Phil Cole 0:04
Hello, and welcome to class solutions dental education Podcast, the podcast series where we share knowledge and experience to provide you value to you and your dental practice. I'm your host, Phil Cole, and I'm with my co host, Chris Webb. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about payment solutions. And we want to give you a dental specific perspective on setting up your payment systems and how it's in an ever changing process. So today, we're joined by co founder and dentist, Dr. Zachary Allmand, who has his own practice. And then also Mark Wikkerink, of APEX payment solutions. And they're going to be sharing their thoughts, their experiences, and way more about this topic with us today. So welcome, Zach. And, Mark, we appreciate you being on.
Dr. Zachary Allmand 0:57
Thanks for having us. We appreciate the opportunity.
Phil Cole 1:00
So always a big topic. For us. It's a big topic, because it's not just when we're doing our coaching, but when it comes to transitions and buyers, and when they're dealing with the banks in different things. Of course, when they're getting those loans, the banks, of course want to get their merchant services, different things like that. So we run across this for us in multiple levels, when dealing with dentists, not just ones that own the practice, but ones that want to get involved. So I guess it the first question, I'd have just how is the payment landscape changing when it comes to the practices and, you know, give us a little outlook on the opportunities of different ways to that people need to start understanding about how to charge patients and introduce those kinds of things.
Dr. Zachary Allmand 1:53
Sure, sure. You know, it's funny that you discuss practice transitions, that that kind of leads to our origin story as well, like, that's how Apex started is when I transitioned into ownership in my own practice. So you're exactly right, the bank that's going to give you the loan is going to push them purchase services, because it's another revenue stream from them that they can sometimes handcuff you into and then end up charging you a higher rate. But to specifically answer your question, like how is the landscape changing? It's changing greatly, especially as with inflation, the economy changing interchange rates are going up from the different card brands. So merchant services costs are going up, like no matter what processor you're going to use, they're going to increase because those interchange rates are controlled by a global companies, Visa, MasterCard, Discover an American Express. And so one of the newer types of systems for charging merchant services is called a surcharge or a cash discounting program, where you're passing the fees on to the patient or the customer. You know, this has traditionally been seen in retail stores, restaurants, a lot in tourist areas. It has historically been down upon to pass your fees on to the customer or the patient in a dental practice. The you know, I'm big in social media in as these questions that come up in the past, I would say pre COVID They immediately got shut down like the topic got shut down. Oh, just raise your fees. That's that looks bad. On the practice, just raise your fees. It's a cost of doing business. Well, the cost of doing business, I don't know if you guys have noticed it, but it's just skyrocketed. With supply costs with like staffing costs. All of those increases are negatively affecting our overhead. But at the same time, if you're a PPO office, your reimbursements are actually going down or or have been stagnant. And so your breathing room or the ability, your profit margin is shrinking, and it's not shrinking gradually. It has shrunk and very quickly. And so in the past two three years, surcharging and cash discounting have really gained some steam in the in the space. And what we have found as we've started implementing these systems or these payment options for offices is that they haven't been rejected by patients. And with our system, we we've been very intentional about the way that we roll it out. With our program, we allow you to basically try it before you buy it. You can try the surcharging program. And if it doesn't work for your patient base, we switch it back the next month to our traditional pricing, which is still lower than almost every other processor out there. But it allows you the flexibility to see what works best in your office. And what kind of low over the threshold to switching to us by if you go with a surcharging program, we provide the free terminal for you. So it's really a no risk way of trying out this pricing model, which automatically just cuts out 3% of your overhead. And so when when we're looking at, you know, that increases your profit margin by 3%. And when you're looking at, you know, let's just call it a million dollar practice, that's maybe processing $500,000 a year, that's an in your pocket savings of $15,000. That pays for I mean, we've, we've had offices do like, you're basically paying for my new CBCT. And that's generating new income and driving production for the office. So not only are we saving them money, but we're also creating opportunities to create more treatment and get better case except,
Phil Cole 5:54
you know, I think I agree with you 100%, I think, two, three years ago, maybe pre COVID, it was kind of the dirty, the dirty thing, you know, just people I know, I personally did, too, I can't believe they're charging me 3% And my landscape guy comes out and you're charging me 3% To use a credit card, you just hide it inside your costs. And you know, and I wouldn't be so upset. But I think that that you are right, it's kind of drifted away, and it's fallen away. Because I think the other thing that if you want to say that I'm falling into the trap of getting caught up in is the amount of stores that you go in, and you go to a gas station now and to go get a pop. And now every single thing is there's a tip, you know, leave a tip. And it's one of those things where it's like, hey, you know, you go in to get a coffee, and I'm supposed to leave you a tip. All you did was poor black coffee. So I think that's the way and I hear a lot of my friends and stuff. Can you believe the amount of places that you go to, like a fast food restaurant they want to tip. And that was kind of where I think a couple years ago, that surcharge was at that same point, right? I can't believe they're charging me a surcharge. And that's kind of gone away. So this is actually for you then is an absolute an actual program built in.
