Scheduling Institute

«The scheduling institute» is a complete joke! The women (fake patients) who call sound like airhead bimbos and ask the dumbest questions ever! You already know it’s them on the other line because they sound so phony not to mention rude. I have purposely «failed“on several occasions because I already know it’s the SI on the other line. Dentists beware of this scam! My dentist has already caught on to this joke of a company but we just keep them because honestly the recorder CDs they mail out are very entertaining to listen to!

I am an orthodontist from California and have worked with the Scheduling Institute for just over a year now. I found it interesting reading the reviews for this outstanding company. All of them were written by disgruntled employees or people that barely dabbled in the vast information that the Scheduling Institute offers to give outstanding care to our patients.
With over 30 years of orthodontic experience and after working with at least five other management consultants in this industry, I can say with certainty, That the Scheduling Institute is the most thorough and the most effective management training company I have ever experienced. Their systems are very organized and provide the framework to do the best dentistry and orthodontics possible. The tools they offer will grow your practice and at the same time improve the quality of your patient care.
I give them the highest of recommendations.

I ordered the 3 month self study program and, although there was a some good information in there, the phone auditors couldn’t figure out that our receptionists NEED to ask patients what type of insurance patients have, otherwise we end up with patients coming in for appointments and leaving when the find out we actually don’t work with their plan. Jay’s advice «take every plan» might work for dentists, but s an optometrist I can’t accept plans that pay me 20% of my usual and customary fees (I’m sure Jay wouldn’t accept 20% from his clients).
So we cancelled after the 90 days. A month or so and a gizillion emails later in which they I was continually asked to come back, I was offered a free month, to see if a different account specialist would be a better match. They also said they would change the way the auditors were grading our staff due to our unique needs. They were never able to do this and the new rep, although better than the young kid they paired me with the first time, just didn’t cut it. So a said «no thanks» to joining again. That was July. It is now October and we have received membership bills for the past 4 months! I have called, emailed, my staff has called and emailed and the bills just keep coming. I had to file a claim on my CC to stop the charges which apparently will go on forever once they get your card number!
Proceed with caution!

My office has worked with SI for several years now. We have done the big events, the trainings and participated in The U. Initially it all seemed good and we implemented some great things in our office that our patients really enjoy. There have been other things that we have tried that failed miserably with our demographic.
Our office was doing pretty well before we originally made the investment to join. We were already doing a lot of the things that were being suggested in the trainings, but we figured this would be a way to take the practice to the next level. Four years in and with a very dedicated staff who is not resistant to growth and change, we are yet to see that happen. In my opinion, the amount of money that our doctor has invested to be a part of this organization is outrageous. The thing that is most disappointing is the lack of new information. It is all very repetitive. I can certainly appreciate the value of retraining, but I have found that it is a lot of the same information being repeated over and over and not always in different packaging.
Also, because SI has grown so quickly since we initially joined, the level of service we receive is now subpar at best. The people answering the phones need to go through their own telephone training because they often seem clueless on who to direct me to when I call. It would be a great idea if our consultants actually knew something about the doctor and the office before calling to speak with him or our staff. It seems to me that Jay and SI like to make big promises, but they fail on delivering and follow through is poor. Their referral program is a bit of a joke and we are still waiting for a thank you for our referrals.
I understand the principles behind what SI is trying to accomplish, but I think that Jay and his team have lost sight of the initial vision they were promoting. We will not continue with SI and I cannot say I am disappointed with the doctor’s decision.

We ordered their 3 month self-​study over the phone. The experience was subpar and did not yield positive results. One thing to note is that after your receptionists are graded, you must wait 15 days until you can address that grading and be graded again. Waiting 15 days in a 3 month program is a long time, I imagine the reason for the delay is to push the program out of the 3 month timeframe.
After the three month program, we received a call from the scheduling institute about extending the program. We said we are not interested. Despite that, we have been charged now for 3 months @ $ 199. We have called numerous times asking for a refund and that no new charges be applied. They said they will comply, but the charges persist, forcing me to call my credit card company to stop payment and dispute the charges. Furthermore, when I called the scheduling institute, the people answering were very disrespectful to both me and my manager (two calls ended in hangups!). Considering this company is teaching phone etiquette I found that confusing. Their guarantee promises «we will always treat you with dignity and respect…»

