Are You Guilty of Customer Negligence?
February 21st, 2019 // 12:45 pm @ Scott Manning
This week, I wanted to share with you something most are afraid to talk about and the very powerful underlying forces that are in EVERY industry. Truth is, MOST businesses end up sabotaging their customer, client and patient experiences and literally run them off, usually without you even knowing it.
We can all think of restaurant experiences or of course airlines and many other types of places and businesses where you spend your money that are the opposite of “customer-friendly.”
No business “plays customer” enough – they do not think about how the customer perceives and experiences everything that is happening to them. And even more importantly, most people do not understand even how their customer, client, patient, prospect thinks about their own lives, challenges, frustrations, goals, decisions, money and so on and so forth.
One of my friends and mentors, Bill Glazer, used to talk about the “Sales Prevention Department” meaning that more is done to prevent, stop, delay, deny sales from happening in a business than a person could ever realize.
For my Doctors, it can be treatment plans sitting on a desk, it can be insurance claims and calls not dealt with, it can be treatment missed, it can be no one answering the phone or returning calls, it can be foot-in-mouth (pun intended) poor verbiage, and generic flyers that talk differently about dentistry than what they would want them to hear. The list goes on.
You might be use to experiencing a place of business where no one shows up to help you or they are too busy talking to each other as co-workers instead of being attentive to the customer or you can’t find anything on a website that you are looking for or orders get messed up.
Here is the reality: you only know about the ones you get “in front of you” that say yes or no – you do not know about the ones that never make it in, make it through the website, never made the referral or even worse never make it back.
Again in Dentistry, there are always a lot more new patients that come in one way, shape or form than the number that stay, repeat and do treatment. The number of patients not coming back or leaving and the dollars of treatment not said yes to is always far greater than anyone wants to admit.
The question is why?
For your benefit, today, right now, I want you to ask yourself…
“What is it like being my patient, client, customer? What is it like buying from myself?”
“What do my customers really think about this experience?”
“Am I making it more than a transaction?”
“What am I doing differently than others in my industry or that my customers interact with?”
I talk about “obvious differentiation” in that it only matters what is known to your customer; NOT what you say about your business or your experience or anything else, only what you Customer actually experiences and can say about you.
This is worth all of your consideration and thought.
Where do you go wrong? Where is there room for improvement? Where might the customer bail out, change their mind, have room for error?
One of my big money breakthroughs that I teach is the concept of CONTROL…
Control over the customer expectations.
Control over the process.
Control over the outcome.
Pretty much the more control the more profit and opportunity. If you do it right, the more control over the customer’s satisfaction, transaction size, referrals, etc.
I really challenge you to assess your business. You are losing money through opportunities where you could “wow” your customer.
There are a lot of ways to find out more and to get their input. Sadly, we usually just make assumptions and just keep right on doing the easiest things instead of the ones that are most profitable. We leave way too much up to the Customer.
This is what I call customer negligence. We all do it. The key is to be proactive and always try to improve.
There is a fine line between making the business “your way” and designing it to serve your purposes and going over board to forgetting the main point is to maximize profit and SERVE the customer. Creating an extraordinary experience which is what’s best for everyone involved.
Taking action on this is one of the highest and best uses of your time. It is making you more profitable. And all the marketing in the world won’t help make you more money with an inconsistent, inept or dysfunctional customer experience.
Category : Blog