Dr. Zachary Allmand 7:14
Yep. And so and to be very clear, our surcharging program still allows the patient to pay with a card, but not pay the fee. So this is the difference between us and some other other companies. Because we're, we offer, just like we offer in my dental practice, different treatment options, we're offering our offices, different payment options. So when you're looking at what's called a cash discounting program, that's where no matter no matter what type of card it is, if the patient pays with a card, they're taking, they're paying a 3% fee. It doesn't matter if it's a debit card, American Express whatever, right. And so if they pay with a card, they do that with our surcharging program, which I am a big fan of as a dentist, we're giving the patient the option of paying with a debit card, and the office still pays their fees. Yeah, that actually opens up the conversations for your front desk to you know, talk to patients about it, educate them about credit card fees, because a lot of people just say, You know what I'm paying with a credit card, it's just like paying you cash. Absolutely, it is not you are paying the credit card company to facilitate that transaction and give you that that flexibility. Okay, that's worth something. But, but the general public doesn't understand that. So it kind of allows the officers to shift the blame, actually back to apex. And I'm okay with that. Because it's, you know, the Fidesz can say, you know, you're right, like, I hate credit card fees, too. Fortunately, if you pay with a debit card, will still will pay your fees for you. And people I bought, I want to use my delta rewards American Express, because I want to get the points, then your front desk can stare at him and be like, Okay, if you want the points, you have to pay for the points, I'm not gonna pay for your points for you. I mean, you don't have a conversation, but you know, like the onus back onto onto the patient, like, if you want to, if you want to earn the points, you have to pay the fee. If you want to, if you don't want to pay the fee, you can pay us with a cash a check or your debit card, you have options. And that way you're putting the onus back onto the patient for them making the decision that works best for them. So in when with our surcharging program that lowers offices, effective rates below 1%. We're seeing about .7 to .85% effective rate because debit cards, the interchange rate is much lower than a credit card. And so the office accepting that fee and taking that fee greatly offsets the cost of the other cards.
Chris Webb 9:50
Yeah. Get your 1% your 1% cashback well you paid 3% Right? Yeah. And that's it. educating them. So my so my personal my personal dental office, you know what, what they started doing was, you could do either a cash discount, but but even if they didn't, you know, you just you pay the flat fee if you pay check or cash, or you can pay with a card and pay the surcharge, which now like Phil said, you know, post COVID is pretty standard operating procedure. But do you guys, did you guys do that as well? Where like, did you just say like, Hey, here's what the charge is, you can pay by check or cash, or you can pay with the credit card and you get the surcharge or debit card can be free, whatever. But did you guys offer a discount on top of it? Or in your personal practice? Or did you just have them pay the fee.