This is company is THE most unethical, sneaky and underhanded company I have ever dealt with. I received the «mystery call» and thought the call sounded funny at the time, but I disregarded it and went on with my day. Then I received the «tattle tale» recording and realized what they were up to. I showed the recording and information to my doctor and he laughed. It really is comical when you think about it, they spend an exorbitant amount of money on these FedEx packages and mailings, so that goes to show you how much money the are milking out of these poor Dentists that buy into this program. I too have received calls from this company on a weekly basis and I advised them that my employer was not interested, they refuse to take my word for it and will continue to call until my employer returns their call directly. Well, HELL will freeze over before this happens, so I have no problems taking messages and throwing them in the trash.
So if you happen to read this «Carrie, from Jay Greier’s office» don’t expect a call from my employer.

At least once a year, our office gets those annoying, harassing phone calls from Jay’s Scheduling Institute. They call completely unsolicited and it’s always very obvious that it is these parasites who are calling. When they call, it doesn’t matter how many back flips you do, nothing you offer the phony caller (Jay’s fake patients who are terrible actors) will appease them. They call asking for a Saturday appt., late evening, etc. And, when you magically give them exactly the day, time, the moon and the stars that they ask for… they still don’t schedule an appt. because they are only pretending so they can give you a failing grade. Today I got such a call and I knew immediately it was Jay’s liars wasting my time once again when I have REAL patients i need to attend to. When I told my employer, he said they were barraging him with emails again, too. Last year they called to speak to my employer and when I told them he didn’t want to speak to them and he wants them to STOP calling and STOP mailing their CRAP to us, they tried to say he requested for them to call. That is a TOTAL LIE. We detest them. They are liars and frauds.

If I could give them zero stars, I would. They are the most disrespectful and sneaky company I have ever dealt with in my 16 years in practice. They should be ashamed of themselves for the shenanigans and lies they tell to get people to sign up for their training!

The Scheduling Institute is a terrible company that wants to train you to scam your patients. Regardless of how many times we tell them to stop calling our office they refuse to stop. The send us snail mail pamphlets, and brochures, and letters from other dentists «singing their praises» almost daily. Ever other week or so they send us a package via FedEx packed full of crap.
They also record ‘mystery caller’ calls of our staff and then mail our dentist a CD of the call saying how the staff Received an «F» grade because we did not lie to the ‘potential patient’ about accepting their insurance. Or we receive and «F» grade because we took the time to talk to the ‘potential patient’ and actually cared enough to answer their questions; instead of scamming the patient to come into the office to find out that we do not really accept their insurance. Our Dr. listens to the mystery caller CDs and then laughs and tells us what a great job we are doing.
We have even started refusing packages from the Scheduling institute because we are so overloaded with their crap that we can not throw it away fast enough. We literally received three separate mailers from them today. All the reviews from offices who have paid the Scheduling Institute say how ridiculously expensive their seminars and training are. All I can say is they must take a huge chunk of the money people pay them and put it into marketing. If I could get them to send me a blank piece of computer paper instead of their mailers we would never have to buy paper again for our office.
If anyone has found the secret to get these people to stop calling and wasting the time that we should be helping actual patients, please let me know. When I tell them to stop calling they say that only the dentist himself can request them to stop. Do you really think a dentist wants to take time away from his paying patients to have to deal with a scam company’s marketing call? All I can say is thank God my Dr. is too smart for fall for their scams.

This company is sending excessive amount of mail and cd’s with recordings of calls they record of our team answering the phone. They are trying to bait our boss into purchasing their product. We have a successful practice which receives numerous new patients monthly. It is sickening the tactics this company uses on professional people trying to entice them by making them think their team is sabotaging their profits by incorrectly answering the phone and turning patients away when they purposefully end the calls abruptly so your team automatically fails. #1 Ratings, whatever! Their tactics are extremely tacky and by the looks of other reviews people are unto them. Stay away from this company.

