VIP Service?

Question: How do you know if you are really providing “V.I.P. Service” to your patients?

Having concluded our ToPS Total Immersion course in Las Vegas last week, we were checking out of one of the big name hotels on the Las Vegas Strip. This place is so big that it has three registration and checkout areas in three different parts of the hotel for guest convenience.

Over the several days that we were there, I noticed that the “front desk” and taxi stand on one side of the building was less busy than at the front of the hotel. So I strategically planned our escape when were ready to checkout and get to the airport. We naturally went where we would not have to stand in line and wait. And we were right! There was no line at the taxi stand. The only problem was, there were no taxis either! (And no hotel employee to seen anywhere.) We waited for a few minutes. No taxi and no bellman.

I ran inside the hotel and into the place I was sure could solve my taxi problem. “V.I.P. Services.” After all, these are the guys and gals who know how to jump to attention and make it happen for the hotel’s high rollers, right? I told them the situation and asked if they could call a cab. “There are cabs out there,” they said. I pointed outside through the window so they could see for themselves. “Just ask the bellman,” they said. “There is no bellman,” I explained for the second time. “Then you’ll just have to walk to the front of the hotel to get a cab,” was their solution. (That’s quite the hike mind you.) Keeping my cool, I asked if there were any way they could pick up the phone, call the bell desk at the front of the hotel and tell them that a cab was needed at the taxi stand on the other side of the hotel. “Oh, yes! I guess we could do that,” they responded.

Answer: If your customer is the one making suggestions as to how you can provide V.I.P. Service, you’re not providing it!

Providing “V.I.P. Service” is about thinking on your feet. It’s about coming up with a way to solve the other person’s problem without being told. It’s about being a little creative. It’s about taking initiative.

Over one hundred years ago, author Elbert Hubbard defined “initiative” as “doing the right thing without being told.” Providing the right kind of V.I.P. Service requires initiative.

So what initiative would you take in these every day situations that are opportunities to provide V.I.P. Service?

· An “emergency” patient calls and there are no openings in the schedule today.

· A patient really wants to start treatment, but doesn’t have all the money and doesn’t qualify for third party financing.

· A busy mom just can’t seem to remember the appointments she sets in your office.

· You have a patient scheduled in one hour for whitening and you just discovered you have no whitening kits left in the office.

Every day presents opportunities to use your initiative to provide “V.I.P. Service.” It all starts with simply asking yourself, “how can I make this work right now.” That’s the kind of thinking that every office could use more of every day. It’s the kind of thinking that makes “ordinary” patients feel like V.I.P. patients who will tell everyone they know about you as a result.

Too many options?

A quick visit to the pharmacy this week turned into a major problem. Cheryl, my wife, needed some cough drops. Her brand of choice? Ricola. Easy enough, right? Wrong. When I found the display, I was immediately distraught. There were multiple options to choose from: Original, Cherry, Lemon, Honey, Green Tea, Mixed Berry, and then many of the same flavors in sugar free, menthol, and Echinacea. Good grief! I thought this was going to be easy. Not wanting to disappoint Cheryl, I immediately called her to go through all the options: flavor, sugar or sugar free, menthol or not, Echinacea or not. “Forget it,” she said. “Just get me some Dayquil!”

And such is life. Sorting through too many options creates too much stress so we opt for the less stressful route – no decision at all!

Now let’s step back into the dental office. How many treatment options are you giving your patients? One, two, three…five?

In an effort to try and find something that will work for the patient, many make the mistake of presenting too many options. Science has proven that the greater number of options we have to choose from, the less of a chance we have of making any type of decision. It is too confusing. It takes too much effort. It is too stressful. Since we are all susceptible to natural laws, we revert to the natural law that is stronger than choice: The Law of Least Resistance. “Matter tends to take the course of least resistance.” In other words, water flows down hill. We all tend to take the course of least resistance. Rather than sort through the mental process of options and alternatives, we look for the easiest way out…no decision at all.

Take the better path of a clear, recommended direction. Based on what you know about the patient, make a clear recommendation that makes sense to your patient tied to the benefits they are looking for.

The efficient way out for you is to just give the patient a lot of options because you have not done your research. The more effective way is to do your research, find out what matters most to the patient, and then make a solid recommendation that makes the most sense for the patient, their situation, and what they want.

Isn’t that the better option? It’s the only option that makes sense.

