John Meis (00:01.531)
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis with my partner, Wendy Briggs. Hey, Wendy.
Wendy Briggs (00:08.748)
How's it going, Dr. John?
John Meis (00:10.331)
Now awesome and we have with us today Dr. Len Tau and Wendy's going to tell us all about Dr. Len.
Wendy Briggs (00:16.206)
That's right. I'm sure many of you know Dr. Tau already. He doesn't need much of an introduction, but let's give him an official introduction that he's probably earned, right? He deserves that. Dr. Tau is the celebrated author of the Raving Patients bestselling book, right? He also has another book that's 100 Plus Tips to 100 5-Star Reviews in 100 Days.
Dr. Len transitioned from clinical practice in December of 2022 after more than two decades. And his focus now really is to help practices unlock their revenue potential. Throughout your career, you were wildly successful as well. Pennsylvania Center for Dental Excellence in Philadelphia became a premier destination for outstanding patient care and innovative dental solutions. And you've continued to do great work in dentistry here today.
I've been a guest on your podcast. We are having you as a guest on our podcast. And I can tell you that out of all the speakers and all the experts that we hear from in regards to providing five-star patient care and generating five-star reviews after providing that patient care, Dr. Tau has become a really well, highly thought of, esteemed expert in the field in dentistry in this category, especially. So welcome to the podcast, Dr. Tau. We're delighted you're here.
Len Tau (01:34.754)
Well, please call me Len. know we've discussed that before. I much prefer Len. I am a doctor. I practiced for 23 years. I know I deserve or had that respect, but I like Len much better. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much for that introduction. And I'm excited to spend some time with you and hopefully entertain and educate the listeners.
John Meis (01:55.749)
Yeah, fantastic. So there's been some noise in the review world. Tell us what's going on.
Wendy Briggs (01:56.226)
Very good.
Len Tau (02:04.546)
Yeah, a lot of noise and I was knee deep in it for quite a long time. I spent hours dealing with this. on Thursday, which was February, what? 12, 9th, 8th, I got reports of dental practices freaking out because they thought they were losing Google reviews. And, what was happening was the number that Google was showing was decreasing, multiple times per day.
When you wake up in the morning, there's more reviews that are missing and people thought they were actually losing reviews. And that was the initial instinct because you don't really count the reviews unless you have 10 or 20. You don't really count them. Some people obviously have a thousand and they thought their numbers were going down. And we soon realized I was actually sent a report by another dentist who counted his actually, he like 600. They counted each and every one of them. And he realized that he wasn't missing any of them. So I posted in my group that I think it's a glitch with the number of reviews Google is actually showing and you haven't lost anything.
And then all of these offices confirmed that that was the case. And we had reached out to Google and Google became aware of the problem. They're always doing new algorithms and the latest algorithm just had a glitch in it and it was taking reviews down on the number, but wasn't removing the Google reviews actually. so thank God, after a couple of days, we're reporting everybody is back to where they were. But it made people freak out because generating reviews is a job in and of itself and offices work really hard. It has major effect on where offices rank. It really makes patients decide whether to use the office or not.
Offices were complaining, which I was surprised at because I didn't witness it myself, that they would go down from five stars to 4.9 or 4.9 to 4.8. Not a significant difference. But when you rely on these for patients, it kind of sent a real scare through the to the industry. So thank God it's all taken care of and we're on to the next chapter now, basically is what it is.
John Meis (04:08.123)
You never know what they're going to do, right? It's just, it's changing all the time and, and, you know, why you teach and we teach, the best way to get more patients is to have an outstanding patient experience. Cause all these other things can come and go. And so awesome.
Wendy Briggs (04:25.506)
Yeah, I think it's also important to note that it was all businesses, not just dentists, but of course our world is dentists, right? And so it was something that I heard a lot of chatter about all throughout a lot of different communities and verticals. There was a lot of panic.
And what's interesting about that, Len, is that, you you know, as well as I do that sometimes there's really not a strong enough focus on reviews, you know, and then I think practices will, will turn on that dial or start to focus on it. And once they do, they're really proud of those reviews. But I think it might be an important time. It's a great reminder. If you're not focusing on reviews, if you don't even know how many Google reviews you have, it's probably something we should be taking a look at and be a little bit more aware of and mindful of.
