Guest Post By Dr. David Moffet, The Ultimate Patient Experience
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“One of the major reasons that businesses do not implement change into their customer service systems is their belief that the cost of change will be greater than the cost of making no changes.
Which is false science.
And illogical.
But it is a belief trotted out time and time again.
Could you imagine how backward our world would have been had fear of change manifested itself successfully above the exhilaration of new frontiers and the discoveries of the great unknown?
What if Columbus had never sailed off into the sunset?
What if Armstrong had never ventured up and onto the moon?
What if Steve Jobs had never dreamt of the iPod?
And yet in Dental, I often hear dentists say to me:
“I don’t think my staff would do that.”
And the old chestnut:
“But my patients are different…”
I can’t believe how much squandered opportunity there is out there because of fear of change.
The funny thing is that despite the fact with change, there is always the opportunity to go back and return to where you started with minimal disruption if you so desire.
And I see this too.
I see dentists who embark on change only to return to the status quo and nothing ever ends up changing…
Have you seen it?
Have you ever been to a seminar and seen dentists writing their arms off with copious notes, only for them to return to their practices, throw their notes onto the bookshelf never ever to be read or opened or implemented…
That’s called “SHELF Help”
What are the issues with changing your levels of service?
Some dentists believe that their patients do not want to be pampered or treated specially.
But everybody does.
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Everybody likes to be recognized and to be appreciated.
Appreciated as a person and appreciated as a customer.
And the number one reason that customers leave a business and go elsewhere is because of apathy and perceived apathy by the employees and the business owner towards those valued customers.
They leave not because anyone does anything wrong to them.
They leave and go elsewhere because they believe they are being taken advantage of and are being taken for granted.
I can remember in my practice one year when we rang patients who had not been in for a while to “reactivate” them regarding incomplete treatment and overdue hygiene visits.
And one patient Molly Smith told my receptionist:
Oh we go somewhere else now.”
And when asked why, Molly offered this reason:
“Oh, we hadn’t heard from Dr. Moffet for a while. And we thought he didn’t care about us any more.”
Patient lost.
Due to apathy and due to lack of watertight follow up systems.
How are your Customer Service Systems?
Do you have patients like Molly Smith slipping through the cracks in your Dental Business never to return again?
Because of your Customer Service Systems leaking like a sieve?
Or are your customer Retention Systems watertight?
Are they so complete and seamless that the only way that a patient can leave the practice is to pass away?
What are the benefits of change for your business?
The benefits of change are these:
Improvement to your Customer Service Systems will see your Dental Practice retain more patients.
Your patients will keep their scheduled appointments.
Your patients will cancel fewer appointments and reschedule fewer appointments because they will be so pleased to be getting their dentistry completed before it has the opportunity to deteriorate due to inaction.
Your patients will be keen to bring their appointments forward because they do not want to run the risk of their necessary treatment not going ahead due to deterioration of their dentition due to time.
As a result of having less cancellations and more kept appointments your other patients will begin to fit in better with this culture that you are trying to establish.
You will appreciate your patients more because they keep their appointments and reschedule far less frequently.
So you will feel appreciated.
And so the feeling magnifies.
How do we bring about change effectively?
Change only occurs when we commit to the outcomes of change and acquiring those outcomes.
When we do not commit to those outcomes it becomes “too easy” to surrender and relapse and return to our former place, which may not be a good place but is a familiar place just the same.
Although the journey to the new place in the future may be uncomfortable it is a place where we know we must go.
We must be committed to the vision of improved customer service.
We must know what that end result will look like so that we can set our sights upon it.
We need to have that vision of the improved destination so that our team can then become motivated to attain that improvement.
The motivation follows the vision.
Motivation cannot precede the vision.
What must be the key driver must be the fact that the cost of regret, which is the cost of not changing, is far greater than the cost of change.
We must always be striving for improvement of our Customer Service Experiences in our business.
We can never rest on our laurels.
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The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that Dr. David Moffet developed that allowed him to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, download a free chapter of his #1 Amazon best-selling book “How To Build The Dental Practice Of Your Dreams (Without Killing Yourself!) In Less Than 60 Days” right here now.
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