We have been with Scheduling Institute for about a year and have experienced amazing results! Our new patient numbers have increased at a rate we could have never anticipated.
Hunter Rhodes is our consultant and we love him! He is always available whenever we have questions or concerns, regardless of the time. We often work later than he does, but he still responds promptly! He is knowledgeable and we love him so much, when we upgraded our program, we insisted Hunter switch from the current program to the new program. (He was given the green light to do so and we couldn’t be more thrilled!)
Many offices experience issues with staff being uncomfortable with change leading to tension in the office. Hunter guided us through that process and listened to our points-​of-​view and concerns prior to giving us his opinion. Despite other reviews (seemingly from disgruntled staff members instead of doctors/​practice owners), he didn’t encourage us to change staff. He was focused on how to make things work with the amazing team we already have.
We strive to provide excellent customer service to our patients and Hunter/​SI have given us fantastic ideas to increase our ability to provide the best customer service around, which we implemented immediately. Due to these few measures, we have seen a dramatic increase to our internal referrals (new patients referred by current patients).
I would recommend (and have!) Scheduling Institute and Hunter to colleagues, friends, and other practices looking to take their practice to the next level. Scheduling Institute is a great asset and we are very lucky to have the opportunity to work with such a skilled team.

Hunter Rhodes at the Scheduling Institute has given us nothing but problems. Of course, when we were first signing up, he was eager to take all of our phone calls and answer all of our questions. When the time came that charges started appearing on our credit card bill without any contract being signed, we called him to ask questions, and that was when all the avoiding start happening. «He was in a meeting», «He was not in the office today», calling our office after 5pm, emailing to tell me he will call me first thing in the morning and then nothing, etc. When we finally reached him, he let us know he will remove the charge and we will no longer be charged. We got another charge. He has not done what he says he will do. Do not trust this company.

My Boss decided to purchase this program and told me all about it. We usually discuss things but being that we were getting extremely busy I took her word for it. This company is extremely annoying beyond imaginable belief and by reading all the negative reviews on Unilocal and on their face book I’m like ouch, wasn’t just us. First of all the rep who came to do a tremendously boring training with us and the man (billing dept… no names) is rude and persistent. Any company that has pride in their business will have a different approach to letting the formula work and then being persistent about selling more. We keep getting charged for services monthly on our bank account and nobody will call us back in regards to that. We got numerous calls and mail asking for us to purchase more and more. FYI the training was about someone teaching us how to answer phones!!! They are supposed to give us a few secret shopper calls several times a month and it’s only been 1 – 2 every couple months since they know that we are not interested. They also call under a random long phone number or private and have people call who stay silent on the line so that the script they show you is impossible. Now for fun I play along and we have a great laugh afterwards about it. We purchased another program where we all fly out to the east coast once a month and spent 90% more and is so effective! And btw a quarter of our training with scheduling institute was the worker bragging about Jay and what car he gives away! It’s cheesy especially when the bonus incentive is to get $ 5-​$ 10 per new patient depending on who answers the phone. I’m assuming I’m going to receive a feed back from the same person responding to all the comments «trying» to validate something! We don’t care, your services didn’t work for apparently many companies and please use your energy on Dr’s who love wasting their money and time on things like this

Jay and his staff are great!

It is fun to learn and implement systems and see the results pretty much right away. We attended the 5x Summit this year with my whole team and we had a blast. Thanks to SI for putting such a great program together.

I attended their 5x summit meeting at Phillips Arena. It was a complete joke and a waste of my time. I felt sorry for the doctors who actually flew in their entire team from other states. I at least got a courtesy invitation from a vendor. 80% of the show was mostly recorded testimonials to market his company, a lot of cheap acts such as magic shows, and «keynote speakers» who have no experience in the dental industry. One speaker who was a dentist flown in from Australia was literally drunk or high on stage who droned on and on about serving expresso and donuts to his patients for 45 minutes!!! Jay finally stepped on stage to get rid of him and started shooting T-​shirts rolled with $ 100 bills out at the audience to stop people from leaving. The next morning, the docs and staff were separated. For the doctor’s venue, another «keynote» speaker failed to show up and Jay babbled nonsensically about nothing relevant on how to grow a dental practice. My assistant was trapped at Phillips Arena subjected to another poor magic show, a woman doing a hula dance, and had to participate in their World Guiness Record attempt at the most selfies. We left the conference immediately. His gimmick seems to be giving away cars and getting doctors to give away cars in their own practices. This was my first experience with SI and never in my right mind would I ever invest in working with them.