And I also find it interesting, it's human behavior to, maybe we don't value something until we start losing it. And then we think, oh gosh, we really should probably be focusing on that and paying some more attention to that. So I think that's probably really one of the reasons why we invited you on here today and another reason why we've invited you to be a speaker at our upcoming Summit, which we're excited about. We'll talk more about later, but it's fascinating, you know, how focused on reviews ebbs and flows in some places until they're threatened or until they start noticing a glitch in the system and they start disappearing. And then it can create panic as we've seen.
Len Tau (05:44.686)
100 % so. Back to your initial question was that, practices I think are now realizing as I got into this space in 2008 and nine when reviews were not a thing. I had 30 at that time and I had more than anybody else in the area. And two years later, I had a hundred and something and I dominated the area as well. Now, if you don't have a few hundred, you're like considered underperforming.
Reviews were the biggest driver of patients to my practice as a fee-for-service practice. When you look at what referral sources people have for an insurance based practice, insurance patients are going to be number one. You may get patient referrals and then the online sector is the third. I like the online sector to be even more than where most practices are. And one of the biggest drivers of that is just generating reviews because when you're referred to a practice, when you are looking for a practice, gonna, you go on Google. I mean, literally 90 % of the population goes on Google before making a decision. And the very first thing they see before they see your website, before they see any of the other information, they're gonna see what other people are saying about you. And that's one of the first things they click on is, okay, let me check out the reviews that this office has. And whether you have 5,000, whether you have 20, that's where your first impression is made. That's really where the impression of joining a dental practice starts.
Obviously they call the office and then that's your ability to make another impression. But literally you have to put your best foot forward on Google or else patients are not gonna come in. I mean, it's that simple. I've interviewed thousands of patients over the years, because I travel a ton. I like to engage the patients in the office as I go to. And a lot of times I ask them, they say, I came in because of the reviews. That was the biggest driver for me. And unfortunately, I don't think practices really know that.
Because when the person answers the phone, they say, well, how did you hear about us? And they go online and they write, okay, checkbox online in their intake form. Online absolutely means nothing now. If you're asking and getting the answer online, you're way behind the 8 ball on that. There's Instagram, there's Facebook, there's TikTok, there's reviews, there's website, there's all these different directories. I mean, you need to delve into that question better and bigger because you need to know where you should focus your intention on. I realized that very early that it was review. So I put all my eggs in one basket. Obviously. Well, did I know 10, 15 years later, we would be in the position we are now. look, I had, I had tried tons of things and I threw lots of darts at things in dental practice, but the one thing that stuck was and still worthwhile is, is reviews. Okay.
And, I think it's going to continue forever because we are a reputation society. Every single thing we do has some form of reputation behind it. When you go to a restaurant, you may go to Yelp. When you go to wanna watch a movie, you may go to Rotten Tomatoes now. When you go to Amazon, you don't buy a one-star product. You buy a five-star product, okay? Every single thing we do has some form of reputation attached to it. And when I search for businesses, I spend so much time looking at the reviews and I look at the negative reviews actually. I wanna see what problems they had in the practice or business, not what was good about it. Okay. Because I want to see what people are saying about the problems that may occur. Maybe a one-off thing, but I still want to know about it. So reviews are so important, not only for patients, but even for Google now.
And if you don't generate reviews at a decent clip, you're not going to be ranking on the maps. And that's the visibility part of the arm. And speaking of my seminar that I give, it's called, it's called raving patients get visible, get credible, get more new patients. It's all about this whole arm that exists where you need to get reviews, need visibility online, and that's how the reviews actually work for you. A practice that is visible and doesn't have enough reviews, that's a problem. And a practice that has reviews but not visible is also a problem. You need both of these things. And that's really how reviews work for a practice to get to more new patients.
John Meis (09:48.231)
Yeah, for sure. So obviously to get good reviews, you have to have a great patient experience. But so let's assume everybody listening to this already has that nailed. So what are your kind of your keys for getting more reviews? Is it technology? Is it personal touch? Because I've seen both work and I've seen both fail. So what's your magic touch?
