The 3 Waiting Room Moments Most Practices Completely Miss

Anxiety, uncertainty, and small frictions in the waiting room can quietly drain trust before a patient ever reaches the chair. We walk through three simple, high‑leverage touch points that transform those first minutes into a calm, intentional start: orienting new patients to amenities and next steps, acknowledging delays with a clear time estimate, and setting expectations for early arrivals so the experience feels fair. These moves are easy to teach, quick to execute, and proven to raise referrals, boost case acceptance, and earn better reviews.

Throughout, we connect these micro‑moments to macro outcomes: stronger trust, smoother visits, and higher acceptance of treatment recommendations. You’ll leave with a mini playbook you can implement today—roles, timing triggers, and language that fits a modern, patient‑centered dental practice. Want help building a complete, scalable experience system that runs without you? Book a free strategy call at dentalpracticeheroes.com/strategy, and if this episode helps, subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review so more owners can find it.

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Transcript

Why The Waiting Room Matters

Paul Etchison 1:55

You can be the best dentist in your city, the best clinician. You can run on time. You can have that beautiful dentistry that you can see it from across the room. You could just smell how good it is, you know? But still, you could be losing referrals and having a lower case acceptance than you need because of what happens in your office before that patient even sits into the chair. And I'm talking about the waiting room. You know that room that you call the waiting room, but nobody really is supposed to wait in it because you shouldn't be waiting because you're an on-time practice. Yeah, that's the room. And I'm not talking about the furniture. I'm not talking about the paint color. I'm talking about the experience of it. Because there are three very specific moments that most practices completely fail to even acknowledge. And when you miss them, it can quietly damage trust. And if you nail them, it can increase your referrals. And I guarantee it's going to help your case acceptance. So that's what we're talking about today. Three magic little touch points you can do in your waiting room. They're easy to implement and they make a huge difference. Now you're listening to the Dental Practice Heroes Podcast. We are the podcast for practice owners who want to work fewer clinical days, increase their profits, and build a team-driven practice that runs without them, all while taking amazing care of their teams and amazing care of their patients. Everything feels good. We like it. Now I'm your host, Dr. Paul Etchison. I'm the owner of a large group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago. I'm a dental coach and a two-time author of two books on dental practice management. So if you want to have a practice that is the foundation of you having an awesome life, you've come to the right place. And today we're going to be talking about those three small waiting room moments that can dramatically affect the referrals and the case acceptance at your office. And guess what? They're 100% under your control. Let's dive in. Now, everything I'm talking about today is part of a larger patient experience system. So in our seven-phase dental practice heroes omnipractice system, this is phase four. This is patient experience, the ultimate experience integration. So this is just a little part of it, what we teach, but it's one of those things that's small, it's a small detail, but it matters. Because I mean, if you don't do this, people aren't necessarily going to complain directly about it. They're not going to yell, but things just might start off on the wrong foot. I mean, it just feels slightly off, right? When the patients feel slightly off, or maybe the trust is just diminished a little bit more than it needs to be, the patients are going to refer less people there. They're not as blown away. They're not as likely to say yes to your treatment. They trust less. They hesitate more when you're telling them what they need. So this waiting room, we like to think about it as like this neutral space, but in reality, it is a big part of our patient experience. And we can use it as part of the emotional priming that we're doing to our patients as they move from the front of our office into the clinical area. Now, first of all, before we talk about these three moments, uh, you got to sit in your waiting room, man. You got to get in there, sit in there. You got to look around, you got to smell it, you got to check out everything, the little details. Look under the chairs as they're a bunch of dust and bugs. The other day I walked out into my waiting room. Okay, look, check this out. So I walk out there, we have our coffee station, and somebody put like a full stack of coffee cups. Like it's still in the packaging, and they put it in