It may not be the most obvious of comparisons but dentistry can learn some lessons from the collapse of the banking sector and the public’s waning confidence in high street banks.
Deregulation, changes in ownership, the large corporate, increased legislation, fierce competition, increased staff turnover, public antipathy, government intervention, supervised neglect, extended opening hours, new routes to market, overseas labour, call centres and a sales driven culture. Any of this sound familiar? Are these features of the banking sector or the emerging features of the dental sector?
The culture that brought about the Credit Crunch goes far wider than just hedge funds. It can be traced back to many sources including high street banking in the mid 1980’s.
Back then, I was a cashier in the city centre branch of a major high street bank. My job, or so I thought, was to take money in, cash a few cheques and smile from time to time. That was until somebody decided that we should start to talk to our customers, not just about how they were or the weather, but with the sole objective of achieving an outcome. We had been sent on courses in “selling” and told to get on with it – whether they wanted it or not, whether it was the fifth time the customer had been asked in a week or whether it was completely against what we considered to be right from wrong, we were told to recite a script that had been drilled into us. Most of us knew that it felt wrong, but hey if everybody else is doing it.........
“Going on holiday?” – “you must buy your travellers cheques from us. You will need your insurance too – what if the worst happens?” “Have you thought about how your dependants will suffer if you die?” – “you better get some life insurance” “It's a lovely day. Do you have a sunroof?” – “How about a loan for a new car?”
This kind of behaviour resulted in the hurried introduction of misguided regulation, Ombudsmen and a culture that encouraged selling the product of the moment. Rather than simply being present for the customer to do the best for them, bank managers and their staff were now doing what was best for the bank. The paradox of the 1980’s customer service culture was that it was never about the customer.
This “product shifting” mentality is still with us. It is one of the reasons why some of the banks went bust and for the public’s antipathy towards them. It can explain why the high street banks are now peddling another “new message” that they are now here to help us again; we can lounge around in comfy leather chairs drinking coffee with our new bank manager best mate, completely oblivious to the fact that he is trying to shift the product of the week. Be warned, it’s back to smiles and empathy again, nothing has changed and no lessons have been learned.
The real shame about this is that somewhere at the top of the organisation, the intentions are probably honourable; it’s just that those intentions get lost somewhere and when the pressure is on, it’s back to product shifting and in the end everybody loses out unnecessarily.
Now ask yourself a question. When the pressure is on, how narrow is the gap between building a successful dental practice that looks after its patients, is present for them by doing the best that it can through a relationship based upon trust, and a practice with a culture of shifting treatments, teeth whitening and payment plans? As Warren Buffett said “it’s only when the tide goes out do you notice who was swimming naked!”.
We may not be there yet, but many of the trends we have highlighted can be seen in dentistry right now and some dentists are swimming naked.