Len Tau (10:14.136)
So I think it's a combination of those things, okay? Because if you have to ask, okay? If you don't ask, you don't get. Just like they say, if you build it, they will come. If you do not ask for a review, you won't get it. And if you ask manually, if you ask 100 patients that you know would leave a review for you, 98 of them will say, love you, I'm gonna go home and write a review. And if you're lucky, two to five people do it, okay?
I like to have a conversation with a patient, think, 30 seconds of your day, talking to a patient about how important it is for the practice, I think is a very important aspect that is missing from a lot of things. And we rely too much on automation. So I think automated messages are important because it simplifies the process that the front desk has to go through. But what happens when a patient comes up to the front desk? Okay. The first thing you ask them shouldn't be, you owe this much money today, give us your money.
It should say, was your visit today? That's the first thing that should come out of your mouth. How was your visit? And you're hoping it was great. It was as usual, simple, easy. You want anything that's positive to come out of that. And you want to have a conversation with them. That's amazing. We love hearing that. Just so you know, you may be getting a text message or email that's going to ask you for some feedback about your experience. We would really appreciate you taking a couple of moments to leave us some feedback because we love celebrating our five-star reviews.
That took 20 seconds, not even, and saying that to the patient makes a whole lot of difference in them wanting to do the review for you. Okay? So that to me is the automation plus the manual part of it that many practices still miss and they rely too much on automation and wonder why they don't get a significant number of reviews. So that goes hand in hand with the patient experience. The other aspect of it, certain doctors, I wish everybody would call their patients after hours. Doesn't have to be the doctor.
Could be a team member. Hey, Mrs. So-and-so, you came in today, we anesthetized you. We're checking in to see how you're feeling. How are you doing tonight? I'm doing great, thank you so much. I really appreciate you reaching out. By the way, did you get that text message that we sent you? There's a link to provide some feedback about your experience. I would really appreciate you taking a couple of moments to take care of that for us. So it's those minimal touch points that you have that make it really easy for the patients to do it and want to do it, okay? But it all starts with the doctor preparing this reputation culture in the office. And I like to call it that.
Now, reputation culture means that you know that you're being watched. Patients are watching you, they're watching you do your job, and they're gonna go home and write a report about you. That's what a review is. That's what their experience is. And if you have that reputation culture, you're gonna take feedback good, and you're gonna take feedback bad. And that's how you improve your practice. If a patient says, every single time I'm there, I wait 25 minutes to be taken back. That's feedback for the practice. So what do you think you should do the next time the patient comes in? You should take them back right away because they're gonna know that you read that feedback, you acted on it, and now you turned a critic into your biggest fans.
And we don't do that as dentists, okay? We wanna ignore it, we don't look at the situation, we're always so defensive. You know, if you get a bad review, some person didn't target your office. They used an alias, okay, not a real name, because they don't want you to know who it is. And they wrote about their experience, whether you believe it or not, you do provide some negative experiences. We're not perfect.
I like to call it, we're dental practice for a reason. We're not called dental perfect because we're not perfect people. Patients leave the office, whatever reason, you're gonna get bad reviews. It's not the end of the world. Okay, but you have to give this outstanding customer service from the very beginning to start this level of trust. And that's what reviews do. They allow a patient to trust you. And what does a patient do when they trust you? They come back for more, they buy, they come back six months later, they refer others to you. So it's all in this cycle of the buying cycle that you have to offer this amazing experience, but also request them to talk about their experiences online. And we don't do enough of that.
Wendy Briggs (14:19.182)
Yeah, I would agree. It's funny Len, because you talk about this and I remember the day, the era, right? And sometimes it's fun to look back at how far we've come. I can remember working for a practice years ago, and we would send out surveys once a year. Everybody on the team hated survey week, because of how the doctor responded, right? The doctor got defensive, the doctor got sullen, the doctor would sulk, the doctor would be frustrated. You he ignored the 800 positive surveys and narrowed in on the three to four negative. We do this as human beings, right? But we all hated that week because of how the doctors would respond to the negative feedback. And I think you absolutely nailed it. If we don't have a systematic process in place for all the things that you just mentioned, but if we don't have a systematic process for what to do when we get that negative review, then in a way we've missed the most important part of the entire experience.
