Over my travels of the past week I’ve come to realise that great service and great processes go hand in hand.
It is very difficult to have success by having one without the other.
In fact, dare I say, it is impossible.
Even the Seinfeld Soup Nazi, who had great soup, but no service acumen, met his fate in the end.
You cannot rely on your processes, or systems, to dig you out of a customer service fail hole.
Once you are in that hole, you are in deep. And you need to stay there and suffer the consequences.
If your service is great at your restaurant, but your food is bland, then it’s only a matter of time before your clients lose their tolerance of the poor product.
No matter how good the service, your clients will eventually go elsewhere because your systems let your clients down.
Your product needs to aim up and match your great service.
Back in the day, when dental technicians operated with couriers, or better still, couriered their own jobs themselves to the dentist clients, I worked at a dental practice where the delivery service was always punctual, but the product,the denture set ups were always wonky and needed attention.
My employer finally drew the line and ended the relationship.
Later, I had a very good dental technician who provided exemplary denture work. However, his delivery services were erratic and unreliable.
We ended the relationship and took our custom elsewhere.
How are things at your dental office?
I see practices where the dentist moves patient appointments to suit his own circumstances.
And then the dentist wonders why patients at his practice keep wanting to move their appointments?
And the dentist then gets upset with those patients?
Can you see the problem here?
I certainly can.
The systems you employ in your dental practice require congruence with the service you provide.
Respect your systems AND respect your customers.
Provide great service. But back your service up with watertight systems and processes that say to your customers:
“We care”.
*****
Linda Miles is coming to Australia in August.
Don’t miss this once in a life-time opportunity to see and hear Linda speak first hand…
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.
Last weekend Jayne and I visited Canberra where Jayne presented another of her very popular Masterclasses.
On one evening, we dined at a restaurant that had a very peculiar protocol for diners.
The restaurant’s menu consisted of a long list of small plates ideal for sharing.
When we were asked for our order, we were told by our server that at this restaurant, they bring all the dishes at once, so we would be best not to place the order in its entirety but rather, to place the order in smaller sections, and then add additional plates later on.
How peculiar.
Surely a restaurant should have the ability to time the delivery of its product so that the diners do not experience a log jam?
Especially, if the restaurant is presenting itself as one of THE “in places” to dine in the city.
This restaurant was trendy enough….high ceilings and a bar lined with bottles and bottles of a wide variety of whiskies and gins and tequilas.
And plenty of staff as well.
Anyway, we succumbed to the server’s demands and ordered our first three raw dishes.
And guess what, they arrived all at the same time.
Which was kind of stupid.
Because we would have preferred to enjoy the dishes one at a time…
After completing those dishes, we then ordered three small warmer dishes, which as you would expect, were delivered pretty well on top of each other.
Once those were completed, we requested a menu AGAIN and then waited for an eon while waitstaff at the bar seemed to do everything around us except to ask us if we would like to order more food.
I’m not sure why this “policy” was being used by this restaurant.
Any good restaurant should be easily able to pace the service of its food….after all its not rocket science, and there are plenty of other restaurants out there that can perform this task with ease.
But to declare with such arrogance that “this is how we do it here” and then NOT back that decision up with exemplary service, well that’s criminal.
My rule too is that if the first half of the dining experience is flawed then the reward to the restaurant of dessert, coffee and a tip is withdrawn.
They need to earn this reward.
And on this occasion, this restaurant did not.
To ice the cake, at 10:00pm, unbeknown to us, this restaurant becomes a bar and so for the completion of our meal we were joined at the seat beside us by a belligerent guest who just wanted to join our conversations and comment derogatorily about us…. while he was drinking Pepsi cola only.
Will we be going back to this restaurant and be recommending it to others?
I don’t think so….
Their systems were flawed.
And their systems were self-imposed…..
This certainly was not an Ultimate Dining Experience….
How are things in your dental practice?
Are there systems or protocols in your practice that operate illogically?
