You know there are times when problems are going to occur in your office. Patient problems that you can’t resolve. Something goes bad. Something doesn’t work and the patient doesn’t feel like he/she got the value for his/her money. Now I know the work that we do is on a human body and things are going to go wrong, but you know what? I found that a refund will go a long, long way. Imagine just arguing with the patient and saying, “Well you know I did the best I could and it cost me blah blah blah,” and the patient has no product as a result of it? In my opinion, the patient did not purchase a service. The patient purchased a result. And if I can’t produce the promised result, I’ll give a refund. Now, will we try corrective actions in order to be able to create that result? Sure. If an implant fails and as a result we have to do an unplanned bone graft because of the immediate failure, we’ll do the bone graft at no charge. We’ll put the implant in at no charge. But if that doesn’t work out, if the patient doesn’t get what he/she paid for, give a refund.
What does that do? The patient knows you’re looking at him/her and looking for a result first, and that goes a long way towards creating positive public relations for your office. I know, you cringe a little bit when you have to give a few thousand dollars back. I know how much work you did in order to be able to try to give that patient a result. I learn from that experience. And an important lesson that I have learned when I was not quite as experienced as I am now is that a refund will go a long, long way towards helping you, get rid of that negative stigma that may have been attached to that particular procedure and raise your reputation. You can’t get better than that.
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