So what I heard you say is, you know, systems matter. At The Team Training Institute, we focus a lot on systems. We focus a lot on our three pillars of practice success. Patient flow is one of those. And one of the vital systems we teach to support patient flow is our Eight Rs: recall, recovery, reactivation, retention, referrals, reviews, reappointment. You know, so we've focused on these things for a while. And, and I'm sure you can agree that the practices that are the most successful have what you just defined as a clear system in place for reputation management, building that culture. It doesn't just happen. It's not just a wish, right? You have to have those systems in place so that your team can support this vision and help you drive it. So I love all of that.
Another thing that I was gonna mention is what I love you do with some of the groups and the communities that you've helped create in dentistry is you help people know how to respond when they get that negative review. What do you do about it? How do you respond? Now, sometimes you're like, my gosh, can you imagine if that was your practice or if you got that negative review? But as you mentioned, no one is perfect. Sometimes there are mean people that come through and there's people that maybe have a vengeance or vendetta or a former employee or whatever it may be. But I love that you've created a community where we help support one another in how to best deal with those negative reviews. So just for a little fun. And I know that we don't want to derail this too far, but what's one of the worst reviews you've ever read? Like what's, I don't know, I putting on the spot a little bit, but, but, how can you actually recover from the negative review? Let's talk about that for a second.
Len Tau (16:52.49)
So let's talk about negative reviews in general. So I always like to ask when I give a seminar, raise your hand if you've never received a negative review and almost nobody raises their hand. Okay. And usually if there is there in dental school, cause they haven't been in practice yet. If there's someone who's brand new and they raise their hand, I mean, you're not a dentist yet because you haven't got a bad review.
Okay. We're in a, in an industry that there's a lot of negativity about. I mean, when you turn on the news, it's always about, you know, if a dentist murders somebody, okay. The headline is dentist murders person. Not, it's not, you know, they always talk about it as a dentist. Okay. you know, there's so many stories about dentistry. It's negative stories, not positive ones. And I, I used to talk about that in my seminars. We need to put a positive spin on things. So dentists have a bad reputation overall for whatever reason, money hungry. You hear all these things. Even when I read local Facebook groups, there's always, my dentist I went to is trying to rip me off. He tells I need five fillings. It, that's what it's always about.
So you're gonna get negative reviews. It's not the end of the world. In fact, I don't want a business to only have five-star reviews. It looks false to me, it looks fake. I think you need to have some negative reviews. Now, what I like to joke around and say, if you only have positive reviews, then you need to piss our patient off once in a while and tell them to go home and write a bad review about you. Because it's good for business.
Now, I personally, I ended my career with well over 2,000 five-star reviews, but I had 91 negatives. That's a lot of negative reviews to have, okay? They weren't about my dentistry. They were about my New York attitude, which I'm direct, no doubt about it. I can be loud, okay? I had rules in my practice. I was a fee-for-service practice. I wanted to be paid, okay? When you don't follow the rules, you get in trouble basically in the practice. You miss appointments, they're strike three and you're out, okay? The best thing you can do is fire a patient, but those patients are gonna write bad reviews about you, okay?
If you get a bad review, it's not the end of the world, okay? I always say people relax, calm down and take a deep breath before you respond. I am not a very big fan of responding to negatives online. I don't like to start a war of words. My first choice would always be to figure out who it is and then reach out to them personally. Offline, okay? Start the conversation offline. See if you can make any headway there. Address the concern. What do you think the reason that patients go to Google to write a review?
Well, they had a bad experience, obviously. But if you would...
John Meis (19:21.319)
They're not assertive enough to tell you directly.
Len Tau (19:25.486)
or you haven't given me the ability to do that. So one of the things, and again, this isn't about BirdEye, but obviously I represent BirdEye. One of the things BirdEye has in the message we sent it is a red button that says, us directly. And it says, if you didn't have a great experience or had a problem, please contact us. That red button, it's green and red. The red button is hit many times when the patient has had a bad experience. They're not going to Google. They hit the red button to leave feedback for the practice. You gave them the way to reach out to the practice that prevents that bad review. Okay. But if you're not doing anything, you're going to get bad reviews. Okay. Again, I like taking it offline. like contacting the patient, addressing their concerns, fixing the problem. If you can, a lot of times you're going to take the review down then because you address their concerns. Okay. If you can't reach them.
