Some industries are renowned for charging clients ridiculous fees for things that don’t even cost…
It’s a gouge.
It’s a clip.
It’s an unnecessary impost.
Credit card surcharges
In this day and age, nearly every client pays by credit card.
In fact, I’ve been noticing recently how sales agents automatically assume that you are going to pay by card and push the terminal right there into your “space” without even asking whether you will be using cash…
And with the machine, the bill now comes with an automatically added credit card surcharge, without even asking.
But having a credit card merchant facility is an everyday cost of doing business, just like rent and utilities.
Why should businesses be allowed to “pass the merchant fee on”?
Why can’t businesses just suck it up and allow for it, without trying to look like a hero?
And especially when you are paying for a product or service online… there’s no other way to do it other than use a card?
Getting a “treatment” at the hairdressers…
Getting a conditioning treatment or hair mask at the hairdressers can often seem like a lifesaver for dry and damaged hair.
But according to Leo Izquierdo, co-founder of IGK hair salons & IGK Hair Products, paying for a mask or conditioning treatment at the salon is “a waste of money” and buying the full product and doing it yourself at home is cheaper.
He said in an interview with the Sun Newspaper in the UK:
“In the salon I always give my clients a complimentary hair mask conditioning treatment with any service they come in for. I don’t have a conditioning treatment on the salon menu because it should be something salons do for their clients for free.”
Izquierdo went on to say:
“If anyone just wants a hair mask or conditioning treatment it’s a waste of their money to go to a salon, it’s much better to purchase the full product and do them at home more often.”
If your hair is in need of a little extra TLC though, “the best option is a cut followed by a good shampoo and conditioning home routine,” the celebrity stylist advised.
Lancashire hairdresser Celeste Arnold also told the Sun:
“If a hairdresser suggests you need a treatment always ask how much it will be as they can be quite expensive – and don’t assume they’re free, although they should be!”
Builders’ variations
A builder’s variation is a change or adjustment to what has already been agreed in the building contract between homeowners and their builder. The builder or tradesperson may need to vary the contract because of a council requirement or unforeseen circumstances, or because the customer changes their mind about something. If the reason for variation is the builder’s or tradesperson’s fault, customers do not have to pay for any extra work to rectify the problem.
Most building variations or additions to a contract have an impact on the contract price.
But some do not.
Documents authorising variations must contain a statement explaining the cost implications of the variation and their impact on the overall contract price. Calculation of the price change should be shown, rather than just a simple dollar amount.
Two questionable variations in building are:
Changes in choice of taps and plumbing from the “original plans” because the original plans usually include only very basic and unattractive tapware. The change of tapware almost always occurs well before the builder has needed to purchase the tapware. But he claims a “variation fee”.
Changes on the plans of the position of floor wastes [drains]. Usually, the paper plans for a house have floor wastes positioned arbitrarily by architects and draughtsmen in the centre of rooms, in lines of sight, or in standing areas [in front of sinks]. These off the plan amendments have no physical impact on the cost of plumbing. This fee is a pure gouge.
At your dental office…
At your dental office, are you accidentally participating in an industry gouge that is silently infuriating your patients?
Is there a surcharge on your services that your business would be better off not displaying?
Are you charging a surcharge fee for credit cards?
Are you charging for diagnostic photos?
And are you charging patients in advance for wax ups for large case presentations that are most likely to proceed?
Where possible, it’s always better for a business to absorb the fee silently into their pricings rather than announce it as an itemised extra.
Always.
*****
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.
At the start of this month, my family and I attended the Grand Final match of the NRL [National Rugby League (of Australia)] season.
The game was a hard fought game played between the two teams that finished first and second during the regular season. These two teams were the best two teams of the seventeen teams that competed throughout this season.
The team that finished first, the Penrith Panthers, were the season Premiers for 2021 and 2022, and were chasing a third straight Premiership title, a feat not seen for forty years, and a feat made very difficult to achieve because of salary-cap restrictions [spending restrictions] placed on each team in an effort to help spread the talent [of players] more evenly throughout the competition.
The team that the Panthers were to play was the Brisbane Broncos, who had finished equal first, but second on points differentials. The Broncos had been a very successful team twenty and thirty years ago, but had not won a premiership for some sixteen years.
The Broncos team was very talented, and the game was expected to be a cracker of a contest.
And it was.
After leading the Broncos 8-6 at half-time, the Panthers came back from a deficit of 24-8 with 18 minutes to play to win the match 26-24 in the final three minutes.
This was the biggest comeback ever seen in the history of Rugby League Grand Finals.
