To be of service, in business, as business owners, and as employees, we need to be active solvers of the problems that our clients, customers and patients bring to us.
“I need to dig a hole.”
“Which aisle are the cashews in?”
“I’m looking for an outfit for a special event coming up.”
“I need to make an [a dental] appointment.”
These are all legitimate problems that people have that require a solution. The reason someone asks one of these questions is because they are wanting a solution to their problem.
“I need to dig a hole.”
The hardware store attendant would ask the customer a couple of clarifying questions:
“How big is the hole?”
“How deep is the hole?”
“What are you going to put in the hole? Are you planting something, or building something?”
“Do you need to carry the excavated earth away?”
Depending on the customer’s answers, the store attendant could come up with a number of possible choices for the customer.
“Which aisle are the cashews in?”
The supermarket employee would answer:
“They’re down here in aisle 5. Let me show you.”
And then the employee would lead the customer directly to the cashews.
And while leading the customer to the cashews, the employee could also ask the customer if there were any other items they were looking for, and whether or not the cashews [or the other items] were for a special event or occasion, maybe?
“I’m looking for an outfit for a special event coming up.”
The clothing store employee would ask:
“What’s the event?”
“When is it?”
“Where’s it being held?”
“What did you have in mind?”
And then the store employee would come up with a number of suggestions, and spend time with the customer, giving feedback on the outfits suggested….
“I need to make an [a dental] appointment.”
The dental receptionist who receives a telephone enquiry like this could say:
“I haven’t got anything available until late March, early April.”
“We’re very heavily booked because of COVID”
Here’s a couple of tips:
Find out the customer’s name and whether they’ve been to your store before.
Everybody loves to hear their name, and personalising the visit, even if it’s to buy a shovel or a bag of nuts, really does help to break the ice and build some commaraderie.
Ask questions that give clarity to what the customer already has, and how soon they need their problem solved
The hole may not need to be dug today.
The outfit may not be needed for another week or two.
And what exactly are they looking to have done at the dentist?
Our aim is to come up with a solution
Our aim is to come up with a solution that is a WIN-WIN for both the customer and also for our business.
Slamming a door in someone’s face is not a win-win result for either party.
Did you notice the GOLDEN RULE?
One of our Golden Rules in customer service is that when a customer is looking to find something, we never point. We always stop what we are doing and we lead our customers to exactly where they need to go.
At Disneyland, it is the janitors and rubbish collectors who receive more enquiries from guests about ride locations, than do other park employees.
And so the janitors and cleaners are trained specifically to stop what they are doing when they are asked directions, and to put aside what they are doing and to LEAD the park guests directly to their ride.
Metaphorically, it is the role of the dental receptionist to help the caller find a solution for their problem they have phoned about.
And that comes down to understanding supply and demand, and knowing how many appointments of varying types are enquired about, and templating the practice’s schedule to accommodate all of those enquiries, rather than just saying the dental equivalent of:
“The line starts here. And the back of the line is way down there.”
Because that sort of comment is far from helpful.
When serving…
If you’re exchanging goods or services for money, then you’re in the SALES BUSINESS.
And selling is serving, as one of my mentors used to say.
And serving is solving.
Problem solving.
When you come up with a workable win-win solution for your customers that exceeds their expectations, you gain a loyal customer for life, who returns, and returns, and tells all their friends and everybody they meet about how good your business was at solving their problem.
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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 heard of a lot of people who are searching and searching for the perfect career, or the perfect job.
That’s the paid vocation where you do what you love, and there’s no pressure and no accountability.
You don’t have targets and you don’t have to answer to your boss or to your bank manager or to yourself for those weeks that just don’t seem to want to go to plan.
It’s a career where you can say what you want, to whoever you want, and not have to be concerned about the consequences of offending or upsetting anyone….
The two horizontal circles, at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock were “What my strengths are” and “What the world needs” and where they intersected with each other were your cause and your calling, depending on whether we were looking at an intersection with the “What I love” circle at 12 o’clock [calling] or the “What I get paid for” circle at 6 o’clock [cause].
Interestingly….