Wendy Briggs (20:08.898)
Or so many updated reviews, right? Which said, know, we appreciate update to the review or appreciate that. I'm going to change the stars to this rating. And I think that's great too.
Len Tau (20:17.922)
Yep, exactly, there's nothing wrong with that. It shows that you actually are reaching out to people. But in terms of responding, you don't wanna be crude, you don't wanna be angry, you wanna be calm and relaxed if you respond and you wanna address the patient's concerns. We can't violate HIPAA, so technically, we can't even acknowledge them as a patient to some extent. I don't worry as much on positive reviews because someone who's unhappy or happy with the practice isn't gonna care. But if you violate HIPAA, on a negative review, that can get you into some problems. I have instances, you everybody says, well, who's the HIPAA police? They are the Office of Civil Rights. And the Office of Civil Rights levies fines against businesses who violate HIPAA. And there's dentists who have been fined as much as $50,000 because they violated HIPAA by calling out the patient by their real name when they use a nickname on Google. So you have to be really careful what you say.
I like a generic response. Always apologize, even if you're not sorry, you're sorry online because you're responding to the people who are reading the reviews, not to the person who wrote the review. Because in most cases, the person who wrote the review is not gonna come back into the practice, okay? Most times, okay? In my entire career, I had three one-star reviews wanna come back, and they had to take the review down because it's a lack of trust. And when patients don't trust me, I won't treat them. So they had to take the review down. One did and two didn't, and the two people that didn't, I dismissed. The one person that did was welcome back into the practice with open arms and we became really good friends because of it.
Um, so I just think you need a very generic response. Thank you for your feedback where we take all, we accept all types of feedback, both good and bad. Please contact the office to address your concerns directly. Cause unfortunately I'm unable to answer publicly due to concerns about HIPAA. That's a very generic response. It will never get to any problems. Now there is a lot of dentists or there's this particular dentist, name is Tommy Murph. He's in Conway, South Carolina. And he's known for just being crude in his responses. And I give Tommy all the credit in the world. I know Tommy personally. I laugh when I read his responses. He's got a cult following. I personally could never say that. I mean, it's not in my wherewithal.
I mean, I once had a patient who claimed I told her that she needed her fillings replaced because her children would be born with disabilities. That's what she said I said to her, John, we know that I would never say that to somebody, okay? And what am I gonna do? I'm gonna call her a liar? You're a fat liar, go to hell. mean, I'm not going to do that. So I just left the review there. I knew who the patient was. It wasn't even worth my time.
Okay. So the very best defense against a bad review, more positives, you drown it out. 15 reviews will try not one positive and one negative. That's what you do. You don't let it ruin your day, you know, cause a lot of people, they get their day ruined when they get a bad review. So there's a lot of different things you can do with negative reviews. I'm still waiting for a dentist to make something that shows one star and put it their t-shirt or put it on their website. You see that in other industries. I haven't seen it in dentistry yet. I'm waiting for someone to do that because I think it's brilliant to focus on the negative side of things sometimes and make a laugh out of it rather than want to sue a patient. There are dentists who sue people because they got a bad review. would never go to that extent. just be cognizant of the fact, address the concerns and move on and get more positive. That's really what we want to do here.
John Meis (23:39.419)
Yeah, awesome. Tell us a little bit about BirdEye and how that helps with reviews.
Len Tau (23:47.106)
So, BirdEye is an automated reputation. I call it reputation marketing rather than reputation management. Reputation management is really worrying about negative reviews. I want you to generate five-star reviews and market them to generate more new patients. That's really the goal of our software. But it's an integrated platform. It's automated for the plaque practice. I do teach them to use subverbal skills as well. But we generate a review very easily from the patient. We have some techniques that allow it to be done very easily through a text message or email that the practice gets.
