Elevating the Patient Experience: A Case Study on Gillespie Dental

At Biltmore Center for Professional Development, our team is passionate about helping companies differentiate and grow their businesses. This month, we are launching an exciting new series we are calling “Client of the Quarter.” Each quarter of the year, we’ll feature a client who has used our practices to create positive change in their organization! This month, we’ll hear the story of Gillespie Dental, starting at the beginning before our partnership began.

Gillespie Dental: Challenges & Opportunities

Gillespie Dental, one of the leading cosmetic dentists in Western North Carolina, has served the area for over 25 years. While they had a reputation for excellence in clinical dentistry, practice management, and customer service, they were facing a few challenges they wanted to address to take their practice to the next level.

Challenges included:

• A sometimes rushed office environment
• Lack of resources among front-line employees to initiate hospitality solutions, particularly at the front desk
• Patients who were unfamiliar with dental procedures and required empathy and explanation
• A fast-paced front desk environment which resulted in busy signals on phone lines
• A competitive dental market with stifled growth; Gillespie faced challenges attracting new patients

Gillespie Dental’s forward-thinking leaders recognized they needed a competitive advantage; something to set them above the rest. They turned to Biltmore Center for Professional Development to integrate hospitality practices into their business.

The Results

After engaging Biltmore Center for Professional Development in private trainings on The Art of Customer Service and Cultivating Change, Gillespie left with Biltmore’s best practices and specific plans to implement when they returned to the office. The results have been astonishing:

• A 12% increase in revenue just a few months after the training, with yearly revenue set to surpass the previous year by an even more significant amount.
• Within one year of implementation, Gillespie saw a 67% increase in new patient visits (for the month of January).
• Maintained Mountain Express “best of” as one of the best dental practices in the area.
• A new position at the front-desk hired to focus solely on patient experience
• Employees feel more empowered to make decisions, and now bring leadership their insights and recommendations.

To achieve these results, Biltmore took a multi-faceted approach to the patient experience.

Our Approach

Before the initial training, a change readiness survey was conducted to see how willing to change Gillespie employees were. Based on this feedback, and our discussions with their leadership, we realized that while they were already a high performing dental practice, they needed to add “gracious hospitality” to stand out from the competition, leading to both new patients and loyal existing patients. The following approach was implemented by Biltmore Center for Professional Development:

The entire staff attended a half-day training on Cultivating Change on Biltmore Estate.

The team developed and left with a traction plan that identified the application of change concepts to the organization’s change initiatives, creating momentum for progress and increasing success.

Key employees returned to Biltmore for ongoing training in The Art of Customer Service and Employee Engagement. Following the training, Gillespie crafted their own service standards to integrate into the fabric of their culture.

1. The entire staff attended a half-day training on Cultivating Change on Biltmore Estate.
2. The team developed and left with a traction plan that identified the application of change concepts to the organization’s change initiatives, creating momentum for progress and increasing success.
3. Key employees returned to Biltmore for ongoing training in The Art of Customer Service and Employee Engagement. Following the training, Gillespie crafted their own service standards to integrate into the fabric of their culture.
4. Staff went behind-the-scenes at Biltmore to see exactly how Biltmore puts best-practices into action on the front-line.

Gillespie is on target to continue growing in years to come as a leader in their field.

If your organization is facing similar opportunities, we would be honored to be your guide. To explore what a solution could look like for you, simply inquire.