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Healthcare Worker Safety: 13 Tips to Apply Right Now

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a renewed emphasis on the safety of healthcare workers. People throughout our society are rightfully championing these workers as heroes for their willingness to continue to provide lifesaving service in the face of a global health crisis. The duty of healthcare practices is to do everything they can to protect these heroes.

Weave recently commissioned a survey of 750 providers and patients in order to better understand how they’re dealing with the challenges imposed by the pandemic. The results indicate some of the best ways to use communication technology to reinforce social distancing protocols in your office.

Here are 13 tips for keeping healthcare workers safe that you can apply right now:

1.Ditch your landline phones

73% of the healthcare practices interviewed said they’re confident they can keep employees healthy at work. Providers have years of experience grappling with difficult circumstances, and their sick or aching clients have always needed safe conditions. Because healthcare workers are exposed to various viruses and illnesses on a daily basis, most providers are sure they can protect their employees from COVID-19.

However, the pandemic has brought some new dimensions to the table. There are government regulations and cultural expectations that offices will guarantee appropriate social distancing. If your office only has landline phones, it makes enforcing proper social distancing significantly more complex. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phones are internet-based, allowing your team to explore new ways of shielding itself from the spread of disease.

VOIp Weave Phones

2.Adopt new waiting room procedures

Despite the pressure and occasionally chaotic scenarios presented by the pandemic, many offices say their quality of care has improved. 48% of healthcare providers say their customer service has gotten better due to COVID-19. While it’s crucial to show enhanced care in strange times, it’s also critical that offices match this quality of service with dedication to worker safety.

Practices have altered the way they structure their waiting room in order to protect their employees. Curbside waiting rooms are set up by using a VoIP system to text patients before appointments and ask them to wait in the parking lot instead of in your lobby. Along with this request, providers are sending a wellness form to screen customers before they step into the office. Both of these measures can redirect infected clients to public health clinics, saving your workers from exposure.

3.Convert to text messaging

VoIP phones allow offices to bounce between calls and other forms of communication. 68% of healthcare practices think most of their outgoing communication will happen via text in the next three years. Coincidentally, texting is a great way to encourage social distancing and keep your team from getting exposed to COVID-19.

For instance, texts can work in tandem with your inbound calls. If customers aren’t able to reach your front desk by phone, communication software will automatically send them a missed call text, assuring them that your team will contact them as soon as possible. This type of reinforced communication keeps clients from showing up to your office unannounced, potentially bringing with them germs and viruses.

4.Control your scheduling by text

Even though most offices are aware of business texting and many use it on a regular basis, only 18% of healthcare practices say they’re using text messaging to its fullest potential. Texting isn’t just useful when you want to have a conversation with patients; it also lets you maintain an orderly schedule and control the office environment.

Scheduling software allows your practice to distribute appointment reminders that let clients know about their upcoming visits. These reminders can be scheduled in advance for specific dates and times. When customers confirm their appointments, sentiment analysis interprets responses and lets your team know about cancellations and rescheduling. Keeping clients on top of their appointments ensures that they won’t rush into your office without following social distancing protocol.

5. Don’t forget about emailing

Calling and texting patients are foundational forms of communication for modern healthcare practices. However, 33% of patients admit to forgetting about calls and texts from providers. They also say that their third-most preferred method of communication with practices is emailing.

Emailing allows you to get vital information about social distancing, office closures, and other safety measures out to your entire clientele base at once. This efficiency will make your patients better informed than relying strictly on calls and texts because emailing enables you to share more detailed descriptions of how your office is handling COVID-19. Email marketing software is now available that professionalizes your email outreach with pre-written templates, images, and Call to Action buttons.

6. Ask for feedback with review requests

Traditionally, healthcare practices have gathered feedback about their services with in-person interviews and written questionnaires. In recent years, providers have also collected feedback with text messages and phone calls. Of these two methods, 38% of patients say they prefer giving feedback by text compared to 24% that would rather respond over the phone.

Text review link to Patient

Based on the preference for text feedback, providers should consider sending online review requests by text. Instead of talking to customers at the front desk following appointments, employees can use communication software to send a request with a link to popular sites like Google and Facebook. This form of gathering feedback is effective as a means of social distancing and building a strong online presence.