the basket where it's supposed to go to, but like literally half of the stack is in the basket and the other half's sticking straight out the front. They didn't take it out of the plastic wrap and put it so it was all the way inside the basket. I like brought this picture up at our team meeting the other day. I'm like, dude, we are about the details here, right? I'm like, look at this picture. This person did not care about the details. And I don't care who did it. I'm not there to blame, but I'm letting whoever known that did that. Not okay. I didn't like that I saw that. But you need to make your waiting room look nice. So you might need some updating, you might need some new furniture. Maybe it's a little too waiting room-y. I don't like using waiting room chairs. I mean, we do have a few of them in my waiting room where the space is tight, but most of our chairs are these big, like accent chairs. We get them from Value City. They're like maybe$150,$200 each. They last us, I don't know, four years, five years, but I like it that way. It looks different. It's a different experience than the patient is used to. And when I when they come to my office, I want them to feel different. So let's talk about the first touch point that we can really capitalize on. And that's when the patient comes in as a new patient to our practice. We always need to prime them and tell them the rules of being a guest in our home. So, what I mean by that, we're gonna let them know where the amenities are. Hey, Mr. Jones, just so you know, there's a coffee machine right over there. If you want to make yourself some coffee, feel free. Just go over there and pick something out and make it. If you want some bottles of water down there, if you want some refried beans, they're right under the shelf right there. And just so you know, the bathroom is right through that door right there. You can use it right on the right there. You don't have to ask. If you need to use it, go ahead and use it. So I want to prime the patient and let them know exactly what they can do. Okay, what they can use. If they want to get some water, some coffee, or some refried beans, or if they want to use the bathroom, it's all there for them. They don't have to wonder if they have to ask. They don't have to wonder if they got to go get a key for the bathroom. They just know they feel welcome, and it just takes that possible anxiety-producing point out. Now, do we offer re-fried beans? No, I just threw that in there just to throw you a loop. Well, didn't know if you caught that one. We are not offering re-fried beans at our office, but man, maybe we should. I love beans, dude. I love all sorts of beans. Beans are the best. Not as much as I love pomegranates, but I do love beans. So we're gonna start off on the right foot because one of the main psychological principles of waiting is that weights that have anxiety associated with it will always seem longer than a weight that is calm. Now, do our patients, is there any anxiety associated with dental offices? Of course there is. So we want to do things that are gonna help that. We can't really necessarily do much about the patient's anxiety when they're sitting in the waiting room, but we can just know that it's an important part of our practice because of the anxiety. So we're orienting the patient, we're welcoming them into our home, we're showing them where the stuff is. Maybe if it's the winter time, you take their coat for them. That's a nice touch point, too. We like doing that as well. Take their coat and hang it up, or you know, just little things, anything you can come up with. But we're not letting them sit down being like, oh, I'm nervous, oh, I gotta go drop a deuce. And I don't know if that bathroom is for me or the employees, and I'm too embarrassed to ask. That's what we don't want. They ate too many beans right before they came to the office. That's why we don't serve beans in our waiting room. All right, let's talk about moment number two. Are we ever behind in our dental office? Yeah, we sure are. We run behind. I mean, I think you shouldn't run behind. I think the schedule is totally under our control. And if you're consistently running behind, you need scheduling protocols. That's the foundation. We do that in phase two of our omnipractice program. It is one of the first things we do because it's under our control and it sets the stage. It is that blueprint for the framework of this is how our day is going to set up. We're gonna set it up intentionally, and then all we gotta do is execute on it. But occasionally things happen. You go into an easy extraction, you snap off the palatal root, and you're digging around for it and you push it up into the sinus. Yeah, that happens. It happened to me. It just happens. So your day gets behind. But here is something you need to make part of your culture and you got to talk about it. Now, have you ever been to a doctor appointment and maybe you checked in at the front desk? Okay, so let's say your appointment's at nine o'clock. You