Dr. Kelly Henry, a successful Dallas chiropractor turned small business coach, believes small businesses must improve their customer service to survive and thrive. Dr. Kelly shares the formula he uses to help businesses achieve a 25 to 95 percent increase in profit. Great customer service is becoming known as the best form of marketing but Dr. Kelly shares how overconfidence and a transactional mindset will limit your success.
I had the opportunity to buy-out a couple of chiropractor practices throughout the years from retiring chiropractors who had let their businesses decline to the point there wasn’t much value left. So I made a mental note that I would not wait to sell my practice until the end of my career but instead, I would sell my business at the peak of its value.
I built my chiropractic business on the foundation of great customer service. Along with my chiropractic work, we decided to specialize in great customer service to help promote and grow the business. It was a 20-year long journey with coaching along the way that helped me find success and provide a great customer experience.
In my book Define and Deliver Exceptional Customer Service the formula I use is based on a study done by the Harvard Business School. In that study, they found out if you can improve your customer retention rate by only 5 percent it can lead to a 25 to 95 percent increase in profit. When we coach clients we begin with the 80-20 rule, we start by focusing on the most important 20 percent of customer service interactions that impact 80 percent of the customer experience.
The two main areas I see that hold a company back from delivering great customer service are overconfidence or a transactional mindset. What I often say is we need to learn to serve better in order to sell more. I have found that in the early stages of a new business they often provide better customer service but over time, as they begin to grow, they lose that focus on customer service. They start shifting into that transactional mindset which can be detrimental to the growth and long-term viability of the business.
When it comes to online businesses, there are three critical areas they can focus on to improve their customer experience. The first is to be faster or more convenient, the second is to be more friendly, the third is to resolve problems quickly. You might not be speaking with customers face to face but you can still offer exceptional customer service by excelling in these three areas.
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Dr. Kelly Henry:
If you can improve your customer retention rate by just 5%, it can lead to 25 to 95% increase in profits. And so that's what we're trying to do. We're going to provide a better level of customer service in that business, just to drive up that retention, that loyalty rate, to increase profits. That's the whole key concept. That's what we focus on.
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Gordon Henry:
Hello. This is Gordon Henry with Winning on Main Street and today we have an exceptional guest, Dr. Kelly Henry. Kelly Henry is a chiropractor turned business doctor and he's going to explain his system for getting your business healthy. And I should say full disclosure, Dr. Henry is no relation to me, Gordon Henry. He just happens to have a great last name. Good to see you, sir.
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Thank you, Gordon. I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.
Gordon Henry:
You live and work in the Dallas area and from, I think, 1999 to about 2018, you built one of the top chiropractic practices in the US and then you became a business doctor. Do I have that right?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
You have that right. That's correct.
Gordon Henry:
Yeah. Your book is called Define and Deliver Exceptional Customer Service. We're going to talk all about that, but let's start at the beginning of your career. You were a chiropractor for two decades, then you became a business doctor. How and why did you make that switch?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
That's a great question and I get that all the time. People think I'm crazy because got out of a great career and moved into something completely different. I had the opportunity to buy out a couple of chiropractors through my career, retiring chiropractors that basically had nothing left for me to buy out, unfortunately for them, but it was good for me at the time. And I just made a mental note that I wasn't going to let my career get to that point where I was past my prime and let my business get to the point where I was selling it for pennies on the dollar. If I was going to retire, I was going to do it at the pinnacle of my career.
And fortunately, that's what I was able to do. My business, my chiropractic businesses were built on the foundation of great customer service. That's what we somewhat specialized in. Obviously I specialized in chiropractic, but we specialized in that operating system to help promote and grow my businesses. That was a 20 year long journey that I utilized. I've also been coached since about 2003 and had consultants and coaches personally and business wise. I saw the impact of that on my life and career. When I sold out, again, I knew the impact of customer service on my business and wanted to communicate that to others. I knew how coaching had benefited me and impacted my business and my life so I just meshed the two together and here I am.