Dr. Zachary Allmand 10:47
So in my personal office, my personal office is a little bit different. And I will admit and own that we are fee for service. So I still just make the credit card fee into my UCR fees. Right, I'm doing a 5% raise every year, right. And so that offsets the credit card fees. So my office, my personal office still absorbs the credit card fees, which is a good model, I feel for a fee for service practice, right. But in those PPO offices where you're in network with different companies, you don't get to set your fee increases. And then if your delta you don't get a fee increase, right, or you're getting a 30% reduction in your fees, right, so this the surcharging program I feel works best in a PPO office, where instead of giving that 5% discount on treatment, like cash treatment, or 10%, discount, whatever you are, you're just saying, Well, here's the fee, or you're going to pay a surcharge or charge on top of that fee to offset the credit card fees. And that also allows you it makes the waters less muddy when you're looking at, you know, contracts with like, let's say delta, let's just say delta is like you can charge $800 for a crown. Well, but you can't discount that 10% unless you give delta the discount to. Right. And so then you're discounting a discount A discount, and then it just gives a really confusing, right. So this is a way around that where you're still charging the fee. But then if they're using a card, you're adding the surcharge on top of that.
Chris Webb 12:31
Ok, so let me take that and go on to like the my next question, which is, you would you guys have talked to you and Mark talked to us a little bit before we got started, about how you guys can take like the credit card processing and use that towards overhead control? Can you give us a little insight on how you do that? And then like an example, again, throwing throwing you out there, but just like in your practice, what did you see in overhead reduction? And what kinds of things did you do?
Dr. Zachary Allmand 13:03
Yes. So it's a concept that I've internally called breathing, breathing room, okay. Think of it like you're sitting, you're sitting in your apartment or your house, and you've got eight foot ceilings. The floor is your overhead, the ceiling is your production. Right? At some point in your in the breathing room is the space between your head and the ceiling. Okay. In dental offices, the floor is being raised with our overhead, right? Because of cost of supplies, labor costs, all of that. So the floor is slowly rising, which is shrinking that breathing. Well, how do you how do you maintain that breathing room? Well, you have to increase the ceiling, you're either doing that by increasing your production. So you're bringing in more revenue or, or you're increasing your fees, right to to bring in more revenue. And in that, like I said, in the PPO office, and if you're a maxed out office, where you've got six chairs running and you can't do anything more like your ceiling is fixed. So you have to look at lowering the floor. Okay, you create room by lowering that floor, that's by lowering your overhead. And, you know, first talking what we talked about before, when I talk took over the practice. My partner and I bought it in 2013 it was a well, well, good producing office, but their overhead was like 72 or 73%. And they were one guy was 78 years old, the other 66 They've been doing it forever. They're comfortable. They weren't looking at trimming the fat, right? But as new owners, that's all we can think about it's like holy cow. How are we going to cover this loan cost? We got it, we got to do something. So that's where I immediately dove into you know, we cut out things like they were dry cleaning their lab coats every day. And so we put in a washer dryer combo and we just started cleaning our own stuff in like a cut out crazy, crazy cost. Stare are a cycle, you know, like our waste control, we start cutting that and then looking. And then I started looking at okay, financially, what can we do? That's what led to looking intensely at merchant services, cutting those costs, because the end of the day, if you're looking at Apples to Apples services, and they're providing the same service, it comes down to cost and customer service. Right? How are you going to our customer support? How are you going to support me? And how are you going to reduce my costs. So right now, our overhead, and actually, it's been this way for about eight years, our overhead hovers between 39 and 42%. So that's about a 30% reduction in overhead. I mean, that's a pretty big drop of a floor. And that allowed us to have some pretty comfortable breathing space within that, you know, we did a lot of different things we were always intentional about our costs are about our expenditures, we never wanted to have huge equipment, loans, or huge construction loans. And so we would, in the first year, we updated the office, aesthetically, we put a new flooring painted, just spruce it up, put in new lighting. So that was our big expenditure for the first year for 2014. We paid that off, in 2016, we added Cerec technology to the office, we paid that off. And I could go into Cerec, and how much I love it and how much it's how much that inherently has reduced my overhead, Chair time, things like that, but let's just take that piece out. But we once we paid that off, then we added a CBCT. pay that off, added new two new chairs, we're in the process of paying that off, we're going to add electrical handpieces, you know, and it's just a lot of offices get into the weeds