get there at like 8:50. All right, so you're 10 minutes early. You check in, you sit there for 10 minutes, nine o'clock rolls around. Now it's 9.02. You look at your watch. Hmm, 9.03. Start wondering when you get to 9.05, you say, shoot, I wonder if they forgot about me. Maybe they didn't check me in. I don't know if they checked me in. And then it's 9.07, and you're like, crap, they definitely forgot about me. They did not check me in. I should probably go walk up to the front desk again and let them know that I'm here. But if they did check me in, I don't want to seem like a complainy patient. So, you know what? I'm gonna wait a few more minutes. Now it's 9 10. Yes, they definitely forgot about me. I have to go up there, but man, I don't want to be like that. I hate when people are like that. I don't want to be needy. Oh gosh, what should I do? 9 12. Okay, I'm gonna go up there. Walk up to the front desk. Hey, I'm so sorry. My appointment was at nine. I just wanted to make sure that like I got checked in and yeah, we checked you in, Mr. Jones. Sit the F down. Why are you asking me that? So then you go back and you sit down, and then you're just like, okay, well, they did check me in. Now you're starting to get like irritated. 9.15. What the hell? Why aren't they not getting me? Why is this place always behind? Now you're primed that if anything else happens during this visit that's wrong, you're gonna say to yourself, I should have known this place sucked when they sat me at 9.15, 15 minutes past my appointment time when I got here 10 minutes early. All right. So we were behind. Yes, it was given. It happens. All right, but we should be able to recover from this and we should be able to make this so it doesn't even matter. So here's how you're gonna do it. Everybody on your team needs to know this. We are sat, we are an on-time practice, arc on time. We know they're not gonna get sat on time. So here's what we do. All right, there is a principle of waiting. It says that unknown waits are longer than known finite waits. So, what this means is if you know how long you're gonna be waiting, it does not seem like as long of a wait. So instead of sitting there, you know, having the patient be all anxious for the next 15 minutes, wondering if they should go back up to the front desk, here's what you do right at 9 a.m., when it is the patient's appointment time and we know we're not getting them on time, you send somebody out, and it's this is our usually our assistant's responsibility. We send somebody out, we say, Hey, Mr. Jones, I just want to let you know that we know you're here. We are so sorry we're running about 15 minutes late. We will get you back as soon as we can. And then Mr. Jones says, Hey, 15 minutes, no problem. I'm an easygoing guy. I don't care about that. I'm totally chill. I'm just gonna fart around on my phone a little bit more. So all of a sudden, that next 15 minutes that they're waiting, they're not even worried about. You know what? You might come out and get them at 9, 10, and they're like, oh my gosh, you guys are the best. You exceeded my expectations. It's all about setting that expectation. We need to acknowledge that we are behind and we give them a time estimate for when it's gonna be. People are forgiving, they offer grace, but they will not forgive you if you put them through that 15-minute experience of where they're wondering if you forgot about them. That says, I care about you. I'm acknowledging your appointment time is now, just like I expected you to come on time. We are coming in on time too, and we're letting you know that we're running a little bit behind. It was unexpected, but please forgive us. It makes everything okay. So just do that. And now, no problem. Now, when you come in the room as the doctor or the hygienist, you should always apologize. Always acknowledge it. There's nothing wrong with saying, hey, I'm so sorry we're running behind. We had a kid that fell on some rollerblades today. I say it all the time. Did we have a kid that fell on rollerblades? No, it might have been that I busted the palatal root off of number three and I shoved it into the sinus. But you know what? Kid fell on the rollerblades. I don't know, whatever you want to say. Maybe we we get we had an emergency that got in, somebody was in a lot of pain, we had to take care of them, things ran a little behind. I'm so sorry about that. Hey, it's no problem. No problem, Mitch. We still love you. So, small touch point, big difference. Do it. All right, number three. And this one is an interesting one because it's funny how this happens. You ever have a patient, and it's usually like the older guys, it's like the 70-year-olds, and they come in like 30 minutes early to their appointment, and then you see them on time, but then they're kind of PO'd because they've been sitting in your waiting room for 30 minutes. Like, you got here early, dude. Like, that's not my problem, but nonetheless, it happens. So, kind of similar to the other thing, you know, the thing we just talked