Our office started with The Scheduling Institute last year, and it has been the single most team busting, demoralizing decision that could have been made. Just mark me as a «DITTO» for every one star rating listed for this company, and I too would give them a ZERO if Unilocal had the option.
We all sat through 10 or 12 hours of poorly produced audio and video training, and all the while we received «Mystery Calls» and had the results emailed directly to our Doctor. Imagine the stress on our team, there was no opportunity for questions, feedback. Oh, we could have «practiced» with them over the phone one day a week, but we did not shut down the office while we did this, it was all between patients and was time consuming enough. It was all very demoralizing, with many on our staff receiving a grade of «0» at first. Can you imagine a legitimate adult education program giving untrained or partially trained students that type of grade? Imagine your boss, who is paying you to perform a service, hearing that you have received a «0». We were all sick about it, and tried so hard to improve, but the concepts that were described in the training could not be applied to our phone calls, no matter how hard we tried. And we did try. Hard. Because we love your jobs, we love our team, and we loved working for our Doctor and wanted to do our best for him and get all this trauma (I mean, training) behind us so we could be happy at work again. Please don’t underestimate how destructive this was to our workplace. We were literally frustrated to tears. And then we figured it out — the metric that the Scheduling Institute was using to «rate» us. They were not interested in concepts, tone, or even connecting with our new patients. They were simply rating us according to an exact script — words. We had specific words they wanted us to say, and if we strayed from the script even a little we did not get the passing score. So we created a script, and it worked. We said the words in the most dispassionate manner possible, and it worked. 10 to 12 hours of PAID staff time PER PERSON and it all boiled down to a short script. There was no reason to learn any concepts as there was no room for personalizing the script. Unbelievable. But it gets worse. The Scheduling Institute set the stage by saying that if we followed EXACTLY the guidelines given we would be successful. If staff don’t buy in to the program 100% it will not work, and that is not Jay’s fault, it is the fault of the staff. That effectively squelched communication with the Doc about this program that he had already invested in. Smart move, Jay. We turned this training from the office nightmare to the office joke, and we made it through. We did not get a SINGLE (please re-​read that) new patient because of this program. We were already scheduling consults TWO weeks out, so there was no gaps in our schedule that were not being filled. We knew the Scheduling Institute calls when they came in because of 1) they were usually an unlisted number, and 2) they asked the questions listed on our script in a way that NO patient would ever ask. When patients call us, they are calling to make appointments and rarely need to be «sold». And that’s what we felt like the training videos were more suited for, used car salesmen. The Scheduling Institute sends snail mail and email to our office EVERY SINGLE DAY. He must have an enormous marketing budget, as it clearly does not go into training or materials. A recent opportunity to attend a Scheduling Institute seminar in Atlanta presented itself. Every attempt to get an agenda or syllabus was responded to with «It is so motivational! There will be a concert!» No answer to the question «But what will we learn?» Our Doctor was all ready to sign us up, but as one voice we said «no». Leif L., you said in your review something negative about me, a person leaving a one star review. I’m not going to reciprocate and get personal with you but I will say that I still love my job, my team, and our patients. It is a privilege to serve in this profession. If you feel the same way, please save your money, don’t damage the team you have worked so hard to build, and find another company to provide REAL training.