7. Make customer insights easy to access

In our survey, 73% of healthcare providers said communication that’s personalized performs better than generic communication. That’s because personalized communication relies on the rapport you’ve built with clients to get their attention and call them to action. Once you’ve captured the attention of customers with personal insights, you can take care of a laundry list of tasks that, like many of the other tips on this list, control the flow of patients into your office.

Controlling how frequently people pop into your office is an effective way to protect employees from COVID-19 threats. Software that connects customer insights with your calls and texts brings medical histories, upcoming appointments, and outstanding balances to your team’s attention. They can clear up a whole series of needed actions with just one call or text conversation.

8. Socially distance with contactless payments

After receiving essential services, patients frequently stop by the front desk to take care of scheduling and payments. This article has already shown how texting can alleviate the need to schedule appointments in-person. We haven’t, however, taken into consideration how alternate payment processing methods can promote social distancing.

73% of healthcare providers say contactless payments support social distancing. Contactless payments include both mobile wallets and text payments. Mobile wallets are available through companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Samsung. Weave offers a feature called Text to Pay that makes contactless payments incredibly simple and secure.

9.Meet the demand for contactless payments

COVID-19 has put pressure on healthcare workers to provide improved service in stressful circumstances. 71% of practices say the pandemic has increased the demand for features like Text to Pay. So, why is a contactless payment method like Text to Pay in high demand?

Text to Pay allows your office to promote social distancing at the end of patient visits in the same way curbside waiting rooms protect employees and clients at the beginning of an appointment. After a visit, customers can forego the usual stop at the front desk. Employees can send payment requests by text that include a link to a payment site.

10. Offer a complete payment platform

For better or worse, some patients will insist on sticking with traditional payment methods, like cash, checks, and cards. That’s why 69% of practices want one complete payment platform. Being able to accept the full gamut of payment options increases your office’s appeal to prospective clients.

11. Transition away from credit cards

Credit cards are ubiquitous in our society, yet 67% of healthcare providers want to transition from primarily processing cards to contactless options. A complete payment platform allows practices to make this transition. Moving away from credit cards means better social distancing and greater protection for your employees.

12. Be more hygienic with Text to Pay

Credit card processing and other conventional payment processing options involve a lot of touching payment portals, exchanging currency, and violations of social distancing. 51% of healthcare practices think Text to Pay is more hygienic than credit card processing. Once your office has a patient’s credit card information on hand, it can take care of all its merchant services using texts rather than physical exchanges.

13. Emphasize growth and safety

Safety for your employees doesn’t have to come at the expense of growth. In fact, high-growth practices are 41% more likely than low-growth practices to emphasize Text to Pay and contactless payments. The pandemic has highlighted how taking safety measures with advanced communication technology is a model for growth in the near future.
If you would like to discover more about how to protect your employees using Weave’s complete business toolbox, contact us today.

VoIP
8 Tested Methods for Managing a Veterinary Office On the Go

Veterinarians are incredibly busy people. Along with their duties as practitioners, they’re frequently small business owners that have to tend to the day-to-day demands of managing an organization. Vets in more rural areas also choose to travel to take care of animals that can’t easily be transported to their clinic.

In short, vets are constantly on the go. Many of them have adopted modern communication technology to help them cope with their busy schedules. However, these technologies are often lacking consolidation, which means their overall communication network is a bit disjointed.

For those veterinary practices looking to bring their communication together into an integrated system, one of the primary benefits is that this unification of your network allows for improved mobile management. It’s time-consuming having to repeatedly check-in at the office when you’re working remotely. Putting as many communication strategies in the palm of your hand as possible facilitates optimized remote work for vets and their employees.

Some vets may wonder how such a system would work on a practical level. The goal of this blog post is to describe eight methods for managing a clinic with a mobile device. Consolidated communication that’s accessible through a smartphone is a reality for thousands of offices already. Here’s why you should consider upgrading:

1.Founding your communication on VoIP Phones

Veterinary practices that still rely on conventional landline phones are doing themselves a disservice. Not only are their basic daily phone calls more difficult to manage with landlines, it’s virtually impossible to create a unified communication network with landlines in-house. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phones are foundational to any modern communication network because they connect your phones with the central feature of information flow in today’s world: the internet.

