Sometimes, to receive great service, you have to be a good customer.
And there’s nothing wrong with being a good customer.
What you give out comes back to you.
Often, in spades.
However, in your business, there has to be a respect shown towards customers.
I attended a non-dental marketing Summit over the previous three days.
One of the presenters mentioned that in his company he has a zero tolerance for employees who engage in bad talk about the customers.
And I like that.
Customers, patients, clients come in all shapes and sizes.
And pay us money for our services.
And with that transaction there has to be a level of respect.
Shown.
By us.
Towards them.
How are things in your Dental Office?
Do you hear staff members discussing your patients in a negative way?
“He walks funny”
“He talks funny”
“She dresses poorly”
These are judgments our team members should not be saying, let alone be thinking.
The only thoughts our team members should be thinking towards our patients are:
“How can I be impactful today on Mrs. Smith’s day?”
“How can I make Mr. Brown’s visit today better for him than it was last week when he was in?”
“What can we do today to make Mr. Jones say ‘WOW! These people are different!’”
If we don’t think in this manner then we won’t create a Point Of Difference.
We won’t create a palpable difference between us and anybody else out there doing business.
And if that’s the pond of mediocrity we choose to swim in then our business will be subject to the tides of that pond.
And the tides of that pond will be influenced mainly by price alone.
Because everything else in that pond is same same.
Rise above the pond.
Be the difference in your customers’ days.
Not same same.
Because same same is vanilla.
The number one reason that most of our valued patients leave our Dental Office and seek treatment elsewhere is because of apathy and perceived apathy from our staff and team towards those valued customers.
The best way to remove that perception of apathy, be it real or false, is to go out of our way to be the Point of Difference in the days of our clients and customers.
But Points of Difference don’t just magically happen.
They need to be created.
And worked upon.
And practiced.
So that they become a regular part of our days.
By having an awareness, in ourselves, that we do indeed need to be “putting in an effort” we do do exactly that.
And so the opposite is true too.
If we are not putting in an effort, if we are simply going through the motions, then we slide into that vanilla state of same same mediocrity.
And if all we’re dishing out is vanilla, or less, then who’d blame our patients from looking for something different?
After all, they can easily go down the road and be treated just as shabbily for a lot less money?
Who wants to live and operate in that sort of world?
If better is possible then why not strive for it?
Your customers will indeed notice the difference.
Be the Point of Difference in their day.
Go out of your way to Make Their Day.
It’s worth it!
******
My One-Day Workshops cover in greater depth how to address simple changes that create BIG RESULTS.
For more details about my Australian workshops in July August and September, CLICK HERE.
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.
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One of the craziest things that I hear about Dental Offices is of Offices that tolerate underperforming and non-performing team members.
Whether it is Offices that I see myself or it is Offices that I hear about through other Dentists and other Consultants, there are Dental Practices out there with inappropriate people in critical employment positions.
And every position is critical.
But why tolerate having people in the wrong position?
Why is it so?
Why do Dentists even bother to employ people in positions those employees cannot fulfill, or employ people who do not want to fulfill the role that they have been employed to perform?
What the heck is that?
In 1997 as a Dentist with a struggling practice I went to an information evening put on by a consulting firm and I heard the following *LIFE CHANGING* statement.
One of the owners of this consulting firm said the following.
He said:
“We can go into a practice and find one team member costing THAT practice $200,000.00!”
And I said to myself:
“That’s MY Practice!!”
It was true.
I had an employee so abrasive, so uncaring, that she was treating patients as if she was stroking cats backwards.
Patients were leaving the treatment room very happy with their procedures, but were being rubbed up the wrong way so much at our front desk that they were never ever returning.
We had a very costly employee in a position she did not want to master.
Consequently, I replaced this employee and the next receptionist was so people centred, so friendly, and so respected that business just boomed and boomed and boomed.
What’s your Office like?
I know of a Dental Office that’s doubled its turnover in the past eighteen months.
