It might be obvious but I've had a number of conversations on this basic topic lately about 'average medical spa patients'.

From my buddy Shmula who designs systems. 

Most organizations collect and report on metrics that are not descriptive of their processes. Some of you may have noticed that most metrics that are reported are the “average” or the “median”. Most people do not understand elementary statistics and their application to business. Here is the truth of the matter: Your customers do not feel the average — they feel the variation.Make

sure that your metrics reflect what your customers are feeling. The “average” is an inadequate measure and is not descriptive of what the customer is feeling. There are other measures that basic business statistics makes available to us that will help us (1) understand the customer better, (2) understand better where we can improve (3) identify ways in which we can further delight the customer.

Pete's exactly right and worth repeating.

Where Pete is talking about 'deviation from the average' as outside what the patient has come to expect, I'm using that term to highlight how a medical spa or physician looks at and services it's patients. There are any number of times when I've heard physicians or staff discuss 'average' patients.

When you first open your doors you are thinking of 'the sale', if you begin to achieve some level of success this quickly morphs into 'sales' and generalities begin to set in. You begin to use things like average sales, average consultations, average everything.

In and of itself that's not a terrible thing, except when it bleeds into patient interactions. If your 'average' patient spends $250 on Botox, a patient who's spending $150 might be thought of, and possibly treated in some subtle way as "below average". Are they? No. The average is an abstract construction that should remain in the realm of accounting. Don't let it migrate into your customer service. It's poison.

Your patients do not feel average.