Awhile back I wrote a piece about my old dentist and his terrible customer service policy.
After going to him for 10+ years, I took
my business elsewhere due to a stupid policy
that lost him a lot of business.
You can read more about that old post here.
Since then, I got a new dentist, and just the
other day I got a reminder card for my next
appointment.
Although I like the new guy a lot, he made a
grave marketing mistake that I bet will cost
him a ton of money over the years.
Instead of sending me a card with my next pre-
scheduled appointment, he sent me a reminder
card that I should call and schedule my own
appointment after a certain date.
This may seem like a small difference, but
this is HUGE!
When a business sends you anything that is
pre-scheduled, they have done the heavy
lifting for you, and are just giving you
a reminder that you need to show up.
When they remind you that you need to call
them and schedule you own appointment, you
will end up losing tons of money, because
people will just blow it off and will wait
to actually make that appointment.
Who REALLY wants to go to the dentist?
Who REALLY wants to do a lot of things that
us small business owners sell?
That’s why it is our job to remind people,
do all of the heavy lifting ourselves and
make it stupid-simple for the customer.
After all, you just want them to show up,
right?
So, if you ever have a situation in the
future where you are abou to make your customer
do most of the heavy lifting in order to close
the sale or have them show up to an appointment,
you might want to re-think it.
If you want to know 101 more ways to get a
new flood of customers banging down your door,
stay tuned.
The Underdog Marketing 101 course will be
coming out soon.
It contains 101 FREE ways to bring more customers
into ANY business, on-line and off.
Until tomorrow,
Joshua Black
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_________________________________________
{ 8 comments }
Hey Joshua,
I completely agree with you on this. I’ll give a similar story. Our small local newspaper, The Latrobe Bulletin, makes similar daily blunders. You place an ad, that you prepay for, and then when it expires, they do not alert you to the expiration??? Do you not think it is worth an $8/hour person to call everyone up 2 days before it expires and ask them if they would like to extend? I’ve talked to them about it countless times, but they always have some excuse as to why their system can’t do that (I’d make my employees do it by hand).
I’ll bet they could increase revenues 20%, or more. Oh well. As long as they have job security, huh ??
Brandon,
Yes it’s amazing how many small business owners (the stats are something like 95%) don’t do ANYTHING at all to try and get repeat business from their current customers, the most free, pre-qualified way to get more business… oh well, more money for the rest of us I guess.
-Josh
This is a great post and you’re right it’s throwing money away.
What annoys me the most is Brandon’s comment. (Nothing against Brandon at all). I really hate it when businesses come up with excuses like that.
Someone was telling me that he ate in a restaurant and got terrible service and terrible food. He happened to know the guy who ran the place and bumped him to a couple of days later and told him how poor everything was. Unbelievably the guy who ran the place came up with excuses!!!
How annoying…. people!
Matthew,
Yep, there is no excuse for bad service and poor product. You can’t shine a turd. Sometimes business owners get so wrapped up in the fact that they are business owners, that they forget about the product and customers altogether. A very slippery slope indeed.
-Josh
Great point Joshua!
Your old dentist blew it on service and the new one blew it on the continuity program.
Dentistry is a phenomenal repeat business if run properly. Most don’t because the profit margin allows us dentists to be stupid about business and still make a decent living.
Joe,
Yep, I am amazed how many highly eeducated service providers (dentists, doctors, lawyers etc.) coast on the hopes that people will just walk in off the street. Where I live there are chiropractors on more corners than their are Starbucks, yet these guys are not following up either. More money for the ones that do, I guess, but it’s a real shame to watch these guys sabotage their own businesses like that.
-Josh
Hey Joshua, we must have the same dentist
, or at least they went to the same business class together. Mine sent out the 6 month reminder to make an appointment “at your convenience” but wipes you off their mailing list, it seems, if you do not contact them. We used another dentist and now, over 6 months later, have still not heard from the first one.
As the Toronto gentleman said, the profit margin makes them lazy (to paraphrase it a little).
By the way, do you have an email subscription to your blog? I can see the freebie signup form but not one for blog updates. I have stopped using RSS for a while. Cheers, Michael.
Michael,
That sounds like par for the course with way too many dentists. For a group that has an intsant customer base of anyone that has more than 5 teeth in their head, it would seem like they would be better marketers.
My blogs posts are the same thing that I send to my email list as well, so if you sign up for the goodies, you will get the same blog posts that I send every day, without the pretty pictures. If you want to go the RSS route, then you can sign up through your email account in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
-Josh