when they want all the new technology, all the pretty aesthetics office, and they want it now. And so especially like startups or practice transitions, they get sold a good game by the dental supply companies, because, oh, sure, we're gonna put in $800,000 worth of equipment and just add that into your practice law. Okay, but you're paying interest on that. And then how are you going to pay yourself and still have flexibility to, like, two weeks ago, my compressor just went. And I'm looking at a brand new AirSTAR 50 for about 10 to $12,000, through, through Schein, refurbished one through our local company, our local service company that was about $5,000. But I ended up buying a Dansereau 2.5 horsepower, two head, compressor for about $1,000 less and you know, just not getting sucked into the marketing and pushes from the supplier reps and doing your due diligence and just being smart business people, which is something we don't get trained on it dental school at all, like I we had one, one business class. And, and I didn't pay any attention in it, because I was going into the military. And so I'm like, I don't need to know this. And then I got out of the military, I was like I should have paid attention to this. A lot of the business management things we learned along the way. And you know, that's kind of where yeah, that's where KLAS comes in. It's like consulting and helping you to like, navigate through those different landscapes that we didn't really think about. And you know, that's where we want to be a resource as well as, not only are we providing your credit card processing, but we're increasing the solutions that you have for taking payments in your office. And you know, kind of the additional pieces of that and we don't have time to get into I wish we did I wish we had like seven hours. But you know, overhead control is also about increasing your efficiencies, and increasing your profitability through increased case acceptance and, and how are we making treatment accessible to patients? You know, and that's why with the apex platform we have baked in automated payment plan management software, we have website integration, we have card encrypted card on file storage, so that way, we're removing the hurdles from your patients from saying yes to treatment. We have a whole case acceptance program that we've developed in my office using our platform and implementing a treatment plan coordinator position where we're, the patient is in the chair with a broken... let's just say they have a broken number eight, and we're taking intra oral pictures, we're putting those up on a big screen TV in front of them while we're discussing treatment options. All the while we're using our in office communication system to communicate with our front desk. Hey, we're treatment planning endo posting for crown on number eight. For Mrs. Smith, I want you to break that up into a six month payment plan with 25% down why don't we use 25% down? Well, it's either 25% down or my true lab costs right so that way, even if Mrs. Smith gets the treatment done today, and skips town I'm only out My time because she's at least paid for the lab costs, right? So 25% down, and then I break those payments up over the next six months, why over the next six months, because we know the sweet spot for payment plans is nothing less than $100, nothing more than $1,000 a month, because if we can keep it less than a car payment, patients aren't going to be oh, I can handle that. But if they can't afford $100 a month, they can't afford that treatment. And so that's going to allow us to like weed the people out that really shouldn't be getting treat or not shouldn't be getting treatment, but need to look at different options. Right. And so then my front desk, my treatment plan coordinator is creating that payment plan within our software so she can actually print out, here's what your next six payments are going to look like, here's the date that we're going to automatically withdraw those from your bank account, or automatically put them on your credit card. And she's coming back to the room presenting the treatment plan. Patients looking at the treatment plant and they're looking at the screen of that ugly broken number eight, they look back down on the treatment plan. And since it's being held in the privacy of the operatory, like we're completely HIPAA compliant with the way we're presenting treatment, we're giving them a sense of safety and security and knowing that oh, well, my friend who's out in the waiting room, I don't want them to know I broke off number eight, that's Oh, that's terrible. You know, and we keep it a clinical situation. So that way they are, they're more likely to say yes. And we took in as we talked her. So we took my case acceptance, we track this over 2016 to 2018, pre COVID numbers, but from 42%, to above 60%, for our case, acceptance. And when your treatment planning in my office, were treating planning about $2 million a year in treatment, that increase of the minimum, let's just call it 20%. Let's increase the revenue by $400,000. In the dental office, yeah, that inherently lowers your overhead because you're you're raising the top number, without significantly increasing your bottom number. Because I'm doing in office milling that's already paid, the machines already paid for, and I'm just paying for the $30 block, you know, and, and I don't have to have that follow on appointment that's taking up chair time, which cost me $275 an hour. Right. And so all of these factors play into keeping that overhead low, keeping your profitability high.