Gordon Henry:
Okay. You didn't really have business training prior to becoming a chiropractor, but you ran a super successful chiropractic business for 20 years and you based it on customer service and so that gave you the expertise to know how to tell others what you learned, right?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Basically, yes. And again, a lot of that came from trial and error and making a lot of mistakes, but also from great coaches and consultants that I had hired through the years as well.
Gordon Henry:
Okay, great. Before we get into the details, I do just want to ask you right off the bat, you've I'm sure delivered great results for your business customers. Can you sort of give us a flavor? One of the quotes I saw on your LinkedIn profile was a guy who said that he's worked with you and you had helped increase his collections by over $120,000 a year from prior years. Are those the kinds of results people expect?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
To some degree. I don't ever guarantee those kinds of results because every business, every industry, every person's different what you're dealing with. What I do guarantee is I will give my best to that business. And I only do one on one coaching so I want to know who I'm dealing with. I want to know the business intimately. I want to be able to help that business in real time so they can make the best decisions and move forward properly. And so I will give my best but we're seeing results like that pretty regularly.
I also have another one where it was a startup where we worked with, it was a physical therapy office. They were just starting off, just coming out of the blocks and we helped them understand not only customer service, but I had a lot of similarities from when I was opening my chiropractic offices to what they were doing. And so business wise, and we were able to help them get on a very sure foundation and scale their business up within six months to a great level. Everybody's different, every business is different so I don't want to guarantee anything, but if they'll latch into it, we're going to see some great results.
Gordon Henry:
Okay. Your book is called Define and Deliver Exceptional Customer Service. Let's get into the system a little bit. Can you describe broad speaking, what is the system or formula that you recommend for business success?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Basically, it is based on my formula, my programs, my coaching is based on a statistic or a study done from the Harvard Business School. And they found out if you can improve your customer retention rate by a measly 5%, by just 5%, it can lead to 25 to 95% increase in profits. And so that's what we're trying to do. We're going to provide a better level of customer service in that business, just to drive up that retention, that loyalty rate to increase profits. That's the whole key concept. That's what we focus on.
Gordon Henry:
Okay. And then what's system for delivering great customer service?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Well, there's several layers to it. My programs are based on the, I'm going to call it the 80/20 rule. I'm sure you're all familiar with that. We're going to look at and work on and be very good at the 20% of things that customers really, really recognize and really want in a business as far as customer service, which will obviously create the 80% of impact on the customer, but also onto the business. The key components are we're going to lay a great foundation as far as the principles and rules. We're also going to create a team atmosphere and create a scenario where the employees are valued as much, if not better than what the customers would be valued for that business. That is a huge component that many, many businesses miss the boat on. And if we don't get that working right, you can put whatever actions and principles into play, but ultimately that will get undermined because of the team dynamic or lack thereof team dynamic in the business. We got to make sure that's in play.
We also want to be really good at and look at how to be more efficient and quicker and more convenient for your customers. You and I talked about that off air that customers will actually look at that more than they will look at how having a friendly conversation with the service rep. But we want to put both those together ultimately is what we want to do. We want to have that friendly atmosphere, but we also want to be very quick and efficient and convenient for customers to do business. And then the last key component is to be very, very good at handling problems in an efficient manner and to the satisfaction of the customer. When you put those core concepts together, that 20%, it has a chance to have phenomenal results and benefits for business.
Gordon Henry:
Right. Right. Are most of the businesses you work with small to medium size businesses? What's your average customer like in terms of size?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Exactly. 50 employees or less is really my sweet spot. Now I have dreams and aspirations to move in and pass that. But being a small business owner, that's my sweet spot. That's who I like to work with.
Gordon Henry:
Right, right. Yeah. We talked to off air and I gave the example of everybody's ordered something pretty much by now from Amazon and I think Amazon has exceptional customer service because I know when I order it, it gives me the notification. I know when it's on the truck, I know when it's being delivered to my house. I know when it shows up at the door and it's always what I ordered and I've never spoken to anybody there and I don't care because they get me what I want. It's a fair price and it's always on time, unless it's some extraordinary circumstance. And that's what I want. That's what I expect. It's not that I want to speak to somebody with a pretty voice who tells me how much they care about me. And yet that's so many times what you get from a business is you don't get the product or service you want at the price and the time you want it, but you get the friendly voice that's saying, "Oh, I'm sorry."
