One of Jayne’s and my fondest memories from our recent road trip to rural NSW relates to one of our experiences as paying customers.
On this road trip we travelled over 1200kms and stayed at three different accommodations. We ate in numerous restaurants, drank wine, beer, gin and Guinness… in fact we also visited nine vineyard cellar doors along with two gin distilleries. [Just to set the record straight, we were visiting a region in NSW known for its cool climate wines. Cool climate wines are wine varieties that Jayne and I had tended to pay less attention to in the past, so this trip presented a welcome opportunity for us to familiarise ourselves with something different to what we were previously used to consuming.]
Anyway, on the last afternoon of our trip, Jayne and I decided to visit the Baker Williams gin distillery in Mudgee. A few days earlier we had been pleasantly entertained at the Parrot gin distillery in Orange, a sizeable and very professional operation that served not only as a cellar door, but also as a meeting place for both locals and tourists, with gin flights, pizza oven, and table and seating [both low and high], and live music playing quietly in one corner.
The Baker Williams distillery was a much smaller facility, operating out of a small add on room at one of the local wineries in Mudgee.
On the afternoon that Jayne and I visited Baker Williams we were met by Nathan [one of the two owners], and Mike [key Brand Ambassador], and fortunately for us, we happened to arrive while their small tasting room was devoid of tasters and customers. This meant that while we enjoyed their tastings, we were also “blessed” to receive their undivided attention as we chatted about them, and their various gins, and other produce, along with discussion about their distillery and the ways they market their various products.
As would be the case, Nathan began to enquire about Jayne and me and what we do, and why we were visiting Mudgee.
Actually, that’s not true.
I mean the “As would be the case” bit was not true. Not the “Nathan began to enquire” bit. On more than half of our cellar door visits, what Jayne and I found was that the people serving weren’t trained in the art [or should I say, weren’t trained with the skill] of being able to find out a little bit of information about their customers.
What Jayne and I had noticed on our road trip was that the art of “connection”, or the ability of a business employee to connect with the customer, appeared to be a skill that was either dying, or under-developed.
So when we let Nathan know that we worked helping small businesses [and dental practices] improve their business processes and their team members’ customer service skills, his ears immediately pricked up.
Nathan then opened up to us that prior to starting the gin distillery he had worked at an accounting firm for a short while, and that while there he had been introduced to business coaching because those accountants had engaged with a coaching firm to help them grow their business.
Nathan told us that he had found this whole concept of small business coaching to be fascinating, primarily because he had seen the successes that this accounting firm had experienced, but also because he thought that “having a business coach for your business” just made logical sense.
And yet, as Nathan then went on to say, he couldn’t understand why so many small businesses did not engage the services of a business coach…
Isn’t that fascinating…
As a coach of small businesses myself, I recognise that there are some areas of my coaching business that I need assistance with, and so I have three or four different coaches who help me with those areas of my business.
I know a business coach who works with mechanics. I know another business coach who helps plumbers, and another who helps electricians, and I know that each of these coaches are sought after in their niches by trades people who are business owners by default, and need assistance with the business processes of their businesses, rather than with the “technical” aspects of what they actually do as a trade.
Sometimes I find that the motto:
“I’m smart enough to open my own business, I certainly should be smart enough to run my own business [on my own]”
really doesn’t hold any water.
In fact, blind ignorance on the side of business owners who fail to seek advice for their business when things are going well, as well as when things are going pear-shaped, really has a severe financial impact on the short term and the long term earnings and profits that their business SHOULD BE ENJOYING.
When a business owner finally realises, as an individual, that:
“None of us are smarter than all of us”
and also acknowledges that structured advice that is paid for is worth more than free advice gathered in an ad-hoc manner, because:
“Free advice is worth every penny you pay for it”
it is then and only then that the light-bulb truly comes on.
Nathan Williams gets this….
Do you?
*****
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.
Years ago when I worked as an associate in a suburban dental practice, one of the neighbouring medical practices used to answer their phones:
“Surgery.”
If you were lucky, sometimes when you phoned you may have gotten:
“Hello surgery?”
The second greeting was far more expressive than the first, because it began with a greeting of “Hello”, and it finished with an upward inflection and question mark, that implied that the answerer of the phone was expecting the caller to the medical practice to continue the conversation.