When a vet clinic’s phones are converted to VoIP, a whole range of possibilities open up to your practice. For starters, the average office sees an 18% improvement in the amount of calls it answers. This increase leads to higher customer satisfaction and more regularly scheduled appointments with pet owners.

But that’s just in the office. For vets on the go, they now have the ability to access their voicemail through their mobile device, letting them stay up to date with the everyday administrative needs of the practice. From their device, they can also alter their voicemail message and phone tree, or simply allow their front desk team handle things while still keeping in contact.

2.Starting text conversations with customers

It’s hard to really manage your clinic without business texting. Many customers now prefer texting to calling, and busy pet owners are also likely to utilize texting, especially considering how often they’re on the go. Veterinary practices that adopt text messaging within their communication system are much more prepared to manage themselves remotely.

Text messages are perfect for vets that are constantly on the move because they’re much less time consuming than phone calls. Vets can shoot a quick text to their administrative team or their next customer, then get going on their next appointment. It’s crucial, however, that your clinic’s business texting have a two-way capacity in order to allow for dialogue with pet owners.

Through software that syncs with VoIP phones, customers that aren’t able to get through to your front desk receive missed call texts that are sent out automatically. These missed call texts initiate conversations that can be handled with a mobile app. This feature opens up possibilities not just for veterinarians, but for their employees.

appointment for pet

3.Having customer insights on hand

When vets are trying to access information about specific pet owners from outside the office, it can be a bit of a fiasco. If their systems haven’t been updated, they’re forced to call their own front desk and have receptionists share information over the phone. This scenario is a waste of valuable time, especially when it could be taken care of with customer insights available through a mobile app.

Veterinary offices with a VoIP phone system can connect the individual information of pet owners to calls. This level of connection allows your network to populate a computer screen with information that’s directly pertinent to your call as soon as it’s received. If you’re a vet on the move, a mobile app gives you this same personal information.

Having customer insights at the ready makes for more efficient management of your practice and better customer service. If you can look at the names, pictures, birthdays, medical history, and payment history of customers regardless of your location, you’re able to recognize each customer’s needs and remember the particular condition of their pet. You and your staff can also make notes within a customer’s profile for future reference.

4.Automating your scheduling

Vets that aren’t always in the office may have difficulty keeping track of their schedule. If their employees are also having to work remotely because of social distancing measures, scheduling gets even more chaotic. Utilizing communication software that automatically ensures that appointment reminders and confirmations are going out on a regular basis cuts down on the stress of managing a practice’s schedule.

With scheduling software that’s part of your communication network, your office can program appointment reminders and confirmations to automatically go out to customers at specific times, relieving front desk workers of the need to cycle through reminders each and every day. These reminders keep your schedule full and customers up to date, even if as a vet you don’t have the bandwidth to worry about your upcoming calendar.

These automated messages allow for two-way text conversations to start, providing an alternative channel for customers that might need to reschedule or cancel. In the event of cancellations, scheduling tools provide a feature that lets practices send out last-minute text blasts to priority customers. Again, vets and their employees can access these features from their mobile app.

5.Collecting digital payments

Veterinarians on the go can sometimes have clumsy or uncoordinated methods for collecting payments from customers. If they’re showing up at a rural location, they might be taking checks back to the office that won’t be cashed for days. Credit cards can be a pain in their own way; cards and card readers tend to backfire, creating a huge hassle for busy vets.

Luckily, technology has evolved to the point where veterinary offices can get around conventional payments, including cash, check, and cards. By implementing digital payments, clinics can simply send a text message to customers after appointments to take care of payments. All practices need is card information, and then customers handle the payment by clicking a link within the text message.

text to pay secure link

Vets with small practices sometimes manage payments themselves. If they’re out on a call, it’s remarkably easy to use a mobile app to send a payment request after an appointment than almost any other methods. This approach also appeals to younger customers who are getting accustomed to paying for things with services like Venmo and PayPal.

