Skip to content 
Hospitality Is Not Just For The Hospitality Industry
Hospitality Is Not Just For The Hospitality Industry | Don’t Trust Your Customers | Uber Is Systemized Hitchhiking The DiJulius Group Welcomes Katie Mares, CXC Due to our rapid growth in Customer Experience consulting, The DiJulius Group (TDG) has added another Customer Experience Consultant, Katie Mares. A former Customer Experience Executive of multiple TDG clients, Katie has been working with the X-Commandments methodology since 2011. She is also an instructor in the CXE Academy. *The following is written by Katie Mares, CXC Who is Your Competition? Our customers have multiple interactions all day long on a daily basis. In fact, businesses are competing with all of the experiences people have from the moment they wake up until the moment they have the privilege to interact with that customer, sell to them, and convince them why they have the best product, food, or service there is to offer. As a result of this, a great deal of businesses put a focus on improving their customer experience. Emphasis is also put on developing the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure the Return on Investment (ROI) for initiatives like this. One of the most popular KPI that businesses look at is whether or not the customer is likely to recommend them. This particular KPI uncovers those customers that are ‘likely to recommend’, but it also sheds light on those customers who are ‘not likely to recommend’. Studies show that news of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for a good service experience. This is a pretty compelling stat. Understanding this, it would be in the business’ best interest to focus on perfecting the customer experience to reduce the number of ‘not likely to recommend’. If this isn’t reason enough to focus on establishing a World Class Customer Experience, here are a few more statistics that might sway some away from the dark side: It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. Source: “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner 3 in 5 Americans (59%) would try a new brand or company for a better service experience. Source: American Express Survey, 2011 Customer churn is attributed to the poor quality of customer service. (Accenture Maximizing Customer Retention Report) The Bottom Line The list of reasons you should have the customer on the forefront of your mind goes on and on. Let’s try this reason on for size. What if providing a World Class Customer Experience created brand evangelists and generated referrals all while increasing your profits? A study conducted by American Express shows that 7 in 10 Americans say they were willing to spend more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service. I learned early on in my career that providing a World Class Customer Experience plays a major impact on the bottom line. Because of this, I have spent the majority of my career focusing on people and the experience we provide the customers we interact with. I had the pleasure to work with The DiJulius Group at the beginning of my career (in retail) and together we successfully created and rolled out a World Class Customer Experience program that raised our ‘likely to recommend score’ from 64% to 77% across a fleet of locations yielding 13% organic growth year over year. Hospitality is Not Just for The Hospitality Industry As I transitioned out of retail and into the dental field I got to thinking, if retailers, restaurants, and other services put a focus on creating a World Class Customer Experience (and rightfully so), why aren’t we putting the same emphasis on the Patient Experience in a dental practice (or any medical practice for that matter)? Let’s face it; visiting the dentist is not something many of us look forward to. Ultimately, it is a grudge buy. We have to go to the dentist to maintain our oral health. Don’t get me wrong, caring for your oral health is extremely important, but it is expensive, sometimes painful, and you don’t leave the practice with something tangible that you can hold and show off (like a Kate Spade handbag or the newest Apple gadget). Knowing that most of your patients are already hesitant to book an appointment and have a variety of dentists to choose from, it is important now more than ever to establish a World Class Patient Experience. Remember, you are not only competing with the dentist down the street but with every interaction your patients have before they commit to an appointment or booking treatment. Here’s the silver lining. If your patients leave your practice feeling cared for by a team that creates wow moments seamlessly throughout their entire visit, they will recommend you to a friend and they are far more likely to say yes to treatment. When I realized the importance of a Patient’s Experience in the dental practice, I made it my mission to pull from my customer experience knowledge in retail to create a World Class Patient Experience for the dental practices I was working with across the country. Where Do You Start? Going from good to great in Customer Service is a major project and can appear to be overwhelming. Where to start? Eat that elephant one bite at a time. I was working with a rather large group of practices spanning across the country. Before I began developing any processes or programs, I needed to better understand what the buy in would be from the field to carry this initiative to fruition. So I surveyed these practices and asked the following question: “What is the one area in your practice you wish you and your team had more training on?” The options given were as follows: A. Clinical Knowledge B. Treatment Coordinating C. Administration Processes D. Patient Experience E. Leadership An overwhelming 87% responded the need for more training on providing a better Patient Experience! We had buy in! Having teams committed to providing a World Class Patient Experience is half the battle.
Humbled, addiction is an ongoing battle
I sat tonight in the back of a room watching someone close to me, whom will remain anonymous, reach a milestone that a lot of addicts never reach. I heard this person speak and really realized that addiction is not a choice, it’s a disease. Even though I have been there to support this person through the toughest of times it didn’t dawn on me until tonight how much support and determination is needed to make addiction a choice, to choose to fight, to choose life, and to choose sobriety from their drug of choice. As I listened to the speakers tell their stories I felt a lot of emotions; empathy, compassion, sadness, but most of all I felted very humbled. You see, tonight I also realized that those without addiction take for granted the ability to get up everyday and be able to face the heavy weight of the world ( that we all wear on our shoulders) and move through the day without the need to lean on a drug ( including alcohol) to forge through and make it out the other side. Tonight I felt thankful to be able to handle whatever life throws me and be able to wake up the next morning without the regret on how I handled that heavy load I ( we) carry. I listened to these stories and felt grateful for being apart of this person journey and honoured for them trusting me enough to help them through their darkest time. Because an addict doesn’t handle everyday problems like you and me, an addict turns to a drug of choice to numb the pain and escape- they give in every day to escape life’s challenges and they’ll do anything to get what helps them to cope. I saw clearly tonight that addiction is a disease, it’s not a choice. And those that are brave enough to face the up hill battle on the road to recovery are the strongest people any of us could know. The choice is to fight for life but the battle just begins at that moment. Because once that battle begins it’s about winning the war against addiction. Humbled is how I feel going to bed tonight. Tonight I will pray to give strength to anyone battling addiction. You are brave. You are strong.
