I was reading an interesting article recently titled “Dentists revenue jumps with one simple process change”. The article was referring to ‘getting your customers to come back more often’. This is just one of four ways to grow your business.
Apparently you should visit your pain free dentist every 6 months. Whilst in the article the dentist had a process in place for this to happen, there was something amiss.
The process relied on three things. It relied on the system being reliable enough:
Whilst this system was in place, it appeared that it was not necessarily fulfilling its role. That is getting them to come back for their six monthly check up (coming back more often).
They found a simply solution that during the payment process, immediately after an appointment, and with the patient feeling good about having healthy teeth and gums, the receptionist simply said: “Let me book in your next appointment for you right now.”
From there the booking would come up in the dentists appointment system, this would remind the admin team to contact the customer and customer would be prepared for the appointment (thinking that there should not be any major issues with their teeth as it was not that long ago that they were checked).
Personally as a customer that finds time just seems to fly by, this is a system that would work exceptionally well for myself. It happens currently with my hairdresser and I have found this a perfect solution.
This made me think on how this could apply to other businesses, and when you think about it there is no reason why it cannot apply to all businesses. As an example, if I buy flowers for my wife’s birthday a simply reminder can be sent the following year by the florist and I will continue to be the best husband in the world. They could even question me on when my wedding anniversary is?
There is no reason why this cannot these principals to your business. You just need to take a bit of time out of your business and look at the numbers and study the processes.