The result left all spectators, commentators and journalists wondering what exactly they had just witnessed.
With eighteen minutes to play, nobody in the ground believed that in a game of this intensity, the tide could turn against a team that had taken the half-time score from 6-8 to 24-8.
At 24-8, the whole crowd believed that the Broncos would just go on with the slaughter of the Panthers and show no mercy.
Everybody in the ground believed that at that point, with eighteen minutes to go, it was “game over” for the Panthers.
Especially because at eighteen minutes to go, three key Panthers players were off the field… their star playmaker Jarome Luai had succumbed to severe pain of playing with a previously dislocated shoulder that required immediate surgery [which he had chosen to delay] ….and two star forwards were off the field for concussion assessments.
Things did not look good for the Panthers…
The trouble was, nobody told the Panthers players that the game over script had been written for them…
Here’s what happened…
Jarome Luai’s replacement, Jack Cogger, came on to the field and immediately stepped up and stepped into the role that he had been training for.
Cogger was by no means a second string understudy. His role was to seamlessly fill in for any one of three players, should the need arise.
And he did.
In fact, his presence allowed the Panthers’ key playmaker Nathan Cleary, to reassess the situation calmy, and then step up and “take the game by the throat”, and lead his team to an historic victory.
And he did.
Because the Panthers had prepared for all scenarios including this one.
And so Cogger simply flicked the switch, and it was GAME ON for the Panthers…
And the rest was history.
In contrast…
The Broncos halfback Adam Reynolds suffered a significant leg injury during the first half, and chose to play on, despite being seriously injured.
And I think that the Broncos had no Plan B for a Reynolds injury happening.
And although Reynolds said after the game that the injury did not hinder him, when it happened, everybody there at the ground, along with those viewing on TV thought that the injury was certainly presenting a threat to him playing on….
The lesson here is simple:
When you can’t perform your role at 100%, it’s time to move aside and let someone else who can perform your role.
Because your back-ups, your understudies, they know the roles they need to play.
Everybody on the team must know that they have a specific job to do.. and must be able to step up as required.
In your dental practice…
In your dental practice, do all team members have the ability and the skill to seamlessly move into any other team members’ roles, if needed?
Can this be done, without our clients, customers and patients being concerned with the fact that a member of the A-Team is absent?
Because that’s what makes a great business…. The fact of knowing that anyone on your team can play a “pinch-hitter” role without missing a beat.
Nobody likes going to the theatre and hearing the announcement that “the lead actor role tonight will be played by the understudy”
It’s an announcement that disappoints the audience, because it smacks of receiving second best.
And that’s wrong.
Because second best needs to be as good as best.
Always.
And that’s what wins matches.
And that’s what wins in business.
*****
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.
Last weekend Jayne and I travelled to Melbourne to see Sir Paul McCartney in concert.
We had seen him last time in Australia in 2016, and we figured that at age 81, this was most probably going to be his final visit to Australia.
We chose to go see him in Melbourne because the Melbourne venue, Marvel Stadium, was the only venue with a retractable roof, should the weather change and fans required shelter.
Every other venue on his tour was open-air only.
Spending a lot of money to sit in the rain to watch a concert certainly is not my idea of a fun time.
And guess what? Last Saturday, the roof at Marvel was closed for the concert, and a good time was had by all.
One of the challenges of traveling to Melbourne for this concert was the question of where would Jayne and I have dinner before the concert.
We needed to dine early, and we needed to dine at a restaurant close to the stadium so that we could still arrive at our seats with plenty of time to spare!!
We also wanted to dine somewhere where we knew that the food was going to be good.
So what did we do?
We knew that we had the option of Google searching for a restaurant, but I though that the best thing to do was to ask a friend for a recommendation.
Fortunately for Jayne and me, I have a good friend who works nearby to Marvel Stadium, so I was able to reach out to her.
I asked my friend:
“Can you recommend a good Thai restaurant near to Marvel Stadium for Jayne and me to dine at next week?”
My friend replied:
“Hi David. Do you want something within walking distance? In Docklands I would recommend Thai Thani. The Pad Thai and Pad See Ew are very good there.”
And so Jayne and I dined at Thai Thani.
At Thai Thani the food was exceptional and the service from the owner and from the waitstaff was also excellent.
The staff were courteous and polite, and nothing was too difficult for them.
I am so glad I reached out to my friend for her recommendation. It was definitely worth asking for.
At the end of our meal, I asked the owner if she could please bring me a toothpick.
The owner told me that the restaurant was unable to receive any toothpicks this week from their supplier, and then, within an instance, she had gone out to her car and sourced me a container of dental floss for me to use….
