Three years ago I was sold a framework for an online membership site for the purpose of distributing educational recordings to purchasers and subscribers using an online platform.
Well, as things go, this “plan” actually got away from me. One thing led to another and I never got around to ACTUALLY assembling the recordings and building the membership site.
You know how it is…. other “more urgent” things start taking priority, and soon that great thought that seemed to you to be a very good idea at the time gets put on the backburner as other more urgent things are prioritised.
The good news was that the membership site had an annual renewal fee, which is billed to my credit card….
And so when I saw that annual fee debited from my card after one year of no activity, I thought to myself:
“There’s the inspiration I need to get my thoughts together and really start building this thing”
Of course that didn’t happen….
No. Another year down the track and the membership site was still but a thought, and a third payment is taken from my credit card…
Well, I thought to myself:
“This year I am definitely getting this membership site happening”.
The funny thing is….
The funny [strange] thing is, that during these three years of paying for the membership site, nobody from that company made contact with me to ask whether I needed any assistance?
Nobody….
In fact, nobody from that company ever contacted me to let me know in advance that my annual membership fee was about to be deducted from my credit card they had on file.
And by the looks of my story this far, it is quite obvious that at ANY point in time, a helping hand would have been quite useful and welcoming to me.
So this year…
So this year my credit card expired. It passed its expiry date. It needed a new card that needed to be activated [by me] with a new expiry date.
And so I thought that my membership site people would need to contact me for that new expiry date?
Well, no, they simply took it upon themselves to guess, and then process, a new expiry date for that same credit card.
Which kind of shocked me…
But it did inspire me to send them some recordings that I needed to have them put together in an online membership access site for me…
And so that’s what I did.
And then guess what happened…
Absolutely nothing.
No reply.
No acknowledgement.
No reaching out.
Despite my continued requests for some acknowledgement and feedback about what the next sequence of steps needed to be.
So here’s what I did….
I contacted my credit card company and informed them of the fraudulent processing of my card, and to immediately reverse the reaction.
I contacted the membership site merchant supposedly providing me with a membership site, and informed him that I was not doing any more business with him, and that my credit provider was voiding the last transaction.
It’s a miracle!!
Well, upon receipt of this instruction from me all of a sudden the excuses started coming thick and fast and the membership site guy started trying to put together a product for me.
He even started to build the membership site all of a sudden, after no activity or acknowledgement at all in a two week period after I had been in touch with him and sent him the recordings.
Well guess what?
It was too late.
In the school of life, you cannot keep writing in an exam after they call for “Pen’s Down”.
In the school of life, your homework is rejected if it is submitted late.
Sadly for this guy, “Last Drinks” had been called and the bar was closed.
What a hide….
After being paid three years’ worth of fees and not having to deliver one little thing, the membership site guy had the hide to contest the credit card refund …. YES REALLY!!
He submitted a protest to American Express.
What a hide indeed…
On another note…
Recently I had been following up with a dental practice that had expressed an interest in some of my coaching programmes.
And it’s funny, when you leave a message on their service that tells callers that:
“We value your call”
And
“I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
and they don’t return your call [and they hope you go away so they can stagnate in inactivity].
You have to wonder at the fact that the dentist’s actions, or inactions, are actually saying more about them than them NOT returning the call and manning up about their own inadequacies.
The Lesson Here Is This:
Congruency is so important.
If you make a mistake, take action immediately and be seen to be taking reparative action to rectify the situation as best you can.
If that mistake includes seeking help and then feeling overwhelmed, man up about the overwhelm
The fact that you sought help in the first place is indicative of the fact that assistance is required.
If that assistance needs to be instigated with a “softly softly” approach, then that soft approach is better than no assistance at all.
But communication is the key… and great communication is the real answer.
If you cannot communicate well with your customers, on a regular basis, don’t worry….
Your customers will leave you and soon you will have very few people that you will need to communicate with…
*****
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.
As we head into August and then September in these uncertain times, here are five serious questions you need to ask yourself about where you want your dental practice to be heading.
Is business growth something you’re looking at in the next twelve months?
Or is it something that you’ll never do?
How are you going to feel in twelve months’ time if you don’t do something now to grow?
How much longer are you prepared to stay where you are?
Is treading water a great business strategy?
Is business growth something you’re looking at in the next twelve months?
The simple answer to this question should be:
“Yes.”
The actual answer to this question is most often:
“Yes. But I never end up doing anything.”
Or is it something that you’ll never do?
And so the answer to this question is more often than not:
“You know what, it’s actually something that I never get around to doing….”
And it’s because of this lack of taking action, lack of planning, and lack of planning to take action, that ninety five percent of dentists reaching the age of sixty-five are unable to retire on their practicing income level, simply because they have not earned sufficient throughout their careers to allow them to fund that level of retirement.
How are you going to feel in twelve months’ time if you don’t do something now to grow?