about is we're setting expectations, we're being upfront about when we're getting the patient back. So we get somebody, anytime somebody's showing up really early for their appointment, we at the front desk need to acknowledge them and say, Okay, Mr. Jones, I got you checked in. Just so you know, you're about 30 minutes early, your appointment's at 9 a.m. I will let them know that you're here in the back. And if they can get you back earlier, they will. But more than likely, we're going to get you back right on your appointment time. No problem. Now, Mr. Jones can say, uh, okay, maybe I'll just go run next door and get a coffee or something like that. I don't know. Maybe they'll make a coffee in your waiting room. Maybe they'll use that awesome bathroom that you just told them about, but they it'll feel different to them. Because the thing is, is if you don't say that, they're gonna sit there for 30 minutes. They're gonna see somebody likely that's gonna come in five minutes after them and possibly go back into the clinical area before them. Maybe two people will do that. And it feels unfair. It's like, dude, I was here first. They cut in line. So, in order so that we can let them know we are going to do our best, we know they're here, but you are early, Mr. Jones, because sometimes they don't know they're early. Sometimes they really think their appointment is like right on time. So we want to make sure that's not going on. So we let them know they're early and we'll get them back as soon as possible. It's just good customer service. So those are three things. Let's zoom out a little bit. Small moments, right? Small moments that communicate big things. They show your patients things. Are you an intentional office? Are you organized? Do you respect your commitments? Do you respect time? Do you think ahead? Now I don't think patients are consciously like scoring this, but they do feel it. It's part of the experience. And when they feel cared for, they are going to trust you more. So when they trust you more, they're gonna accept your treatment more easily. They're gonna feel good about your practice and refer more of their friends. They're gonna leave better reviews. So it's not really about, it's not about the coffee machine and the fancy floors and the furniture, even though that does play a part, but it's about the clarity and the respect of people's time and showing that you are hospitable office, that you care about your patients. So if we think about our patient experiences, this big script, okay? It's this book. It's this book that reads from beginning to the end. The waiting room is like that first chapter in that magical story that you're gonna start telling to your patient through all these touch points. And that's what the bigger patient experience thing is about. That's what phase four of the omnipractice program is all about. All these little touch points that done intentionally add up to a big result, the way your patients feel about your office. Go look at my reviews, Nelson Ridge Family Dental of New Lennox, Illinois. Read those reviews, see what they say. They talk about my team, they talk about the experience. People say, I've never been to a dental office like this, blown away, things like that. That doesn't come from just being kind and nice. It comes from getting intentional about all those little touch points. And all those little touch points, they're under your control. There's a lot of things that will happen in our day that is not under our control. Let's control the things that we can. So those little things should help your patient experience, should help improve your case acceptance, your referrals. So ask yourself if you're orienting the patients, are you acknowledging delays? And are you clarifying the early arrivals? These little small friction points, these can create the emotional distance that we don't want to create between our patients. And if you are listening to this thinking, man, I should be more intentional about my practice. That's exactly what we do at Dental Practice Heroes. Please reach out to us, set up a free strategy call, dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy. I will be happy to talk to you, hear about your situation, give you some advice. And if we think we can help you in your practice, we'll let you know that. If we don't think we can help you, I will also tell you that as well. But no matter what, you will leave that phone call with a little bit more clarity about what you can do with your practice, what your potential is, and how to reach it. But for now, start with what we talked about today. Start with those three things. Fix these three. You'll be surprised how much smoother everything else feels after doing it. Thank you so much for listening and spending time with me today. If you like what you hear, would you please give a five star review on Apple or Spotify? It would mean the world to me. It really helps this podcast get heard by more people. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next time.