When we are serving our customers, our aim needs to be to help them the best way that we can, even if that way is not us.
Often I hear people say to me about their dentist [in a disparaging manner]:
“I need to have a root canal and a crown. They’ve [their dentist] referred me for the root canal. I just don’t know why they couldn’t do it all there?”
This is clearly an example of miscommunication.
The patient does not understand that they have been referred out to a specialist so that they receive the best treatment and their treatment has the most likely chance of success.
If the patient was informed about the real reason for referral, they would be more appreciative of the service.
When our patients think of our service as a commodity then they start to reflect on price as their only means of differentiation.
Trust trumps price all day long every day.
Therefore you must build trust.
When you create enough trust and you create sufficient perceived value for your customers then you will do more business.
You must care more about your customer than you do about making a sale.
If you lose a customer it is because you have failed to create trust and failed to create enough perceived value.
So how do you build trust?
You get people to like you.
Putting it simply, people do business with people they like.
If they don’t like you, they won’t do business with you.
They will go elsewhere.
If you want your customers to like you faster and better, you need to be more like them.
People tend to like people more like themselves.
And they do business with those people that they like.
*****
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.
The George Calombaris story is all over the news this week.
[For those who do not know, George Calombaris is a TV celebrity chef.]
The story, in a nutshell, is that George’s company has been fined $200,000.00 for underpaying staff working at his restaurants.
Following an investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman, it was established that his company had underpaid 515 current and former employees at one restaurant a total amount of $7.83 million and another nine employeesat another restaurant were short paid $16,371.
There are calls from Union leaders and also politicians that this is a significant act of theft and that the fine is a poor substitute for what really should be a punishment of gaol time.
Michele O’Neil, President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions said:
“While anyone else would face prison time for theft of millions of dollars, employers routinely steal huge amounts from working people and get away with simply returning the money they have stolen and paying a paltry fine.”
Interestingly, Calombaris’s company actually self-reported to the Fair Work Ombudsman in 2017 admitting that they had underpaid a significant number of their employees.
And the company has since repaid all these employees.
Currently there is a Federal Court judgement that a Dental Service provider has failed to pay an employee their due entitlement of superannuation.
This is in line with a decision years ago by the Australian Federal Government to pay and backpay superannuation to their part time dentists working for Australian Defence Services.
It is my contention after researching the ATO website that dentists employed in dental practices are being misrepresented as contractors and business owners when in fact all they are exchanging is their labour for money.
The Federal Court ruling supports this contention.
And it is my belief that this judgement will also be shared across to annual leave and long service leave entitlements. Just take a look at the ATO website.
It is pure fantasy to suggest the existence of a business for these EMPLOYED dentists when their supposed businesses have no equipment, no supplies and in essence, no customers.
These dentists are engaged in what is clearly a SHAM CONTRACT arrangement.
In light of the George Calombaris decision handed down this week there must be serious ramifications for owners of dental practices relying on these fantasy arrangements.
The law of the land is the law of the land.
The existence of some convoluted paper arrangement cannot overrule the law of the land.
Just ask Glenn Wheatley.
These sham contractor arrangements that large companies are using to pay doctors and dentists are rife in the health profession and create an unfair competitive advantage for these entities when compared to the operations of the solo-operating medico or dentist.
Now I am well aware that no member of the public will EVER have sympathy for any story where dentists or doctors are being hard-done by.
But here are the consequences:
Ultimately, these sham contracts are set up by employers to avoid paying significant amounts of payroll taxes.
Very significant amounts of tax.
So the community has to make up that payroll tax shortfall in other ways.
Companies failing to adequately superannuate employed dentists and doctors create a serious retirement income shortfall that future governments and communities will be burdened with when these employees reach retirement age.
The sham contractor arrangements are blatantly just that.
They are a sham.
These employed dentists and doctors ARE NOT running a business as these companies contend… they are simply providing labour to patients owned by the facility on equipment owned by the facility.
The parent corporation companies make their employee dentists and doctors work using an ABN. The corporations then generate sham invoices on behalf of the employees in a feeble attempt to disguise these false arrangements.
On top of this, in some of these organisations there exists a culture of bullying that would put the military to shame.
This historic bullying hovers like Vesuvius over these organisations, just waiting for the right time to erupt.
And erupt it will.
And don’t get me started on the practice acquisition processes, which are really just poorly disguised glorified Ponzi schemes.