But it's really what we do afterwards, in my opinion, that really separates us from the other people who do reviews. So we market the review for them. So it goes to Facebook and Instagram. It goes on the office's website. Our BirdEye clients have a BirdEye microsite where the reviews go as well. And that shows up in Google search. We also now have an AI tool that helps respond to reviews using artificial intelligence. And then my opinion, even more importantly, and I mentioned it, is we help with visibility.
So we go into the local search and we make sure the name, address, and phone number of the practice is consistent online. So it's the combination of the credibility from the reviews and the visibility from the local search stuff. Practices rank higher and when they rank higher, the reviews generate more new patients. And I know that there's many practices out there who have a lot of reviews, but they have zero visibility. Zero visibility, you cannot find them at all. And so the reviews aren't really working for them because nobody can see the practice.
When you get the visibility, that's how the reviews actually turn into more new patients for the practice. So those are really the tools that we have, but the end result is more reviews, more credibility with Google, more trust with Google, better ranking because we're making sure the name, address, and phone number is consistent, and then ultimately more new patients coming into the practice.
John Meis (25:33.743)
Yeah, awesome. So we're so excited that you're going to be one of the speakers at our Champions of Dentistry Annual Summit. Tell us a little bit about what you're going to be talking about there.
Len Tau (25:45.42)
It's a very, you'll hear a lot of the things I talk about today, we'll talk about during the seminar, because I talk about visibility and credibility, I talk about dealing with negative reviews. So a lot of the things we talked about here, I'll go into a lot more detail. What's gonna be great is I put a QR code up that the offices in attendance will be able to scan their business and see how they actually look online and how this NAP is consistent or not. And it's eye opening for practices because they sit there and they see their scores like 20. And I usually ask, say, who's got the lowest score in the room? And I usually give them a prize for being the lowest. So the other offices, I like to do the worst office, not the best office. So they don't feel as bad.
Okay, and then I ask how many reviews they have. It's a fun interactive session. We get a lot of laughter out of it because the negative review stuff is really funny. What other businesses have done and how dentists have responded and what they've done and what not to do and what to do when it comes to this stuff. So that's the seminar. called Raving Patients. It's my most popular one. I do it all the time and I get rave reviews on it. So I'm looking forward to presenting at your summit in April.
John Meis (26:27.42)
Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (26:49.538)
Yeah, you know, we thought it was perfect Len because our theme is, "Profitability Through Five-Star Patient Care". And again, as you, as we mentioned at the very beginning, the patient care parts, what drives everything and how can we have higher levels of profitability if we're not providing that five star patient care? But we decided to bring you in because again, if we're providing five star patient care, we want our community to know that. And so they all, you know, connect together and help drive practice success through generating higher levels of patient flow. That reputation management that you mentioned earlier is really critical as well because we want our patients to be well served, but we want the community to know that we're doing a great job. So we couldn't be more excited to have you join us.
Len Tau (27:32.696)
And what I'll do, thank you very much for that, but what I'll also do is because you're talking about five-star customer service, I have some very unique things I did in my practice from a customer service perspective that I teach, and I'll add some of that in there so they get a little bit of, hey, this separates you from everybody else. It's what makes you different. So I'll add a couple of minutes of that in there and pull something else out to fit in the timeframe. But I think they'll enjoy some of the things I talk about from a customer service experience as well.
John Meis (27:57.765)
Yeah, well, we're very much looking forward to it. And I appreciate you so much for being with us today, Len. And so that's it for this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. We'll see you next time.
Wendy Briggs (28:09.577)
One, I've got one more thing to add, John, and that is for our listeners now, you can go to championsofdentistry.com, find out the information about the summit. I believe we're still in the early bird phase, so you can get an early bird discount for registering before March 24th. So if you're hearing this podcast now, the window of opportunity is shortening, so be sure you join us. We'd love to see you there at the summit, and you'll be able to meet and hear Dr. Len in person, and we'll look forward to a great time together.
John Meis (28:11.611)
Okay.
Wendy Briggs (28:39.363)
For sure.
Len Tau (28:40.738)
Thank you guys, I appreciate it.
John Meis (28:40.806)
Alright.
Wendy Briggs (28:42.84)
Thanks so much, everybody.