Are your protocols acting as a deterrent for the best type of patients that you want to attract and keep?
*****
Linda Miles is coming to Australia in August.
Don’t miss this once in a life-time opportunity to see and hear Linda speak first hand…
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.
I was searching for some images recently and came across this one here that I thought would make a great conversation starter.
Often I’m searching for images to portray an association with a blog article I may be writing, but in this case, I found this image that stimulated the blog, rather than the other way around.
If you get my drift?
So let’s look at the image, and discuss each of the component words, and their contribution to our message.
SERVICE.
Central to our image is the word “SERVICE”, with all other words in the image contributing to the “SERVICE”.
CUSTOMER.
Customers are central to the concept of service.
Without customers we have no business, and with no business, then we cannot exude our service skills.
In exchange for the great service we provide to our customers, they respond with a degree of loyalty toward our business.
The better the service we provide, the more loyalty we create with our customer.
Our goal should be to make sure that our service is so exemplary that wanting to be taking their business anywhere else would be the thought farthest from their mind.
FRIENDLY.
Service should always be provided in a friendly and courteous manner.
In fact, in my dental practice, the aim of our business was to build relationships with our patients that wereas strong as friendships.
I often said that 95% of the patients of my dental practice I would be happy to have as guests in my home.
When your relationship with your customers goes beyond what you do for them and embraces the “WHO” that you both are for each other, it is then that you have indeed embraced the body of the ideology of service.
SUPPORT.
Your customers must always believe that you are there to help them and to solve their issues and clarify their concerns.
Your customers want to know that you are indeed there to help them and to support them with what they are trying to achieve.
Your customers need to “feel” your support for them. They want to know that you have their back.
INNOVATIVE.
Your service processes need to be inventive and creative.
“Same old same old” is not going to do it forever for your customers.
With service, you need to be always looking for ways to improve upon the things that you do for your customers so that they look forward to seeing you with anticipation.
One of my mantras was:
“What can we do for Mrs Smith next time that will make her visit more memorable than it was today?”
Remember, the road to excellence has no finish line….
POSITIVE.
Remember, when your customer walks in your door, you have absolutely no idea what sort of day they have been having.
Nor do you know what they are thinking, about their dental appointment, nor anything else for that matter.
Our role is to provide them with positive feelings during their time with us.
There is no time in our dental practice to be entertaining any thoughts of negativity about anything with any of our patients or with any of our co-workers.
As dental workers, sometimes we forget that attending a dental appointment can be emotionally draining for some of our guests.
We need to be doing everything in our power to send thoughts of positivity to our patients.
PRECISE.
Your service must be on point.
It must be as precise and as regular as a Swiss Watch.
Your customer service processes need to be defined so that they act with seamless regularity.
Your customers must never be made to feel that your service is contrived or that their requests are a burden or an inconvenience.
Your customers must always be feeling that the providing of service by you to them is an absolute pleasure for you.
TIMELY.
Your service must be appropriate.
It cannot be overdone.
Recently a friend was telling me about a burger place he visited, where once he had his food, a member of the wait staff had asked him how everything was so far on his visit.
As they do.
After he replied, she then removed a decoration from his table.
The presence of this decoration on his table was used by the wait staff to indicate to each other that this table had not been asked about their visit.
Removal ofthe decoration from the table sent a message to all wait staff that this table had now been asked.
This story reminded me of a fine dining experience I had some twenty five years ago where everybody from the restaurant, and I do mean EVERYBODY, had asked us how we had enjoyed our food so far.
So much so, that when the head chef finally appeared to ask the same question, we had to tell him ENOUGH ALREADY…..
It was just too much.
Make sure that processes are timely and appropriate.
SERVICE.
If you are able to organise these seven ingredients into a constructive manner, you will find that your service processes will indeed be soaring towards world classstatus.
Consistency is the key….
*****
Linda Miles is coming to Australia in August.
Don’t miss this once in a life-time opportunity to see and hear Linda speak first hand…
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.