I suggest that Calombaris’s company isn’t Robinson Crusoe.
There will obviously be other restaurants found to be underpaying their employees.
And there will be other industries.
I wonder, if George ever does end up going to gaol, will he be made to work in the prison kitchens?
And I’m thinking there might be a few very nervous other business owners and former business owners, and executives out there….
We live in interesting times.
*****
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.
Some dental practices are always concerned that the prices that they charge need to be competitive and need to reflect the economy of their community.
Other dental practices do not care what their neighbours are charging for their dental services and these practices then bill their customers based upon the EXPERIENCE that the practice provides.
Who is correct?
Well the answer is:
“It’s complicated.”
But it is also quite simple. When it comes to receiving services, twenty to twenty-five percent of the population out there do not care what the competition is charging for the services that they are receiving because they are more than happy with those services and they would not bother to change service provider no matter what.
NO MATTER WHAT!
The chap who mowed my front lawn at my previous home did such a wonderful job and took such pride in maintaining my lawn that I never ever even wondered what my neighbour across the street was paying to his guy.
Because the service I received from my guy was exemplary.
[He actually posted photos of my lawn on Instagram!]
Do you know anyone who has a similar relationship with a service provider?
A doctor?
A nail lady?
A hairdresser?
These great relationships show that it is not the commodity that is being traded here.
It is about the service and the experience that the customer receives that has seen the relationship transcend from purely being an exchange of money for goods, to being something more visceral, and deeper.
Pareto knew best.
Pareto said that twenty percent of your efforts will result in eighty percent of your outcomes and that the remaining eighty percent of your efforts will result in only twenty percent of your outcomes.
So doesn’t it then make more sense to be focusing on creating a business that attracts more of those top twenty percenters and attracts less of those eighty percenters?
Because it is often those bottom eighty percenters who produce one hundred percent of your dramas.
Have you ever been worried about whether a client thinks that your fees are too high?
Let me tell you about my driveway…
When I built my last home in 2002, it took on and off about twelve months to landscape the property from the back fence to the street.
And this is the usual direction that landscapers work.
So when it came to the paving of my driveway towards the end of their tenure,our landscapers, Argyle Landscapes, who we affectionately nicknamed Plus, Plus, and Plus, presented us with a costing for the paving job.
Which we thought was a little bit heavy.
So we sought out other prices from other paving companies.
And when we presented those other quotes to our landscapers, and asked them why there was a significant difference, the answer came back:
“Because we’re Argyle.”
So now what were we to do?
Long story short, we decided to have Argyle do the driveway paving.
They had already done an exemplary job paving our backyard pool and outdoor areas, as well as our front portico and front stairs.
The result?
A superb job that stood the test of time.
[Our driveway had a 1:4 incline. So the job needed to be done well.]
Was it money well spent?
Absolutely.
And the moral to the story is:
If you know that you provide an exceptional product with exemplary service, then you put yourself and your business into the position where you can bill your clients differently because they won’t be as conscious about the price.
It will always be about the service and the EXPERIENCE.
Aldo Gucci said:
“Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten.”
The Marvel of La Giostra
I’d like to share with you the story about my family dinner at La Giostra restaurant in Florence Italy, in 2011, where at the completion of our meal, the host had asked whether my wife and I would care for an after-dinner drink, on the house?
Well how could we refuse his generosity?
What followed then was an act of even greater generosity….
My wife asked for a Limoncello and I said I would like a Johnny Walker Black Label. The host returned, but not with two drinks, but rather with a bottle of each beverage and two glasses, and told us to have as many glasses as we cared to enjoy.
On him.
Can you imagine how many times I’ve retold this story?
Can you imagine how many other patrons there are who have experienced this generosity and have told and retold the same story?
Do the math…. there is significant profit to be made by charging $12.00 for a 30mL portion from a 700mL bottle that costs the restaurant maybe $50.00 wholesale to buy?
But free drink?
Really, who is going to go overboard and drink more than one or two free glasses at the end of a great meal?
In fact, if every diner had two glasses at the end of the night, one bottle would serve twelve diners.
So for a fraction over $4.00 per diner, do you think giving away a couple of after dinner drinks is a great investment?
Imagine the amount of repeat business this act of generosity creates? And then again there are the referrals created as well…
Like I said, can you imagine how many times I’ve retold this story?
*****
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.
Here are some interesting ideas and thoughts to consider when setting up a sales offer.