A Financial Arrangements Secret

For years, we have talked about the “15 System” which says, after the 15^th impression or request, 90% of patients or prospects will say “yes.”

Here’s the statistics:

After you have ASKed...

4 times – 20% will say “yes”

8 times – 50% will say “yes”

12 times – 70% will say “yes”

15 times – 90% will say “yes”

That is a lot of ASKing. The tragedy is that 80% of the people QUIT asking after the first request. In other words, we ASK far too little and not often enough.

Here is a direct example and application in the dental office.

One of the most challenging tasks in the office is doing financial arrangements. In fact, more treatment is lost during financial arrangements than any other place in the office because there are not enough opportunities in the financial arrangements system in most offices to keep ASKing the patient to say “yes.” The more options you have in your financial arrangements “tool box” the more opportunities you will have to ASK.

How many financial options to do you have to offer your patients? The most effective financial coordinators we work with are masters at continually finding creative ways to help people pay for treatment without compromising the financial stability of the practice. Here are some examples of the kinds of financial options we are talking about:

• A courtesy for paying in advance of the start of treatment.
• Accepting all major credit cards.
• 3 or more forms of third party financing available in the practice.
• Monthly payment plans for whitening or Invisalign.
• 90 days same as cash with post-dated checks processed by a third party.*
• Co-signers for 3^rd party financing.
• Relatives that might help.
• Other assets or investments they might cash in.
• “Lay-away” plans where they can “save up” to have the treatment done.

The more options you have to offer, the more successful you will be at helping your patients accept treatment. Today, it is more than just cash, credit or third party financing. If all you have to offer are 3 or 4 financial options, you maybe losing 80% of the opportunities to help your patients say “yes.”

The challenge is to fill your financial arrangements “tool box” with at least 15 financial options. That’s right…15!

To help you achieve that goal, make sure to participate in our Crown Council webinar entitled, “I Can’t Afford It – Secrets to helping your patients accept and pay for treatment TODAY!” on Tuesday, November 9 at noon Central time.

During this webinar, we will present the most up-to-date information including research on every third party patient financing option available today along with the best verbal skills and financial arrangement systems to help you increase your case acceptance TODAY.

For enrollment information, just e-mail: Answers@TotalPatientService.com and request information on the “I Can’t Afford It” webinar.

In today’s environment, you have to be better - a lot better at helping your patients say “yes.” In fact, it may take 15 request or options. Just remember, the more you ASK and the more options you present, the more patients will accept.

How referrable are you?

In the never-ending quest for continual improvement and search for great ideas, I am constantly reaching out into every possible corner of the world. That journey led me this week to speak to 300 of the leading home remodelers in the country that were holed up in a 4 day retreat in a remote part of Wisconsin to reinvent their businesses.

As an industry, this group has had it rough for the last two years. They got hit HARD by all the financial turmoil in the country so it was interesting to hear them talk about what they had done to adapt, stay nimble, survive, and in many cases THRIVE while the competition has been going under.

I worked the room thoroughly before and after my presentation to ASK and find out what they had done that was working. I got quite a list so I thought I would share one that was common sense and very revealing.

One home remodeler said to me, "Steve, the change in the economy has been the best thing that has ever happened to our business. The first change that we made was to get jobs done NOW! We used to string our jobs out as we juggled multiple deadlines. Now, we get in, get the job done quickly in a quality way, and get out. As a result of our improved timing and service:

• Our customer satisfaction has sky rocketed,
• We now have raving fans,
• And we are getting more referrals today than we have ever received from our customers in the history of our business."

He then confessed, "It was never a problem with our quality. We always did great work. It was our personal service that needed a serious upgrade. The change in the economy forced us to do that and it has been a HUGE benefit to our business."

Nothing new I suppose, but the reinforcement of the lesson is invaluable. Rarely is it the quality of the work that is the problem. It is the way we go about the work and the personal service that is attached to it that makes or breaks the deal.

His comment reminded me of a statement by Crown Council (www.CrownCouncil.com) member Dr. Trevor Murray (www.allure-dental.com) at our recent ToPS Total Immersion course (www.TotalPatientService.com) in Chicago when he said that if your practice is not getting a healthy flow of referrals from your patients, there is something wrong with what you are doing. Patients naturally want to refer when the product is sound and the service is spectacular. If they don't refer it is probably because you are terrible instead of referrable!