Problem solved!
It was a response I wasn’t expecting, and it was certainly a response I was pleased to receive.
When we told the owner that our friend Dr Pia had recommended her restaurant, she was very grateful of the recommendation, and she let us know that she had known Dr Pia for a very long time and that they were good friends.
The familiarity of the recommendation from our friend Dr Pia had a very positive effect on our interaction with the owner.
In your business…
When we coach dentists and dental practices, one of the things we always reinforce with the dentists and their teams is how important it is to acknowledge a new patient’s mention of any relationship or recommendation that they have that has brought them to our dental practice.
Recognition.
We all know that babies cry for it, and grown men die for it.
Recognition is so important.
Our visit to Thai Thani was great, but with the recognition of Dr Pia’s recommendation, our visit has now become INDELIBLY FOREVERMEMORABLE in our minds.
At your dental practice, are you taking the time to connect with each new patient who lets you know that their very good friend has recommended your services to them?
It’s so important to pause and give thanks.
Because the new patient will pass that expression of gratitude and thanks back to the referrer.
And the effect of that? It’s PRICELESS….
*****
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.
Some of you may remember that in 2015 I underwent a surgical procedure called shoulder resurfacing.
Shoulder resurfacing is considered to be a partial replacement treatment of sorts, because it’s not a complete replacement of the joint.
Well let me tell you that the surgery still hurts as much as a complete replacement.
The process of shoulder resurfacing is where the head of the humerus bone is replaced by a titanium insert with a pyro-carbon head cover, but the glenoid fossa remains untouched.
The reason resurfacing is offered as a treatment is because complete replacements only last for a finite number of years, and if the patient is young, a resurfacing procedure conserves more bone should a redo be required.
Anyway, because of the shoulder surgery, I chose to give up my golfing for three years.
I stopped playing golf for eighteen months prior to the surgery, because my right shoulder joint was just so unpredictable that my golf became painful, as well as painfully inconsistent.
Following my surgery, full recovery of the new shoulder joint took another eighteen months.
When I returned to golf…
When I returned to playing golf at my Sydney golf club, I was disappointed to find out that one of my good golf buddies had left that club, and moved down to his country town home to live full time.
A couple of years after the operation I had reason to phone my friend for a catch up [let’s call him Steve*], and he filled me in on the recent events that had seen him relocate to the country.
So Steve told me that he had moved to the country full time because he and his wife had separated and divorced.
The reason for the separation was quite shocking.
Apparently Steve and his wife had opened up their home to a male friend of Steve’s who himself was going through some relationship issues and needed a place to stay…. it seemed that with time though, Steve’s friend started “cutting Steve’s grass” and struck up a relationship with Steve’s wife.
When Steve worked this “secret relationship” out, it was game over for him and his wife, and Steve moved on.
And moved out.
And moved away.
End of story.
You’ve got to wonder…
You have to wonder, that with all the dating sites and single women in the world out there, why did Steve’s friend choose to start a relationship with Steve’s wife, rather than look further afield?
The same thing happens in business…
Sometimes business can be a very cutthroat affair, where some people set out to go into a business venture that they know will cause harm to another business.
Or another person.
And that other business might be operated by a person who is a friend, or a relative, or a colleague of the owner of the new business venture.
The owner of the new business may be new to that industry, niche, or location.
And they see opportunity without seeing cause and effect and consequences of their intended actions.
Or maybe they do, but they continue to move ahead anyway…
And so the new venture goes ahead in a process that results in doing harm to the acquaintance’s business.
Instead of thinking of collaboration and abundance, the new business venture only seeks to divide and plunder and destroy.
The harm caused in such a process created by the new business venture may also include a significant amount of self-harm. Results may be hard earned and may be earned at a significant cost to the owner of the new business…
Or results can also include hard fought losses for the new business with permanent injuries and long-lasting scars.
The original existing business may fail, or they may dig deep and survive…
But at what cost…
In reality, sometimes there’s just a lot of really dumb stuff that goes on without any rhyme or reason or long term checks and balances..
Really dumb stuff…
[* Some names have been changed to protect the innocent]
*****
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.
The title of this blog is a direct quote from a Seinfeld episode.
And that’s because sometimes, life imitates art.
Or does art imitate life?
Last week I had need to travel up to Sydney to have some new parts fitted on Jayne’s car.
As you know, Jayne and I live about two hours southwest of Sydney.