Hardly inspiring stuff…. on a customer experience level. And unless you just happened to be Nostradamus phoning, how would the average punter even believe that they had phoned the right place?
And then magically, after either of these significantly inadequate messages, the medical practice expected the caller to start speaking in a logical and sensible manner…
[I can’t in any reasonable mind refer to these messages as “greetings” because they do anything but “greet” the caller]
It all just simply beggars belief….
And still today this sort of thing continues to be trotted out…
The professional three-part phone greeting is not used by businesses as often as it should be when their business telephone rings.
When the phone rings at a business, it is usually a customer or a potential new customer with a problem that they expect the business should be able to solve for them.
And if that is our business, then it is the duty of our team members answering that phone to do everything in our power to help that caller find a solution for their problem.
And more often than not, that solution is usually an appointment with one of our business’s service providers, or one of our sales people.
And therefore anything we say or do when the phone rings that diverts or distracts us or the caller from our purpose of solving their [the caller’s] problem is an unnecessary action that needs to be eliminated.
The best way to solve the caller’s problem…
The best way to solve the caller’s problem is to immediately invite the caller to share their problem with us when we answer their initial phone call.
This is in fact the third part of the three-part professional phone greeting that all employees answering a business phone should use EVERY TIME that their business phone rings.
For the phone answerer, the third part of the three part phone greeting is simply the asking of this question, after they have thanked the caller for calling their business [NAME], and identified themselves personally.
They should then say:
“How may I help you?”
By asking this question, we invite the caller to continue the conversation by explaining the outcome they seek from their call, or be divulging the problem they would like our business to solve for them.
Failing to ask this question as the third-part of the phone greeting actually leaves the greeting with a suspenseful and uncomfortable NON-ENDING… where the caller does not know exactly what to do or say next.
Every caller to a dental practice needs to be led [gently] to a solution, which is often the scheduling of a necessary appointment for either treatment or for a consultation.
Failing to ask that important third-part of the phone call greeting places an unnecessary hurdle in front of the caller that can and does result in no solution for the caller.
And that’s just simply a LOSE-LOSE solution that wastes the caller’s time and our practice’s time, and our practice staff’s time.
And that’s just dumb.
*****
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 April 28, 2022 in Brisbane QLD
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.
One of the things we can all be guilty of from time to time is pre-judging, and pre-judging incorrectly.
Whether it be things, events, or people, human beings always tend to be pre-judgers.
The question is why?
“Why do people pre-judge?”
The reason is because of fear.
People pre-judge mostly as a result of fear.
Judging and categorizing of other people and things is the most efficient way for people to reinforce the assumptions on which they base their core view of reality.
In reality, our essential view of the world and ourselves is the sum of everything that we have thought and experienced. It is also limited by any experiences, thoughts and emotions that we refuse or deny.
All people are hard-wired to enjoy the feeling being right and to enjoy the process of making correct predictions about what they see and experience.
For most people it is important to have their judgments and predictions continually reinforced, even though it doesn’t actually matter if those predictions are accurate.
Because as it turns out most people are quite terrible at pre-judging.
However, the emotional need to be a pre-judger remains…
While Jayne and I were away on a recent road trip…
While Jayne and I were away on a recent road trip we visited a number of regional wineries and enjoyed their cellar door tasting experiences.
At one cellar door, we enjoyed engaging in a very interesting and meaningful discussion with our server Simon about his experiences with judging and pre-judging visitors to his cellar door, and talking about his successes and failures, and whether in fact he was a good pre-judger or not.
On the whole, Simon reported, that as a pre-judger he was in fact a poor judge as to whether patrons were going to be serious wine connoisseurs or not, and whether or not they were going to be purchasers of significant quantities of wine.
This was quite interesting.
For a person to be admitting their judgments could be incorrect means examining their own perception of their reality along with any resistances they might have towards certain aspects of that reality.
That’s because most people have minds that work more out of mechanical instinct, persuasion and habit, than logic or truth.
Are you a pre-judger?
Years ago a man turned up in my dental practice one morning without an appointment, asking whether I could have a look at his teeth.
He was dressed very casually in a flannelette shirt. In fact he looked very “working class”.
I was able to see him, and in discussion I found out that he was a small business owner, providing shelving to a major hardware retailer.
And that he had just won ten million dollars in the lottery.
And he wanted to get his teeth fixed.
