THE TWO SIDES TO MARKETING YOUR PRACTICE

I was reading an article today in USA Today about internet and email marketing. It is an interesting piece about the use of emails and other internet marketing methods to bring in new business. I think you'll get something out of reading it. To access this article click here.

This brought to mind taking a look at what happens with new patients or clients when they walk in the door - i.e. what their initial experience is with your office and how they will or will not be properly converted to an active patient or client. My point in this blog is that there can be two sides to marketing - what you do to get someone new in the door, and then what their experience is once they walk in the door. The information below concerns the later.

The facts are that a new marketing idea that is creating new people coming into your office can completely fall apart as soon as the new patient or client walks through the front door. The subject I am referring to is the lost art of customer service and the customer experience. The graciousness that a new patient/client coming into an office feels as he or she first walks in the door can make a huge difference in whether they will actually proceed with any recommended treatment plan. Your technical skill and all the fancy new equipment that you just leased for your practice is for naught if the new patient/client that just found your practice is not comfortable with you, any of your staff and/or feels ignored.

The customer experience can fall down at any point in a practice. We have seen it all too often that a treatment plan that was well explained to a client by the doctor was completely sabotaged by the Tech that had no authority to alter the treatment plan. We have seen the overly chatty chair side assistant that was “Just trying to make the patient more comfortable” completely talk the patient out of the chair to go get his or her dental work done elsewhere. In my own experience, I have had an office manager turn me away because she was unable to handle my questions regarding payment options for the services I needed. All of these situations can be easily handled with good coaching on the subject of customer service.

A good experiment for any practice owner to do is to walk outside his or her practice and close his or her eyes for a moment. Have the doctor or owner get the idea that he or she is a brand new patient or client and then have them walk into the practice. Get the idea of that brand new patient or client arriving to the practice on time for their appointment. Now, having that idea firmly in mind, walk in the front door and look around. What is your first impression? What do you see? How does the practice look? What is the staff doing? What do you hear? What odors linger in the office? Each and every person that is walking in your front door is unconsciously assessing all of these perceptions. Having other staff do the same experiment can be very beneficial as well. Have them jot down their observations and present them for discussion in your next staff meeting. What solutions can the team come up with to address these issues? If you really want to get an unbiased assessment, ask a friend or relative who is not known to the staff to call in and set an appointment and to note down how they were handled. Then have them come in for their appointment and go through the normal new patient routing in procedures. When they are done, have them honestly evaluate their experience as a new patient. Go over all the positives and negatives with your staff. Reinforce the positives – see how you could do more of these things. And, of course, address and fix the negative points that come up. Note all these points down and review and reevaluate them in a few months to make sure you are improving.

In this economy, the individual practice owner can ill afford to waste even one customer experience. Each customer that leaves with a bad impression of the practice is costly in terms of production and potential word of mouth. A very famous phrase in customer service jargon is “Nothing gets talked about more than a bad customer experience.” In fact marketing people have determined that a happy customer tells 1-3 people about his experience while a dissatisfied customer tells 7-10 people about it. It is a key datum for managers in any industry to keep in mind when assessing weak points of service in business. By making “Customer Service” the motto of your practice, you will ensure that the marketing dollars that you are spending to attract new patients and clients will be well spent and result in patients/clients returning to your practice for their health care needs.

If you have any feedback on this, let us know by visiting our discussion forum at the Silkin Facebook Page.

Larry Silver
President, Silkin

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