done
And here is a photo of the car Kevin Rose will be driving down to Monte Carlo in aid of the Robbie Anderson Cancer Trust
http://robbiesbigdrivetomontecarlo.wordpress.com/
I’m pleased to be the joint main sponsor of one of the cars undertaking this fantastic event in the next few weeks or so. The driver has so far raised just short of £10,000 for this cause. I hope to have some live updates via twitter and the blog as it happens.
Looking forward to Portugal at the weekend with the PracticePlan team, chance to catch up with some friends.
Photos soon of the sponsored Lotus Driven by Kevin Rose on the Teenage Cancer Trust Race to Monte Carlo.
Drum Clinic tomorrow with the team at Highwood Drums
Plenty of Gigs lined up for the Summer for the band I play in – The Ripple Effect.
This is the first Tuesday for a long time that I have spent not doing something totally dental. Usually, I spend all day Tuesday working out of the practice on the business. However, recently, I have spent it on various other projects, courses, working with Kevin Rose (www.azimuthdental.com), and even treating patients.
So it was nice to take my son to school this morning, without having a huge list of things I have to do. I went to the gym for the first time in 4 months (and the waistline is showing it!), then had a nice lunch in the park with my wife Claire.
I still have had time to check what’s happening on twitter, take a coaching call from Kevin, and update the various bits of the website that I am now able to do.
And it is a lovely warm sunny day. Too early for the wine yet though.
Another fantastic day at work, loads of positive comments from patients, all unprompted telling us how good the service we provide is currently. We have a full page write up in the local newspaper, which has already been commented on by loads of patients. Leanne (our Therapist) and Steph (Dental Health advisor in Training) visited a school yesterday and spent the entire morning spreading the message to the 5 and 6 year olds there. Loads of dental goody bags were duly handed out and went down a treat by all accounts. One of those days filled with ‘helium’ moments that just lift you up.
But I have never been one to take praise and feel complacent, as I reckon you are only ever as good as the last experience your customer had. I think there is always an opportunity to improve things for customers, so I have decided its time for another round of patient questionnaires.
There are only 3 questions though this time:
What do we do well?
What could we do differently?
Would you recommend us to family or Friends?
Only one closed question there, and hopefully we will get a positive response. But judging by the comments today, I would like to think we will!
One thing that has struck me as I have been at the BDA Conference this week is the large numbers of younger practitioners, many of whom are probably Vocational Trainees, or just embarking on their careers.
There has been a pretty broad selection of different lectures to attend this year, and some of them were business and customer care oriented. What surprised me was the seeming lack of younger practitioners in the more customer service oriented lectures, but the huge numbers in the cosmetic and aesthetic lectures.
When I was was teaching, I always made sure I encouraged the students to get themselves fully skilled up by going on loads of courses, but not just clinical ones. In the new millenium, they will find more competition for jobs and positions that I did when starting out, and they need to place themselves ahead of the game.
But just going to lectures on cosmetics and aesthetics, whilst important in some respects, is not going to give them the edge in my opinion. They need softer skills too, customer service, empathy, communication, and business skills. The conference has been a good vehicle for them to get these skills, and I just hope that they realise that these are just as important as knowing all the tricks of the aesthetic dentist.
Its a difficult balance, clinical vs non clinical, but I do hope they realise they need these skils, because if they are to be the future of dentistry, and dentistry is not to be fully suborned by the NHS and the corporate bodies, they are certainly going to need them.
I’m currently sat in what must be the world’s hottest hotel room, airconditioning on full and the windows open, in Glasgow.
The British Dental Association conference starts tomorrow, and I am at the Presidential Meeting first thing, so early morning call for me.
Need to get back into this blogging lark, but developments with Azimuth Dental have somewhat taken more of my spare time than I thought! Its nice to see the hits to my blog going up on the back of it.
I reckon Kevin is doing some incredible work at the moment, and I’m proud to be part of it.
Hopefully there will be some new contacts to be made at the conference, and a chance to meet up with some old friends too.
Check back for updates……
A couple of unrelated problems with 2 recent purchases from the same company were dealt with in totally dissimilar ways this weekend.
First was a sullen, ‘you are an interruption to my job’ approach, with excuses, and just poor customer care. A bit of a business saboteur in all truth. It made me feel a bit disappointed that I had made a big purchase from the company.
The second one less than 10 minutes later IN THE SAME SHOP was so different. Not only was my problem purchase dealt with efficiently, but the assistant (who I suspect was actually management) went the extra 9 yards to make sure I was happy, even collecting something I had suddenly decided I needed from the far reaches of the huge shop.My faith in the company went some way to being restored. However, is this representative of the company ethos, or was this a solo performance?
Just goes to show that we all need to make sure everyone is dealing with customers properly in the same way, everytime, all the time. There is no room for saboteurs in a business, but unless we experience it first hand we dont always realise the effect it can have. And if we do get poor service, how hard is it for that company to get our business back?
We’ve just returned from spending most of today in the Royal Marines Museum in Portsmouth. It was quite moving to stand next to my Grandad’s actual uniform that he wore in the 1920’s and be allowed to touch it. The museum were expecting us and displayed a courtesy to us that you rarely experience. We also found his brother in laws medals which were found after the Exeter blitz 2 streets away from his house. He was never found, along with all his family. Quite a moving day.
