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Earlier this week I wrote about how my wife and I had experienced a serious Service Fail while visiting a “hatted” restaurant in Melbourne.

Fortunately our other dining experiences in Melbourne were not all bad.

We did visit another hatted restaurant twice on that trip that provided us with exemplary service.

Let me share…

When I speak on dentistry and customer service, and templating your appointment book, and pre-blocking, I always share the story about how well Balthazar in Manhattan and how MoVida in Melbourne do the “same-day-I-don’t-have-a-booking” thing so so well.

It’s a great story.

It ties perfectly in to the fact that as dentists we need to keep blank “same-day-emergency-time” unfilled in our dental appointment schedules.

And so last week we went to MoVida, not just once, but twice.

[And by the way, the portabella mushrooms were divine!]

Both times, we arrived without a reservation time.

On our first visit, when we arrived without a booking, we were asked to leave our name and phone number and we’d be phoned when a seat at the bar became available [for dining].

When we returned twenty minutes later, after our phone call, we were pleasantly surprised to be seated in the restaurant rather than at the bar. Apparently someone with a reservation had failed to attend.

Our waitress Ellie, was the perfect host.

Friendly and courteous, along with a great knowledge of the menu.

Her table service matched our moods perfectly.

At the end of the evening, as we departed, my wife looked to the kitchen to wave goodbye to Ellie.

Ellie came out from the kitchen, and she and my wife shared a hug.

You don’t see that sort of connection often.

When we returned to MoVida three nights later, again, without pre-booking, we were pleasantly seated for dinner immediately, this time at the bar area, and attended to by Carlo and Ellie, and others.

The food, as usual, was superb, again, and the service by Carlo was entertaining.

Ellie told us that after we had left on the previous time we visited, that all the staff remarked that we were their favourite diners for the night.

And on this night Carlo was surprised when we told him we were from Sydney.

He said:

“You seem too nice…..”

What a joker!

It wasn’t so much, I think, that we were good customers.

I think the real thing was that Carlo, and Ellie, and everyone at MoVida follows Mary Kaye Ash’s golden rule:

They make their guests feel important.

And that’s what it’s all about.

Make your customers feel important and they’ll return and return and return.

Every time.

We certainly did.

What are you doing in your dental practice to make your customers feel important?

How are you going above and beyond your customers’ expectations?

What are you doing for your customers to make them feel important?

Or are they leaving your practice with that low cloud of apathy hanging right on top above them?

Sixty eight percent of clients of a business that leave and switch vendors do so purely because of a feeling of apathy that they receive [and perceive] from the personnel working in that business.

As a dentist, I can vividly remember receiving information about a follow up call with Ken and Mollie Smith, who we had not seen at the Dental practice for some time.

Molly told us:

“We’re going somewhere else now. We hadn’t heard from Dr. Moffet for a while.”

“We thought he didn’t care about us any more”

OUCH!

I don’t know the reason why both Ken and Mollie had been allowed to slip out of our system all those years ago, but obviously there had been a Service Disconnect and a Service Failure on our behalf to allow them to do so.

Did they leave without a booking?

Did they call and cancel an already scheduled appointment, and not be put into a follow-up sequence?

All I know is that our system failed Ken and Mollie.

And in doing so, it failed us, at our Dental Office.

In the same way that the poor service systems my wife and I experienced last week at that “other” restaurant failed us.

Sometimes we think we’re doing a good job, doing what we are meant to be doing.

But really, we’re often just going through the motions….

And not connecting, truly connecting, with our living, breathing clients and customers.

At our peril….

******

My upcoming two day workshops will be held in Manhattan in April as well as in London in August.

You can reserve your places here: Click Link To Order and also Here

*****

Have you read my book , How To Build The Dental Practice of Your Dreams [Without Killing Yourself!] In Less Than Sixty Days.

You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order

*****

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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