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Exactly. And that's, Amazon's obviously the gold standard as far as convenience and being expeditious in what they're doing. That's why that's such a critical area. Now not everybody, not every business, an online business and you're buying products in that manner, but again, just seeing those little things and helping to eliminate roadblocks and inconveniences and those issues that, yeah, they got a great voice and they have great attitude, but dang, they're slow in what they're doing. I call that the and and but. You want to have your customers say and, not but. Hey, they're really, really friendly, but they're so slow in their delivery. You don't want that.
Gordon Henry:
Yeah. Yeah. Tell us why the small businesses seem to have such a problem with what you're describing with customer service? Why is that? Why is that an Achilles' heel of the small business?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Well, two reasons. One is they often get into the mindset or having the delusion that they do provide great customer service. Now, most businesses have pieces of good customer service. Yeah, maybe they have the friendly voice, but they're extremely slow or vice versa, whatever the case may be. And they feel like because I had this piece and this piece that overall, that synergistically makes us have great customer service. And that's just not the case. If you don't feel like you have a problem, you're not going to be looking for areas to improve. And so they just let it go. But in the customer service realm, when you have holes, you're pushing customers out the door, you're losing them to your competition and you're obviously losing profits. You have to be so careful of that.
Another thing that businesses get focused in on is instead of being service minded, they are stuck in being sales minded. They're stuck in being transaction minded and customers feel that. If they feel like you're just in it for the money, just in it for the transaction, just trying to make that other sale, kind of the used car salesman type mentality, that may not be that dramatic, but customers can feel that. Where they don't feel valued, they just feel like, hurry up and give me your money so we can move on to the next customer. That is a big mistake. What I teach my customers and what I often say is, "We want to be able to serve better, which actually is going to help you be able to profit and sell more." That's what the key is, serve better, create relationships. That's going to help you be able to sell more and grow and profit your business.
Gordon Henry:
Right. We find that so many of these businesses, small businesses, do deliver a very good product or service. And what I mean is that that business owner is a great plumber or a great roofer or a great remodeler or a great chiropractor or what have you. They're really good at their craft because they've been doing it for a long time and they love it, but maybe they're not necessarily a great quote unquote business person, whatever that means. And so some of the things we expect as customers, whether it's a call back or a good website, or transparent price, whatever, they don't offer, because maybe they don't know how to do that. Do you attack that? And how? Do you install systems? Do you use technology? Do you have a process that you give them? What is your way of enhancing this business system that maybe isn't as good as it should be?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Well, I start off and I mention this one on my programs. We're going to start off with an audit basically. And that's kind of a dirty word obviously, but we audit their customer service system and actually what's going on in the business. And that's what I love about being one on one with them because I really get a whole lot better understanding of where they're at. Yeah, they're good at this and they're a great plumber or they're great at installing air conditioners, but they're terrible at callbacks and getting invoices out or whatever the case may be.
And so I'll get an intimate look at that and then we'll address those issues. The key is, as far as the customer service, is getting those core pieces in place that I talked about, the actions, the team, the being more efficient and then solving problems. And then outside of that, let's start looking at the other areas that are from a business standpoint that can really be causing them problems as far as the perception of them providing great service or being a great business. That's usually the case. We'll just, we'll audit through it and figure some things out. And it's usually, it's pretty glaring where the deficiencies are. And so we can start working on those.
Gordon Henry:
Yeah. Sounds like going to the dentist to get a drill, do a drilling or something, this audit. Yeah.
Dr. Kelly Henry:
It is. And it's hard on a business owner when some of these things come to light and they have to be willing to suck up some pride and say, "Hey, do I want a better business? Or do I want to be right? Or do I want to take care of this in a proper manner? And so you have to check your pride so your business will be better and ultimately more profitable.
