By Rick Lau, Healthcare Entrepreneur
I recently got a call from a client I’ve been mentoring for the past couple of years. He owns multiple locations and was having a very tough month.
He called and told me he lost his superstar front desk and didn’t know what to do.
As you know filling a front desk position is difficult. It doesn’t pay that well and you’re asking them to do a lot. You have to spend all your time sifting through piles of resumes, then interviewing them… then once you find the right one you have to train and test them to see if they’re a good fit.
It’s a frustrating, time consuming, and painful process.
I’ve owned alot of clinics in the past 15 years and made just about every mistake in the book when it comes to hiring front desk. But through experience and modeling outrageously successful clinics. I discovered the key quality that the most successful companies look for to find an all-star front desk that drives more patients consistently and predictably.
They don’t look for people who worked for another medical practitioner or has receptionist experience. They really don’t care. They want people with sales experience.
In today’s hugely competitive marketplace your front desk must know how to sell. When you spend all this money on marketing to get the patient to call and they have questions. It’s your front desk’s job to get them to book an appointment instead of hanging up and going to your competitors.
Thankfully, after hiring hundreds of staff I created an easy blueprint to finding an all-star front desk that can sell and get you more appointments. That’s much more enjoyable and only takes 60 minutes. More about that in a sec…
So there’s a trend happening where clinics are starting to hire front desk with sales and customer experience.
When you have salespeople at your front desk it gives you a huge edge over your competition.
The next key distinction the top clinics understand is… they don’t name them “front desk.” Having that label can affect their performance because it makes them feel not valued enough.
Most successful clinics call them Client experience coordinators, hosts or patient care ambassadors. Try this and watch their performance skyrocket.
As I was talking to Roger on the phone he was telling me about his biggest pet peeves…
He said: “I either find someone who is great with numbers and billing but terrible with customer service. Or vice verse, I find someone who is great at customer service but terrible with numbers.”
I understand where he’s coming from when it comes to hiring front desk. I have some of my own pet peeves like:
- 100’s apply and have to sift through all them
- Some don’t show up to the interview
- They sound good in the interview but you don’t know if they’re a right fit unless you spend the time training and testing them.
Thankfully, after hiring hundreds of staff at my 100+ clinics I created an easy blueprint to finding an all-star front desk. That’s much more enjoyable and only takes 60 minutes.
Here’s the blueprint I shared with Roger and all my clients.
Your current patients give you an easy way to form a connection and get the channels of communication open with doctors.
Step 1: Select Resumes with Customer or Inside Sales Service
In today’s fiercely competitive marketplace you need salespeople. You want to find people with sales and call center experience that have a track record of staying at the job for more than 2 years. Don’t look for people with MOA diplomas or even those with healthcare experience. You want salespeople working at your front desk.
Step 2: Group Interviews To Rank Candidates: Select Resumes with Customer or Inside Sales Service
Not only does this save you time. It’s also a great way to see how these candidates rank. According to Shaw, “If they’re in the room, they’ve met minimum expectations for what we’re looking for in the role… I’m really looking for a cultural fit.”
At the beginning of the interview spend some time asking them to share their goals and missions.
Another great thing about doing group interviews is… if you invite 80 candidates, 30 show up, you just weeded out the people you don’t want.
Next, implement the intelligence test and teamwork test with the group (just click those links to download them)
This will allow you to see who are better communicators, teammates, and best fit for the job.
Step 3: Individual Interviews
After the group interview, pick the 2-3 best contenders. Also, make sure you bring other staff members in for these one-on-one interviews because you want to make sure they’re a good team fit.
Step 4: Reference Check + Personality Profile
Next, you want to validate what they said and then explore key areas for possible gaps in skills they need for the job.
I use the DISC profile for this.
It was developed by American Psychologist Dr. William Marsden in the 1920s. More than two million people have taken the DISC test which uncovers their behavior style such as people oriented, reserved, outgoing, task-oriented, and more.
I also like to use the Strength Finder 2.0.
This test will tell you their top 5 strengths. The theory behind it is to hire people who already have the strengths you want instead of trying to fix their weaknesses.
Step 5: Hire, Train, Measure
Last you have to train them with phone scripts and measure their performance to see if you have the right candidate.
By doing this process it will save you a lot of time and frustration of finding the perfect candidate. You’ll greatly increase your chances of finding a superstar.
The first month of hiring someone is the most crucial time.
Once you’ve hired your new “client experience coordinator” you have to measure their performance. What is their booking rate, both in person and over the phone?
Are they able to multi-task and do many different things at once without getting stressed out? Like taking appointments, answering phones, laundry, and take payments.
Over the years of hiring hundreds, I know within the first month if they have what it takes to do the job. If they don’t I’ll let them go sooner and bring in someone else. You want to hire slow and fire fast.
In fact, for every bad hire, it cost you $3000 per month or more if you factor in the overtime of training them, messing up bookings, or not answering the phones.
Now that you know what to look for. How do you train them the right way in the fastest way possible and measure their success/progress?
The Most Effective Strategy to Train and Measure Your New Hire.
You must provide them with high-quality training to:
- Understand the in and outs of your business.
- How to use your EMR and billing the right way.
- Give them a proven script to book the next appointment after every visit.
- How to book new patients who are calling over the phone so they don’t call your competitors instead.
- How to handle the most common objections:
Like:
- Price
- When you have no availability in the schedule
- It’s not covered by insurance
- I will call you back
- I have to ask my spouse
You want to make it fun and engaging. Use cue cards to role-play these common objections.
After that, a great call tracking software to use to see how your front desk is performing and how well they are booking appointments is CallHero. It records the phone call so you can see how well they are doing. You can even listen to it together to offer feedback.
This is a great way to test new hires as well as get real data on how well your staff is performing. Plus, you’ll hear if you’re staff is making costly but easily correctable mistakes that are causing your patients to flee to your competitors.
With this valuable training and feedback tool it will keep your staff at their best and accountable because they will know you can see how well they are doing.
After 30 days, you should know whether you should keep them or fire them fast. Next metric you must test with new hires and with current staff is are they answering the phones.
Did you know the average clinic has an answer rate of only 70%?
Jason was shocked when he discovered that his front desk was only answering 74% of calls and many of his patients were fleeing to is competitors. What was most surprising though, was how easy a problem it was to fix. Watch the video below to see how he did it?
See How This Clinic Owner Increased His Revenue by $15,000/month After Using Call Grader
The Call Grader test is a valuable call tracking metric tool for testing new hires and current staff. It will give you real data on how well they’re performing so you be certain they can do the job. Also, you can compare their performance to your other staff.
CLICK HERE to take the Call Grader test and see what your answer rate is…