He had come to our building primarily to see a hair studio in the building, but had seen on our practice listed on the tenant directory in the foyer and thought that he might “kill two birds with one stone” on his visit.
Had I not treated this person with independent respect, he may not have invested with me in improving his oral health.
Had I not treated this patient with independent respect, he may have perceived some inherent indifference from me towards him.
You just never know…
*****
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 April 28, 2022 in Brisbane QLD
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 I’ve been writing recently, Jayne and I took a road trip last month, where we visited three rural cities in New South Wales over a period of nine days and eight nights.
On the last night of our adventure, we decided to dine at a gastro-pub that a few locals had recommended. It was a pub that Jayne and I had walked past one night on the way to dinner somewhere else, and so we both knew this gastro-pub, and knew that it was a very popular establishment.
In preparation, we did decide to pre-book a table for that night, which ended up being a wise decision, because when we arrived that night for dinner, the pub was really buzzing, with all tables full.
In fact, the greeter who met us on arrival was just about to warn us of a significant delay or wait time, until we announced our reservation.
The table we were shown to was well located in a glassed in breezeway that allowed us good vision of people coming and going through the front door of the pub.
We perused the menu options, and then went to the kitchen to place our order, not long after our arrival at 7:30pm. Fortunately we weren’t in any sort of hurry…. we had finished our touring and sightseeing of this town over the previous two days; all we had to do the next day was go out for our morning constitutional walk, and then depart on a leisurely drive back to Sydney, for which we had plenty of time.
As I mentioned, the pub was extremely busy that night for dinner.
And the meal we ordered took an eon to arrive.
In fact, the people at the table beside us had reserved their table for 7:00pm, and waited nearly 30 minutes longer than us for their meals to arrive.
It was obvious to me and Jayne that the small kitchen in this hotel did not have the capacity to cook and serve meals in a quick and expedient manner.
Which probably doesn’t matter too much in a pub, where “responsible” diners would be happy to continue quenching their thirst with an adequate supply of adult beverages while waiting for their meals.
When our meals did finally arrive, they were very tasty, and we enjoyed them.
Once Jayne and I had completed our meals, we thought that dessert would be a nice way to finish off the evening, and although I am not a “dessert person”, I knew that the twelve minute walk back to our accommodation would help me burn off a few of the dessert calories.
But there was a problem…
When I went to the kitchen to place my order for desserts, I was told that the kitchen had now closed, and so desserts were unavailable.
Which was quite disappointing.
Sadly, I’m not the sort of diner who “saves room for dessert” when I order my meal.
I’m one of those diners who decides whether I will have a dessert or not after the main meal. And often if there’s nothing on the dessert menu that takes my fancy, I’ll have nothing.
Also, one of Jayne’s unwritten rules of dining is that if the service and the main meal do not live up to our expectations, then “rewarding” the restaurant with a dessert purchase is definitely not part of our agenda.
So, when the kitchen informed me that I was too late to place a dessert order, I was naturally disappointed.
And I let them know that had they not taken so long to deliver our main meals, we would have certainly had plenty of time to order a dessert at the completion of those meals.
Anyway…
Anyway, Jayne and I decided that despite the fact that dessert was not an option, an after dinner drink [A.D.D.] was in order. After all, this was the final night of our road trip. So I headed up to the bar to order.
While I was away from the table, one of the servers, Patrick, started up a conversation with Jayne, and he asked her how her meal had been.
And Jayne shared our experience of the evening with Patrick, and our disappointment that the kitchen had closed before we had had an opportunity to finish our delayed main meals.
And so Patrick did this…
Patrick told Jayne that he would go back to the kitchen and see what he could do….
And when he returned, Patrick returned with the offer of a sticky-date pudding for Jayne and me to share, with his complements.
BAM!!
What brilliant service recovery!!
After we had enjoyed the pudding, Patrick returned again and we discussed our experiences of the evening, along with the issue that at times, the small kitchen did not have the capacity to prepare and cook the amount of food ordered by diners in an appropriately acceptable timeframe.
And in his mind, Patrick felt that the wide variety of choices on the menu contributed to the inefficiencies of the small kitchen, because there were only so many meals that could be prepared at one time…
This was a problem for another day for the hotel, but it was good to see that the establishment was “owning” its problems.
Because sometimes some businesses choose to ignore their problems, which can infuriate customers, both new and old.
