During our travels last month Jayne and I had a very interesting dining experience that I’d like to share with you.
We had arrived in a rural city in NSW for the first night of a three night stay, and had organised to dine that night at a local gastro-pub there.
When we arrived at the pub, the dining area was quite sparsely populated [we are late diners] so we were able to take our time and sit and chat with each other about stuff, and life in general.
Because there were only a few diners left in the restaurant [most had moved to the bar for Thursday night BINGO], we were also able to engage in meaningful conversation with our waitress Chelsea.
And as you do, we discussed some F.O.R.D. topics with her. [We spoke about her family, work history, recreation, and her aspirations for her future].
Halfway through our main meals Chelsea came over to our table to let us know that she was going home, and to thank us, because tonight we had “made her day” [Chelsea’s words].
How did we make Chelsea’s day?
Chelsea said that in the whole four years that she had been working and serving people, Jayne and I were the first people to ever ask her name.
We made her day by asking her name.
It’s hard to believe that no one had ever asked Chelsea her name in the four years that she had been working in the service industry.
And it made such a difference…
It certainly made a heck of a lot of difference to Chelsea, that patrons she was serving actually wanted to know her name, and then used her name back to her in conversation.
To Jayne and me, it’s very difficult for us to think how anybody can engage in a conversation with someone new without finding out their name.
Dale Carnegie said:
“A man’s name is to him the sweetest sound in the language.”
Everybody loves to hear their name, and they love to hear it used back to them in conversation.
It’s common courtesy.
In the dental practice, it’s very important when building rapport with clients and patients, to find out the name of the person with whom we are speaking and to use their name back to them frequently.
This is especially true when answering incoming phone calls at the dental practice.
If you are not doing this, then make today the day you begin to ask people their name.
It’s time to ask people their name and find out who exactly you are talking to.
Start a revolution and ask everybody you speak with their name.
You will make their day!
*****
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 businesses in Australia begin to return to some degree of normality and start to adapt and to learn to live with COVID, we are seeing the consequences now being paid by those businesses that failed to insure against hard times or difficult circumstances.
Periods of enforced lockdowns and shutdowns were indeed very difficult times for most businesses.
Many businesses with low cash reserves struggled and suffered during these times.
When lockdown restrictions were lifted, those businesses that had managed to survive then struggled to service the backlog of customers with demand for their products and services.
It was as though someone had kinked the garden hose, and then unkinked it.
Firstly there was no water getting through, and now there was an excess of water.
Finally, as the dust settles, we’re starting to see a return to a “degree of normality” in the levels of supply and demand.
In dentistry, here’s what we’ve been seeing…
When lockdowns finished, dentists would tell us how busy they were.
“We’re booked so far in advance.”
“We’re turning patients away.”
“We don’t need any new patients. We have nowhere to put them.”
Now, as the tide goes out, and the levels of supply and demand are settling, we’re hearing dentists tell us that their appointment books are starting to have gaps in them.
But as we peal back the layers….
As we peal back the layers here’s what we’re seeing…
During the periods of high demand, dental practices were relaxing their protocols and “allowing” patients to cancel appointments because the practices knew that there would always be someone wanting that newly created appointment vacancy.
As supply and demand levels have settled, what we are now seeing is that dental practices that “allowed” these patients to cancel [and failed to reschedule these cancellations into a new appointment] are now struggling to re-activate those patients.
And that’s because during times of excess, those practices that failed to MAINTAIN their level of care for all patients because of this perceived [or real] oversupply of patients with demand, are now struggling to re-create the principles of urgency and concern for those now unscheduled patients.
Hindsight is always crystal clear.
But throughout each wave of the pandemic we’ve been saying this:
Your practice needs to maintain its CORE PRINCIPLES of customer care.
All diagnosed treatment needs to be completed.
All patients need to have a next appointment.
The purpose of an appointment is to create another appointment.
Those practices that have allowed their valued patients to cancel and not reschedule their appointments for necessary treatment are now seeing their poor processes EXPOSED as the tide goes out [and the demand for appointments recedes].
And as you would expect
Those practices that did reschedule all of their valued patients and did not allow them to cancel their appointments for necessary treatment are now seeing the results and rewards of their CONSISTENT processes and their diligence.
And their patients are indeed grateful for the care shown by their dentist and dental practice.
The principles and processes of consistent appointment scheduling are timeless
The principles and processes of consistent appointment scheduling are timeless and are paramount in maintaining the health of your dental practice during times of unexpected hardship.
When your team and your practice follow through and deliver on those THREE CORE PRINCIPLES OF PATIENT CARE consistently, no matter how good things seem to be, or how tough things seem to be, it is then and only then that your practice will bullet-proof itself, and avoid the shock and disappointment that occurs when the tide goes out.
Because the low tide will always reveal who’s who in the zoo….