Gordon Henry:
Right. Well, we're going to drill into that audit process a little bit more in just a minute. We're going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor.
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Gordon Henry:
We're here with Dr. Kelly Henry and we're talking about his business audit process and how to deliver exceptional customer service. We were talking about the business audit. Sounds uncomfortable, but that's part of your process when businesses sign up and you go through the audit. First of all, how long does an audit take to do it?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
It's not very long. Basically it's just a series of questions, just hitting the, do you do this? Do you do this? Do you do this? How do you do this? And just seeing where they are and how much they've actually looked at it and have they thought about it and those types of things and just working through a series of questions to get an overall feel of where their business is, mainly from customer service, but then also from a business standpoint.
Gordon Henry:
Okay. And then after you've collected that information, you go off and develop some thoughts and then come back to the business with recommendations?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Exactly. Again, most every business, well every business I've worked with, is deficient in most of those areas that I talked about as far as the core pieces of my program for the customer service. That's the first thing we're going to work on is just work through that. And then we'll see, obviously the other deficiencies that come to light. And so we'll develop a plan that, okay, once we get through this, then let's start working on these pieces of the puzzle too so we get just the whole atmosphere of the business is going to be completely different. Not only the customer service culture, but how the business is functioning as a whole.
Gordon Henry:
Got it. How much do your services cost for the typical customer?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Well, I have three different levels. I have an entry level, which is basically just a week. Couple calls, we're going to dive into really where the biggest holes are and work on trying to sure those up as quickly as possible. And that's 899. Then I have a midpoint, I call it my Prime Program, which is three months. And again, we're going to dive in a little deeper, be able to take care of few more things, really trying to get those core concepts, core pieces into play. And then my, what I call my Alpha Program is six months. It's a 6,900. We're going to dig very deep. It's going to be weekly calls. It's going to be constant interaction where we can really solve a lot of problems and really get things sured up very nicely for that business to move ahead in a whole different trajectory.
Gordon Henry:
Okay. It can go from a week to three months to six months for the longest session.
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Exactly.
Gordon Henry:
Yeah. Okay. Well, that makes sense. And my understanding is you also do a free upfront 10 minute analysis call if somebody wants to just get to know you and maybe you can evaluate whether they're a good candidate?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Exactly. You can schedule a call by going to my website, drkellyhenry.com. And, I say 10 minutes, it may last a little bit longer than that. Usually it does, but basically I just want to know where your problems are, understand what your issues are and just see if I'd be a good fit and see if and you can do the same with me and see if I would be a good fit for your business moving forward. But it's just a quick, simple chat. Get a little information from both sides and then go from there.
Gordon Henry:
Right. They say that 50% of small businesses won't make it more than five years, that half of them go out of business in that five year period. Why do you think that is? Is it just some aren't cut out for it? Or the economy's tough? Why do you think that happens when probably most people going into business have very high hopes?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
You bet. There's a lot of variables there, obviously. And I think what you just said is two of the most common. Another one is, we bring a product or service into a market that doesn't need that product or service. You can have the best customer service in the world and it's not going to save your business unfortunately. A lot of them lose out to, they're under capitalized, they don't have enough cash to move forward. They lose out to competition. Those two really tie into customer service.
What I found and through my research too, have found that there's when a new business starts out, intuitively they provide better customer service. They're trying to get their mark, get their product out, their service out. They're being friendly. They're very promotional and trying to develop a great reputation, obviously. And maybe that business takes off and they start doing pretty decent and they're making some profit. But slowly over time because of hiring employees and keeping up with demand, they lose that focus on customer service and they start shifting into that, like I mentioned earlier, that sales mindset.
Oh man, we got to make more sales. We got to make more transaction. We're not keeping up. We were doing better a year ago. And those type things and all of that mindset shifting into trying to sell, sell, sell, we lose that service aspect. It can be very detrimental to a business and that's what I see a lot with the small businesses. They intuitively had that great customer service and then it starts to plateauing off and even gets worse as their mindset is just on marketing and sales and marketing and sales. And they just never can recover from that.
