I often am asked by people as to what is the point in bothering to provide World Class Customer Service?
After all, they tell me that customers don’t expect great service ALL OF THE TIME, and if that’s the case, then why try to provide great service all of the time?
And that in itself is an interesting conundrum.
Recently we started offering a free trial period for one of our coaching products.
We thought that this would be a great way of showcasing what we do.
We also thought that during that free period we could demonstrate sufficient value and RESULTS that would make the continuation of the use of our services a NO BRAINER.
The problem was:
Before I tell you what the problem was, let me tell you an interesting story…
Last year, I was on a golf trip overseas where the owner of the tour company had booked a couple of evening dining meals out for the golfers at a couple of very fine restaurants.
There was one small problem…. The golfers just wanted a good steak and nothing fancy.
The intended message [from the tour organiser] totally missed the mark [the market of the golfers on the tour].
The problem was that not everybody wants what you want for them….
Despite the fact that what you want for them might just be the best thing they ever had or ever needed, if they don’t want it and don’t appreciate it, it’s not worth doing…
In our businesses, what we have found is that there are enough people out there who really do want our services that we don’t need to be offering free trials to attract people who haven’t “bought in” on the programme.
There is ALWAYS a market for providing great customer service.
No matter what you do, no matter what industry you are in, and no matter what your community, there will always be 20-25% of the population who will be SO HAPPY with the product or the service that you provide to them that they will never care to bother to find out what your competitors are charging because they believe that the service that you are providing is exceptional value for the money they are paying you.
Your job is to make sure you find those clients who value and appreciate what you do.
Offering “free trials” is a great way of working for nothing and having to deal with a lot of people who may not fit your ideal client profile.
In fact, the attraction of people who just want a “free lunch” will not only wear you out, but it may also upset those customers of yours who really do want the service that you offer, but are unable to offer, because you are dealing with those who want the “free lunch”.
For this reason, advertising that attracts the wrong type of potential client to your business may not be the smartest form of advertising.
The service you provide must be dictated by the type of client you wish to attract.
My friend Shep Hyken said:
“My belief is that confidence comes first from consistency. Great customer service is an all of the time thing. You can’t be good one day and just okay the next. Inconsistency could be the fastest way to erode customer confidence. So make sure that what you are doing today is good enough to make that customer want to come back to do business with you again the next time they need what you sell.”
I agree.
When you erode the confidence of people who want great service, you end up having to try to be more to more people, in an attempt to try to satisfy someone.
Which takes more effort and is more difficult.
And so, when you offend a broader range of more customers with your poor service, and you turn more of them away, you actually have to spend more money on advertising to attract a larger number of customers.
And that really doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Why not just provide exemplary World Class Service to those customers you have who value what you do…. The end cost to you and your business is a lot less, in financial terms, as well as in terms of your own heart muscle and stomach lining.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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 something is offered to someone that could help them, that could make their life easier, or make their work life more efficient, that person has a choice to be interested, or not.
Some people choose to be interested in finding out more.
Others choose not to be interested.
Both decisions are allowable.
That’s what a democracy is about.
Even when one decision is illogical, respect that person’s choice.
When someone chooses to make a decision without gathering information, that is their choice.
Sometimes, the use of some following clarifying questions has the ability to enlighten and alter an illogical decision.
But if someone is steadfast in their decision, no matter how illogical that decision is, you must respect their decision and move on.
Respect their choice.
Although their choice may appear wrong to you, let them live with their decision.
The beauty of this planet that we live on is that no matter what you have to offer, there are more than enough people out there who could do with the help or improvement that you offer.
Your job is not to convince people to take up your offer.
Your duty to yourself is to find those people who might want to take up your offer and present the information to them, and to move past those people who for whatever reason choose to decline your offer.
At some point in the future, those who chose not to take up your offer may change their mind.
If your offer has expired when those people do decide they are now ready, that’s their own fault for failing to act at the time of the initial offer.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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 often hear dental front office staff members talking on the phone to people who have called in to their practice.
And to put it quite bluntly, the conversations are really very WEIRD.
They are weird because the composition of the conversation is something that would never exist in real life.
And yet, for some reason, some of the very fabric of society is discarded when it comes to telephone conversations at a business.
As Julius Sumner Miller used to put it so eloquently:
“Why is this so?”
In real life, you would never conduct a face-to-face conversation for a significant amount of time with someone you had only just met without trying to find out a little about that person who you had just started talking with.
But in business, and in dental surgeries, I hear long conversations between dental staff and first time callers to the practice that end without the caller’s name ever being asked for?
So, for the business, when the caller’s name, and contact details are not recorded, it’s as if that conversation never existed and it’s as if that caller never existed?
Yet in reality, that caller was someone who for some reason had decided that this dental office was a candidate to help them [that caller] solve a dental issue that was significant enough to warrant them picking up the phone and calling about.
Wouldn’t you as a business owner feel that the name and phone number of that caller might be of some interest to you?
Especially when [as a business owner] you’d spent money or created enough interest for that caller to think that your practice might be the place to help them?
Imagine how depressing and upsetting it must be for those poor callers to be let down and not have their problem solved, when they phone your dental practice?
You see, when we find out the name of the person who calls, and use their name back to them [strategically] during any ensuing conversation, it puts us in a position to be able to instantly build better rapport with that caller.