Interestingly, the “What I get paid for” circle at 6 o’clock intersects at Profession with “What my strengths are” at 9 o’clock, and also with Vocation when it intersects with “What the world needs” at 3 o’clock.
“What I get paid for” also intersects at “Cause” when it intersects with both “What the world needs” at 3 o’clock and “What my strengths are” at 9 o’clock.
And even more interestingly….
And even more interestingly, the “What I love” circle at 12 o’clock has intersections of “Passion” and “Mission” and “Calling”, but none of these intersections are with the “What I get paid for” circle at 6 o’clock.
The “What I love” circle at 12 o’clock and the “What I get paid for” circle at 6 o’clock do intersect very briefly at “Career” with the “What my strengths are” circle at 9 o’clock.
The “What I love” circle at 12 o’clock and the “What I get paid for” circle at 6 o’clock do intersect very briefly at “Potential” when they intersect with the “What the world needs” circle at 3 o’clock.
The sweet spot…
The sweet spot, where all four circles meet [“What I love” circle at 12 o’clock and the “What I get paid for” circle at 6 o’clock and the “What my strengths are” circle at 9 o’clock and the “What the world needs” circle at 3 o’clock], is “Purpose.”
The sweet spot on a Venn diagram is a very small portion of the diagram.
Is this because the sweet spot is difficult to achieve?
Does the perfect vocation exist, and is it realistically achievable?
Or is there always going to be a need for compromise?
.
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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.
Years ago, as a young man, I used to spend the odd weekend or two travelling two hours and spending time with friends who lived regionally outside of Sydney.
These were great friends, who’s company I very much enjoyed. We would spend the weekends discussing all the problems of the universe, and solving a few of them.
Those were the good old days… but time moves on…
One of the things I learnt from one of those friends was a greeting, or conversation starter, that has stayed with me for over thirty five years.
It’s a simple question that I use on a very regular basis in conversation with all sorts of people, and is something I believe that every person should adopt to set their conversations apart from the other conversations out there that are using very ordinary and banal greetings.
The greeting that my friend used is this:
He said to me, as I arrived at his home and was settling in, he asked me:
“How’s your week been?”
Here’s what he didn’t say:
He didn’t say:
“How are you?”
Or
“How ya going?”
Which are probably the two most over-used and under-appreciated greeting questions on the planet.
I say this because I find that most people who ask me the questions
“How are you?” or “How ya going?”
really don’t care at all about my physical well-being or my mental health, and only use these questions as a silence breaking tool to then depart from the current moment of reality and get quickly onto their own agenda.
Make a note when you hear people greet each other and LISTEN as to whether they actually pay any attention to the answer they receive.
Often the person answering the question “How are you?” replies with an answer equally as insincere as the original question.
They will say:
“Not bad.”
Or
“Not too bad”
whatever those two phrases mean…. And then we’re off into more banality….
The genius of my friend’s question is this:
My friend’s question is genuinely thought provoking, and initiates a genuine conversation about the events of the week.
My friend’s question gets the conversation away from any banality and leads it straight into recent and current reality.
And it shows a genuine interest in the other person and what they are about to reply.
From that day forward….
From that day on I used that question and other variances of that question as a genuine conversation starter, getting the conversation straight into the other person’s agenda and reality.
The other variances that I used were these:
“How’s your week looking?”
and
“How’s your day looking?”
Which can both be followed with:
“What have you got planned?”
And of course, using a shorter time frame when discussing the past, you can ask:
“How’s your day been?”
which can be followed with the genuine questions:
“What have you been doing?”
or
“What have you been up to?”
Here’s what will happen
When you start asking these questions when greeting your friends, contacts, and customers, your conversations will immediately move up to be more personal and more genuine.
And the change in conversation matter me will be more appreciated.
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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.
Years ago the great Bob Johnson told me that the best way to be successful in business was to give all your customers and potential customers the world’s worst headache, and then let them know that you’re the only guy in town with an aspirin…
It’s called problem solving.
And yet I see so many people building businesses as if there are no customers.
They say:
“I’ve got a great idea for a business….”
And I ask them:
“Who’s going to buy this product and how many customers do you think you will need to make this a viable business?”
Business is all about supply and demand….
If what you sell is something people don’t need, then you ain’t got no business.
