By Paul Wright | Physio Professor
I am often asked by health business owners what is the absolute best and most effective method to increase patient bookings in health care business.
For those who have attended one of my live lectures, a webinar or watched one of my health business marketing DVD’s – the answer will come as no surprise.
It is, of course, a regular and systematic follow-up phone call system.
One Month Follow Up Call System
The typical system we recommend involves therapists calling any and all clients who have not attended your clinic for a treatment session for between 30 and 60 days.
This list is essentially called a “One Month Follow Up Call List”
From our experience, when combined with the “Golden Script” – asking the patients, “Are You 100%” – this system should result in a 2-3 out of 10 re-booking rate.
If you learn nothing else from this post today – at least make sure you have a One Month Follow Up call system in your business.
Set out to make it a systemized strategy and I can assure you the results will change your business!
Common Mistakes With The Call System
However, there are a vast number of health business owners who are missing out on this incredible marketing system – or just mucking up the process totally.
Here are a couple of common mistakes when using or starting a “One Month Follow Up Call System.”
Mistake One
– Not having this system in place at all.
This system is such an easy form of internal marketing that costs you nothing extra, except a bit of time. I find it incredible that so many health business owners are sitting by the phone waiting for their long lost of clients to get back in touch.
Don’t wait for them to call you!
Be proactive. Give incredible customer service and contact them first to make sure they are progressing well.
Wanna meet, learn, and network with physiotherapists across the country?
Mistake Two
– Not training your team in the effective delivery of this follow up call.
You cannot just hand your therapists their call list and expect them all to be effective at re-booking and making a good impression in this call.
You need to script the call and play it out exactly the way you’d like to see it happen. Professional, precise, and patient focused.
Get your team to role play it over and over again and ensure all team members are confident and professional in their delivery of the message.
Mistake Three
– Not asking for the booking.
Again, due to a lack of training, I’ve heard way too many health professionals end these calls with something lame like:
“Well that’s not great Mrs Smith – keep doing your exercises for the next few weeks and call me if you don’t see some improvement.“
That’s just a bad ending.
If Mrs Smith is not 100% and is walking around in pain you need to get her into your clinic to find out exactly why she is not recovering the way you planned.
If you genuinely believe you have a need to see the client for a follow up session, to identify other potential issues, or make a referral to a fellow health professional, then you have a moral obligation to make an appointment for that client and help them get a great result.
If you always have their best interests at heart, convincing them to come in for a follow up isn’t all that difficult.
Mistake Four
– palming off these calls to the admin team.
I am a huge fan of delegation.
However, unless your therapy team have a utilization rate over 90% – meaning, their available time is filled with treating paying clients – then, I strongly encourage you to get your therapists to make these follow up calls.
In the majority of cases the therapist will get a much better conversion to re-bookings and will also be able to answer the more technical questions the patient may ask during this call.
The therapists also knows the individual patient’s condition and treatment plan, making them the ideal person to gauge the progress of their problem.
However, if the therapists are over 90% utilized, you may have no option but to get the admin team to make these calls, which is still a hell of a lot better than not making the calls at all.
So get cracking on your “One Month Call List” – you will be staggered at how effective this simple system is in increasing your clinic bookings.
All it takes is a little extra time on your part, or the part of your team, a systemized approach, and you’ll boost your patient booking consistency both now, and well into the future.
Give it a try, like I said, you will be staggered at how effective this system is!