Gordon Henry:
But some of your program is about customer acquisition. It's not just about customer retention and customer satisfaction. You do focus on customer acquisition as well. Is that right?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Well I do, but it's acquisition from the standpoint that the more customers you retain, as you increase that retention, naturally, they're going to refer friends and families and acquaintance to your business. That's what that acquisition generally will come from. Great customer service is kind of known as the new marketing. I'm not saying that should be your sole focus, but when you're doing it correctly and you're creating that retention and that retention of new customer or customers is creating a referrals, that can take away from your marketing. You don't have to market it as much as you once were. And again, it's that sales focus that just drive more customers into, hey, let's focus on building relationships and keeping more customers in the business, which is going to drive referrals.
Gordon Henry:
Right. Right. You mentioned great customer service, kind of the new marketing and getting referrals and so forth. And that leads us a little bit into the discussion about online and how online has changed marketing. What do you tell your customers in terms of things like building a website, using email, accepting electronic payments? What about their use of the tools or the technology that today many consumers expect?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
You bet. Do it. We talked about being convenient, that is a key component. And again, Amazon's the gold standard. It's going to be difficult to achieve that level, but the more convenient you make it for your customer to do business with you, the better you're going to be. Now from a standpoint of, and generally this is the three things that I tell an online business, if they can focus on three components of better customer service, one is being faster and more convenient, obviously. The second one is being friendlier. You may not be talking to a customer face to face like we're doing here, but they can talk to their customers through text and email and presentation on the website.
You want to be friendly. You want to hello and thank you and use those terms, particularly on emails and text. Those go a long way and show appreciation and value to the customer. That's another key component. And then the other issue is being able to fix an issue, a problem when the business drops the ball and do that in an expeditious manner and doing it properly to the satisfaction of the business. If an online business can do those three things, that helps tremendously in that perception of great customer service for their businesses.
Gordon Henry:
Right. Well, one of the things we have found is that sort of every business is an online business today. That if you're any of those service businesses we've been using as examples, whether you're a doctor, dentist, lawyer, plumber, remodeler, in a sense you're all online businesses because no, is the service delivered online, of course not. But most of us live on our phone. Most of us expect an appointment to be delivered into that phone and to get a reminder to show up or that you're showing up. And they expect to be able to get a bill on their phone and they expect to be able to pay on their phone and get a receipt on their phone. Everything is technology driven because we're all sitting with this supercomputer in our pocket called an iPhone. And that's what people are expecting. If you don't do that and it's still all paper and pen and envelopes and postage stamps, like it was in the 1950s, some people may find that charming, but a lot of people get tired of it pretty fast.
Dr. Kelly Henry:
They do. What's funny, from a standpoint of where I practiced, I tried to do that in my office and make it much more convenient for my general patient population. But I treated a lot of Medicare patients, the older population and I loved it. They were great patients, but they were dead set against being able to get a receipt or pay on their phone. They wanted the envelope, they wanted the input. That's not the case for most businesses, but that's something to consider that you may still have to have that option for all segments of your business, but the vast majority is going to want the convenience of everything being sent to your phone and connecting digitally.
Gordon Henry:
Right. For sure. How has it been for you this year with COVID? COVID's changed a lot of things for a lot of people. One of the things we've seen is that certain businesses, not all, but certain businesses have actually flourished during COVID. Obviously those hard hit have included the travel businesses, hospitality businesses, restaurant businesses and we all feel terrible about what those people have had to go through. But at the same time, there have been businesses like home service businesses that in many cases have flourished because we're all sitting home, in many cases when we wouldn't have been. And we're looking at the peeling paint or looking at the chips on the floor, or the kitchen that needs remodeling or roof that's leaking and saying, "Hey, now is a good time to do that." And so many home services businesses are extremely busy, actually doing very well. Is that something you've noticed, that trend?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Absolutely. Being here in Texas, we haven't been quite as hard hit as far as the shutdowns, but yes, the two things that I've really noticed, you mentioned the handyman home services. I use one that lives in our community and it used to be, hey, they could get to me this week and now it's, hey, it's going to be probably a month before we can get to you because we're so booked. Another one of the service, I guess you can call it a service or a product is pool builders here in the Dallas area. I actually built a pool two years ago, thankfully and it was a matter of weeks from when I talked to the builder to when they were digging a hole. Now I understand it's two years out before they can get to building a pool, because like you said, everybody's stuck at home and hey, might as well have a pool. If I'm going to be stuck at home, be stuck at home in style.