When ordering [or sending out] dental laboratory cases, there needs to be an attention to all details with regards to the individual laboratory case.
Even though your dentist may appear to regularly order the SAME treatment or similar treatments for different patients, attention needs to be taken to ensure accuracy, for those times when the dentist does indeed deviate from his [perceived] regular well-worn path.
The Dental laboratory work sheet needs to have the following information conveyed:
Patient Name.
Tooth or teeth being treated.
Treatment required for those teeth [specifically].
These three are self-explanatory by definition.
Shade
Occlusal staining [if any].
[I’m not sure why anyone would want occlusal staining on their fissures of their crowns??]
Date that the laboratory work is due back in your office.
This date has nothing to do with the date of insertion that your patient has booked. This date is determined by the “turnaround time” that your laboratory takes to regularly complete this sort of work.
This is the date that your laboratory will have the patient job back at your practice.
This date should be the earliest it can be.
What we found was that when we put a later than usual date of return on our lab work sheet, our lab failed to begin our work until just before it was required by us…. What we found was that our lab delayed starting our work until as late as possible, despite being able to start it and finish it earlier.
Once we have this ETA date, then we can go ahead and schedule the patient’s next [issue] appointment with the knowledge that we have complete certainty that the crown/job will have arrived already.
And by the way, we should never schedule the patient for the same day that the lab job is due.
We need to create a “buffer” of time between the arrival of the lab job and the insertion or issue of the job.
The “buffer” is a blessing.
Without this “buffer” we are not so blessed.
At my dental office we used to allow a weekbetween the arrival of the laboratory job and the insertion appointment.
This allowed us some flexibility if for some reason the laboratory was going to deliver the job later than expected. [it was never a full week later].
It also gave us certainty that the laboratory job would definitely be back well before the day of the patient’s insertion appointment.
And in most instances, because the lab job did indeed arrive back earlier than the patient had been scheduled, it gave us an opportunity to call the patient and bring their insertion appointment forward to an earlier date, if an opening had indeed occurred in our schedule.
And we were always able to structure this scenario in such a way that the patient always felt we were giving them an “Above and Beyond” experience.
So here’s what would happen in the treatment room on the day of preparation and impression.
At the end of the appointment I would say:
“Mrs. Smith. Now this job will be off at the lab for three weeks, so we’ll organise a time now for you to have that crown seated in three weeks time. Now, if by chance the lab gets that job back to us a few days sooner than expected, would you like us to call you and bring that appointment forward if we have a change in our schedule?”
Most times the patient would say yes to the opportunity of coming in sooner.
This gave our practice the opportunity of creating a mini stand-by list of patients having crown insertions, just in case we needed someone to fill any last minute schedule changes.
So the phone call would go something like this:
“Hi Betty. It’s Jayne from Active Dental. You know how you asked me to call you if your crown came in from the lab earlier than we thought? Well guess what arrived in this morning’s mail?”
“I’ve had a change in Dr Moffet’s schedule for tomorrow and he can see you at 9:30am and we can get this crown put in then for you, if that time suits? How does that sound?”
This way we never disappointed patients when a crown was inadvertently delayed.
And it gave us many more opportunities to go “Above and Beyond” by getting the crown to the patient sooner than they had expected.
Receiving.
The process of receiving dental laboratory work in your office should be systematised and organised.
When dental laboratory work is received each day, it should be opened and each case being returned to your office should then be stored individually in its own separate and SAFE and LABELLED compartmentwhere it can remain safely until the day of insertion.
This means that for the visit of each patient requiring the seating of crown and bridgework, only their own work needs to be opened and out in their treatment room.
Separating different cases [belonging to different patients]that may arrive together in the mail, is the simplest and most effective method of avoiding the costly and embarrassing process of apologising for dental work that could have inadvertently been sent to the dump ahead of time.
*****
Linda Miles is coming to Australia in August.
Don’t miss this once in a life-time opportunity to see and hear Linda speak first hand…
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.