*****
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 many of you know, a few weeks ago our household of two people was thrown into mandatory seven-day isolation.
It was an interesting time.
Nobody “plans” an immediate seven day stay-at-home and don’t-leave-your-house-for-any-reason.
Isolation is one of those things that just gets THRUST upon you.
And you have to comply.
There’s a feeling of helplessness… you’ve been touched on the shoulder by the magic wand of isolation, and comply you must, or pay the fines, and face the possible public humiliation should you choose to disobey, and you then create your own personal hot-spot or super-spreader event.
It’s that same feeling of frustration you feel when you’re playing musical chairs, and the music stops, and suddenly you realise that all the chairs are taken, and you are the last one left standing… you must leave the arena….
Rules are rules.
Fortunately for Jayne and me we always have a well-stocked pantry, but halfway through our week of “home-stay” we realised that we didn’t have enough milk in the refrigerator to get us through our remaining days of isolation.
One of our friends had mentioned to Jayne that should we need anything during our home quarantining, she’d be happy to drop off supplies at our door.
So I sent her a message, asking if she was down in town could she pick us up some milk, as well as a lettuce, and also a small bag of green beans.
She replied, saying she’d be able to do this by midday, and she had a question about our preference for lettuce.
So here’s what happened…
Around midday, our friend sent me an SMS saying:
“Groceries on the verandah”
And when I went out to collect them, here’s what I discovered:
On the verandah was a large cardboard box and inside the box was our milk, and our lettuce, and our beans.
But also inside the box was a bottle of wine, some chocolate, some delicious cheese, a loaf of fresh sourdough bread, some Kiwiberries, and some trout.
WOW!
The package also included a hand-written note explaining the “extras” were to cheer Jayne and me up, and wishing us to “Get well soon.”
Jayne and I were overwhelmed by this kind act from our friend who had definitely gone ABOVE AND BEYOND in answering our call for assistance.
Her gift was very much appreciated.
Here’s my question to you…
When an opportunity arises or presents itself to you, in life, and in business, are you the kind of person who identifies your chance to EXCEED EXPECTATIONS without having to be asked to?
It’s not a difficult thing to do, or be able to do, but it is a very rare thing to do.
And that’s why ABOVE AND BEYOND MOMENTS are so impactful and so memorable.
And remembered for a long time.
Easy to do. And easy not to do.
You choose….
PS. Thank you to our other friends who also reached out with offers of assistance. We made it through our seven days….
*****
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.
My blog article a couple of weeks ago about selling cheap parachutes and offering “supervised neglect” drew some interesting criticisms and comments.
Criticisms that I found disappointing because the article was published as a WHOLE, and not as a collection of individual unrelated words, or phrases, or sentences.
I’m not sure whether any or many of you have had the DISPLEASURE of being in a courtroom in front of lawyers and barristers, or a kangaroo court of would-be barristers?
It can be quite unpleasant when those asking the questions start asking the meaning or intention of certain words or phrases you have said or written, when they know full well exactly what you have meant as a whole.… the urge to GO TAKE A SHOWER as quickly as possible becomes your number one priority.
It’s been said by others who are more clever than me, that if dentists had to form a firing squad they’d line up in a circle…
For those who don’t have time to re-read my whole article…
For those who don’t have time to re-read my whole article, there were six underlined and bolded sub-headings in the article, and the intention of the article is best summed up by simply reading the fifth sub-heading, followed by the sixth sub-heading:
“You should always be offering your patients the best treatment.”
And
“Don’t let patients talk you into giving them a treatment that is not in their best interests.”
Followed by the second last sentence:
“To be truly honourable to your patients you must learn to get out of your own way and learn how to ethically offer your patients best treatment always.”
If this is not happening…
Dentists, if you are failing to offer each patient only the best possible treatment, you are actually participating in supervised neglect.
And if the reason you are not offering the patient the best treatment is because of your fear of them rejecting you, and “not liking you” and them “thinking that you are pushy”, then you need to get out of your own way and learn how to deliver them the important message about their best treatment.
If you believe that your dental treatment is the best care that they will ever receive and will be in their best interests to have, then it is your moral obligation to do everything in your power to ensure that the patient goes ahead with your recommendations.
If they fail to proceed with your treatment recommendations then you have let your patient down…
If for some crazy reason you believe that it’s OK to offer the patient up some second-rate or third-rate treatment alternative just to appease your own personal and social inadequacies so that they still “like you”, well you’re simply operating in your own little world of delusion.
You need to do this:
You need to stand in front of a mirror and look yourself in the eye, and tell yourself to get out of your patients’ wallets, and into their mouths, and fix what needs to be fixed in the best way possible.
From this day forth.
Because your job is to give them TOTAL ORAL HEALTH.
And nothing less.
Tell them what is wrong.
Tell them what the best thing to do is [to solve their problem].
And schedule them in to have that treatment done.
*****
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.
