A while ago, on a trip to visit my mom in Vancouver (something I do as often as I can because, yes, I am an unabashed mama’s boy), my luggage was lost. This was not as upsetting as you might think, though - in fact, my first thought the next morning when the hotel staff told me that my bags had still had not arrived was, “Great, I get to pay a visit to Harry Rosen.”
Harry Rosen is my favorite menswear store in Vancouver. I have been shopping there for years, and they have records of my sizes and preferences. The salesperson who served me looked up my history to see what I had purchased before and began making suggestions based on what they know about me.
This is the kind of comprehensive customer care I have come to expect from this store. But this time, as I browsed and spoke with the staff, I was struck by another realization: Many of the employees were also wearing items that were available for sale in the store. I found myself noticing the combinations and accessories they were wearing and asking about them. And they were able to give insightful responses from the perspective of someone who knows the merchandise from personal experience. This kind of sharing of “insider knowledge” helped create a bond - more customer-to-customer than salesman-to-customer - and opened the door to further suggestions. Who needs mannequins when you have real people displaying your products and talking about them?
You can probably see where I am going here. If you are a restorative dentist or specialist who is proud of what you can do for your patients, you naturally want your team to support you and communicate your value to patients who may be considering esthetic treatments. And nothing communicates that value better than a magnificent smile. Especially if it is a smile that represents the work you do.
It’s quite simple, really. If you’re in the business of creating great smiles, the people in your practice should be living examples of the great dentistry you do. Patients should notice their smiles. It should make them think, even on a subconscious level, that they are in the right place. And if a team member can say to a patient, “I have had that procedure done myself. Our doctor is great at that,” it creates a special bond, because now they are talking patient-to-patient.
And that adds a layer of credibility and authenticity that cannot be duplicated. It shows that the doctor and the team really “walk the walk” when it comes to communicating the value of great dentistry.
(Click this link for more articles by Imtiaz Manji.)