So, if you want more referrals, be more referrable! A powerful reminder of a lesson for any business.

The Tale of Two Teams

I was in St. Louis, MO this week as well as Springfield, MA speaking at different dental meetings. I was struck by the contrast of two teams that I encountered:

Team #1: The doctor asked me how much the tuition was to attend our two-day Total Immersion course. When I gave him the fee of just a few hundred dollars per person, he was shocked. “That is a lot of money.” (He sounded just like the patients that so many dentists complain about!) I simply responded that it was only a lot of money if there was no implementation. $1 is expensive if you don’t implement.

Team #2: Contrast that with another team that was in the same room; the team of Dr. Michael Hoffman. I have known Michael for over 10 years. He has built one of the top sedation practices in the country. He is known all over the region for his expertise. Patients seek out his practice because he is one of the pre-eminent in his field. What sets Michael apart is his dedication to education, development of his team, investing in his practice, and IMPLEMENTATION. We see every new team member on Michael’s team through our ToPS Total Immersion course as soon as they are hired. He believes in his people and he invests in them. As a result, his practice continues to grow.

So what is the tale of your team? Are you stagnant and in retreat or progressing and developing? Any money you spend on your practice is “expensive” if you have no plan for implementation to get a return. Any investment is well worth it if you plan, implement and take action.

The course you take will determine the tale of your team now and in the future. You decide.

Have You Become A Commodity?

It has become a classic scenario: You pull into Costco or Sam’s. You walk in flashing your membership card and grab the over-sized shopping cart or flat bed cart. You grab mass quantities of toilet paper, paper towels, canned goods and other commodities. You even remembered to bring your discount coupon book that gives you even deeper discounts than normal. You wait to check out and then commandeer your over-packed cart through the parking lot and stuff your car full of boxes and containers that were never meant to fit into a car in the first place. As you settle into the driver’s seat, a rush of satisfaction comes over you as you think, “I saved so much money!” As you bask in your victory on the drive out of the parking lot, the thought suddenly flashes through your mind, “I deserve a reward!” You drive a few short blocks, pull into Starbucks, and pay $5 for a cup of coffee!

What is a commodity? It is the kind of stuff you buy at Costco and Sam’s. By definition it is a raw material or product that is widely available, and the quality is perceived as being basically the same from brand to brand. Since there is no differentiating factor that sets one brand apart from another, you are left to shop based on one thing and one thing alone: PRICE!

Think of the commodities exchange in Chicago. Every day, millions of tons of “commodities” are traded based on PRICE. Go to Costco. They stack it deep and sell it cheep because most of what they sell are commodities. It is a price driven game.

Unfortunately, some products, services, and people for that matter have unknowingly become commodities. They become so widely available and indistinguishable one from another that there is nothing left by which to distinguish them but PRICE. Toilet paper, paper towels, computer chips, dentists and some PEOPLE.

Dentists. Our work at the Total Patient Service Institute (www.TotalPatientService.com) has shown us that most consumers think a dentist is just a dentist and there is really not much difference. And they are right if that has been their experience. If all they have known is the run of the mill dentist who does nothing more than walk in, diagnose, treatment plan and treat, then the patient thinks all dentists are about the same so it only makes sense to price shop them to find the cheapest one.

Our society has a way of trying to make people into commodities. That’s what a job application and a resume do. They standardize all applicants so that they all present the same. It is easier for the employer to make a decision that way. And job applicants fall for it. That’s why we work hard each year at our LEAP seminars for high school and college students (www.LEAPfoundation.com) to show them proven ways to separate themselves from the commoditized masses so they rise to the top and get positions, scholarships, and opportunities that they may have thought were only available to people older and more experienced. As we repeatedly say, “If you do what everyone else does, you’ll get what everyone else gets.” Most people become a commodity. But remember, being a commodity is a choice, not a circumstance.

Take coffee for example. Coffee is a commodity. It is traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and other commodity exchanges around the world. You can get a cheep cup of coffee at the local donut shop for fifty cents. But when you go to Starbucks, you pay 10X that amount. Why are you willing to do that? Because Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, simply turned a commodity, coffee, into something a whole lot more. There is a great lesson here for anyone who wants to keep their product, service or themselves from becoming a "commodity casualty."

