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Welcome to "The Dental Business Hub." Join us as we explore actionable insights and strategies for dental professionals. From marketing and practice management to industry trends and personal development, we provide the tools you need to grow your practice and achieve financial success.
Hi. Welcome back to the Dental Business Hub. It's my pleasure today to introduce John Waller. John is known as the on hold guy. He has a fabulous business helping dentists redeem the time that patients spend on hold.
DBH:None of us want that, but when it happens, it's a great idea to have a product that helps you introduce your practice in the best light possible to your patient. John, welcome. Tell us all about it.
John Waller:Thanks, Monica. Yeah, I help in dental practices for over twenty eight years utilize an asset that most business owners don't even realize that they have in their business or practice, that's hold time. And like you just so eloquently said, that nobody wants to put anybody on hold, but welcome to the planet, it happens. You gotta do-
DBH:It does happen.
John Waller:You know, so what we do is we create a custom patient education message. We write the script, provide the licensed music, the award winning professional female male voice talent, not bots, not AI, and the studio time. You know, I hear people talking about wanting to do it themselves. That dog doesn't hunt. You got to have a professional studio and folks that create the message that sounds like it's an on hold patient education message.
John Waller:And that's what we do. We write the script for the practice. The only thing the practice has to do, Monica, is approve the script once we write it for them. Send it back. We go into studio and produce it and out it comes.
John Waller:It's that simple.
DBH:You know, one of the things that I've been seeing a lot of practices are needing bilingual support in areas like this. Do you have a bilingual option with what you do?
John Waller:We try not to go there. We can do that. But what we do is for the Spanish, we'll mentions we'll have a sense and sense that mentions that that the practice does speak Spanish. We'll just
DBH:Okay.
John Waller:Give them a sentence in there so that the folks calling know about it. But we don't wanna upset the English speaking people that are calling the practice by having something that's real long and winded in Espanol.
DBH:So you just have the option that if someone needs to speak Spanish, they know that they can get into the office to speak to someone in the office.
John Waller:That in the in the message. We'll mention that that the practice says speak Espanol. We'll mention that.
DBH:Okay. Yeah. So when you're on hold, what kind of messages are patients likely to hear? What do you talk about as far as the practice
John Waller:That's a great question. Everybody always asks me that. Typically we want to like, yeah, your husband's a dentist, we want to talk about Doc's experience, what makes him tick. We want to build rapport with the dentist and the prospective patient or the current patient when they're calling, let them know about what your husband is like, what he's all about, his hobbies, where he was educated, what makes him tick. And then we want to talk about the different services that the practice offers.
John Waller:Want to talk about types of insurance that they take and something that I love to do is have testimonials on there. You know, we'll just mention, you know, first name, last initial. We won't have the actual patient doing the testimonial, but the voice talent will talk about the testimonial. And then we want to remind them if they're happy with the practice's service, make sure you go out and give us a Google review because that helps the practice ranking on Google.
DBH:Okay. That's pretty valuable. What about if the doctor's running a special one month? Is it editable or is it just like a one time forever?
John Waller:Good question. It's editable. What we try to do is because we will update the message for the practice as needed at no cost because they're they're not going to be going in there and changing it and updating it all the time. We will mention make sure you ask when we come back in the line ask about this month's special. You know, you know, and maybe you could even mention, ask about our Invisalign special.
John Waller:You know, are we are we giving away a laptop, I mean, a laptop or an iPad? Because there was I remember in California, there was a practice on August, which is the interstate that goes by Raider Stadium. This dentist had a bunch of billboards, and and I remember him talking. This is probably early two thousands about getting a free iPad when you didn't visit. So, you know, make sure that they ask.
John Waller:I wanna make sure the practices say that, ask about this month's Invisalign special. That way you don't have to update the act out of the message, but it's still a month. Right.
DBH:Because I was gonna ask when you do these updates, like, how likely is it that you would get the same voice artist being able to do those updates or would it sound like a bunch of different people?
John Waller:That's a great question. Yeah. We're gonna do that. We're gonna have the same voice talent. That's what's good about using somebody like us who has a monster stable of voice talent.
John Waller:You know, we know who's doing your voices, female and male. So what we do is we alternate female and male. Every other paragraph, we alternate that voice talent, and we're gonna know who your voice talent was.
DBH:Oh, that's interesting. What's the reasoning behind that alternating?
John Waller:Oh, I like to do it because that's who's calling your practice, is men and women and women and men. So you alternate it because it really refreshes that I've called a lot of businesses and got put on hold, which one of the things I do to qualify what somebody has on hold. And I will hear all female or all male. You don't want to do that because that's not who's just calling you. You want to alternate it.
