Find the moment your customers dread

Serving as a Vegas Chamber Ambassador puts me at a lot of ribbon cuttings, and some of them stay with me. Avocabo Dental & Orthodontics was one. It doesn’t feel like a dental office. It feels like it was designed by kids, for kids: bright colors, playful branding, a welcoming team, and small touches everywhere that turn a visit families usually dread into one they look forward to.

Innovation doesn’t always mean a new product. Sometimes it means changing how people experience what you already do.

Every business has its own dental-chair moment, the part of the experience people dread:

• The invoice nobody can read.
• The hold music.
• A new hire’s first week.
• The handoff between sales and operations.

Most owners never notice theirs. They’re too close to it, and they’ve stopped seeing the business the way a stranger does. This is one of the quiet advantages of a council made up of owners from different industries. A contractor, a medical practice owner and a distributor will each walk through your process the way a customer would, and they will ask about the part you stopped noticing years ago.

Try it yourself first. Walk through your business as a first-time customer, then again as a first-day employee. Then let someone outside your industry do the same.