Here are 4 proven ways to keep your product, service or person from becoming a commodity:

Create different kind of EXPERIENCE. Most of us have become lulled into a world of the mediocre. It all just becomes a blur of average, every day, transactions that never make a mark in our memory. But every once-in-a-while something comes along that wakes us up. It WOWs us with a memorable experience that draws us back over and over again. Take Disney, Starbucks, and Southwest Airlines as well-known examples to name a few. They create an experience that moves people emotionally and makes them want to come back.

Personal Service. Most commodities are so cheep that the provider cannot afford to give any type of service. Just try to find someone at Costco who can help you beyond the people at check out. Contrast that to the team at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, in an otherwise commoditized industry, Enterprise goes out of its way with professional dress, frequent use of your name, escort to your car, and plenty of choices. It is a different kind of car rental experience because of the personal service.

Customization. Many products and services have left the commodity ranks by becoming customized products to fit specific consumers. Take Levi’s for example when it started making custom fit jeans, or my local men’s clothing store. Everyone there knows my name, my style, the brands I like the most, and everything that I have bought in the past. The store fits me instead of expecting me to fit whatever they decide that I should buy!

Specialization. There are so many niches today around the world that it is relatively easy to provide products and services to specialized niches that need what they need in a different way than the masses. Take my friend Troy VanBiezen, a chiropractor, who has specialized in helping professional athletes cut their injury recovery time in half. (www.chirosportspecialists.com) He’s not a chiropractor in people’s minds. He is a celebrity sports performance specialist. As a result, he has an amazing following among professional athletes and executives that wish they were athletes! Or Crown Council (www.CrownCouncil.com) dentist, Dr. Brian McKay who has made a specialty of being the dentist for people with eating disorders. (www.acid.com) As a result, people come to him from all over the world and around the country. (For a special Crown Council recorded interview with Dr. McKay entitled “Bulemia is a Dental Disorder” call us at 1-877-399-8677.)

There are as many ways to keep your product, service, or yourself from becoming a commodity as there are people. It all comes down to differentiation. What can you do to make yourself unique and different from the masses so you don’t end up being exchanged strictly on price because no one has any other way to tell you apart from the competition.

Continual Improvement - Kaizen

At a recent Crown Council Mastermind retreat, I accompanied a group of Crown Council (www.CrownCouncil.com) dentists as we toured the Phillips Lighting Plant in Salina, Kansas. Salina is the home of Crown Council Lifetime Qualified Members, doctors Guy and Kate Gross and Dr. Ken Guest (www.NewHorizonsDentalCare.com).

The remarkable fact about the Phillips Lighting Plant in Salina is that it produces 80% of the fluorescent light bulbs for North and South America. Despite the lower labor costs, plants in China have been unable to compete against this powerhouse in Salina. One of the secrets to the plant’s success is their dedication to Deming Management principles, (the current popular term for which is now LEAN Management), especially that of continual improvement.

When Deming taught the Japanese the principles of quality improvement, they were quick to translate the principles into their own language. One word that became part of the quality equation was “Kaizen.” Kaizen means constant and never-ending improvement. It is not just a philosophy. It is a process – a daily process.

As we walked about the Phillips plant, it was impressive to see the Kaizen initiatives that were in progress. Each department had a “Kaizen 30 Day Action Plan” listing the initiatives that had been approved, who was accountable, and what the target date was for completion. Future review dates were also listed as well has how much progress had been made to date on each initiative.

One of the impressive charts present in each department was one that measured how many Kaizen initiatives had been undertaken by that department in the last year and how many had been completed. That visual reminder had to be a great motivator to the team as they saw on a daily basis how much progress they had made.

I am reminded of the team member refrain heard often as everyone files into a regular team meeting: “Here we go again – another team meeting where we talk about the same things all over again and nothing ever changes.” In some cases that may be true. In others it may be that progress is not as apparent as it would be if progress were tracked and recorded like they do at Phillips.

What is your system for tracking and reviewing continual improvement projects in your practice? How often do you review that list of projects with your team? Do you track what projects have been completed so that everyone can see the progress that is being made?

If you would like a copy of a “Kaizen 30 Day Action Plan” and the associated completion list, just call the Total Patient Service Institute at 1-877-399-8677 or e-mail: Answers@TotalPatientService.com.

Continual improvement – it is just one more characteristic of a team that is striving to be ToPS.