Jay and the Scheduling Institute are the very best at helping dentists and health care practices to grow and deliver the highest standard of dentistry to their patients. I have been involved with various other practice management firms over my entire 30 year career and the Scheduling Institute is without peer. I have also lectured and taught very high end esthetic dentistry to the very best dentists (clinical practitioners) internationally in dentistry. I have authored numerous articles and even chapters in reference texts for advanced dentistry, esthetics and occlusion so it concerns me that one reviewer states ‘if you are an intelligent individual… this company is not for you’. I can honestly say that being the best possible clinical dentist is vastly different than delivering the very best to our patients. I have seen more than my share of the best and brightest clinicians that dentistry has to offer (a literal ‘who’s who’ in advanced dentistry), and have been privileged to a ‘ring side seat’ teaching alongside many of these gifted individuals so I can objectively say that SI is without peer in their professionalism, depth, and knowledge on how to create not only better dentists, but better people.
They are not a ‘cookie cutter’ approach to management. They are adept at helping dentist’s to understand exactly who they are and exactly what they need to do to improve their practice and ultimately deliver better care to our patients (which is what its all about after all). I can certainly see how some dentists and/​or staff may not like to be told they are directly responsible for how their practice and/​or life is going, or that they can or need to improve. I can also see the difference between a practice that desperately tries to hold on to past detrimental practices, or tries to ‘modify’ or ‘re– interpret’ what they learn from SI and claim they are making the effort but truly don’t engage the process of change (with predictably poor results).
Additionally, I believe it takes a VERY –secure– person to admit their not without fault and sincerely take ownership and control over improving themselves. Jay Geier and the Scheduling Institute have a time tested, honed and proven methodology to take dentists (people) their team (also people), and their practices to new levels. They have consistently won numerous awards (dentist evaluations) to validate that overwhelmingly they are very successful at what they do. It is NOT for the timid, meek or feeble who believe they already have all the answers and are just looking for someone to give them a quick fix (without any significant work). They are actually brilliant at creating ownership and merely guide and hold you accountable to very specific goals and directions that YOU create. If its not successful you only need to look into the mirror to see why not. Like countless offices before us we noticed an IMMEDIATE improvement in our practice metrics, improved patient satisfaction, growth, and my team understands fully that they are accountable to the highest standard and they LOVE what SI has done to improve not only their professional, but personal lives.
SI has the most ‘depth’ of ANY other competitor out there and what I truly appreciate and like is that they are a group of people that practice what they preach in terms of not only improving their delivery, but becoming a more charitable and better person in the process.

We gave their program a try with an open mind. We were not lazy. We gave it a good effort. We stopped asking important questions about insurance, etc over the phone and now we have a billing nightmare, patients would not keep their appointment when at the office once they found out the cost and a big mess on our hands. I am not sure how they think this will work. Maybe if you are desperate for patients, don’t file insurance and if you have patients that don’t care about finances it would be a great program for you. I did not want my team to «sell» just improve phone skills. If you want to hear how your team answers the phone there are ways to do it with most advertisers for free and they record all conversations (ex. netsertive)
And the big kicker… they automatically sign you up for a $ 199 a month additional charge. When you email about it no one responds.

I’m only giving this s**t show a 1 star rating because I don’t have the option on Unilocal to give them zero stars. I worked in an office that used The Scheduling Institute, and I even flew out from CA to GA to attend classes with the doctor. I’m going to be completely 110% honest when I say that this company does have (some) good ideas and useful tools, however, they are definitely scam artists in more ways than one.
First of all, they are overpriced for the tools that they do give you –you learn more taking business classes and you’ll pay less than SI charges too (most of it is common sense). Second of all, they teach you to trick patients into scheduling with your practice and the worst part is they make you believe you are doing these patients a favor by doing so. Third of all, the teaching and training basically stops at the door because although using SI does increase the amount of new patients in your practice, their tools leave those new patients unhappy and mislead and they don’t offer you an additional course on how to keep those new patients you just scammed.
They teach your employees a strict script of what to say to new patients that doesn’t really allow a chance for any of the patient’s questions or concerns to be answered; they turn your staff (and doctor) into sales machines that only care about the numbers and production. God forbid you actually have a conscious or a brain and you ask questions that SI doesn’t want to answer, they single you out as one of the «weeds» or «bleeders» that needs to be extracted from the practice. The focus on the patients and quality care really dwindles from your practice when you use SI. This organization is very much like a cult, and I’m so glad I left the SI practice I was in before I drank the punch like the rest of them!
If you’re reading reviews on this place because you’re thinking about signing up with them, please make sure to see the rest of the honest reviews like mine that Unilocal decided to filter and not show on the main page. This place is NOT all happiness and rainbows like they want you to believe, so really do your research before you hop on this crazy train.