Coffee, teeth and the ‘total experience’

Howard Shultz co-founder of coffee chain Starbucks have created one of the largest and most successful ‘total experience’ outlets ever!

It’s original Seattle shop was a few streets away from the world-famous Pike Place Fish Market – and if you haven’t ever read the staff motivational book Fish! then you had better buy it now!

So easy to read and it will inspire you to work more effectively with your staff again. Starbucks has rewritten many of the conventional rules of management – it took a mundane product and transformed it into extraordinary success.

Yes, you may have heard the overused phrase ‘extraordinary’. But is your practice extra ordinary or many more extras than the ordinary practice?

Take, for example, Jon Swarbrigg from Farsley Dental in Leeds. Look at his amazing mission statement – ‘Doing the things other dental practices don’t do’. My comments? What a fantastic mission statement if I ever did see one. I would like to keep it a living mission statement. So here is how I would reposition this…

Doing 10 new things every month that other dental practices are too lazy and stupid to do

So adding lots of extras is where you become extra ordinary. By constantly surprising your patients every six months you are adding value. And when you add value? You create ‘Ultimate Patient Experiences.’ Which will motivate your patients to tell others, pay more and stay more.

Coffee was uninspired customer ritual…

I remember going to my local dentist that was Jon Swarbrigg and one of my top spending clients. I would get a boring recall letter through the post for my six monthly and even though I literally lived behind his practice. It was still an uninspired patient ritual.

But not now though

So Starbucks are masters at how to get a customer to give up her regular routine, while getting her to pay six or eight times more for rich, exotic coffee blends when ordinary is all she’s ever known.

And this was true for me as a patient. I had only known sterile dental surgeries all my life. Something I would rather avoid at all costs. Even when at need… I had my front tooth knocked out on my 21st birthday by a rugby player dressed as an Austrian milk maid.

So how then has Jon put up his prices five or six times in the space of a few months and not felt guilty about it?

Well, he has changed into a ‘Total Experience Practice’. Doing as Paddi Lund would call the ‘Critical Non Essentials.’

Three Easy Ways To Claim Your FREE KIT:

1) Receive your FREE audio CD and a ‘Practice Growth’ Stress Reduction Kit by calling a free phone answer machine message line on 0800 0729154 and enter the code 3006#. When asked to do so, leave your full contact details. You may call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

2) Log onto www.FreeDentistCD.com

3) Fax your FULL contact details including email address to 0845 3630440.

• Part Two: What are the lessons to be gleaned from Starbucks that can be applied to dentistry.

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