How to Promote Your Chiropractic Clinic to Get More New Patients Through Delighted Current Clients
Chiropractors always look for new patients and recommendations but sometimes neglect their current clientele. It’s typically an honest blunder but can have devastating consequences nonetheless. I know I keep saying this, but satisfied and happy patients already seen by your business are a great way to bring in more of the same. Following these simple guidelines can increase the number of satisfied patients who attend your practice. It’s possible that the most excellent chiropractic advertising you’ve ever done is centered on making your patients happy and healthy.
When you treat your patients well, they will treat you well, as the old chiropractic adage goes. True, grateful patients will gladly pay for the care they have received. In addition, they will likely recommend your services to others. They’ll assign new patients they hope you’ll guide to better health. The financial rewards are a nice bonus. A current patient’s referral is a chance to start a new patient on the path to better health through information, adjustment, and care. It’s crucial to put effort
into making people happier and healthier. This guarantees that the patient’s needs are the primary focus of treatment. This happy customer will also recommend you to their friends if given a chance. By default, a practice’s referral pool of potential new chiropractic customers grows more extensive when it has pleased and satisfied patients. Everyone benefits from this outcome. Doctors can help people while improving their quality of life, and patients benefit from their services. Now that you realize how important it is to have happy clients, we’ll go over five simple strategies for achieving the most significant levels of patient satisfaction possible in your office.
Facilitate the patient’s ease.
Listen.
Keep the workplace to sane standards.
Put forth additional effort.
Be grateful to your customers and show it.
Let’s break this down and look at it piece by piece.
1. Get the Patient to Feel Better
The needs of your patients should be considered at every stage of developing and implementing any new patient processes. You’ve probably heard this advice before, but when was the last time you actively applied it to your practice? While there will inevitably be instances wherein practice requirements take precedence over patient convenience, these instances should be the exception rather than the norm.
New patients are valuable additions to the business and should be treated as such. A friendly receptionist should welcome the patient as soon as they enter the building. While filling out the new patient papers, offer the patient a refreshing beverage or snack. The forms should have been pre-filled with much of their essential contact information.
The patient should be required to shift positions for the examination as little as possible. Exams performed while the patient is upright, sitting, lying down, and prone should ideally be grouped. The best placement for examination rooms is within or directly adjacent to imaging facilities.
Take, for example, the provision of hospital gowns. Do your inmates have a quiet place to undress? Can people store their personal belongings in a secure area? Make sure you have patient robes in a range of sizes. The patient should also be instructed on how to don the garment properly. If they’re too nervous or embarrassed, I’ll let them wear two gowns—one with the opening in the rear and one with the space in the front.
Having open lines of communication with patients is another method to ease their minds. Provide an outline of the upcoming events. New patients appreciate being advised of what to anticipate and given ballpark time estimates, so be sure to do just that.
Make sure repeat customers are taken care of, too! Treating new customers like royalty while ignoring your regulars can harm your business more than reasonably. Provide a drink and a nutritious snack to your established customers. Assume they are as unfamiliar with your practice as a new patient would be, and make every effort to put them at ease.
Although I have many other suggestions for you, I recommend that you question your patients themselves. Asking patients how they feel is an excellent method to gauge their level of relaxation. Simply asking customers for suggestions on making the office more pleasant will likely elicit a wealth of helpful information. Putting up suggestion boxes or conducting patient feedback surveys is a simple method. It doesn’t matter how you go about it; take the practical advice to heart. The first stage in making patients happy is ensuring their comfort.
2. Listen
This one needs little explanation, but it’s easy to overlook while getting through the day. You should pay attention when a sufferer is talking. Patients’ perception that their healthcare provider ignores them ranks high on typical complaints. Just listen to your customers for a minute or two longer.
Don’t just nod your head; make an actual attempt to listen. If you want to show a patient you were paying attention to what they were saying, repeat it to them. For instance, you could ask the patient, “Mr. Jones, am I understanding you correctly when you say that pain increases and travels down your left leg when you bend to your left like that?”
In addition, please pay attention when the patient brings up a topic unrelated to their therapy. While recording every detail of your patient’s lives is impossible, keeping track of events outside your office can be helpful. As we’ll see in Tip #4, this is crucial for making an additional effort. When you treat a patient like an individual, not a number, they notice and respect it.
Stop talking so much and start listening. You should prioritize effectiveness, but never at the cost of connecting with your patients. One of the significant challenges of being an effective chiropractor is learning to balance listening to a patient and getting through the appointment quickly.
3. Keep Your Office Policies and Procedures Reasonable
All dislike a tyrant. Maintaining order in the workplace requires establishing protocols and policies, but these need not be overly restrictive. When necessary, it is acceptable to deviate from the norm.
