Everything I ever need to know about customer service, I learned from my dentist! (Part One)

I have an exceptional dentist. I don't even like dentists, but I like him. He is kind and gentle and he truly cares. He's also a gardener and people who dig in the dirt are generally just good people. I will even cross the street to say hello to him. Everybody seems to love him. I'm going to have a tough time when he retires. There's nobody like him.

A little background is necessary here. I am not going to go into gory details about my horrible dentist history but I will say it is bad. I had several terrible experiences with dentists and in their offices and even on the way to appointments. It's enough to make someone not want to ever see a dentist again. Because I care about you and your pearly whites, I will spare you!

Several years ago I had a client looking to relocate to my community. Her husband was taking a pretty high-powered job and she had the choice of staying home or working. She was a trained dental assistant and hygienist. However she made it clear she didn't want to work for a dentist that had a "doctor mentality". She didn't have to explain. I knew exactly what she meant. I was seeing a dentist like this. I've spent enough time in the chair to know what's going on even when they "gas" me. This one would even take it out on the girls if he changed his mind about something. Too many times I would look into their eyes for comfort during procedures only to see they were in tears.

I had my mission, and I chose to accept it. I called every single dental assistant and hygienist I knew (3). I asked them the following questions: 1) If you were not working where you are now, which dentist would you want to work with? 2) Who would be your second choice? 3) Can you give me the name of someone else in your line of work that I can talk to? Eventually I got the same names, people I'd already contacted, almost 30 in all. I built a spreadsheet with the answers. First and second votes were treated equal for my purposes. I purposely didn't ask if they were happy where they were.

What a picture I had in my hands. I noticed my current dentist had NO "votes" - not a single one. Then I noticed that one dentist had more than three times the number of "votes" of any other dentist in our community. At this time, my client's husband decided not to relocate.

I didn't just throw all my hard work into the round file (Less than two hours worth, by the way). Not a chance. I had to know what this dentist's secret was. Why were all the assistants and hygienists so fond of him? One of my respondents had even said she would have to wait for someone to die before a position in that office would become available. What could be so special about this dentist?