Gordon Henry:
Right. There you go. Yeah, exactly. Well, we just have a few minutes left. This has been a great conversation. I'd like to ask you a couple of, I guess, more personal questions just to understand a little bit Dr. Kelly Henry, the person. First of all, you seem like a pretty busy guy. You're obviously a very successful guy. Tell us a little bit about your kind of daily regime. You have any particular habits you pursue that kind of make you a more successful person?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
I do. I tend to get up at 5:30 AM. That's my normal get up time. First thing I do is I got to get my coffee. Have a couple of cups in the morning. That's a vital. But the first thing after I get my coffee is I'll read the scriptures, read the Bible. And then I have my prayer time immediately. From that, I'm going to read for half an hour every morning, I read either inspirational, informational or educational material. I read. I also, I typically read digitally so whatever I'm reading, I will take a copy of whatever hits me from that book and I'll put it in a note. And then I take those notes at the end of the book and keep a copy of those for further reference so I can build my knowledge base off what I've read. But like I said, I read half an hour every morning.
I'll check some emails, do some early business stuff and then I will go work out. I work out seven days a week, generally high intensity interval training and some weight work, but I do that seven days a week. Then get cleaned up and then I'll hit the computer or whatever I need to do as far as business. I'm a morning person so I work in the morning and then I tend to fade about 2:00 PM. I know it's time to shut down about 2:00 PM in the afternoon and then I'll take a break from 2:00 to about 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening and then I'll do some more work stuff in the evening, right before I go to bed. That's my typical day right there.
Gordon Henry:
Okay. Well, we're doing in this late afternoon, so I guess this is your break time is podcasts.
Dr. Kelly Henry:
That's right. I should be napping. No I'm kidding.
Gordon Henry:
And what do you do for fun or pleasure other than everything you just told us about? Any sports or just outside activities?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
I'm a golfer. Actually, I gave up golf for about 10 years as my kids were growing up and they were playing sports and it was just taking up too much time, but my youngest son's a senior in high school and so I just figured I need to have a hobby once he heads off to college in the fall so I picked up golf again and thoroughly enjoy it.
Gordon Henry:
That's great. That's great. And lastly, can you tell us a great book or podcast or some other material you might recommend to our listeners?
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Absolutely. Great book and actually I'm reading it right now. I've read this author's couple other of his books, but this one has really impacted me and I'm thoroughly enjoying it and I'm almost done, but it's called Burn Your Goals. And it's by Joshua Medcalf and Jamie Gilbert and a tremendous book on, we all have goals. I'm a big goals guy, but your goals don't mean anything if you aren't training and taking action to achieve them. That's the key component. Really great book. I'm really thoroughly enjoying it and I'd highly recommend it.
Gordon Henry:
Fantastic. Well, again, this has been a great 30, 40 minutes with us sharing your vision of how to help small businesses succeed. And that's really at Winning on Main Street, we're really trying to help small businesses succeed and your ability to sort of turn that into a message about customer service, I think is something that everybody will really appreciate. Thanks again for your time today.
Dr. Kelly Henry:
Thank you, Gordon. Again, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much.
Gordon Henry:
We've been speaking with Dr. Kelly Henry. He is the author of Define and Deliver Exceptional Customer Service. And if you're interested in availing yourself of his services, you can go online, find the free 10 minute analysis call and speak with him for free and get his insights on your business. And if you're interested in going further with him, as he described three great services he can provide, different price levels, different lengths of time that can help you make your business better in the important area of customer service. This has been Gordon Henry and we will see you next week.