Retention and Marketing

Okay, let’s bring this patient production cycle full circle and talk about retention and marketing. First of all, with your patient retention, we do recommend that after 3 or 4 days from the patient picking their glasses and contacts especially, that we just have a real nice touch base call to see how they are doing, are those glasses fitting right, do the contacts feel good? This gives us an opportunity to address any concerns or issues that they might have in a positive manner. Very, very important because we want to be able to address that rather than have them complaining to their friends and family and limiting our ability to get future referrals. Now with your recall and pre-appointing, we've gone over that thoroughly in your schedule management program, so again, be sure that you watch that. And as a reminder, we do recommend that patient communication facilitator when your practice is ready for that because that can be a huge value to helping to make sure that we keep that schedule full. 

Now, with your marketing, ask your patients how did they hear about us and track that. Usually there's a place in your PMS where you can mark, you can have set up a drop-down menu, to know how your patient heard about us. That is extremely valuable information. Let's say that you ran an ad in the local newspaper or maybe even you paid for ads on the internet and you're asking that question and nobody is saying that “oh yes, I saw that ad that you ran.” What's that tell us? Well, maybe that wasn't a good use of our marketing dollars or maybe they are saying “oh yes, I saw that Facebook video you guys did of your practice, love that and was looking forward to coming to see you. I saw you had great 5 star reviews.” Valuable information, but you don't know, what you don't know. So be sure to ask. And then of course, you're going to want to have somebody that knows how to utilize your social media network avenues as well as referrals, that is the best form of marketing that you can have. Simplest way is to ask for them. When you know a patient has had a phenomenal experience, whether it's you doctor, in the exam room or maybe you're dispensing those glasses and the patient is just raving about how they love their bright new red frames, it’s at that moment you want to say “oh, thank you so much Robin. I'm so glad that you enjoyed your experience with us and we truly enjoyed helping you. Here's a couple of my cards if you know of anybody else that we can help them with their vision needs. We'd be happy to help them and we'd appreciate you giving us the referral. Thank you so much.” It's as simple as that. We know that for every 10 times you ask, you're going to get one person to say yes and that continues to help our practice grow. 

So, there you have the patient production cycle. Of course we have programs that we go through on our online Optometric Success Center learning library that are there to give you more detail, but as a Patient Reception Coordinator, it's important that you have a good understanding of that cycle and what the patient is experiencing and you’re knowing the timing and you’re knowing the expectations and you know how to communicate with your team. We look forward to having you join us in our live group sessions and have a fantastic day!