Phil Cole 22:21
You know, for us, a big thing for us, as always teaching doctors, especially going to buy the practice, like you mentioned the break even point and following that break even point, knowing what it is. So what you were describing as as buying, you know, buying that piece of equipment and paying it off and stuff. And that's that breakeven point does that right, you know, what, you know, what you can afford, you know what you can afford, but I do think that when we go over dental overhead reduction and stuff as well. And of course, you know, we look at Apex or we look at the credit card situation stuff. But that's the other thing, too, is getting the mindset, I think for dentists a lot of times to realize it's a lot harder to lower the floor than it is to raise the ceiling. So if you want that breathing room, it's a lot easier to get to work with on production and the things that can get that production than it is to try to always constantly lower that floor. But yet, on the other hand, I think that there's certain things that make up that floor that people look at consistently. And that's it. And I think one of the and then there's a lot of things that they take for granted, or they just assume, and I would say, you know, your solutions are one of them. Because I don't know how many times like I said, when we go back to the transition thing, and we're dealing with the buyer, they get sold so easy from certain banks that I'm going to give you, you know, I'm a half a percent less in my interest rate. But I always tell them, if someone comes in a percent last or something like that, they're like, well, they're they're saving me a whole 1% I'm like, no one, if all the other banks are at six, and this guy's at five, they're making up for it somewhere. And if so many times it's merchant services, right? So it's always like, Listen, you have to read the small print, you got to make sure that you're, you're covering the looking at everything. So with that being said, you know, inside these, I mean, there's all kinds of credit card payment solution companies and stuff like that. They all I think a lot of them seem to me is is what I thought interesting when when meeting with you guys and talking with you, you have different solutions, hence the name. But when you're talking to a lot of the other companies, it kind of goes back into that bank thing too, right? It's all about so that they have the lower percentage or they have a lower cost fee or something like that. And I go back to the same thing with a lot of those companies as you talk just like a bank does, you can lower here, but you're going to make up for it somewhere else. So when what tool what other tools are what are you guys doing that provides help with the office when it comes to, you know, the and it maybe you've I know, you've said some of it, but the collections a project productivity, stuff like that, I mean, just what other? What other avenues Do you help with, so that that office realizes that they're getting a full solution package versus we're getting a better point process?
Mark Wikkerink 25:45
For sure. So when I was working in office, I learned a couple of things. A, it's really hard to get money from the patient as soon as they leave the office. So getting into the collections while they're in the office is critical. And we can do that multiple ways. I think the biggest thing is giving them options, like Dr. Allmand said, you know, if they they're in the office, the treatment changes, suddenly they owe an extra $300. You can say, Hey, do you want to pay this $300? Or would you prefer to pay $50 for six months, or the $300. Setting them up with an automated plan while they're in the office really helps that. The other thing, I think these can really help with marketing efforts. You know, a lot of dentists are doing aligners. Now, with the recurring billing, you can get a deposit that allows you to order the case, get them started, and then set them up on a payment plan for whatever amount per per month. And then just don't give them all the aligners you know, only give them a tray or two at a time. And that way, you have some safety net there that are still making payments. But suddenly, you start doing flyers or ads or whatever, and you're seeing new patients as well, which is good, and then get them back for recurring. So that's one of the big things I want.
