Fun Fact: We’re quite the musical family. Susan played piano and violin as a child, I’m a drum and guitar guy, and all 4 of our kids take piano lessons (and play more beautifully than I ever could).
You will often find us blasting music around the house – while practicing sports, having a game night or even just doing chores.
One of my favorite music-oriented possessions is our TurtleBox – a small bluetooth speaker that packs a big punch.
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I’ve had my share of cheap bluetooth speakers. You spend $40, get something that sounds halfway decent, but only for a short time.
Then the speaker starts to crackle, the battery life drops, and it become relatively useless in short-order.
So at some point, like any responsible adult would do, I realized you get what you pay for. So I forked over $400 for one of these Turtleboxes. For that kinda scratch, my expectations were high. And boy did the Turtlebox exceed them.
It’s insanely loud, but the audio is still clear when it’s cranked up. The battery lasts for hours. And it’s waterproof, so you can have it on the beach or by the pool without any worries.
But I recently had a problem with my Turtlebox…
One of the rubber feet on the bottom came loose and went missing. Not a huge deal – it didn’t impact the actual function of the speaker at all.
But now it was wobbly, which started to bug me. So I headed over to their website to see if I could buy a replacement.
They don’t sell rubber feet, so I then turned to Instagram. I messaged the page and told them my dilemma and asked if it would be possible to order new feet directly from them.
I received a rapid response: “Hey, shoot me a pic of the speaker so I know what model it is. Send me your address and I’ll send one out to you.”
Awesome! Didn’t even ask me to pay or cover shipping.
3 days later, I received a box from the company. I was a bit surprised, seeing as the rubber feet could have easily fit in an envelope for cheaper shipping.
Upon opening the box, I discovered a full set of new rubber feet and this rad trucker hat, which they sell for $30 on their website.
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Without spending a penny, without jumping through hoops, without waiting in a customer service phone queue… they solved my problem and added surprise-n-delight to my experience. Simply for being a loyal customer.
So what can we learn from Turtlebox?
1. Turtlebox is a premium product with a premium price point. They charge what they’re worth, and they deliver on high expectations.
If you’re the best in town, act like it. Charge like it. Deliver like it.
Because all this customer service would ring hollow if the product was crap in the first place.
2. The more you charge, the more margin you have for customer service.
Is Turtlebox the Ritz-Carlton of the speaker industry? They surely act like it.
Neither company is cheap. Neither cut corners. Both are apparently keen on providing a great customer experience.
But part of that is having the financial bandwidth to provide customer experience at such a high level.
Turtlebox has margin, which is why they (and Ritz) have the time, energy and capital to randomly send product to customers and provide quick, helpful communication.
The lower your prices, the lower your margins. (Your prices may be low, but rent stays the same.)
And the lower your margins, the more patients you have to see. The more people you have to see, the more your customer experience suffers. Long wait times, overextended team, etc. And the result of that is fewer conversions to surgery and lower employee retention.
Can you see the death spiral that occurs when you operate from cheapness / scarcity vs. high-ticket / abundance?
Not saying you do that, but in this less-than-rad economy, you might be inclined to start getting cheap. Don’t. Because it’ll cost you.
3. Turtlebox took care of it.
I had a problem, and they took care of it. I was happy to pay for them to take care of it. I would have immediately sent them $10 or $20 to get my problem fixed. I just wanted it handled.
People in your market – particularly the kinds of folks you are going after – are the Ritz-Carlton, First-Class flight types. They don’t want to jump through hoops or go through complicated, drawn out processes.
They just want someone to handle it. “I have bad vision. I want to get it fixed.” Cool, we’ll handle it.
In fact the top Patient Referral Strategy we teach leverages this exact principle, and it works like gangbusters for the practices who implement it.
Patient’s got an issue? Needs more info, needs flexibility in scheduling, wants something to drink, would like to talk to a doctor again? Take care of it.
4. Empower your team to make all this happen.
I don’t know who answers Instagram DMs at Turtlebox. But I guarantee you he didn’t go ask for permission to send me a few rubber parts and a hat that cost them $6 to make.
At some point along the line, someone empowered him/her to “take care of it.”
It looks something like this:
- If someone has an issue, if you can fix it for under $25 cost to us, fix it.
- If you can additionally make someone’s day by giving them free swag, do it.
- You are authorized to give away A, B, C, D, E, F or G if it solves a problem or somehow makes a customer’s life better.
- Any time you do this, it’s a win. I want you to focus on getting 1 win per day, and you are required to share a minimum of 1 previous-week customer win at the team meeting every Monday.
You can take that same model and apply it to your team. Empower them to fix it. To surprise and delight. To make people’s days.
There are 100 ways to do this (and we go over them in detail in our coaching community, I can’t give everything away here). But this isn’t rocket science.
There’s an added benefit to empowering your team – they start to take more ownership.
Here’s the thing:
You WANT your folks to feel ownership over their job roles and their patients. “This is mine! I’m responsible for making sure this person / team / process is taken care of.” YES YES YES.
So when you empower your people… not only are you improving your customer experience, you’re also creating the culture you want your team to experience and exude.
In conclusion – definitely go get a Turtlebox. And do everything else I outlined here. 👆
AND…
If you’re looking at your marketing budget going into 2025, and you want to allocate a small portion of those funds in a way that will create OUTSIZED results for you… reply and let’s discuss 1-on-1 coaching for your phone / surgery scheduler teams.
If you do any marketing at all, there’s a good chance some of that $$ isn’t creating a return for you. Not your fault, that’s just how it is.
But we can peel off a sliver of that marketing $$ and invest it in your TEAM. Then see what happens to your conversions, your culture and the overall vibe of your practice.
– Troy “Rock On” Cole