S5 Episode 3: Leadership and Onboarding at Dentistry Support

In this episode of Inside Dentistry Support, Sarah Beth Herman, talks about why effective onboarding is such a game-changer—for both the team and their clients. She explains that a strong, well-documented onboarding process isn’t just helpful—it’s essential. It lays the foundation for long-term trust and consistent, high-quality performance.

Sarah Beth highlights the need to keep SOPs and Wiki pages up to date, start communication early, and stay in close contact throughout the onboarding process. She also stresses the value of focusing on complex, human-centered tasks—the kind of work that AI can’t easily replicate.

Above all, she calls on leaders to ensure their onboarding processes are clear, thorough, and truly reflect the high standards Dentistry Support is known for.

Transcript

Hey team, it's Sarah Beth Herman, and today we are gonna be talking about something that defines whether a dental office sees us as essential or just optional.  This episode is titled Leadership and Onboarding at Dentistry Support. Why the first 10 days Define everything. This episode is for every leader at Dentistry support who is responsible for how we onboard,  and that's you,  because every leader has a part in it.

 Before we get into checklists, processes and all of that, I wanna tell you why this matters to me. As the CEOI care deeply about onboarding because to me, it's not just a process.  It is the very foundation. It is the way that we take a sales call and we turn it into a client enrolling and we turn it into a client for life.

 The way we onboard is the way we perform. If our onboarding is weak, scattered half-hearted, maybe we left a few steps out. That's exactly what our support will feel like to our clients.  Like we just don't have it all together.  And the truth is most people don't realize how often onboarding is where we lose trust before we even start the work.

 So as you listen to this episode, I want you to think about what onboarding looks like, how we can make it better, what ways you can take one or two simple things that you've heard in this episode today  and put it into action.  I wanna be honest in this episode, AI is here, artificial intelligence. It's already taking over parts of what we do right now, and one day it may even replace more roles in the dental industry than we ever thought before from scheduling to claims verification.

We're not scared of that here at dentistry support. We're ahead of it because we know exactly what the human touch means. But this also means that our job is not to show up and just do the easy tasks, and as we onboard an office, I've got to have you thinking clearly on that. Our job is to show up, identify the hardest tasks in a dental practice, the ones that require nuance, people skills, deep knowledge, and do those tasks really, really well.

 So effortlessly that the office never wants to let us go. They should look at what we do and think, there is no way AI could replace that. I have to have dentistry support. And as you listen to this episode and then you go into your work and you onboard an office, I want you thinking about this. I want you sharing this with your team.

I want you to make this the living breathing method of how you do business with those that do business here at Dentistry Support. Here's the truth. When we onboard a dental practice, they are investing their money and their trust in us. Their expectations are sky high and they should be. When we onboard a new employee, we're paying them.

Most new hires want to know how to do just enough to get a paycheck, that's not who we are. Here we lead. We elevate the experience. We show our team members  that they matter. That clarity matters and that the work they do shapes the results that we all deliver, and that starts with you as a leader built for them.

Let's talk non-negotiables.  As a leader at Dentistry Support, you are responsible for submitting and maintaining updated SOPs every two weeks. Your SOPs are what are clearly defined in the wiki.  An SOP is a standard operating procedure we call the pages for our clients a wiki page. The standard operating procedures for that client are listed within the Wiki page.

 You are to make sure that every office has a live and accurate wiki page. If you do not update that, the team doesn't know where to go, and any time even one thing changes or new information is shared,  this is the perfect opportunity to update that Wiki page. You're going to teach your team how to use those SOPs and Wiki pages confidently.

You're going to create documentation that matches the exact daily metrics  that we use to measure the team's performance and calculate their pay. If you don't do this, we don't just fall behind. We confuse our team. We frustrate our clients, and we become a liability instead of a solution. Every office's wiki  Page should include the following, full office information and contact preferences, recorded screen shares, showing how to perform office specific workflows, login access and tools list that we use for that office, the names of all employees assigned to this account or client.

Special instructions notes from onboarding are onboarding forms and any HIPAA or compliance factors  that really matter to this office. Our quality assurance tracking and due dates should all be listed. If you don't see it, make sure you add it. Our quality assurance checklists or quality assurance tracking checklists  are all what we check on a weekly basis to make sure we're meeting the minimums and over and exceeding and above and beyond for all of our offices  in every single task we're doing.

We should have billing, phone, and eligibility information for all offices.  Now, if they don't offer that support, they haven't enrolled in that support, they don't want that support, that's okay. It should list that  every Wiki page must be complete. It is your responsibility to maintain this  with our admin team.

So any request you have to modify,  send them into our admin team, and within 48 hours, they will be updated for you in the attached wiki. Onboarding has to be important. It has to be a priority, and it has to be perfect  from onboarding an employee to onboarding a client.  If onboarding is sloppy, guess what happens?

You'll spend the next six months retraining your team over and over and over. You'll confuse our clients and we will lose credibility. But when onboarding is precise, well documented and clear, it becomes our single source of truth and everyone knows what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. The dentistry support way, and when they ask for help, the answer is already in the Wiki  and you can send your team members there.

Your first goal should be, have you checked the wiki? Have you researched the videos there?  If you've checked all of our training and you still have questions come back to me.  Always point your team to the wiki. Here are a few examples of what we expect every leader to implement during onboarding. One early and frequent communication.

Don't wait for the office to chase us. Beat them to it. Provide clarity before they ask. Use the quality assurance checklist weekly for the first 12 weeks. This keeps you and the team accountable, and the client reassured that we are doing all of the right things for them. Own the outcomes, not just the actions. Don't just check a box. Make sure that what you documented actually works in real life for the person doing the task,  if you're checking off something on the list saying it's going really well, provide that, it's going really well.

Give the information that it's going really well. Look through every single piece of what needs to happen so that you know what needs to be done.  If something isn't going exactly perfect, go through the checklist with intentionality.  That intentionality is, I'm not just finishing this quality assurance checklist,  but I'm taking this information and bringing it back to my team and saying, Hey team,  do you all agree with what I've written here?

If you don't, what do we need to do to make this office work better? If you aren't updating your SOPs and Wiki pages,  what you're really saying is, this is good enough, and that's just not who we are here at Dentistry. Support your consistency is the standard. Your team mirrors, let me say that again. Your team will always mirror your consistency.

 If you're fast and loose with onboarding, they will be too. If you're sharp, specific, organized. Your team will be unstoppable.  The offices we serve should depend on us long term, not because we do basic work, but because we do exceptional work.  Because we're the ones who solve the hard problems, they should feel like they got the best value on the planet when they partnered with dentistry support.

And that starts and ends with how we onboard. So here's my ask of each of you. Go back to your wiki page, go to your SOPs. Reread everything.  Make sure your onboarding steps were more than just done. They're effective, documented, and elevated. We are the standard. Let's build like it. I believe in you. Let's go lead really well.