My trip to Las Vegas last week provided me with some very interesting customer service experiences.
I was in town for a seminar, on my own, but with a couple of important side issues to attend to.
We all know “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas”…. But let me tell you, I’m bringing home some great customer service experiences to share.
So firstly, a visit to Las Vegas for me also means a visit to Zappos.com, Inc.
Now I’m not a customer of Zappos. I ‘ve never bought a shoe from them in my life. But I have bought their way of doing business. And if you’ve read the book “Delivering Happiness”, written by their CEO, Tony Hsieh, you’d understand why.
The reason I don’t buy shoes from Zappos is simple. They don’t deliver to Australia. That’s all. If I lived in the USA, I’d buy their shoes. And other stuff. Because I love their business model.
Zappos, and Tony Hsieh, are world renowned for their Service.
Their *Customer* Service.
“Most people know us as a shoe company, but we’ve always said we’re a service company that just happens to sell shoes” – Alfred Lin, chairman, COO and CFO of Zappos.com
When I heard this statement several years ago, I thought “WOW!! I’m borrowing that!”
And I did.
“We’re not a Dental Office that does great Customer Service. We’re a World Class Customer Service Company that just happens to Do Teeth!!” – David Moffet
So my tour to Zappos is booked for 9:00am. And it’s a twelve-minute cab ride, from my hotel.
So I arrive at the hotel lobby at 8:34am. And there’s a line up for cabs. And no cabs. In a hotel lobby. A busy hotel.
At 8:56am I finally get a cab. And the cab pulls into a traffic jam. On the strip. At 9:00am!!
So I call Zappos. And Amy answers and I tell her my tale. That I’ll be late.
Amy says, “Don’t worry. We’ll hold your tour until you get here.”
I tell Amy I don’t know when I’ll get there and ask what time the next tour is. Amy tells me it’s at 11:00am.
Well, I figure that’s not going to work for me so I ask if there’s another tour of their operations at 1:00pm. And that suits me better. Except there’s one thing….
I have a private thirty-minute Q&A session booked for after the tour, and my Q&A host is not available at 2:00pm.
So I leave it with Amy, and she says she’ll get back to me.
Which she does. In like twenty minutes or so. And we’re on for 1:00pm!!
In the meantime, I’d jumped out of my cab, in the jam, and walked the five-minute walk back to my hotel.
Now Zappos.com has just moved to a bigger and better location only six weeks ago.
And I was keen to see the new site, and how it was working, because on my previous trip to Las Vegas last Easter time, I’d toured their previous site.
And I don’t buy shoes from them.
When Zappos.com relocated from San Francisco to Las Vegas in 2004, seventy of their ninety employees moved with them.
Now that’s employee loyalty.
Today they have over one thousand employees and they receive over thirty thousand job applications and resumes every month.
The feeling I get when I visit Zappos is that it really is such a fun place to work. Such a great place to work!
On the tour, you’ll see there are walls and chalkboards allocated for team members of Zappos to write on.
Yes walls!
And there’s even a stairwell where visitors and guests are encouraged to leave their mark!!
At the completion of my time at Zappos.com, they offer a cab voucher for a complimentary return back to my hotel. Which is nice.
But after my tour, they decided it would be just as easy to drop me back personally, which they did.
Which was just First Class!
Make me feel important? Make me feel special?
They sure did!!
And by the way, it was just me being dropped back. No one else!!
At Zappos.com, their aim is to provide service, not to sell shoes.
At their call centre, their aim is to help their customer. Not sell or upsell.
There are stories abounding where customers have rung for a particular shoe that Zappos doesn’t carry, and the person taking the call will go online and locate the shoe at another company, just to be of service.
Because they are so much more than a shoe retailer.
Zappos.com is a culture.
Zappos is a culture of service.
Customer service.
World Class Customer Service.
At my dental office, we often drop elderly patients home, and even personally go out and pick them up as well.
Another time, we helped locate, and then purchased for a patient, a small light with a magnifying lens, that he needed for a specific purpose. And with computers in every operatory and office, it’s no trouble at all to look up and solve a client’s non-dental query.
And it’s simple.
Are you taking every opportunity to go Above and Beyond your customer’s expectations? Because it’s those moments that create Customers for Life.
Brand Evangelists.
And we all could do with an endless supply of those.
So like I said, I don’t buy shoes from Zappos. Because I can’t.
But if I was going to recommend a shoe retailer to a friend, if I was going to recommend a *Must Do* in Las Vegas?
It would be Zappos…
And that’s how we want people talking about you. And your Dental Office….
Like there’s just no other choice…
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!!
It still surprises me that so many dentists out there don’t have a grip or a grasp on their numbers.
Omer Reed told me two years ago that at age 65, ninety five percent of dentists in the USA have not reached their walkaway point in their dental practice careers.
This means that at age 65, only five percent of dentists are in the position of being able to hang up their dental drills and retire into a comfortable life style.
The other ninety five percent are either dead, or dead broke at age 65.
Now this seems ridiculous that after such a glamorous, long and well-paid career, only five percent have saved sufficient funds to support a comfortable retirement.
I was fortunate enough early on in my dental career to be advised to start investing in my own superannuation retirement funding, which had significant and immediate tax advantages at the time of investment. Along with that, the investments in superannuation are quarantined and cannot be withdrawn until retirement age. On top of those reasons, because I began early and continued investing year in year out, month in month out, I was able to benefit from the process of compound interest as well.
“The best time to plant an oak tree was twenty years ago – the second best time is today.”
A lot of people say that they’ll wait until the time is right or the market is just right before they start investing for their retirement. Well that is just so so wrong. The time to start investing is now!!