And if we can build better rapport, then we most probably have a significantly better chance of making that caller an appointment.
People do business with people they like, and they trust.
And when, in conversation, we can break down barriers and make people feel at ease, by calling people by their name and repeating their name back to them, then we have a significantly higher chance of securing their patronage and their business.
This is not manipulation.
It is in fact, common decency and common courtesy.
And common sense.
The trouble with common sense is that in reality, its not all that common.
And it is for THAT reason, that only twenty percent of new patient phone calls to a dental practice result in an appointment being made.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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’ve been talking with a lot of dental practice owners during recent weeks who have been telling me that they are busy at their practices.
And a lot of those practice owners a surprised that they are.
You see, as the dental world emerges from it’s Covid-19 inflicted period of restricted dental practice, nobody in the profession was really sure what to expect in terms of DEMAND in the dental marketplace.
A lot of punters had postulated that once the restrictions had lifted, that the public would stay away from dental practices, because they [the public] were going to be wanting to conserve funds and protect their assets.
And, there were those in the profession that thought that the public would stay away from visiting their dentist because they would [wrongly] perceive dental practices as being Covid-19 infested incubators.
And so the thought was, that if the public were to perceive dentistry as an “optional” service, or a LUXURY, then in times of economic uncertainty [along with infection control uncertainty], dentistry would drop down the scale of necessary and essential services.
This has not been the case.
Across the planet, what I’ve seen is that at present there is a glut of patients returning to visit dentists.
So much so, that a lot of dental practice owners are telling me just how over-busy they really are.
And they’re too busy to be learning new skills.
Necessary skills that might be important in helping them to be managing their busy-ness better.
And also skills they will be needing to be managing their supply of dental services when this glut, or flood of patients and dentistry starts to dry up.
And it will.
They’re also too busy to be concerned about spillage, and wastage, of ALL incoming enquiries into their practices.
After all, they’re busy….
The stark reality is this: the current busy-ness that dental practices are experiencing is due to the backlog caused by most dental practices having been closed during the imposed Level 3 restrictions.
Now, as this backlog begins to get serviced, the demand will start to abate.
Only those savvy dentists who understand the forces of supply and demand will be able to maintain and build on in their practices and benefit from this aberration.
Most practices will not be able to “hold their current line”.
What we will see in the future is that most practices will be sucked back into a vortex.
The savvy dentists out there will fine tune their operations to not only ride out this current wave of momentum, but they will also remain afloat and continue sailing forward.
Are you positioning your practice for this expected downturn?
Mark my words, with unemployment across the western world up well above 10% of the workforce, things are going to be getting a lot tougher for the average dental practice.
The smart dentists out their will be upskilling their teams to have the necessary talents and skills needed to maximise their returns from the supply of patients their practice will be receiving.
And winging it won’t cut the mustard….
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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 recently reminded about Krulak’s Law of Leadership.
General Charles C. Krulak is a retired General in the United States Marine Corp.
He said that:
“Leaders are judged, ultimately, by the quality of the leadership reflected in their subordinates.”
Krulak’s Law of Leadership states that the future of an organisation is in the hands of the privates in the field, not the generals back home.
Seth Godin explains Krulak’s Law thus:
“The experience people have with your brand is in the hands of the person you pay the least.”
Godin says we need to:
“Act accordingly. (This involves training, trust, responsibility, leadership, dignity, authority, management and investment. It mostly means seeing the front-line people in your organization as priceless assets, not cheap cogs.)”
In your dental practice, are you investing well in the training and the responsibilities of your front line employees?
Are you truly able to consider your front line employees to be “foreman material”?
Are you proud of them and the roles that they play in your organisation, or are you constantly cringing and being left wondering at their behavioural gaffes and actions?
Are these actions and gaffes a result of your poor leadership, training and direction?
Sometimes the actions, or inactions of those who we choose as the faces of our businesses, are the direct result of the poor choices and inactions of management, owners, and leaders.
As the head of your organisation, are you investing sufficiently in the skills and trainings that your front line people need on a regular basis to deliver SERVICE EXCELLENCE to your valued clients, customers and patients?
One errant gaffe by an untrained employee repeated on a regular basis could be costing your practice hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
Recently I looked at the statistics of a very successful dental practice, only to see that 43% of their inbound phone calls were not being answered.
And whether these inbound calls were existing patients or new patients or not, was irrelevant because missing nearly half of their inbound calls and allowing a message service to act as a “safety net” is a far from ideal situation, from a customer service industry standpoint.
Because, no matter whether someone phoning your practice is new business or existing business, nobody likes making a phone call and getting a machine when they want to and are expecting to be talking with a real live human being.
Don’t we all know it?
Who out there dreads, for instance, those calls that you need to be making to your phone company?
“Press one to be directed to ….”
We hate it!
So when it comes to your dental practice front line people, the people in your practice interacting with your customers, make sure that you have invested in all of the necessary training that you could possibly provide to allow them to act with excellence in their roles for you.
And also invest in having sufficient numbers of team members to ensure that during times of excessive demand, you have adequate resources available to deal with those demands.
Because the small amount of dollars needed to pay sufficient salaries will be significantly dwarfed by the increased revenue that your business will collect by just having the right number of employees available to manage that customer flow in your practice.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
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.
