By Allan Gorman (www.agcd.com)
A few months ago, a brand new, architecturally striking and very inviting looking Animal Hospital opened not too far from our home.
Since the vet we had been using for the past fifteen years is overworked and extremely busy -- sometimes you have to wait an hour or more -- my wife and I agreed that we might try this cool looking new place the next time we had a need.
Our dog Ziggy is getting up in years and my wife brought him by for a check-up.
The building was well equipped, and looked as great inside as it did from the façade -- it even won an architectural award. But, the young doctor she saw didn’t seem to know what he was talking about and didn’t make much of an impression. There was another vet involved with the practice and maybe he was different.
(Strike one!)
Ziggy gave us all a bit of a scare recently -- he fell down our front steps and wouldn’t put down his back paw. He was clearly in distress.
I called the new hospital to see if the doctor could see him. The receptionist offered to schedule an appointment for the next day. "Unacceptable. This dog is in pain -- it’s an emergency! Can’t something be done to squeeze him in?"
Her response was that there would be extra charges and that she’d have the doctor call me back.
(Strike two!)
A half-hour later, the doctor called. He listened to my description of Ziggy’s symptoms and agreed that he should come in right way. At this point I registered an objection to extra charges since Ziggy was a registered patient of the hospital’s. (Mind you, they never said how much these extra charges would be.) The doctor's response was that since my request is an inconvenience -- they'd have to shift around schedules, extra paper work, etc. -- they need to add extra charges to offset their time and troubles.
I asked him how much the charges would be and he said: "ten dollars".
Did they really have to make a big issue about extra charges for a lousy ten bucks? Why not just train the receptionist to say. "I’ll see if we could squeeze you in, but there’s an extra $10 charge for emergencies". Or, why not just add it to the bill as a line item? Who’d question it?
(Strike three!)
Now for the appointment.
Now I’m not feeling so good about being here at this fancy place. It’s the other doctor this time. My wife didn’t get such a great feeling about the other guy and I don’t feel so hot about this one either. His manner is cold.
He examines the dog in silence and before sharing any diagnosis or educated guess with me, says, "I think we’ll need to do some radiographs to see if there is any damage to the bone. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll be back with an estimate. It’s our policy to get half our fees in advance before treating the animal." He walks out the door and leaves me in the examination room to sit and wonder how astronomical the fee is going to be.
(Strike four, five, six -- a thousand! You guys are out!)
What do you make of this scenario? Are these guys interested in treating sick animals and providing service to customers who are troubled about their pets, or are they more interested in how are they going to pay off the mortgage on their beautiful new building?
And by the way, the only customers in the building when I was there were Ziggy and me. (Thanks for squeezing me in and sorry for the big inconvenience, Doc. I’m sure it won’t happen again.)
Moral: Fail to deliver on your customer’s expectations and you soon won’t have any customers.
Turned out that Ziggy had just shocked a nerve -- he's doing just fine now, but we’re going back to our old vet next time.
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