And interestingly, they’ve not yet settled on their best team.
Some of the employees there are on agency contracts while the Principal Dentist still searches for the right employee to fill certain roles.
How is it at your place?
Have you got the wrong people working in positions that are affecting your Office performance?
Why?
Are they not up to speed?
Or are they just not wanting to do what is needed?
Dentistry, by the nature of the business, is a business that sometimes attracts employees who like to work in an unsupervised environment.
Where the manager is too busy working [i.e. drilling teeth] to be roaming around making sure that everyone is performing optimally.
And that’s not a great way to have a well-tuned “machine” of a business….
Some dentists clearly state:
“Oh I don’t want to upset my staff.”
Meanwhile, having and tolerating underperforming staff is costing those dentists tens of thousands of dollars!
EACH YEAR!!
Is your toleration of mediocrity impacting on the performance of your practice?
Would you rather keep the peace and stay poorer, or fix the problem, and lift your practice?
Because that’s what is really happening.
Underperforming team members are definitely keeping great Dentists in the poor house.
Is that where you want to be?
******
My One-Day Workshops cover in greater depth how to address simple changes that create BIG RESULTS.
For more details about my Australian workshops in July, August and September, CLICK HERE.
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.
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If you Google the words “Lay Down Sally”, what you find, surprisingly, on the page one results, is that half the results refer to the famous 1977 Eric Clapton song, and half the results refer to an Australian Olympic rower.
In the 2004 Athens Olympic Games Women’s Eight Rowing Final, an Australian rower stopped rowing and dropped her oar, allowing it to drag, and laid back in the lap of the team mate that she sat in front of.
The Australian team finished last.
The Daily Telegraph reported: “She quit.”
During the race.
She let her teammates down.
In a team sport, where players, team members need to be physically and mentally able, this rower dropped her oar.
What’s it like in your Dental Office?
Do you have team members there who are dropping their oars?
Do you have team members in roles that they are not physically and mentally fit for?
Do you have team members who fall short of the standards needed to perform optimally?
It’s a wonder really…
I see it time and time again.
Dental Offices with so much potential that keep on underperforming and underperforming.
Because there are employees in those Offices who are either unwilling to perform or are unable to perform.
Perform optimally.
Just turning up and going through the motions is not good enough.
Our patients do not deserve *Less Than Best*.
And we should be embarrassed totally to be even associated with a Less Than Best Effort.
Who wants that on their CV?
We’ve all worked with someone who only goes through the motions.
And if its horrible to work alongside a “flat-backer” like this, just imagine what its like to be a customer receiving their bare-minimum service?
Would you be a repeat purchaser?
Having team members like this in your line up does nobody, and I mean nobody at all any favours.
The business loses, gaining a reputation.
The customer loses. Less Than Best is not an Experience to write home about.
The business loses, because the customer does not return, and not only do they not return, but they also tell eleven people about their Less Than Best experience.
If you have a Less Than Best employee on your team, you need to address their performance immediately.
Because if you don’t, and you let that under-performance go unchecked, it brings the whole place down to their level.
And who wants or needs that?
The Less Than Best attitude may be coming from any of the team.
Front Office.
Dental Assistants.
Hygienists.
And sadly, even Dentists.
And Owners.
When you identify Less Than Best in your Dental Organisation, you must address it immediately.
It may be that the underperformer is doing so because of lack of training and education?
And if that’s the case, then the best training *IS* available out there to lift this team member to the desired level.
However, if lack of motivation is behind the Less Than Best performance, then sometimes, for the sake of team, for the sake of the Business, we need to replace that team member.
Can you imagine how the other seven women in that boat felt, when they saw their team member stop rowing?
Can you imagine how a nation felt, how let down the country felt, that someone expected to “go the distance”, did not?
Don’t ever allow your Dental team to be in a situation where someone lets the team down….
******
My One-Day Workshops cover in greater depth how to address simple changes that create BIG RESULTS.
For more details about my Australian workshops in July August and September, CLICK HERE.
