Last week, Rocket, my German Shedder, decided to turn himself into a 110-lb., fur-covered missile aimed directly at my left knee. Ouch.
I get to the doc, and he sends me over to a radiology center right across the street from his office that exclusively does MRIs, X-rays, CT scans, etc. and takes walk-ins (or hobble-ins like me, LOL).
I arrive and hand the order to the lady behind the desk. She tells me they can do the X-ray, but the MRI machine is on the fritz. I say fine, and she processes me for just an X-ray. Five minutes later, she calls me back and says the order stated I needed my ankle as well as my knee, but she missed that. I have to do all the signatures for all the paperwork again. Fine.
As I’m waiting, I can hear what sounds like an episode of The Three Stooges happening behind the desk as they argue with each other. Patients are upset because they have to be canceled and rescheduled due to the machine being down.Some patients are walking in and being told about the cancellation there, instead of in advance to save them the trip, and they’re understandably frustrated.
I head back to get the X-ray, get on the tableand into position (in a very uncomfortable position, I might add). The tech runs away to push the button and… she can’t get the X-ray machine to work. The two techs operating it are discussing out loud how it’s been causing problems… and maybe it’s the battery… or maybe it’s the connection. She has to reboot the machine. After about 10 to 15 minutes, they figure it out. As I’m leaving, I ask for a copy of the X-ray on a disc. She tells me to go sit in the waiting room and they’ll bring it out.
Ironically, in the waiting room I’m sitting across from, two water fountains that have giant “Out of Order” signs on them. Seems like this place has a theme.
Can you guess what happened? The machine DID take the X-ray, but they can’t get the image onto a CD or uploaded to the system to send to the doc. She says, “IT is working on it. You can sit here and wait, but it could be hours.” No apology, I might add. I decided to come back and pick it up later, and schedule the MRI with another imaging center so I don’t have to deal with this clown show.
What’s the point?
This place has ONE JOB. To take and deliver medical images. That’s the table stakes. That’s how they make money. No images, no money. Simple. A step above glamour shots. If you can’t do the ONE THING that makes you money, you ought not be in business.
When I’m consulting MSPs on how to grow, one of the things we must have in place is at least a good service to sell. Ideally, that includes good onboarding and good customer service.
If they don’t have that, adding on new clients will only accelerate the pace at which people find out your service sucks—NOT a productive exercise when the goal is to get and KEEP customers, so you can secure the return on investment in getting them in the first place.
Never forget that service marketing STARTS with the service.
Before you use your money to acquire more customers, invest those dollars into making a service so good that people can’t help but REFER others, not WARN others to stay away.
What’s YOUR “one job”? Maybe you have too many “one jobs” and that’s the problem —you have too wide a reach in types of customers and service plans, and it’s unnecessarily complicating your business and making it very difficult to scale.
In a crowded, competitive marketplace, you need at least ONE thing you excel at. ONE result you can do better than everyone else. ONE type of client or problem you can solve exceptionally well or in an exceptional way. Every big business started out as a small business doing ONE THING very, very well and expanded from there; but, if you never become great at anything, you never get the foundation to build on.
Related: The Fastest Way to Win More MSP Customers? Become Harder to Get (for the Right Reasons)