Here, we’ll use one guideline as an illustration. Fees for canceled appointments: a topic for discussion. Appointment cancellations are a significant roadblock to running a smooth business. It is now common practice to charge a fee to patients who do not attend their scheduled meetings. A physician I know in the Midwest is very authoritative in the office. He is presumably not as concerned with taking on new patients as his younger colleagues because he is nearing retirement. But ever since I’ve known him, he’s maintained a strict policy regarding workplace conduct. A $25.00 late fee for appointments missed without 24 hours notification will be charged.
Keep things in order by following established procedures, but don’t forget to use your head. If Mrs. Jones, a single mother with two jobs, fails to attend her meeting, you should understand that she has a lot on her plate. If you act reasonably, your customers will, too.
4. Do Your Best
The primary objective here is straightforward: provide superior care to competing facilities. There are an infinite amount of paths to success. Put your creative skills to use and do whatever you can to help your people.
Who doesn’t like getting more value out of their purchase? Who doesn’t appreciate being handled like a king or queen? Who doesn’t enjoy being treated like royalty every once in a while? I doubt it. Bring it up at the next staff gathering as a topic for open dialogue. Instruct your staff to list ways to go above and beyond for customers. Every effort should be made to streamline processes and reduce patient effort. Think of methods to provide such exceptional service that your patients will be completely blown away. Think of unique ways to treat your patients that won’t break the bank. Not only will you enjoy yourself, but you will also be astounded by how many chances to make people happy are wasted. Because of my deep interest in this matter, I shall disclose no secrets here. In a future piece, we’ll cover some strategies for going above and beyond.
5. Do something to let patients know how much you value them.
You might believe that showing gratitude for patients is as simple as consistently going above and beyond. Keep in mind that being proactive is now standard operating procedure. Your patients have come to expect nothing less than the finest from you. (No one ever said being at the top would be easy.) We need to go the additional mile and designate special occasions to publicly show our gratitude to those who have demonstrated patience with us.
There are several simple approaches to this. One frequent practice is to host a thank-you party for the patients. Schedule your patient appreciation gathering for a day, a week, or as long as you like. At my practice, we celebrate “Patient Appreciation Day” twice yearly. (Creative, huh?) It doesn’t matter what you call it. What goes down at your patient appreciation gathering WILL have a significant impact.
You can’t just have regular office hours and call it “patient appreciation day.” It’s not enough to hand out coupons and freebies here and there. The success of a patient appreciation gathering depends on the effort put into making it unique. Create exciting competitions and other activities. This is an event that must not be forgotten. The time and resources spent organizing a patient appreciation gathering will be well rewarded.
We plan to write extensively about this and related topics shortly. Read on for our guide to arranging the ideal celebration of patients’ gratitude. You can show appreciation for their patience until then by choosing one of these ten options.
1. Treat your patients with some holiday card love.
2. Send holiday greeting cards to your customers.
3. Send a new patient a letter of greeting and a “welcome kit” to make them feel at home.
4. Send a patient a letter on their “anniversary” of starting treatment with you.
5. Did a patient brag about their kid making the honor list or winning the little league championship? Even if they aren’t one of your patients, you should still congratulate that child!
6. Treat your most valued patients to a thank-you note and a discount, freebie, or gift card.
7. Existing clients, your gratitude is much appreciated.
8. Create unique business card-sized cards to show gratitude to specific customers.
9. Find thoughtful, low-cost tokens of appreciation for your patients to offer them on special occasions or whenever you feel like it.
10. Display “patient appreciation” on a bulletin board or whiteboard.
A monthly update to our patient appreciation dry-erase board in the waiting room. The phrase “We appreciate our patients because:” is displayed at the top. Every so often, we’ll add a new justification to the board. Patients are appreciated for many reasons, including but not limited to their dedication to improving their health, their thoughtfulness toward others, their reliability, and their understanding of the value of chiropractic care.
The advice given so far is merely the beginning. There appears to be no limit to the number of unique approaches that can be taken in a chiropractic office to increase customer satisfaction. There are countless one-of-a-kind and inexpensive methods to demonstrate gratitude to patients. Create your own, or check out our website if you’re short on time. To automate showing appreciation to patients, we provide exciting and reasonably priced products and free ideas and tools that will do 90% of the work for you. Whether you choose to use our assistance or not, we urge you to let your patients know how much you value their dedication to your business and their health. Putting the needs of your patients first can be the most effective form of chiropractic advertising you’ve ever used.
At ClinicallySignificantProductions.com, you’ll find a wealth of resources designed to help you promote your chiropractic business at a reasonable cost while educating your customers.
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