There.
I said it:
“The goal of providing great customer service is to help your customers get what they want, rather than give them only what you want to give.”
Jayne and I are doing some extensions and renovations on our home.
And one of the feature additions is the creation of a large picture window that dramatically captures the amazing northerly view that our home enjoys.
And so our list of windows for the house were forwarded off to one window supplier, who simply came back to us stating that this picture window that we wanted to create was too wide, and would need to be made as two glass panes with a centre divider.
Now the width of the window that we were trying to create was 4.3 metres. And according to this window manufacturer, for our [rural] location, we could only have a window that was 4.0 metres wide, unless we divided it into two halves with a centre divider.
Which kind of defeated the purpose of the large picture window, if you can imagine…
So, our thoughts were that we could maybe frame up the window space a little on each side so that the window was going to only be 4.0 metres wide, but still only one pane of glass [and no divider].
As you can imagine, the compromised offering from the window manufacturer was not well received.
Well actually, it wasn’t even a compromised offering. It was basically a statement of this is what they will do for us…. as opposed to a suggestion of actually being a preferred alternative…
In your dental practice…
In your dental practice are there occasions where your team have not been flexible in finding a solution for a patient with a particular need or request?
Sometimes when I listen to recordings of incoming phone calls at dental practices I hear dental staff talking to existing and potential patients on the phone as if their dental appointment book is made of stone and has had entries made in it with a hammer and chisel, that cannot be adjusted or amended.
Remember, every person who phones your dental practice has done so because they have a specific dental issue and they have already decided before they phone that they want your practice to be the place where they have that dental issue fixed and resolved.
Otherwise they would be calling another dental practice instead of yours.
Your team member’s job, or their duty, is to help that patient into an appropriate appointment that allows your dentist to resolve that patient’s issues in a time frame considered reasonable by that patient.
So many times I hear dental phone staff saying:
“I can’t get you in until the 12th of …..”
And when I look at the practice’s dental appointment book, it’s filled up with weeks and weeks of unproductive, less than urgent dentistry, and there are no emergency flex-time appointment spaces and no empty and available pre-blocked new patient appointment times.
And the reason that the practice offers me for that is simply:
“Well David, this is how we’ve always done things around here…”
The problem is the old way doesn’t serve anyone well.
A well-structured thought out pre-blocked appointment schedule that is run well and done well will be more accommodating for all patients and ultimately will provide for better production and better patient and instrument flow for the busy practice.
In 1997 I had PRK laser eye surgery on my left eye by a local ophthalmic practice because that’s the way that THEY did laser eye surgery. [I actually needed to have laser eye surgery on both eyes.]
Post operatively, my left eye hurt like heck. I couldn’t bear to be in direct sunlight or indirect sunlight for a fortnight and overall my eye took a good month to heal.
And I still had to go back to them six-months later so that they could do the same “treatment” to the other eye.
Because that’s the way this ophthalmic practice operated.
Out of frustration and desperation, I contacted a different ophthalmologist whose rooms were way across town away from me, to see whether I could have my right eye operated on “differently”.
When I visited his rooms for a consultation, the difference in the way his business operated was palpable.
Long story short, I was able to have Lasik eye surgery on my right eye at this second practice.
The postoperative recovery after Lasik was painless and I was out in broad daylight driving a car safely the very next day.
Putting it simply, the first ophthalmic practice was so set in its ways about how THEY wanted to practice that they were killing their own business.
Is your dental practice so set in its own ways that you are killing your business?
Back to the picture window…
Jayne contacted a second window manufacturer and visited their showroom and factory, where all their windows are made on site.
On this visit, Jayne was made to feel welcome, comfortable, important and understood, by everybody she came into contact with.
Ultimately, this second window company can make the large picture window that we are wanting for our home.
They recognised and enquired about what we were trying to do [and view] with that window, and they were flexible enough to be able to offer up the option of creating the right window for what we were wanting to achieve.
They listened….
At your dental practice, are all of your employees consistently making all of your patients feel welcome, and comfortable, and important, and understood?
Because when your business can do these four things CONSISTENTLY, and make your patients and your customers feel valued, then you will find you have built yourself a business that will always be sought out by customers in your community, with a reputation that will be the envy of all other businesses in your area.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
Convert more calls into appointments…Click the link: http://www.calltrackingexcellence.com
Call Jayne on 1300 378 044 or email Jayne@theDPE.com for more details.
*****
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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