Dr. Zachary Allmand 27:07
And just just to kind of like what what other solutions are we offering if you like using the aligners, specifically, let's just say that your office would offer aligners, but you're allowing the patient to pay through care credit, right? Well, the office is taking a 10 to 15% hit rate, you're getting a haircut right off the top of that, well, if you use our automated system, it doesn't cost you anything. So we're saving you that 10 to 15%, on top of the merchant services, that we're already saving you there. Same thing with in office membership plans. So we utilize the automated payment plan system in my office to offer a membership plan. And it's set up on a recurring basis, I allow the patients so it's either it's either this year, it's either $500 annually, if you make that payment, all right up front, or it's $50 a month, if you want it taken out monthly. Well, they get a 20% discount by paying up front. But we have the Okay, we got that $500 Right off the bat. So and we're retaining them as patients because they've already pre paid for their services. Oh, and it automatically re enrolls every year. You know, if you can completely customize those payment plans to allow for that. Why are we why are offices paying these membership plan companies ridiculous monthly fees and then per participant per per participant fee to manage something that takes literally two minutes to set up in your office and then it just runs automatically you know, and so that way we're increasing patient retention, we're increasing the access to care because we're giving them we give a 10% discount on major work and 15% discount on normal restorative work. Okay and and you know, Mark like brought up like, this is something we can completely like go off the rails on how the case acceptance works with orthodontic aligners, also sleep apnea appliances and implants like these are procedures that you have a captive audience for for an extended period of time specifically with orthodontic aligners. I am giving my patients one month's worth of aligners every time they come in for a couple of reasons. One, I want to make sure that I'm keeping control over the process, but also to if I'm setting them up on a monthly payment plan and they default on that next month's payment. And they come in to get their next aligners. It's like oh, hey, Mrs. Smith, we noticed that your card got declined. We want to go ahead and take care of that payment right now. So and we have people are like, no, no, no, I don't want to be I don't want to be the bank. I don't want to be the bank for my office. Like that's too much risk and responsibility. We have had a less than 1% default on our payment plans over the past eight years. Yeah, yes, eight years, eight years, that 1% is a heck of a lot less than the 10 to 15% that I'm paying CareCredit. We've eliminated care credit from my office. So that right there, so that takes 10% off of my overhead for those those treatment plants. So, you know, you say it's really hard to lower the floor, I say, it's not so hard, I did it, you know, we did it 30% If the fat is definitely there to trim. But in addition to that, you know, we're offering the website integration, like you think about it, like you pay your gas bill, you're either paying it automatically, or you're logging on 10pm to pay the bill. And we don't have to have somebody in the office, taking that payment. It just happens automatically. So like when when I first took over our practice, the office manager was coming in on Fridays, pulling out her Rolodex of phone numbers and credit card numbers to authorize payments. Well, I was paying her her $35 an hour to sit in the office for five hours to maybe collect $400 or $500. That made no sense to me, that's a 50% overhead. Right. And so if I had set them up on that encrypted, automatic payment plan, I don't even need her to come into the office. So that just saves me. You know, let's just call $150 a week, $600 a month, that's seven grand a year that I'm saving just by implementing this automated process, and having the cards on file to like, take payments. So when insurance comes back in, it's like, oh, there's still a $30 balance. And Mrs. Smith, are you okay, if I just run this card that we have on file, as opposed to checking the five minutes to try and call you and track you down? And then you don't answer the phone. And then I have to try five times. That's just eating your, your, your front desks time up throughout the day, the more things we can automate, the more it's going to drive down the overheads. So these are all you know, the solutions that we offer, and then, but to roll it back to okay, you're looking at Apex, like, we're all we're an education company, as well, because of my background as a dentist, I love educating. And so what we do is we always provide complimentary cost savings analysis for you to basically see before you before you commit, like, what would you be saving, but we lead with our rates? And like you said, Phil, they're all going to get their 6%. Right. If the bank is saying 5% on their loan, they're making up that percent somewhere else? Well, a lot of merchant services companies will say, Oh, well, you're right, we can beat their rate. But they're then going to either charge you a monthly fee for your terminal, or they're going to mark up that equipment to make up that money. And then most merchant services companies, especially through banks, oh, they're going to raise your rate every six months without really telling you Oh, it's on your statement. So you should have seen that. But we're just gonna go ahead and do that.
Phil Cole 32:54
Right, agree 100% with that. Yeah.
