When you work in the private healthcare business, it doesn’t matter how many website enquiries you get if you don’t have an effective system of dealing with them.
But for busy medical secretaries, time is at a premium. During a busy day with a multitude of tasks and demands on your time, how can you process enquiries in an efficient, effective way – and do so with confidence?
The trick lies in having a process to follow. Here are some useful pointers:
Get the right system in place
The ideal scenario is for the clinic to have a CRM system. The good news is that there are various free systems available, such as HubSpot. A digital agency can implement this, train the team on how to use it and perform upgrades as necessary so that the clinic can focus on its primary goal of quality private healthcare provision.
Schedule in follow-ups
When patients call to enquire and leave with information to mull over, take their details so that you can do a follow-up. Schedule in time for this every week so that the task doesn’t roll over and your leads run cold.
Communication style
Ideally communicate over the phone where possible rather than via email. This tends to be a skill that medical secretaries have in abundance, and that ability to speak knowledgeably and in a friendly style is massively beneficial for encouraging conversions.
Create a process
A good sales process will make task delivery far easier for you and the team to manage. A typical sales process would begin with the initial contact being handled and details added to the CRM, before providing information relevant to the enquiry, following up by phone and sending a reminder by email or newsletter. Again, professional help can help you to create a solid and robust process that yields results.
Attend training
It is highly valuable to attend a sales training course to learn the right techniques and approaches to effective healthcare marketing. Ensure everyone with sales or customer contact responsibilities in the clinic has the opportunity to attend this. A key aspect of the training will be to understand exactly what the patient is looking for – essentially carrying out a sales diagnostic over the phone – so you can provide the right information to answer their questions, help them feel at ease and make them feel confident that they are in good hands. (It is worth remembering that patients who only want to know about the price may less likely to convert – so don’t prioritise them for follow-ups.)
Have a sweetener in place
When enquiries come in, be ready to discuss finance options and mention if a free consultation is available. It’s a great way to get people through the door.
Ask for feedback
The easiest step to forget about involves following up with patients who didn’t go ahead with a booking. Make the effort and time to get in touch with them to find out why they didn’t use the clinic and find out what you could do better next time. This is information gold and will help the clinic to revise and evolve its sales and healthcare marketing approach for ever better results.
These offline activities will help to support your website conversion and ensure the hard work of your digital assets translates right through to sales!
