Norm!

Don’t you love it when you walk into a business where you’ve been a loyal customer for years and the people working there recognize you and greet you like family? Everyone loves to be welcomed like Norm from Cheers. We’ve all had that great welcome from our local bankers, grocery store clerks, salons, restaurants and pharmacies. For many of us it’s the reason we return again and again.

Now contrast that feeling with the one you get when you enter that same business where you’ve been a loyal customer and the staff ask you to spell your name so they can take your reservation or let coworkers know you have arrived. Even a nice smile and greeting doesn’t make up for the fact that you are now a stranger in a familiar place.

This loss of experience and interruption in customer service is one of the indirect costs of turnover that most business owners don’t calculate. Your patients feel this loss when you lose good people. If you’re serious about improving patient service you need a retention plan…you need to learn how to lead your team and how to stop the drama that drives the good people away…staff and patients.