The following article has been written by Chris from Clinic Answer, a telephone answering service designed for clinics.
You probably regularly hear that customer service is essential for any healthcare practice; in fact you’re probably getting sick of hearing it by now.
So why is there a constant noise around this subject? Well we’ve done the groundwork for you and laid out 5 statistical reasons why customer service will make or break your practice.
1. Typically clients are worth upwards of 10 times their first treatment.
For most clients, one treatment is only the starting point to long-term management of their problems. In fact, for some long-term forms of therapy, ten is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their treatment finishing. So remember that when your new client starts their first treatment with you, there’s the opportunity for you to help them more.
2. Bad news travels twice as fast as good news.
Bad news unfortunately makes more of an impact than good news. This is often why word of mouth has a big impact for a new practice, and also why a long established clinic could suddenly get a bad reputation very quickly within a local community.
3. It can be up to 5 times as expensive to acquire a new client, than to keep a current one.
Do you know exactly how much you spend on marketing to gain new clients to your practice? The cost of all those adverts in your local paper, sponsored social media postings, and the monthly fee to your SEO guru can be reduced significantly if you keep your current clients happy.
You’ve already won them round and earned their trust as their practitioner; you don’t need marketing to convince them!
4. For every customer who complains, 20 others stay silent.
As practitioners, your main focus is to relieve your client of discomfort in their lives; after all you became clinicians to help people. All too often however dealing with complaints can be a unhappy process. Make sure to identify, and understand a complaint in detail, as often the complaint you receive from one person is only the tip of the iceberg. Remember that complaints also act as improvement opportunities, so don’t shy away from them. Delve into the issue and make your practice even better so your clients aren’t experiencing the problem again.
5. Nearly 2 thirds of new clients hang up if they can’t talk to a real person.
Let’s face it, with social media, instant messaging and the ubiquitous nature of Google, people want their information fast, and this remains true when finding a healthcare practitioner. When a new client calls your clinic for the first time, what’s actually happening is they’re experiencing a first impression, so it had better count. Having a warm, friendly and helpful person to help with their enquiry beats a mundane automated voicemail hands down – now who do you think the client would seek treatment from?
Now you’ve read our 5 hard-hitting facts, take a moment to reflect on how much these impact your practice currently, and more importantly how you could make improvements to your customer service.
We’d also love to hear some of your thoughts about delivering great customer service to clients.
We’re all about providing great customer service for our clients; in fact our business focuses on helping practitioners deliver great customer service for their clients by managing their inbound phone calls, diary bookings, and even client emails – this means you have more time to deliver their treatments. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help then get in touch with us on https://clinicanswer.co.uk/.