practice success. If practice systems have not been put in place, then scripting will not be overly beneficial. Many practices that have one, two or three scripts that are occasionally used, and then forgotten. However, very few embed the concept of guided conversations into their overall operations to be used in many situations relative to patient communication. When practices do not have systems in place, it is difficult to help the team understand where and when to use a guided conversation, and in most cases, the suggested scripting will either be nonexistent or fall off quickly when attempts are made to implement it into the practice.

2. Scripts for guided conversations are hard to write. Writing scripts for guided conversations is not as easy as sitting down and throwing a few words or sentences together on a piece of paper. It is a psychological development process to facilitate excellent communication with patients to achieve a specific result. When the practice is attempting to schedule a patient, collect money, present a large case, or help a patient understand why dental insurance does not cover all services, a guided conversation can help to make that specific task successful and understood. Once again, practices with excellent scripting have better results because patients are more cooperative. Once they understand why something needs to happen and what the practice policies and protocols are, they become very receptive.

3. The team members believe they will sound robotic. This is one of the most common reasons for resistance against using guided conversations in the practice. We have heard both doctors and team members explain that scripting would make them robotic and impersonal. This could not be farther from the truth. Scripting will enhance your communication skills greatly, but you still need to bring your own personality. This fear is often due to team member resistance to taking the time to learn the scripts and implement them into regular usage. The fact is that many of the team members who claim that scripting will make them seem robotic, have never used scripts or seen the benefit of results in communication. This is an example of the human nature of simply not wanting to change and then rationalizing the reasons why. Another possible reason for this resistance is that team members and doctors overestimate their communication skills and do not feel that they really need scripting for their conversations with patients. However, scripting makes systems work better and increases practice productivity and results with patients.

4. We had scripting, but we no longer follow it. There are many practices that have tried to implement guided conversations. They may have implemented it successfully at the start but eventually stopped. Why doesn’t this idea hold long-term? Because guided conversations takes more effort and focus, and busy team members often revert back to just talking to patients rather than using the psychologically designed scripting that is so powerful and beneficial.

All systems have a danger of certain steps falling off. In most practices, there are specific steps that will not fall off, such as asking for payments, filing dental insurance, and using automated confirmations for patients. But these are just pieces of systems and practice performance will not reach its potential unless complete scripting is in place to guide the conversations with every patient.