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.
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There are many catch cries and clichés that ring out in business when it comes to the discussions on running a successful business.
“Treat your staff the same way you would treat your customers”
Treat your staff better than you would treat your customers”
“Your customers know when you have unhappy staff…”
With salaries in a Dental Office running at twenty percent of collections in Australia, and even higher in Dental Offices in the USA, then its vitally important to realise the emphasis we need to place on team harmony.
Having said that, a team, be they a sporting team or a Dental team, have a job to do.
Just like a sporting team, the aim of a Dental team is to bring people of different skills and personalities together and have them functioning as a cohesive and effective unit.
In sport, that unit needs to function well together during practice, during promotions and during the game.
And in Dentistry, it’s exactly the same.
In sport, as in Dentistry, players are traded.
Players leave the team and other players join the team.
For whatever reason.
In sport players with good skills are added.
Players with good potential are added.
It’s the role of management and the other team members to make sure that additions and changes to the playing staff are effected seamlessly.
In sport, sometimes the extra-curricular habits and behaviours of the team members outside of their roles as team members can impact upon not only the image of the team but also on the performance of the team.
As an example, the removal of two founding members of the rock-band KISS because of behaviors outside of the band that affected the performance of the band as a product or entity, was a necessary decision to be made on behalf of the business.
In sport, there are players whose off field behaviours affect the image of the team, and sometimes the morale and the performance of the team falls as a result of these off field behaviours.
Similarly, there are times when sporting team members can out-price themselves, and need to be traded. Sometimes two rookies can be of better value to the team than one star player.
Team Harmony
One of the most difficult things in any business is maintaining a balance of harmony between employees.
Just because people work together does not mean they need to have to get on together outside of their work environment.
Sometimes the only thing that employees have in common is the fact that they work together.
The important thing is that with any organisation, we need to remember that when we’re on the bosses’ clock, we need to be functioning for the common good.
And the common good is the team, and the firm.
Fighting for God, King, and Country.
United.
One Office I was talking with recently had a situation where a team member resigned her position because other team members allocated her “extra duties” while they took it easy, and did not share those duties.
And Dentistry is an easy business for these sorts of scenarios to occur in.
After all, the owner of the business, in most cases, is in the business but is not observing the full goings on of the business.
He’s got his eyes and head fixed firmly inside the mouths of his customers, and as such, is not in the position of a traditional business owner to be managing and overseeing all of the various roles and interactions going on during the day behind his back.
In fact, with the use of loupes and of microscopes, that focus away from the business and more on the treatment is in fact even more skewed.
As such, Dentistry does present a great opportunity for people who wish to be employed under “minimal” supervision.
It’s an opportunity for the less than dedicated to pick up a pay check on less than one hundred percent effort.
It works both ways….
In a sporting team, there is no escape.
Video recording of games and practice makes sure that every fibre of the employees’ existence is focused on the one thing of most importance:
Getting maximum effect and maximum result.
You never see a linebacker checking his cell phone between plays, do you?
And probably not at training either?
Yet in a Dental Office, and I see hundreds, where staff really feel it’s their Constitutional Right to not only carry a cell phone on them during work hours but to also be checking their phone while on the bosses’ clocks.
Now that is just totally wrong.
Where does that expectation of privilege come from?
Respect Is A Two Way Street
Now there always needs to be a balance at work.
I like to think of employment as the 38:130 Rule.
Put simply, for 38 hours per week, the employer will pay for employees to work for them. Provided he does not ask the employee to do anything illegal, then there should not be an issue.
For that 38 hours, he will pay the employee very well.
All he asks for is that employee leaves all “other” activities to the remaining 130 hours left in the week.
Employees letting activities from the “other” 130 hours of the week enter the work zone are showing a lack of respect toward their employer.
******
My One-Day Workshops cover in greater depth how to address simple changes that create BIG RESULTS.
For more details about my Australian workshops in July, August and September, CLICK HERE.
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.
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!!
