News

The best way to tell the world you have poor Customer Service is to advertise a New Patient First Visit Special Price Offer.

The New Patient First Visit Special Price Offer…

Interesting concept…

Why not tell the World that you DO NOT value your existing patients?

Because that’s what a New Patient First Visit Special Price Offer is doing.

Yes it is!

It’s telling the world you treat your New Patients better than your existing patients.

Your existing patients will always see your adverts.

What do you think they should think?

After all, why not just send a message to your existing patients saying that you don’t value them?

Because that’s exactly what a New Patient First Visit Special Price Offer is doing.

It’s screaming out to your existing patients, that you are happy to be *DISCOUNTING* your usual fee to *TRY* and attract new patients to your Dental Office.

If I was an existing patient I’d feel shunned.

Why should I, as a loyal existing patient of good faith, with tenure, be unable to access this *discount* plastered out there?

Why should I, as a loyal existing patient, be subsidizing this *grab* for new patients?

It is really a slap in the face, isn’t it?

It’s an advert that screams:

“WE DON’T VALUE OUR EXISTING PATIENTS”

What would you do if one of your valued existing patients asked to be examined, cleaned and x-rayed at the special price?

Would you honour their request?

“That will be my pleasure Mr. Smith”

Would you deny it?

“I’m sorry Mr. Smith. That offer is only for new patients.”

Would you honour it begrudgingly?

“Sure, Mr. Smith. Just for this time. This offer really is for new patients coming to the practice, only, though.”

The concept I totally dislike about a New Patient First Visit Special Price Offer is that just like lemmings, it creates a culture, or a sub-culture of Dentists who feel that they have to *ALSO* offer this New Patient Discount in order to just “keep up”, as you would, with their neighbouring Dental Offices.

And who will win this demeaning battle?

Who will have the lowest price?

Who will be the cheapest?

Whose New Patient First Visit Special Price Offer will be the lowest in town?

Who wants to be known as THE CHEAPEST DENTIST IN TOWN?

Now there’s an honour?

And how long would that title stick, until someone else decided to undercut your low price?

If discounting your fee is the only differential you have for attracting new patients, then frankly, your days of successful dental practice are numbered…

If New Patients have no other differential than price for choosing your Dental Office over another, then whatever else you’re doing or trying to do to attract new patients will become *INVISIBLE* to the prospective New Patient.

All that any town or city with a series of Dental Offices offering New Patient First Visit Special Price Offer Prices does is create a merry-go-round of bargain hunting patients who value a cheap clean over the continuity of a professional service provided by an educated health care professional with a long term dedication to quality care for his patients.

Because these “Bargain Hunters’ will simply flip from one discount New Patient Offer to the next at every six month interval so as to pick up their cheap cleans, to the detriment of their long term health.

Because in so doing, in price shopping, they deny their Oral Cavities of the long-term benefits of a relationship of trust built over time.

As Discount Dentists, all we’d be doing is supporting this societal misconception that

Cheap is OK.

Or worse still, we’d be upholding the Premise that

Cheap is just as good as Regular.

And we know that can’t be so.

So where do you want to be with your Dental Office?

Is this the Dental version of the $7.00 haircut?

Is that what our noble profession has become?

Are we really to become a pack of “No Win No Fee” Health Care Professionals?

I shudder at the thought….

So what should you do if you feel your service is being compromised by a spate of Discount Dentists popping up in your town?

I know of a hair stylist who was concerned about the same thing in his town, as $7.00 haircut shops started popping up, one after another after another.

The answer was simple.

In his window he painted a sign:

“WE FIX $7.00 HAIRCUTS”

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

Did you like this blog article? If you did then hit the share buttons below and share it with your friends and colleagues. Share it via email, Facebook and twitter!!