The following email from Mary Portas appeared in my inbox last month. I copy it here in its entirety. [The bold emphasises are mine].
The sentiments expressed by Mary Portas towards the owners of John Lewis ARE THE SAME SENTIMENTS that the caring general public would share with the directors and owners of corporate dental service providers.
There is an obvious concern with a significant portion of the public that the corporatisation of dentistry has resulted in the provision of dentistry becoming more of a commodity for its customers and patients, and less of an experience.
As Mary’s letter indicates, there is also a significant portion of the British population who value THE EXPERIENCE of shopping at John Lewis and Waitrose, and feel that that experience is now being diminished.
And they don’t like what that trusted experience is now becoming.
Sharon White & Nish Kankiwala
John Lewis plc
171 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 5NN
23rd March 2023
Dear Sharon and Nish
I’m writing to you on behalf of the British nation. Does that sound overwrought? Maybe. But I feel the need to speak for your customers up and down the land because we all know the problems facing John Lewis and Waitrose are huge.
You see, you are not simply chair and chief exec. You are custodians of one of the most valued, loved, and trusted retail brands this country has.
John Lewis and Waitrose are part of the fabric of everyday British life. They’ve been synonymous with fair values and trust for generations. Built on shared employee ownership, and shared accountability. John Betjeman wanted to be under your roof if the world came to an end because ‘nothing unpleasant could happen there’.
That’s what you mean to us. It’s personal for us, too.
So your task isn’t to turn around just another mediocre retailer under threat of going under. You’re fighting to save part of our collective cultural identity.
But what’s worrying me is that you might think your fight is purely financial. It’s not.
The battle in hand is far more nuanced. It’s about what makes up the soul of your brand. The intangibles, the shared beliefs, the beautiful things that can’t be captured in financial projections but earn a little space in people’s hearts.
Somehow, in recent years, you’ve let go of the soul. We’ve all felt the subtle, but powerful, erasure of what John Lewis is, a severing of what’s always set your business apart.
At a time when we crave the constancy and comfort of brands we can actually trust, you’ve been chasing the new. New systems, new people, new identity…new owners. But here’s the thing: that’s not what we really want from John Lewis. And here’s the other thing: that’s not what younger generations want from you either.
What we want in this crooked, flighty, commoditised world of ours is unfailing quality, honest value, genuinely helpful service. What we want is to come to you when we’re expecting our first baby and panicking about buying a cot. What we want is to come to you when we’ve finally made it onto the property ladder and want curtains and a sofa bed that’ll last.
Right now though, all that is being slowly chipped away. From loud headlines to daily whispers.
Every time I open a newspaper it’s a new headline on the financing, the systems, the operations, the ads.
Every time I pop in, it’s another little miss. The newspaper? Gone. The coffee? Gone. Now returned. (No doubt because of the uproar).
Your pledge ‘Never knowingly undersold’? Gone too. Really? At a time when good decent value and integrity could not be important? Your new strapline ‘for all life’s moments’ isn’t a pledge. I’m not quite sure what it is.
This is about what’s happening on the inside too.
John Lewis was founded by merchants – and powered by them for a century. By that I mean people with retail heritage, legacy and wisdom – as well as a huge passion for it. But in recent years, many of those people in your business have been replaced.
I get it. You need money men, financial innovation, new thinking.
But never forget to balance all that with the commercially instinctive, reactive, creative, retail-born folk in the business. It’s an art. Not a science. And its key to building great retail.
Just take a look at the US department store chain Dillard’s. Their stock has outperformed Apple, Amazon and Tesla in the last few years. Their secret? Family owners who are true custodians of their business with no investors to answer to – they walk the shop floor, keep a constant eye on stock levels and have a hugely loyal staff. They’ve also resisted calls to knee-jerk change, kept their nerve, and lo and behold – generated about $7 billion of sales a year.
There are a hundred of shops we can walk into to feel ignored and patronised. Please not yours.
So what do I believe would rekindle your soul and reconnect us all to it? Not a big Christmas ad, although you had quite the innings there.
No, this is about recommitting to the principles John Lewis was founded on: common ownership; the improvement of partners’ lives; collective responsibility; and true enduring value. All this is what we used to feel pulsing through your brand every time we stepped onto your shop floor.
We know British brand history is littered with those who tampered with the Crown Jewels of their identity, the codes, values and conventions that made them who they are – or were. British Airways clings on. Rest in peace Laura Ashley. And dear Woolworths.
But failure for John Lewis and Waitrose is not an option. We can’t lose you too. So while you fight for the financial brain of your brand, never forget there’s a battle for its heart and soul too.
Kindest
Mary Portas
In the big wide world out there, 20-25% of the population will be your trusted and loyal customers because the experience that you provide for them is truly WORLD CLASS, and these people wouldn’t even think of entertaining the thought of finding out what your competitors are charging, because they are LOYAL to you and your brand, and they love what you do for them and how important you make them feel.