Firstly, you need to make your offer compelling enough that potential customers are going to want to purchase your initial offer purely because it represents a solution to their problem.
Having a great product on its own is not a solution.
Your product must solve a problem that your customer is experiencing that is causing your customer sufficient concern.
If your customer feels as though now is the time to solve their problem, your initial offer of a solution needs to be able to spark an interestfor the customer to say:
“I’m interested.”
If you then have an interested customer, you need to be able to offer bonuses to your offer that have the customer saying:
“Those bonuses are great.”
You want the customer to be thinking that if the bonus items were for sale as stand-alone items, then they would consider purchasing those bonus items.
But, the bonus items are items that are never for individual sale.
The bonus items are only items that are available to customers who purchase the core product.
The bonus items are added to add value to the transaction on the core product, and are added to layer on top of that essential core product.
The bonus items offered should be of significant worth and value, so that the customer understands that their failure to purchase the core product will see the disappearance for the final time of the bonus items.
The thing about the bonus offer is that it should be of low wholesale cost, but of high intrinsic value.
What would be an item that would fit the bill here?
A morning on the golf links?
A day out fishing?
A visit to your home for education?
These three bonus items, if offered individually, are of very little cost to the vendor, but are of significant value to the customer.
The Meet and Greet.
The Meet and Greet rock concert ticket represents a perfect example of a low cost, high value item.
The value is that the fan gets to spend time with the rock star prior to the concert. Time and opportunity that the average fan does not get.
The Meet and Greet process takes some time, but if the artist is able to package up the process and then sell a significant number of these packages, the time cost to the artist is negated by the dollar income created for simply allowing a number of fans to experience and view a process that still goes on anyway. Though in this instance, that process now goes on with an audience.
But it creates an experience of a lifetime for your customer.
What door can you open in the day to day processes of your business that will create a lasting experience for one or more of your valued clients?
And will make that difference for those clients, when they make that decision to choose to definitely purchase your core product.
*****
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.
This statement is often offered up in customer service lessons:
“The Customer Is Always Right Even If They’re Wrong”
Have you ever heard that one?
Here are three reasons why I don’t believe that “The Customer Is Always Right” is good for business.
Some customers are not worth having.
Your business does not have to take every customer it can.
There will always be those sorts of customers who make your life a misery.
In dentistry, I see that there are several types of customers that you do not need in your practice:
• The patient who has the clinical patient mirror glued to their nose.
You know the ones….they hold that mirror so close to their eyes… every tiny little microscopic anomaly in that wonderful restoration that you just placed is being examined by THAT patient using their electro-microscopic eyes.
They see things that a research scientist wouldn’t see. Let alone someone sitting across a table from them at a dinner party.
• The patient who asks “are you finished yet?” as an attempt to be funny.
Usually they offer this up after you pause to clean the dust off your hand mirror.
• The patient who tells you to your face: “you are the best dentist I’ve ever had”
But they never ever have any treatment that you diagnose done. It’s always going to be “One Day” but one day never comes.
• The patient who tells you how much they love you in the treatment room, but out the front they whinge about your fees and how much they need to pay.
Some customers are just plain wrong.
I remember when I purchased my practice in January 1987.
There was an ashtray in the then “waiting room” for patients to use.
I removed it immediately.
I had less than three years prior given up smoking myself.
But apart from that, I could think of nothing more offensive to do to a dentist than for a patient to scent their mouth, their skin, their hair, and their clothing with the rancid stench of burnt tobacco.
I remember one patient vehemently chastising me for removing her right to smoke in my dental practice.
Well call me a visionary…. I was happy to stand my ground against the patient’s opinion.
Because that patient’s opinion was totally wrong.
It makes employees unhappy.
It makes employees unhappy and can result in worse customer service.
If you put the employee first, what you will find is that the employees then start putting the customers first.
When your business repeatedly sides with customers, it sends a message to your employees that they are not valued, and that treating employees in a fair manner is not important to your business.
It also sends a message to your valued employees that you want them to “put up with everything” from your customers.
You do not want to be sending this sort of message to your employees.
You do need to be showing a respect toward your customers.
But there are some “absolutes” that you do not want to always be standing by, and “The Customer Is Always Right” is one of those.
*****
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.
![Customer Service [And Selling To Customers] Is All About The Transfer Of Trust.](https://i0.wp.com/www.theultimatepatientexperience.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/shutterstock_510187291.jpg?resize=1000%2C667&ssl=1)
