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Unlimited customer potential

Colin Campbell
by Colin Campbell on 14/11/18 18:00
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When you have a business model which has unlimited customer potential (or it seems as though it has) the easiest thing to do is to shut the doors by making it difficult for them to buy or access your product.

If this sounds like a ridiculous system then consider the facts that NHS patients could be seen as customers of the NHS.

I realise they are not directly paying for their treatment but they are service users, interacting with a service, so customers all the same.

Larger companies use similar models to the NHS to dissuade people from engaging in ‘customer products’. They make it as easy as possible to buy something online but as difficult as possible to speak to someone if you get a problem. What happens in these situations is that 15% or more of patients give up, therefore it saves them money by not having to deal with the issues in the first place.

I have spent weeks, literally, trying to refer a patient for Orthodontic treatment to the NHS. This is a child and I am trying to access care on the NHS because I feel they deserve it and should get it. Even though the parents would be happy to pay me privately for the work, we have agreed it would be better in the first instance to try and access the NHS.

After ages and ages of trying to access the online referral system, we were given a message back the other day to say we’d had an ‘unspecified rejection’

What the f****ng hell is that supposed to mean?

Who do I speak to about this? Who do I ask questions to? Where do I learn? How do I get the patient referred?

At the present I have no idea and my resistance is failing.

Perhaps I’ll just phone the mother and say shall we just get the patient in and do the treatment privately to save time and hassle. Isn’t that what everyone who designs the system actually wants though?

 

Blog Post Number: 1825

 

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Colin Campbell
Written by Colin Campbell
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