Because Jayne’s car was going to be in service for the whole day, I decided to kill two birds with one stone…. I decided to book my iPhone in for a couple of necessary changes that it needed, because I knew that I could get those changes made during the lengthy time that Jayne’s car would be at the dealership.
To be sure I wasn’t going to be wasting any time, I phone the flagship Apple store in George Street Sydney to schedule my booking.
My phone needed:
A replacement battery. The original battery was struggling to hold charge for a long time, and had been in the phone nearly three years.
A new screen display. My phone screen was showing red shadows of icons from the home screen that appeared to be burned across the screen. It wasn’t a glass replacement issue… moreover it was a screen display issue.
When I rang to schedule my visit, I was very specific that I needed both of these defects rectified as I was travelling some two hours each way and a visit to Sydney was not a regular event for me… the two closest Apple Stores to our home were located between 100 and 115 minutes away from our home, and were not located along my journey to Sydney.
So here’s what happened on the day…
After dropping Jayne’s car off at the dealership I arrived at the Apple store prior to my scheduled appointment time. When an attendant came to register me, it was apparent from what she was saying to me that the two needs that I had discussed on the phone when scheduling my appointment had not been recorded.
The attendant informed me that the store was going to be able to change my battery, but the screen display issue was not going to be able to be performed there on that day because this store, the flagship store, did not have the part in stock that my phone was needing.
However, the attendant did let me know that two nearby Apple stores did have the part, but those stores were located east, and south of this city store. The lady told me that if I wanted to travel to either of those stores, she could phone ahead and make me an appointment.
The problem was that Jayne’s car was being serviced in the north, and so both of these alternatives were not a viable solution for me at all.
I asked if she could phone and have the part sent from the nearer of the two stores down to the city store.
She said, she could, but although one store was only 15 minutes away by car, the part would not arrive at the city store until the next day.
I asked if this was for real?
She apologised, but to me her apology was merely disingenuous words.
I told her that the reason I had called a few days ahead and booked the repairs was because I wanted those repairs done for me on this day.
She said, sometimes the store runs out of parts.
And I said:
“But if I’ve reserved the necessary part, why can’t you hold the part for me?”
Especially because when I was on the phone scheduling my booking, the agent on the phone was able to run a virtual diagnostic inspection of my phone while I was speaking with him!
I told the attendant that I had specifically phoned to ensure that I could have both repairs done at the Flagship city store, because I was having my wife’s car serviced on this day, and because I also wanted to go visit my ninety-year old father who lived close to the city.
These events at the Apple store just making any sense.
It was just like the Seinfeld episode about the car reservation…
It was life imitating art…
[From the Seinfeld TV show:]
Jerry: “The name’s Seinfeld. You made a reservation for a mid-size.”
Car rental lady: “I’m sorry. We have no mid-size available at the moment.”
Jerry: “I understand. I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation?”
Car rental lady:“Yes, we do. Unfortunately, we ran out of cars.”
Jerry:“But the reservation keeps the car here. That’s why you have the reservation.”
Car rental lady: “I know why we have reservations.”
Jerry: “I don’t think you do. If you did, I’d have a car. So, you know how to take the reservation. You just don’t know how to HOLD the reservation, and that’s really the most important part of the reservation. The holding. Anybody can just take ‘em….”
So here’s what happened next…
I decided to get my battery changed at the city store, and to organise another time for my screen display to be repaired.
While my battery was being replaced, I suddenly had a BFO moment….
I thought to myself:
“I wonder if the Apple Store located twelve minutes north of the car dealership has the screen display part that I needed?”
I asked another attendee at the Sydney store to see whether a visit to that northern Apple store was going to result in my phone getting repaired this same day, as planned?
The attendee went and checked, and returned to tell me that the northern Apple Store did have the part that I needed and would hold it for me so that I could have the screen display repair done on this same day.
YIPPEE!!
I raced by train to that northern store and was able to have my screen display repaired, with just enough time afterwards to get down to the car dealership before they closed and pick up Jayne’s car.
And then once that was done, I was able to go visit my Dad, and spend some time with him.
But what a shemozzle!
In reality, and in business…
In reality, and in business, a business’s solutions to their customers’ problems should always be customer centric, not business centric.
If as a business, your customers’ solutions are all about your business, and not about your customer, your customers will soon walk away, and take their business to a company that actually cares about customers.
Listen up businesses… IT’S NOT THAT DIFFICULT TO DO!!
Business arrogance displayed towards customers, is ultimately toxic, when it gets out of hand…
In my case, I’m waiting for the feedback survey.
Sadly, from previous experiences with Apple this year, I don’t think they really care….
*****
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.
