Marketing 101
Don’t Be Casual With Your
Customers
By Elizabeth Mansfield
My
close friends know I am proud of my teeth. I’ve never had
braces or any other cosmetic work done, yet my teeth look almost
perfect.
I don’t mean to be bragging—I had nothing to do with it. It’s genetic. But, because I like my teeth so much and want to keep them, I pay particular attention to how my dental caregivers treat me (and my teeth).
For example, I still remember the time ten years ago when I had my wisdom teeth surgically removed by the oral surgeon whom my dentist recommended. Apart from the surgery itself, it was a very pleasant experience.
The office staff was very nice. The surgeon explained the procedure before he began. He also called me the next day to make sure everything was okay. His office staff called the week after that. Since it was oral surgery, my health insurance covered most of the cost.
My next major dental experience happened just a few months ago. At the end of last year, I found out I needed to have a root canal. Then I found out it wasn’t covered by my insurance.
I decided to call a friend. “Dr. Endo” is an excellent endodontist in a very successful practice. He had treated several of my friends as well as my mother, and they had always given him rave reviews. I thought he might give me a self-pay discount, and I was right. Dr. Endo allowed me to pay $810, instead of the usual $1,350. I had the root canal done in two visits, and paid cash on the spot.
But my visit was the complete opposite of my earlier visit to the oral surgeon. Dr. Endo did not explain the procedure to me. Worse (in my opinion), he chose to share “funny” stories from my past with the assistant. After he was finished, no one called to see how I was doing. I didn’t even get a “Thank you for choosing us” letter.
Did they change their patient care follow-up protocol because I was a friend?
I think so. At least, I certainly hope they call other patients after they’ve had root canals.
But I can see that knowing me as a friend might have hurt my care. After all, you treat few people worse than your friends.
You’ve already won your friends’ “business.” You’re comfortable enough in your relationships with them that sometimes you don’t call them back right away. You know they’ll still be there for you.
In fact, sometimes we take friends for granted or ignore them. We behave in ways that non-friends would consider rude or inconsistent.
And that’s my point: treating your patients like friends is bad marketing practice and can lead to poor service. In O&P, patients often become friends. Amputees and long-term orthoses wearers can, if you treat them well, be patients for life. It can become easy to become their friends…and to start treating them casually.
Patient care protocols should remain the same, whether you’re seeing a brand-new patient or one you’ve treated over the last 30 years.
Treating your friends like valued customers doesn’t mean being unfriendly and formal. It just means you treat them as you’d like to be treated if you were their customer.
If anything, patients who are your friends should receive the best possible care and services you can provide. Since they already like you, they are the perfect people to become die-hard evangelists for your business. Sure, they may recommend you just because they like you. But what if you exceed their expectations simply by treating them not as a friend, but as a valued customer?
O&P is a small field. If you’re a vendor or a supplier, you too have customers who are friends. Do you treat them like friends or like the referral sources they may be?
I don’t mean to be bragging—I had nothing to do with it. It’s genetic. But, because I like my teeth so much and want to keep them, I pay particular attention to how my dental caregivers treat me (and my teeth).
For example, I still remember the time ten years ago when I had my wisdom teeth surgically removed by the oral surgeon whom my dentist recommended. Apart from the surgery itself, it was a very pleasant experience.
The office staff was very nice. The surgeon explained the procedure before he began. He also called me the next day to make sure everything was okay. His office staff called the week after that. Since it was oral surgery, my health insurance covered most of the cost.
My next major dental experience happened just a few months ago. At the end of last year, I found out I needed to have a root canal. Then I found out it wasn’t covered by my insurance.
I decided to call a friend. “Dr. Endo” is an excellent endodontist in a very successful practice. He had treated several of my friends as well as my mother, and they had always given him rave reviews. I thought he might give me a self-pay discount, and I was right. Dr. Endo allowed me to pay $810, instead of the usual $1,350. I had the root canal done in two visits, and paid cash on the spot.
But my visit was the complete opposite of my earlier visit to the oral surgeon. Dr. Endo did not explain the procedure to me. Worse (in my opinion), he chose to share “funny” stories from my past with the assistant. After he was finished, no one called to see how I was doing. I didn’t even get a “Thank you for choosing us” letter.
Did they change their patient care follow-up protocol because I was a friend?
I think so. At least, I certainly hope they call other patients after they’ve had root canals.
But I can see that knowing me as a friend might have hurt my care. After all, you treat few people worse than your friends.
You’ve already won your friends’ “business.” You’re comfortable enough in your relationships with them that sometimes you don’t call them back right away. You know they’ll still be there for you.
In fact, sometimes we take friends for granted or ignore them. We behave in ways that non-friends would consider rude or inconsistent.
And that’s my point: treating your patients like friends is bad marketing practice and can lead to poor service. In O&P, patients often become friends. Amputees and long-term orthoses wearers can, if you treat them well, be patients for life. It can become easy to become their friends…and to start treating them casually.
Patient care protocols should remain the same, whether you’re seeing a brand-new patient or one you’ve treated over the last 30 years.
Treating your friends like valued customers doesn’t mean being unfriendly and formal. It just means you treat them as you’d like to be treated if you were their customer.
If anything, patients who are your friends should receive the best possible care and services you can provide. Since they already like you, they are the perfect people to become die-hard evangelists for your business. Sure, they may recommend you just because they like you. But what if you exceed their expectations simply by treating them not as a friend, but as a valued customer?
O&P is a small field. If you’re a vendor or a supplier, you too have customers who are friends. Do you treat them like friends or like the referral sources they may be?
Elizabeth Mansfield is
a marketing consultant with Outsource Marketing Solutions LLC in
Hartford, Conn. Contact her at elizabeth@askelizabeth.net.
