There's a restaurant in Portugal I've been going back to for years. Portugal has become a bit of a summer second home, and one year I even commuted back to London from the Algarve, but whenever I'm there we always end up in the same place.
It isn't cheap. In fact it's properly spenny. The fish is superb, the wine list is dangerously good and the view over the deep blue Atlantic is about as good as it gets.
Over the years the staff got to know me. Not because I'm anyone special, I just kept turning up. A nod as I walked in. "Don Todman, you've returned." A bit of chat. They knew what I wanted before I'd even opened the menu, and not a shot of Medronho in sight. It wasn't polished. It was gloriously shabby chic, sand between your toes.
Then one summer, almost all of them had gone.
The restaurant hasn't changed. Same grumpy owner. Same simple menu. Same wobbly tables. Same eye-watering prices. Same ridiculous view. And yet it isn't the same place.
It's easy for a restaurateur to think he's in the food business. He isn't. The fish wasn't the magic, because the Algarve is one long, beautiful parade of fish restaurants. The wine list wasn't the magic, because Portugal can go toe to toe with almost anywhere. The view certainly wasn't, because the whole coastline shows off.
The magic was a handful of people who made you feel recognised rather than processed.
Yonks in clinics has taught me exactly the same thing. Someone leaves, and you try to replace them with a better CV and a stronger evidence base. On paper it's an upgrade. Six months later the rebooking rate has quietly sagged and nobody can tell you why. Nothing went wrong.
Patients just stopped feeling known.
Most businesses would rather spend £30,000 on a new machine than £10,000 keeping the person people actually come back for.