This gastro-pub was indeed keen to solve its service difficulties.
And the best thing we saw was that when a service defect [like the one that we experienced ] occurred, they seamlessly swung into service recovery mode IMMEDIATELY to make things better, no matter what.
And that’s the sign of a world class business.
How are your Service Recovery processes?
In your business, how are your Service Recovery processes?
Do you have employees like Patrick, that have the power to automatically initiate service recovery processes when a service defect occurs, without having to “check with the boss” and gain approval to do so?
Because being able to do so, is one of the key identifiers of a World Class Organisation.
*****
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 April 28, 2022 in Brisbane QLD
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.
At the end of March, Jayne and I had the opportunity of getting out for a small road trip to some areas of NSW that we had not visited before.
It’s funny that with all the travel we’ve done over the past decade, we have done very little travel in our own backyard.
During our week away Jayne and I were able to visit nine winery cellar doors and also two gin distilleries. And just for the record, we purchased at each of these eleven establishments.
Let me tell you about the most disappointing cellar door “experience” we had, which occurred on our final day of tasting.
On each of our three days of tasting, Jayne and I had tried to visit three wineries, and on this final day, we ran into a little bit of a problem.
The problem was that the third cellar door that we had chosen to visit had closed for the day at 4:00pm [we arrived at4:05pm], and Jayne and I had mistakenly thought that it was actually going to close at 5:00pm.
No big deal, really…. It was our error.
Plan B.
Our plan B was to see if there was another cellar door nearby that traded until 5:00pm, and fortunately for us there was, so off we headed to our “plan B” vineyard where we arrived at 4:17pm.
This vineyard had the most spectacular hillside setting, and the cellar door tasting facility had been specifically built to capture the wonderful vistas from this grand hillside aspect.
When we arrived, there were two female staff working the cellar door, and there was also another male employee lurking around [who could well have been the winemaker].
We were greeted by one of the female employees, who was “free” as the other female employee was serving two small groups of tasters who were seated outside the tasting room full glass floor-to-ceiling windows on the patio verandah area outside.
The employee who greeted us asked us to sit at the bar area counter, with our backs to the view, despite the fact that there were high tables and chairs available right behind us that would have allowed us to ABSORB and soak in the spectacular vista.
To its credit, the bar area did have a mirror as its backdrop wall, so Jayne and I were able to “enjoy” some view, in reverse, and with us in that picture, as you can imagine.
Once we were seated and provided with our first tasting glass, the female employee who had “greeted” us then organised with the other employee to take over our service while she, the first employee went about restocking and doing organisational things in front of us.
The “handover” process was really more a statement from the first employee to let the second employee know to serve us while she, the first employee, was then going to be doing these organisational duties in front of us, and around us, as we sampled the wines. And all the while that we were sampling the wines the first employee carried out her duties as if Jayne and I were invisible, with ZERO EYE CONTACT and zero conversation.
To her credit, the second employee did spend time with us and did help us to enjoy a number of very good wines.
But the first employee did make us feel that we were an “inconvenience”, and in the way, as she went about her end of day duties.
How are your business’s priorities?
I’m not sure whether employee one was following company policy and making sure that no end of day tasks were needed to be completed in an “after hours” overtime situation, or whether she was just in a hurry on this particular day?
But the impression that we received as customers and potential purchasers was that she would rather have NOT BEEN serving customers.
And whether she was not trying to give that impression, or she was trying to, the fact that this was the impression we experienced is really the only thing that matters.
I hope for this vineyard, and for this employee, that the “experience” that we had as customers that afternoon is not a regular daily occurrence.
In your business..
In your business, are you putting up chairs onto tables, or vacuuming the carpets, while customers are still inside your establishment deciding on purchasing from you?
Are you turning the lights off in your store while customers are still inside?
[These three things did not occur at this particular cellar door. They are simply “other” examples of employees with misdirected priorities].
If your business does have employees displaying MISDIRECTED PRIORITIES around closing time, it might be time for you to take a closer look at your Customer Service and CX Experience protocols, because those misdirections could seriously be impacting the potential spend [and future purchases] of those late arriving and late departing customers.
And that damage done to the potential spend [and future purchases] of those customers can seriously impact your business’s sales figures, and its bottom line.
*****
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 April 28, 2022 in Brisbane QLD
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.