6.Setting up a team chat

As already mentioned, a point of difficulty for busy veterinarians is staying in touch with their administrative team. Even if they’re simply in a back part of the building, there can be a divide in the communication between vets and their staff. Putting the whole team into a group chat can save your clinic from having information fall through the cracks.

Recent events have led to many offices working remotely. Relying exclusively on calls or personal texts presents organizational problems that can be avoided with a team chat. Team chats are available through mobile apps and integrate with the other features of a VoIP phone system.

86% of employees cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication¹ for workplace failures. Vets that travel regularly can manage their teams with greater efficiency by setting up a team chat within their office’s communication network.

7.Requesting reviews by text

The marketing aspect of running a business can be stressful for veterinarians. After all, they got into their line of work for animals, not for developing marketing strategies. Trying to bring in new customers is tough enough without having to focus on more essential work.

Modern marketing strategy is geared toward establishing a strong online presence. This presence comes from a professional, easy-to-use company website. It also is influenced heavily by online review sites like Google and Facebook.

Vet clinics that want to amass positive reviews on popular sites can distribute review requests after every appointment with a text message. These texts have links that bring customers to review sites for quick posting. From their mobile app, veterinarians can use an interface to regularly monitor their progress on review sites.

8.Crafting professional emails

Another marketing strategy that’s proven to drive business for small practices is emailing. While most vet clinics have an email outreach, they’re often not optimized. Improving the quality of your office’s emails can make it easier to manage your practice on the go.

Emails appeal to customers because they provide them with a wealth of information without requiring the same level of engagement as texts and emails. Emails also have a visual component that texts and calls do not. Additionally, with Call-to-Action buttons, customers can be given the chance to take action on scheduling and payment needs.

When emails are firing on all cylinders, vets can rest at ease knowing that their practice is being managed smoothly. Email marketing software gives vets access to pre-written templates and an image library for quickly creating aesthetically-pleasing emails. CTA buttons allow for standard practice upkeep to take place without significant oversight from vets and their employees.

Managing your veterinary office on the go

The above lists some of the best methods for managing your practice’s communication. Once your office has a VoIP phone in place, there are numerous opportunities available for using alternative communication and payment methods, as well as areas where automation can save your team time and effort. Weave’s complete business toolbox provides the hardware and software solutions that enable greatly improved clinic management for vets on the go.

Contact us today to discover how to better manage your practice using our VoIP phones and mobile app.

DigitalNewSoftwareVoIP
Your 3 Step Guide to Accepting Payments in the Social Distancing Age

Your 3 Step Guide to Accepting Payments in the Social Distancing Age

The age of social distancing, brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, has incentivized businesses to discover new ways to minimize the amount of human contact that goes on in their offices. These ways include having employees work from home, reducing the number of clients on site at a given time, and implementing curbside waiting rooms and wellness forms.

As businesses have attempted to set up proper social distancing, they’ve also had to maintain effective communication with customers. Consolidated lines of communication make it easier to call, text, and email clients in spite of social distancing protocol. It’s also important that businesses keep a personal touch in their communication by utilizing customer insights and scheduling software.

Social distancing after appointments is just as crucial as before and during client visits to your office. Much of the post-appointment conversation between administrative staff and customers involves handling payments. Depending on how your office deals with payments, you can simultaneously protect customers and staff from COVID-19 threats and optimize your existing payment platform.

In fact, optimizing your payments in the age of social distancing is synonymous with protecting people with contactless payment options. This blog post discusses how adding contactless payments, prioritizing them over credit cards, and using analytics are some of the best ways to improve your office’s payment processing in the new normal.

The statistics included in this article come from an independent survey commissioned by Weave this year to understand the payment preferences of 750 different healthcare providers and patients.

1.Adding Contactless Payments

The first step for accepting payments in the age of social distancing is adding a contactless payment. What is a contactless payment? A contactless payment is a payment method that doesn’t involve a physical exchange, such as traditional methods like cash, checks, and the swiping of credit cards.

Contactless payments can involve mobile wallets, which are offered through companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Samsung. They can also take place with a simple text message. At Weave, we refer to our text payment feature as Text to Pay.