DBH:Interesting. I never thought about it, but you know, what kind of impact does alternating have? Because it seems to me if you're just on hold, usually you're gonna get elevator music anyway. Right?
John Waller:Or crickets, dead air.
DBH:Or crickets. Right. Well, elevator music's better than crickets, but I'm
John Waller:I'm You get both.
DBH:Yeah. I'm curious. Have you tried quantifying the value of having that alternating voice versus not?
John Waller:It's huge. Oh, yeah. It makes a ton of sense.
DBH:Can you elaborate on that?
John Waller:Well, like I said, because that's who's calling in and you, it freshens it up. And if you change it and you have a longer message, then people don't even think about what, you know, how long they've been on hold. Okay. So back last century, when we had cassettes and CDs, you could pretty much only do the message about three minutes long and then it repeats. And so that triggers the thing in their brain that, oh, hey, it started all over again.
John Waller:I've been on here a while. Right. Or three or four times. You don't ever wanna do that. That's why I'm all about making sure that the message is, you know, if it's gotta be seven, eight, nine, ten minutes, make that puppy longer so that you don't know how long you've been on hold.
John Waller:Back in the day when you called Southwest Airlines. I mean, it was humorous and it was long. It was a long message. You forgot about how long you were on hold. That's the psychology behind it.
DBH:Okay.
John Waller:That's why having dead air, you know, you know, you're on there a long time. Or music, the same music repeats. Like I can tell you the name of the tier level Amazon music they have on level tier level two, because I've heard it so many times of being on at the zon. I looked it up on, on YouTube, it's called Too Peachy. And so I liked the music, but that's what it's called.
DBH:That's fun. That means you've definitely been on hold too long with Amazon for sure.
John Waller:Yeah, big ton
DBH:of, yeah. And now of course, a patient, when you retain that patient on the line, you have more chance to serve them, and that ultimately improves your ROI on who Cross
John Waller:promote something else that, you asked me that question earlier about what to say. Well, one thing I'd love to do is if a practice has more than one location, cross promote those locations. If you're in Florida and you're in Tampa Bay, St. Pete, Miami, Orlando, I mean, that's a great way for you to get referrals, you know, because you got a relative or a friend that lives in Timbuk 7 somewhere and they can't get to your practice, but you would love to have them to have the same care that you get at Doctor. XYZ's practice.
John Waller:If you hear on OWN, they have an Orlando practice, you can send your friend or relative to that other location. I mean, you've got a bunch of locations in your practice you're paying for. Why not market those on hold?
DBH:So what's the end of this? Like, there are sometimes the the office is just terribly busy. And I've I know in other industries and in dental offices and in medical offices, sometimes the the patient just wants to hang up because the hold wait is too long. Does the office get notified, like, that x this patient, mister Jones, was on hold for x amount of minutes and needs a return call? Is there any data mining that goes on
John Waller:with your Not unless I think you could do that with certain phone systems out there in in dental, but not as far as the on hold message telling you that. No. Yeah.
DBH:There's no way for them to say, like, to refer to a final voicemail, for instance, at the end of their on hold recording?
John Waller:You might be able to do that on the on hold message and say, hey. Do you wanna leave us a message? You know, go ahead and press press 3 to leave us a message. Or they have a system that, you know, if like a callback system like a lot of companies have. If you don't wanna hang on hold, 3 and put in your phone number, and we'll call you back.
DBH:Right. Yeah. I think that would be good because even no matter how entertaining a message is, sometimes the patient has to go, they might be, know, heading to or whatever.
John Waller:Oh, could put them on hold for a boatload of minutes. I totally hear you. Yeah.
DBH:Yeah. So they're saying press 3, leave a message and we'll return your call kind of thing.
John Waller:Right. You will not lose your place in queue. Right.
DBH:Great. Are you just working with dentists only or is this in medical offices as well?
John Waller:No, I've helped any kind of business over the last twenty eight years. Dental practice is terms. That's my sister company. It's Eyes on Old. We are the national leader in patient education messages for the eye care industry.
John Waller:My boss, Mike Roslow, is very passionate about eyes. He used to work for Gaussian Law. And so when he started this, he started the eye care as well.
DBH:About that. That's interesting. So you do some education on different procedures as well. Like if we're gonna be running in a special on Invisalign, your agents can talk about what Invisalign is, what the stages look like. Can it be customized?
DBH:Like different offices do different things
John Waller:for
DBH:for instance.
John Waller:It's totally customized. Yeah. It's not it is that's a great question. It's not cookie cutter. It's totally customized for your practice.
John Waller:That's what cut sets us apart is you wanna have that message totally custom for the practice.