This is like the baby bird that falls from the nest in the tree and lands in a pile of dung…. At first it struggles to free itself from the sticky, smelly mess that it has landed in…. but after a while, and after a struggle, the baby bird tires, and come to the realisation that it’s not so bad being stuck in the dung, and it’s actually kind of warm, and the smell, well that grows on you, and so the baby bird adapts …. And accepts.
The reason most people don’t change is that they don’t want to.
Because if they really did want to change, they would have changed already.
So they whine and make excuses for their state of play….
How much longer are you prepared to stay where you are?
Most people never change.
But….
Every day, someone makes the decision to give up smoking, and succeeds.
Every day, someone makes the decision to lose weight and get fit, and they do.
Others make the decisions, but fail to commit.
In November 1982 I made the decision to give up my 30 cigarettes per day habit.
I lasted one and a half days.
In November 1983 I tried again, and made the decision to give up my 30 cigarettes per day habit.
This time I lasted four and a half days.
On March 19, 1984 I again made the decision to give up my 30 cigarettes per day habit.
Thirty six years and four and a half months later, I’ve never touched one of those dirty rotten things again…
It all depends upon WHAT LEVEL OF MEDIOCRITY you’re prepared to put up with… and how serious you are about improving yourself….
Is treading water a great business strategy?
The short answer is “No.”
The long answer is “No.”
If there is no current and you are treading water, you will be passed by those taking action and swimming in the direction that they choose.
If there is a current and you are treading water, you will be dragged by that current in a direction not of your own choosing.
Treading water is never a great business strategy.
Taking a pro-active approach is a much better business decision.
*****
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.
A thing I see very regularly at dental practices is the dentist out the front doing the handover of the patient to the front office employee.
And when I see this I know what I am seeing is wrong on so many levels.
In The Ultimate Patient ExperienceTM, the Post-Appointment Handover of the patient is best performed by the dental assistant who has just worked with the dentist on that patient.
And not the dentist.
Some dentists choose not to follow my advice and choose to do the handover themselves while their dental assistant is tearing down the treatment room and is setting it up for the next patient.
And that’s a valid reason.
But….
There are better uses of the dentist’s time than to be out the front handing over the patient.
The dentist could be writing notes?
The dentist could be reviewing correspondence?
And in reality, the dental practice could easily employ an extra team member at a nominal hourly rate to do the room teardown and set up while the assisting dental assistant transfers the patient to the front office.
What can go wrong if the dentist does the handover?
When the dentist performs the handover, he may rush the process, and the urgency of the patient’s treatment, along with the reasons for the following appointments may not be addressed properly.
A great handover takes time.
Because a great handover follows a process.
Secondly, when the dentist performs the handover at the front office, there is a good chance that because he hasn’t needed to handover to the dental assistant [as per The Ultimate Patient ExperienceTM] then this could well be the first time that the patient has HEARD the reasons why they need to return.
And what I have found is that the more times that the patient hears something, the more chance there is that the reasons will “sink in” and be acted upon and will not be misunderstood or forgotten.
And so two times is better than one time.
Another thing that can happen when the dentist takes the patient to the front is, that if the front office person is busy [on the phone or with another patient], then the dentist has to decide whether to stay and wait with the patient, or DUMP the patient and run.
Dumping and running is not a good look for the dentist or for the practice.
And standing and waiting is a very poor use of the dentist’s time.
The dentist could also become sidetracked or even become CAPTURED while at the front desk, and not be allowed to return to the treatment areas.
This is also a very poor use of the dentist’s time.
Are you a hoverer?
What I often also see is I see the dentist bring the patient to the front office area, but the dentist APPEARS on the internal side of the front desk, while the patient is made to stand on the “outside” side of the front desk area.
Firstly, this creates a TWO VS ONE approach at the desk with the patient being the ONE and the dentist and the receptionist being the TWO.
This is wrong.
The patient should always have the team member on their side of the desk, because of the subliminal meaning of care created by having the carer handing the patient over to the front office employee.
Also, what I often see dentists doing is the CROUCH AND HOVER at the front desk, where for some reason, the dentist believes that he [the dentist] can now take over the computer and the appointment book, despite the fact that there is an able bodied employee sitting right there performing that role admirably.
I see no logical explanation for dentists to behave in this manner.
What really should happen…
Ultimately, what really should happen is that the dentist should have two operatories where he finishes treatment in one room with one patient, and then goes straight into the second room where is next patient is seated and is ready to begin treatment.
He has correctly farewelled the patient in the first room and completed his ULTIMATE HANDOVER of the patient to the dental assistant in there.
That dental assistant then takes the patient to the front office and hands the patient over to the front office person.
When the dentist enters room number two, the second Dental assistant has seated their patient and is engaged in light conversation with that patient.
Doing things this way is THE MOST PRODUCTIVE USE of the dentist’s time.
Doing things this way creates an ULTIMATE DENTAL HANDOVER in your dental 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.
You can order your copy here: 