You’re not going to make a fortune selling ski boots in Hawaii.
And it doesn’t matter how aerodynamic those boots are, or how sexy they look, and how many Olympic Gold medalists endorse them… ski boots aren’t walking out the door in sports stores in Hawaii.
There has to be a need…
Once you’ve got a product that people need, and best of all, a consumable product that exhausts and needs to be replenished that people need to purchase on a regular basis, then you have a much better recipe for business success.
But a business is always more than just a product…
Because products can be duplicated, and improved upon by your competitors.
And your competitors can also sell to your customers at a lower price.
The thing that keeps your customers coming back to you instead of going to your competitors is their sense of loyalty that they have towards you and your business. And that loyalty is built upon the exceptional service that your team provides that makes each customer feel special each and every time they do business with your company.
You can still kill that business if you don’t respect your customers.
Steve Jobs said this about business:
“You‘ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.”
So many businesses forget this, and focus on their product, and lose touch with their customers as real live human beings with emotions and feelings.
Your customers will leave you if you fail to make them feel important and valued.
Your customers will leave you and go to your competitors if they ever feel taken for granted or feel ignored by your staff, or your business.
To have and maintain a successful business you must always be focussing on providing an exceptional customer experience for each and every customer at each and every time that you see them.
No exceptions allowed….
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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.
And I listen to a lot of phone conversation recordings.
And one of the dumbest things I hear said on the phone is when one of the people in the conversation has to ask the other person their name, despite the fact that:
The phone conversation has been going for some time…
And/or the other person has already introduced themselves by name at a point earlier in the phone call.
Yes, really!!
And yet it wouldn’t happen in real life, would it?
Would you start up a conversation with someone in a face-to-face situation and not find out their name or not introduce yourself to them?
That would be totally creepy.
Yet on the phone, in a work environment, where people are being paid money to schedule appointments, I hear phone conversations that go on for several minutes where the person answering the phone has no clue and no idea who they are actually talking to.
No clue at all.
They don’t know:
The caller’s name.
Whether the caller is a customer of their business, or not.
Whether the caller has been recommended to their business by an already happy and very loyal customer.
Whether the caller has spoken to other competitors of the business about a solution to the problem that they have that they are calling about.
How much knowledge the caller has about the problem they are looking to solve.
How urgently does the caller need to solve their problem, and what priority that is for them.
How the caller found out about their business and why they chose to call their business.
More often than not…
The person answering the phone gets onto their own agenda rather than the caller’s agenda.
And the agenda of the person answering the phone may not be in the best interests of the caller.
And may not be in the best interests of the business.
One of the worst questions I hear asked on the phone is:
“What did you say your name was again?”
When it is so important to make a good first impression, especially on the phone to someone who is a first time caller to your business, the first three things you need to do are:
Find out the name of the person calling that you are talking to.
Write their name down.
Use their name frequently and deliberately during the conversation.
It is AN ABSOLUTE INSULT to the caller to have to ask them for their name again after they have already told you their name and you have failed to commit it to memory.
It just shows the caller that you, as the receptionist, HAVE NOT been listening.
If the caller introduces themselves and you do not quite catch what they said, then you must IMMEDIATELY at that moment apologise for yourself and ask them to please repeat their name, so that you can commit it to paper, and hopefully to memory, so that you can immediately begin to use their name regularly throughout the conversation.
Because, if you do not, and the conversation proceeds, and then at some point you have to concede and ask the caller:
“What did you say your name was again?”
What you are really saying to them is:
“Excuse me, but I wasn’t paying attention to you…”
It’s not a good look for you or for your business to be asking for the caller to repeat their name.
[And by the way, grammatically, asking the caller in the past tense what their name “was” is incorrect, as their name hasn’t changed from the past to the present. What the caller’s name “is” is more correct grammatically. But situationally the whole question is wrong, and should not be asked.]
Dale Carnegie wrote that:
“A man’s name is to him the sweetest sound in the language.”
It pays to be attentive, and to remember people’s names and to use their name regularly when in conversations with those people.
It’s just common courtesy.
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday February 24, 2022 in Melbourne, VIC
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: Click Link To Order
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