Dr. Zachary Allmand 32:56
So with apex, like, we're all about transparency, we lead with our rate, hey, here's we're doing interchange plus pricing. This is it's transparent. We can't control the interchange rate that's controlled by the global companies. But what we can control is what we charge you, right? Let's take those numbers and plug them into your practice. Like on our website, you can automatically upload your statements in we will reach back out with that cost comparison analysis to say, alright, this is going to save class dental office $300 a month, would you like to know how well and then we go into educating you on the platform, how we utilize it, what are the different features that we have? How is this going to be implemented in your practice to increase your efficiencies? It's a it's not a hard sale, because it's like, we give you the information. And then what you do with it, it's up to you. But if the lab if the only thing that we're doing for my colleagues, is educating them and empowering them to make a better decision for their practice. Okay, great. That's good. I'm happy with that. And I can sleep at night, right? Because there are some people that will be like, they'll take our rate, and they'll take it back to their processor. And they'll be like, oh, yeah, we'll match that. And they feel like they won. But then they have to come back six months later and do the same. Same darn thing. Yeah, right. Yeah. Why didn't you stick with a company that's going to the rate that they quote, you is the rate that you get for the life of your processing? Yep, absolutely. So it's common sense.
Chris Webb 34:26
So you kind of you kind of touched on it already. But my last question for you then is, you know, what sorts of things should a doctor be talking to their processing company about when they're trying to evaluate where they want to go? So it's not all going to be about rate and we've you know, we've talked about banks and things like that to like, you know, that's one of our big things we talked to a buyer is look, interest rate is not the end all be all find out about all of the processes and support that you get from them. So for you guys as a as a processor as a merchant service company, like well, But what other sorts of things should a doctor be asking about? Or looking for so that they can make a good educated decision?
Dr. Zachary Allmand 35:07
So I think, Mark, I'd like to use a talk on this, because you are this. You talked about support. Okay, how is? How is how are we going to support you? How is your merchant services provider going to support you? What happens when your terminal goes down? Or this payment doesn't go through? Or you can't find it? So, Mark? Yeah, I
Mark Wikkerink 35:30
think that definitely sets us apart. So we operate a little differently. We're all a team, we're not a bunch of individual reps. And so officers that I work with, they all have my personal cell phone number, they all can call me, you know, any business hour, whether East Coast, West Coast, whatever. They can text me if they want, they can email, of course, if for some reason, I'm not available, we have a technical support team as well. So there's other people who man that line, they can answer questions, and then we have slack for communication between us. So we can always talk to each other and say, Hey, this happened with this office, can you help them? Or can you call this person because they reached out to me, but I'm on a call right now. That's a big difference. I think, rather than when I was in an office, you know, the terminal occasionally wouldn't work. Or I had a question about a payment, while the company we signed up with got bought out by another company, ended up having to call a call center. I didn't know who was calling, it was overseas. It just wasn't a great experience. And I was trying to manage, you know, patients, checking out checking in all that stuff. At the same time. It was just way too difficult.
Phil Cole 36:42
Yeah, so there's no doubt about that.
Dr. Zachary Allmand 36:45
Question. And that's why that's why 70% of our team is working in a dental office, we do try to go, we try to recruit heavily within the dental space, because they can relate to the offices that we're servicing, right? Just like Mark said, I was trying to trick somebody and fix somebody else. And stay on the line with a call center with somebody, I have no idea where they are. And they end up either I've had to hang up out of frustration they get disconnected or something.
Phil Cole 37:09
Well, and I think that was I think that's a big reason of why like why we wanted you on the podcast, as well as because we are very, we're very particular about who we work with. We want him to be dental specific, and so forth. Because it is its own monster, right. It's not like any other typical business. And so I think that that was huge when you guys mentioned that to us when we first met you guys to know that you're not hiring overseas people that don't know anything but that you are working with, and the people that are inside your organization, we have been in the dental practices.
