Have you re-considered your front office procedures recently? How is your phone answered? (I hope you are not still answering it yourself all the time). Whoever is answering it, have you written down exactly how, at what speed, and with what tone of voice you want the phone to be answered? For example…have you ever called a company in our industry that you weren’t sure if you got the company you thought you called? You need to make sure that when anyone calls they are immediately
- Sure of whom they called
- Know that the person on the phone was happy to answer the phone
- That the person will help them with whatever reason they called
- The person or people who answer your phone are the voice of your business! Make sure that your customers will like what they hear. If that person is you, practice with a recording to see if you need to sound more “perky” or speak more slowly.
Finally, have you written specific scripts for your reception person for the four or five most common questions people ask. These are pretty universal questions and you can write out exactly what you want your staff to say in response. Ask them to memorize these simple sentences. If you are the answerer, have a script will help you sound professional and will also help you be clear about what you really want to do say about “how many treatments,” “how much it costs,” “will it hurt,” “can you take my insurance,” and can you treat my ___ (named condition or disease).”
If you don’t have any front desk help, what would it take for you to hire someone? I absolutely guarantee that you can make more money with someone to run your front desk that you can by doing it yourself. Think about this…if you pay someone $13-15 per hour, but you are charging $50-60-70 per treatment, would you rather pay yourself the $15 or the $60? There is even a list of 20 other things this person could be doing when the phone is not ringing in Points for Profit (my biz for acupracs book). And, if this person’s presence allowed you to treat 1.5 extra patients per day on average, you’d more than pay for their services, be able to give someone a job, and make your office more professional at the same time.
It's worth thinking about.
Thanks for reading and best wishes.