The respondents in the survey recently commissioned by Weave had a lot to say about contactless payments. Let’s take a look at why both providers and patients want to use contactless payments.

Employees and Contactless Payments

Healthcare practices are finding that contactless payments are necessary if they want to set themselves apart on the market. 70% of the healthcare employees interviewed said contactless payments are now a competitive advantage. Those practices hoping to remain viable in the present and thrive in the future need Text to Pay.

High-growth practices are significantly more interested in contactless payments than low-growth practices. In the survey commissioned by Weave, high-growth practices were 40% more likely to say Text to Pay improves the patient experience. High-growth practices understand that contactless payments protect their customers and make their service more satisfactory.

The overwhelming majority of practices recognize how contactless payments are uniquely capable of promoting good social distancing. 73% of the healthcare providers in the survey said contactless payments support social distancing. Because social distancing has become standard practice in the healthcare industry almost overnight, it’s crucial that offices build social distancing into their payment processing.

The demand for contactless payments stems directly from the COVID-19 crisis. According to 71% of the healthcare employees in the study, coronavirus has increased patient interest in contactless payment options. Taking action by offering Text to Pay is a great way to meet this increased demand.

Right now, only 19% of practices feel like they’re using texting to its fullest potential. The younger generation of clients prefers text options in their communication with healthcare providers, and this communication shouldn’t be limited to scheduling appointments and answering patient questions. Text payments increase employee productivity and protect everyone in your office through social distancing.

Patients and Contactless Payments

Employees aren’t the only ones who recognize the value of contactless payments. Of the healthcare patients interviewed in the study, 64% of them said they feel safer using contactless payments compared to traditional payment methods. This response makes sense; cash, checks, and cards inherently risk the transfer of germs and viruses.

Just the idea of touching a payment portal, whether it’s swiping, tapping, or scanning, is problematic for many patients. 43% of the patients surveyed said touching a payment portal is risky business. Practices that allow their customers to forego this risk increase the likelihood of a pleasant customer experience.

Contactless payments are no longer a thing of the future. 68% of healthcare patients prefer contactless payments according to the study commissioned by Weave. If healthcare providers aim to attract more customers and keep their current clientele happy, they should strongly consider adding Text to Pay.

Weave’s Text to Pay

Weave created its Text to Pay feature to integrate contactless payments into the other communication tools it already offers businesses. The age of social distancing has revealed to us how using a text payment option allows businesses to keep their waiting room clear of improper social distancing while increasing the rate of collections.

Once your practice has patient credit card information on record, your administrative team can simply send a payment request to customers by text following appointments. These text requests are able to be customized and include a link to a site for submitting payments. Patients can make payments from the parking lot or from home without sacrificing social distancing measures.

2.Prioritizing Contactless Payments over Cards

Healthcare practices aren’t going to switch to exclusively contactless payments yet. Payment methods like Text to Pay are one option among many. However, pushing for patients to use contactless payments optimizes their experience by protecting them from the threat of COVID-19 with good social distancing.

When asked about their preference between contactless payments and credit cards, the majority of healthcare providers stated they prefer contactless payments. 67% of them said they want to see more payments transition from credit cards to Text to Pay. Clearly, the age of social distancing has demonstrated the value of contactless payments.

Patients manifested a similar preference for contactless payments over credit cards. 68% of the healthcare clients interviewed said they think Text to Pay is more hygienic than credit cards. Practices should not only be offering contactless payments to their customers; they should be actively letting their clients know about the need to transition to text payment options.

Weave Payments

The complete payment platform offered by Weave gives healthcare providers the flexibility to continue to collect traditional payments while prioritizing contactless payments. You know about Text to Pay from the previous section, but we didn’t discuss the other features of the Payments tool. This tool includes secure payment processing and a terminal for point-of-sale transactions.

Payment processing can be a complicated affair when accepting various payment methods. With Weave Payments, you don’t have to deal with upfront or monthly fees. There’s one flat rate for each payment that’s processed. Along with Text to Pay, Weave Payments accepts major credit cards (Visa, AmericanExpress, Discover, and MasterCard), as well as HSA/FSA cards, prepaid cards, and mobile wallets.