Dr. Zachary Allmand 37:46
I mean, it's huge. Like at the end of the day, my reputation as a dentist, as a businessman, and as a human is on the line with my company every day, like we're like hey, when you get on social media, tell me about your experiences with Apex like we're, you know, we're an open book when it comes to customer like our customer service, like we're not going to dance around things. If things go wrong, we want to know about them. So we can either address them head on, correct them, or at least own them and grow from it. But it is done. A dental is a huge industry, but it's still a very small community. Right? Yes, absolutely. And so if if we have a terrible product or terrible service, it's going to get around quickly. And we're not going to have a company anymore. And so it's like being very intentional with Hey, we want to be able to support these businesses, we want to be able to, like stand behind our word on how we support things. And like Mark said, you know, we are a team, you have multiple layers of support within the organization, every office has direct has a direct line of direct communication with their rep that they sign up with with their client engagement specialist. It's not like Mark's gonna sell you the product, and then ghost you once Okay, we're gonna hand you off to the support team. Nope. Mark is still your first line of communication if the terminal goes down, or if you have a question about this. Now, he might not have the knowledge base in that particular. You know, like if the process and Chip goes down in the terminal, Mark's not going to know about that. But we are going to get together with him and another person on the support team to troubleshoot that for you. And then you know, even after hours like we have 24/7 support stateside support where yeah, if for some reason you log in, let's just talk about fraud. Right? Something happens where in this has been happening more frequently with like, online payments, like worldwide, right? There are these fraud, fraudulent people that are testing cards, like if you have an online payment portal, you might notice Holy crap, somebody just tried to run 10,000 transactions on my website and what they're doing is they're testing different card number comm When he gets to see if one of them sticks, right, that happens 11pm. At night, you get a notification, you're like, What the heck's going on, you can call our Customer Support. And we will get that taken care of, you know, we're not gonna leave you hanging. And, you know, if you have any questions, it's not going to take days or weeks to track down your statements. Everything is available on our cloud based platform with your login, where you can access your statements, all of your information in real time, you can see the transactions that are being processed in your offices in real time, even if you're sipping a cup of coffee on the coast of the Dominican Republic or something, you know, as long as you have an internet connection, you can see what's going on in your office. And this is huge for multi location offices where, you know, the CFO, the CEO, the accountant wants direct real time access to all the locations, we can link all of the different locations into one login so they can toggle between different different locations. You can search for transactions to see if there's fraud going on. Who's running refunds? Why is this refund being run? Well, we actually have security measures in place where we can limit the access for people who can run refunds. Our terminals are protected with pin numbers to run refunds. So you can't run a refund to your personal debit card or a prepaid card. Like if the dot and you we can get set up notifications and alerts that the doctor will get, oh, I'll refund ran for this amount. Okay, well, why did that refund run? Like, are we reconciling our end of day reports correctly? All these different things? It's not just payment processing. It's baking this into the process that happens inherently in the dental office, and how can we make those processes easier across the board, not just for taking payments? Well,
Phil Cole 41:46
I can tell you this, we are coming to a close here, we gotta hit the road. But I will tell you that we are definitely having you back. Because I've now brought the fraud you brought up four topics now that I want to sub title to another episode. So before we go on to our fifth topic that gets brought up, we'll probably bring it to a close. But I really I really want to thank you Dr. Allmand and Mark for being on and giving us a little insight on payment solutions. I think it's a huge topic. And I think it's one of those things, to be honest with you that just gets left behind and forgotten so many times. So really appreciate it definitely going to have you back to go over these other four topics in a little bit more in depth because I love the fact that you guys are willing to help educate as well. And, you know, Doctor, you of course that can know more than anybody that when it comes to the business solutions, like you mentioned it the the lack of education that you guys get between class solutions, and yourself with apex. That's something that we really put a lot of effort into making sure that you're getting good sound advice and stuff. So we'll definitely have you back on appreciate it. So if you enjoyed the show, please rate review us on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm your host Phil Cole. Thanks for listening and then once again Thanks Zack and Mark and Apex payment solutions for your information today.