DBH:Interesting. I love that. Okay. So Dennis, I think this would be a great add on for your phone system if you're having, does it work with everything like Weave and you know, many doctors have voice over IP and all these different systems.
John Waller:I'm a real advocate for Weave, referring associate for Weave. I've referred folks to them. Yes, several years ago, I had, I was working with a practice back east. I got them involved with Weave. Yeah.
John Waller:I like Weave a lot.
DBH:Well, you work with the Weave Fund System because it's voice over IP. Totally. Or is there
John Waller:Oh, yeah. We in fact, great question. We have onboarded over 300, I call them Weavers. Weave practices. Yeah.
John Waller:Over 300 because when I call up and I get put on hold, that flamenco music. And I'll I'll say to Susie when she comes back, Susie, I bet you a $100. You guys are weavers. He goes, yeah. And then I'll ask them how they feel about Weave, and they'll tell me.
John Waller:So, yeah, we we totally replace that flamenco music for a patient education message.
DBH:So it's phone system agnostic, no matter what the phone system is, you're just gonna be able to work with it.
John Waller:Almost, almost. So like, if it's a VoIP phone system, like I've got a phone system on my desk here, I've got the Polycom with a two screen Polycom, and I could put you on hold and you'd hear my message from that. And then, so either whether it's Polycom or Yealink, those are fine because they're VoIP, But there are certain phones out there that we can't work with, like RCA phones that have no jack for a player or a single light phone like you have at home. We can't work with it. There's no way to get that message onto that puppy, onto that phone.
John Waller:A single light phone. Okay. But most VoIP systems we can work with, and the older Lucent, Avaya, Toshiba, Meridian phones, NEC we can work with because we have a player that plugs into the music on hold jack with an RCA cable. And because these Ah.
DBH:So you're gonna have a physical box on their desk that has the recorded messages in it next like that?
John Waller:There's a box back in in the back, and it's gonna have an MOH jack for music on hold. We just plug the RC jack into that, and bam, they're good to go. Yeah.
DBH:Okay. So they have to have a PBX system, basically. Right.
John Waller:Bingo. You you know the terminology. They've got a PBX. We don't charge them for the player. We just we give them that magical box and you plug it in.
John Waller:There's no charge for that. Part of our service.
DBH:But when you're going to be doing updates, like updating the message, that's done remotely? Is that done, you
John Waller:know, over the We would update that message, email it to them. Put it on their they have a folder on their desktop, on the laptop. Okay? We we drag we put the thumb drive you put the thumb drive into the laptop, pull the old message off, put the new one on. Bam.
John Waller:They're good to go. It's a thirty second deal. They don't have to wait. So set up and make Back in the old days, last century, we would have to send the cassette or the CD, k, to load that into the player. Now we just email it to him so it cuts down on the time.
John Waller:We email it to new message. They throw it in the file, put it on the thumb drive, and it's onboarded. Done.
DBH:Sounds good. That's pretty easy.
John Waller:It is. It's, know, in our cost, I mean, it's just no. We offer a forty five day free test drive of doing the
DBH:package. And
John Waller:then after that, it's a whopping $2 a day. It's $59 a month, month to month, no long term commitment, no wedding ring involved. They're not getting married to us. Yeah. You know, they want to try it for a year or whatever.
John Waller:That's fine. Okay. That's great if a dentist is going to sell his practice or retire. Not to sweat. You know, married to these guys for X number of decades.
John Waller:They're not.
DBH:I love that. And it's also, while you have it working, there's great potential for it to be helping you increase your bottom line anyway.
John Waller:And then if you sell your practice to your associate or whatever, then the associate takes over that message, takes over the month to month agreement with us. We will update the message, take the retiring dentist off, update it however the new dentist wants it, and they're good to go.
DBH:Sounds good.
John Waller:Okay. Easy peasy. You know? But
DBH:It really does. Well, thanks for sharing that, John. I I really appreciate you. Just full disclosure, John was one of my very first guests on the podcast, and I did such a terrible job with the tech that I lost audio. So I had his video, and I didn't have any of his words.
DBH:So he very kindly and generously Swipe. Joined us again and rerecording his very first broadcast. So thanks so much for that. It's very kind of you to do so.
John Waller:My pleasure, Monica.
DBH:K. And of course, in the show notes, you'll be able to find links to everything that John has to offer. We'll make sure that shows up in the show links. And hopefully, John, you'll be hearing from some of our listeners soon.
John Waller:That'd be terrific. I appreciate that, Monica.
DBH:Thank you so much for joining us and we look forward to seeing you at the next episode of the Dental Business Hub.