From Front Desk to TCO: Who Really Wins the Private Patient?

Michael Bentley has spent 26 years in UK dentistry as a practice management consultant, and his view is simple: the practices that do well are the ones that stopped running everything through the dentist. The team, and the front desk in particular, is where patients decide whether they trust you enough to stay, and whether they trust you enough to spend money with you.

In this episode, Michael talks about how to tell a front desk that adds something from one that just books appointments, why treatment coordinators so often get turned into closers, and what actually separates private pay dentistry from NHS dentistry in the patient's mind.

Here's what we get into:

• The biggest change Michael has seen in his 26 years of experience.
• Why your front desk is your best early warning system.
• How to spot someone who's technically doing the job but adding nothing to the patient's experience
• What you can train into a front desk team and the one thing you can't
• The real NHS vs private pay difference, as patients feel it
• What case acceptance looks like when education comes first
• Why marketing harder before your operations are sorted tends to burn out the team and the patients

#ukdentistry #frontdesk #growth #newpatients