Removing that money now in small weekly or monthly portions starts that investment process. And you’d be surprised how the current budget adapts to compromise for the missing funds being channeled into investment. Miraculously, we get by!!
There’s a large number of dentists out there who don’t know their vital numbers.
They don’t know where they stand on a balance sheet of assets vs. liabilities. On profit and loss.
“It’s somewhere in the negative”
Or they know they’ve borrowed more than their assets are worth.
Their home has a mortgage. Their dental office has a mortgage. And an overdraft. But they often don’t know exactly how much.
The cars are financed. The dental equipment, lasers, and Cad-cams and Cone beams are financed.
And still they keep borrowing. And spending. And borrowing…
There are a lot of docs out there hoping for a big payout when they sell their dental practice. They’re hoping someone’s going to turn up with a big wad of cash and buy them out. When the old doc is ready. At the price the old guy wants. Well those days are fast diminishing.
There’s a trend in dentistry for more young graduates to want a job in dentistry, rather than want their own practice.
And with the corporatisation of dentistry increasing, and the ever-increasing role that insurance is playing in dental treatment, then the “carrot” of owning your own practice is becoming less and less appealing as a way of dental life to those dentists not already owning an office.
What this means is that dental offices will become more and more difficult to sell and offload for retiring dentists. Many retiring dentists will then be forced into staying on and working, as a means of recovering the principle funds that they had invested in the practice, and expected to receive on its sale.
The purpose of working, in any career, is to provide an income stream to survive, as well as enjoy life along the way, and to finance a comfortable retirement.
Otherwise, what is the point?
The easiest and simplest way of increasing your dental office income and funding your own investments and retirements is to fix and repair those retention points where your dental office is bleeding patients and clients and customers straight out the door.
Retaining patients who love coming to see you, who come more often, spend more per visit, and accept more treatment, and also refer more customers and patients to you, is the simplest way of increasing your bottom line, freeing up and creating valuable revenue for investment.
And the simplest way to do this is to fix up your customer service systems, so that they are both complete and impervious to leaks.
So that you’re not leaking patients through the cracks in your systems.
So that your front office is converting and scheduling a bigger and better percentage of new patient enquiries.
Without any additional spend on marketing, or new fancy equipment.
So that your office bottom line goes up….
And then you can get a handle on those vital numbers.
To invest. In your future.
As you must….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build system that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office of patients who love coming to see me, who come more often, spend more per visit, and accept more treatment, and also refer more, in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know how I did this, then you must read 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!!
I’m writing this blog on Sunday night in Cleveland Ohio, where I’m staying with friends. At their home. You see, I’m attending a two and a half day Summit meeting here Monday through Wednesday.
So, as I opened up my MacBook to write tomorrow’s blog post, I was saddened to receive an email from my Dental Office back in Sydney letting me know that one of my long-term patients, Patricia, had passed away.
It’s always sad to be informed of the passing of anyone. But a long-term older patient, well that’s something different again.
I’ve always said, when interviewing for staff for my Dental Office, that I consider the patients here at my practice to be really good friends, and that I’d be happy to have ninety five percent of them as guests in my home.
And Patricia was one of those great patients. That’s for sure.
So what’s my point? Well, the tie in is this.
Like I said, interestingly, I’m staying at the home of some dear friends in Cleveland.
And I’ve stayed here with them in the previous three Novembers as well.
But that’s not usually me. That’s not my style.
You see, I don’t like to impose. I’m not the imposing type.
You know the type? People who say they’re coming to town and expect to stay at your home? You see, that’s truly not me.
Not at all.
In fact, to the contrary, I’d rather stay at a hotel than someone’s home.
Because at a hotel, you can be yourself. You can spread your stuff around. You don’t have to tidy the bathroom. You don’t have to make your bed. Someone comes and does all this for you.
In a hotel, you can go out when you want. You can eat when you want. It’s an open book.
Stay at someone’s place? Now for me, that’s a challenge.
A big, big, challenge…
Hang your towel up. Don’t wear shoes in the house. Make your bed. Tidy your room. It goes on and on and on….
You know what it’s like? Sometimes it’s like you became a kid again in your mother’s house….
And it’s because of this, I’m not a great house host either.
Guests in my house? Very difficult for me….
You get up in the middle of the night….bathroom is occupied!
Come down for breakfast…the Griswalds have appeared there already…..sitting in your seat, eating out of your bowl, drinking out of your mug….
You know what I mean? Sometimes it can be tough….
Now don’t get me wrong…Come to my town, and I’ll show you around…I’ll take you to the sights, and we’ll wine you and dine you and do all the cool stuff, you betcha!
But I value that disconnect time too…as host and as visitor…
Which brings me back to the now.
You see, my hosts in Cleveland, Ron and Trish, are just the best.
Because at their home, I almost feel like I’m at my home.
It’s that comfortable. I can move around as I want, they feed and look after me as I need, and life here is really pretty good!!
And I love their invitations and their hospitalities!! It’s just the best.
But it’s rare.
But because it’s so good, it’s worth bottling!!
And that’s the feeling that I want you to give to your patients.
That feeling, like I get, that when I go to Cleveland, I want to stay with Ron and Trish.
Nowhere else. There’s no other choice.
No other thought crosses my mind. If they will have me I won’t stay anywhere else.
And that’s the feeing you must build into your dental patients.
When it comes to dentistry, you’re the dentist of choice. No other. It’s your Office and only your Office.
It’s got to be that comfortable.
That’s the feeling you’re trying to convey.
That there is only one place for them to visit. For their teeth….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build 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!!
