Last week Jayne and I dined at a restaurant where the service was slick, but the service was also judgemental.
Two things really let this restaurant down.
Firstly, the waiter who took our order heard us, but he did not listen.
And if he did listen, then he didn’t follow up to see that our requested preferences in dining were delivered.
And that’s a big service fail.
The restaurant had duck on the menu.
Jayne was really looking forward to the duck.
She had already reviewed the restaurant menu online, and had decided that the duck was going to be her main course.
When the menu said that the serving size was half a duck, Jayne asked for clarification that the half she was going to receive was a vertical half, and not a horizontal half. You see, Jayne definitely prefers the duck breast meat.
Our waiter assured Jayne that her serving would include a breast, and a wing and one leg.
When the dish arrived, it was two legs, no breast, and no wing.
And no apology….
Maybe this was a four-legged duck…
The second thing that disappointed us was the pace of the servings, and the over spacing and under-spacing of time between courses.
Our appetiser arrived early, as did our shared starter course.
And then there was the wait….
Or should I say, the delay…. the time delay between our starter and our main courses was such a long time, that Jayne and I almost finished off our whole bottle of wine before the main courses were brought to us.
The reason this was so disappointing to us was that we had explained to our waiter exactly when we wanted to have our wine served, so that we could enjoy our wine with our food. Sometimes at some restaurants, the food, the pre-dinner drinks and the wine all seem to arrive within minutes of each other…
We didn’t want to feel that our food courses were being rushed to us… sadly, the opposite became the reality.
The only thing worse than having food arrive too quickly and the wine not being served, is the opposite scenario…. when food arrives too slowly and the wine has been consumed way too quickly.
What disappointed us..
What disappointed Jayne and me was that we had asked specifically to have our dishes and our wine paced more sympathetically so that we could have enjoyed both the food, and the wine, as well as the total dining experience…. on this occasion we left the restaurant feeling a little deflated.
At your dental practice…
At your dental practice, is your timing on cue, or are there times when patients wait an eternity during their appointment?
And are there other times when your patients feel their appointment is being rushed?
Remember, dentistry is a GRUDGE BUY.
Nobody ever wakes up and says:
“I think I might go shopping at the dentist today and see what I can buy…”
Everybody would rather be somewhere else than be having treatment at the dentist.
So if we can help the patient feel as if they are the most important person in the world when they are at our dental office, and that we have all been looking forward all day to seeing them and spending time with them, then the patient will view the dental services that we provide to them as being more of an EXPERIENCE.
If we don’t treat them this way, then they will only see us as just another COMMODITY.
And the more that they view what we do for them as a commodity, the more they will use price as their determinant, rather than the way that we have made them feel during their visit with us.
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The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Email me at david@theupe.com
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