服务营销英文案例2.doc

CASE 3 Dr. Beckett’s Dental Office LAUREN K. WRIGHT A dentist seeks to differentiate her practice on the basis of quality. She constructs a new office and redesigns the practice to deliver high quality to her patients and to improve productivity though increased efficiency. However, it’s not always easy to convince patients that her superior service justifies higher fees that are not always covered by insurance. Management Comes to Dentistry “I just hope the quality differences are visible to our patients,” mused Dr. Barbro Beckett as she surveyed the office that housed her well-established dental practice. She had recently moved to her current location from an office she felt was too cramped to allow her staff to work efficiently梐 factor that was becoming increasingly important as the costs of providing dental care continued to rise. While Dr. Beckett realized that productivity gains were necessary, she did not want to compromise the quality of service her patients received. The classes Dr. Beckett took in dental school taught her a lot about the technical side of dentistry but nothing about the business side. She received no formal training in the mechanics of running a business or understanding customer needs. In fact, professional guidelines discouraged marketing or advertising of any kind. That had not been a major problem 22 years earlier, when Dr. Beckett started her practice, since profit margins had been good then. But the dental care industry had changed dramatically. Costs rose as a result of labor laws, malpractice insurance, and the constant need to invest in updating equipment and staff training as new technologies were introduced. Dr. Beckett’s overhead was now between 70 and 80 percent of revenues before accounting for her wages or office rental costs. At the same time provider overhead was rising,