These loyal customers of yours will only leave your business and go elsewhere if they believe that your business is devaluing their usual experience, and taking them for granted.
So don’t entertain that thought.
You’ve been told by Mary.
And now you’ve been told by me.
*****
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.
During a recent brainstorming session with a dental team, we sat down and analysed some key issues in their dental practice.
We used a big whiteboard to draw out a 3×3 set of boxes, very much like a tic-tac-toe board.
Across the top we labelled the columns from left to right:
What are we doing now?
What changes do we need to facilitate this?
What would be the result that would make ALL happy?
Obviously, we answered these questions in the order of #1, then #3, and then #2.
The lesson here is:
If we know where we are starting from [Column #1], and we know where we want to go to [Column #3], then we can work out the means and the ways to get there [Column #2].
Down the left-hand side we labelled the three rows, from top to bottom as:
Owner[s]
Dentist[s]
Team
What we found as we worked through the issues at this office was that the results that the practice needed to achieve to make everybody there happy were not achievable at all due to the current behaviours of the owners, the dentists, and the staff.
The owners, the dentists, and the team members all knew that for the dental practice to be successful and for everybody there to be happy, the practice needed to achieve two things:
An increase in daily, weekly and monthly revenue collections
Full appointment books
And the owners, the dentists, and the team members all knew that while ever the dental practice had inconsistent bookings and fluctuations in collections, the practice would always be operating under stress and duress.
What we consistently see in most dental practices is that there are many decisions and choices made by everybody in the practice that are not in the best interests of the success of those dental practices.
And while ever these poor choices continue to be made, the results for any dental practice will be fluky at best. But mostly the results will be poor, compared to the true potential.
The self-inflicted failure of dental practices to reach their true potential is an absolute tragedy.
As an outsider looking on, these results I observe are distressing to me.
Do you remember that scene in the movie “FOREST GUMP” where young Forest runs so hard that he breaks his callipers, and in so doing releases himself to a much greater potential?
That same image of achievement of potential is indeed possible for a dental practice when team members, dentists, and owners, as a whole, release themselves from limiting beliefs and limiting behaviours.
Albert Einstein said:
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
That’s kind of harsh.
Blunt.
And harsh.
But it is true.
Because without change, nothing changes.
The definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result each time.
Only with a change of thinking, will things change.
The good news is that dental practices don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
All they need to do to improve their results is change their limiting beliefs and replace their limiting behaviours.
The second sentence of the Einstein quote is:
“The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”
To achieve, to truly achieve, you need to be courageous.
Discard your limiting beliefs.
Sail off to your horizons.
Make the changes you need to make to achieve true greatness.
Remember, if it has been done, it can be done.
Make the results you want happen.
Because those results will be worth the effort.
*****
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.
Policies are for businesses that fail with service and persuasion.
When all else fails, some business people believe that putting a policy in place will magically cure all ills.
A policy is simply a sign that a business has lost control, and has no idea as to the best way to fix their problem and move forwards.
In a dental practice, patients who love the service that the practice provides them will never cancel and will always turn up. And turn up early for their appointments.
In dentistry…
In fact in dentistry, the existence of a policy for something spells SPOTLIGHT for a problem that is out of control.
Typically, a dental practice will implement a CANCELLATION POLICY because patients cancelling appointments has become a significant problem in that practice.
Patients cancel dental appointments for two reasons:
They are allowed to
They have no perception of the consequences and damage that can occur to them when they delay their necessary treatment.
In dental practices, the Cancellation Policy is usually used as a crutch to threaten a patient who wants to cancel or reschedule their appointment. But these weak worded “policies” are rarely enforced.
Often these Cancellation Policies are as soft as a feather.
And often, the result of mentioning a Cancellation Policy to a patient who wants to cancel results in that patient leaving the dental practice and taking their dental care elsewhere.
When a dental practice CLEARLY EXPLAINS to a patient exactly what will happen to that patient’s tooth/gums/infection as a result of that patient delaying treatment, more patients in that practice will immediately start to attend more appointments, and keep more appointments.
Threatening cancelling patients with financial penalties only succeeds in driving those patients away and to another dental office.
Financial penalties do not boost patient attendance rates.
Patients will be more motivated to avoid risking a root canal or a split tooth, than they will to avoid incurring a “threat” of a $50.00 penalty.
Putting a cancellation policy on your practice website…
If you’re thinking of putting a cancellation policy on your dental practice website, you may as well invest in an advert on a local billboard telling your community that your practice has a serious problem with patients cancelling too many appointments.
If cancellations in your dental practice are affecting your practice production and profitability, you might like to drop me a line at david@theUPE.com and I’ll let you know the best ways to go about fixing that problem.
*****
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.