3.Analyzing Your Payments and Communication

The business world has put a premium on collecting and analyzing data in recent decades. Gathering statistics on how your practice is functioning provides you with the opportunity to systematically approach the process of moving toward greater efficiency. Getting analytics on payments is as important as studying any other component of your business strategy.

Analytics are available through software that’s connected with your office communication and payments. Communication analytics look at phone calls and identify the times your office is busiest to help you get staffing optimized. Payment analytics show how customers are paying and when, letting you find better ways to collect payments and make your practice profitable.

Weave Analytics

The Analytics tool in Weave’s suite allows businesses to gather the data necessary to make better business decisions. It shows you to study call times and traffic. For dental practices, Practice Analytics identifies unscheduled patients and unscheduled treatments, letting you take immediate action by calling or texting. Recall Analytics helps you recapture customers you haven’t seen in a while by identifying those customers and easily messaging them.

Payments Analytics gives you the ability to understand how customers in your specific organization want to pay for services. While the general market trend is toward contactless payments over credit cards, you need to have the tools to make sure this is the right move for your patients.

Weave Payments in the Age of Social Distancing

There are three steps for businesses and healthcare practices hoping to optimize their payment processing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. First, add a contactless payment method like Text to Pay in order to protect employees and customers from community spread. Second, prioritize contactless payments over traditional payments like credit cards. And third, use Analytics to understand the best payment methods for your specific practice.

If you’d like to get a better idea of how Weave Payments works in the age of social distancing, contact our team today for a free demo.

DigitalNetworkingSoftware
13 Tricks to Triple Veterinary Google Reviews in No Time

Historically, veterinary offices have relied on their reputation in the community and some conventional advertising to discover new clients. Times have changed. Although word-of-mouth marketing, promotions on local media and billboards, and print ads still have their place, veterinary clinics should increasingly be focusing on their online presence to find customers.

95% of consumers now read online reviews¹ before making a purchase. This statistic means the vast majority of your prospective clients are googling veterinary offices in your area in order to make a decision about whom to trust with their pets’ health. A modern marketing strategy has to involve a push for a high number of positive reviews on sites like Google and Facebook.

Some small veterinary practices may believe they can continue to stick to their old strategies for adding customers, like personal recommendations. However, 84% of customers now trust online reviews as much as recommendations from their peers.² It’s become easier for pet owners to simply search for vets online than for them to ask friends about their favorite clinic.

Collecting online reviews for your veterinary office requires strategy. The goal of this blog post is to give you some ideas for building your practice’s online reputation with reviews. Below are thirteen ways to boost your clinic’s online review status.

1.Make a profile on Google My Business

The first step for ensuring that your office gets online reviews is registering on key sites. Google is the most widely used search engine in the world, so setting up a profile with them is a great place to start. Registering with Google builds your online credibility and makes it easier for potential customers to see your business in Search and on Maps.

Once Google has your physical address, website, and other significant information about your veterinary practice, its search algorithm is more likely to make your business visible to the public. From here, you want to increase the amount of positive reviews you have on Google Reviews. Real customer reviews further authenticate your business and boost its visibility in search results.

2.Strengthen your communication system

As you go about collecting reviews, using communication technology will greatly improve your efficiency. Formerly, vet clinics and other businesses gathered reviews and testimonials by recording tapes or videos and having customers write down their thoughts on paper. Digital tools now make it possible to collect reviews with much less effort.
A VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone system is foundational for offices hoping to upgrade their communication. VoIP phones allow your practice to utilize the internet instead of landlines, thus increasing the speed and flexibility of your network. It also lets your office gather online reviews with modern approaches like text requests.

3.Ask for online reviews

An obvious holdup for veterinary offices looking to collect online reviews is simply not asking. When you forget to ask customers for reviews or avoid the conversation, you cost your business the opportunity to build its online presence. Be sure to emphasize the importance of online reviews to other practitioners, administrators, and receptionists.

Asking for online reviews doesn’t require you to antagonize or annoy customers. People are happy to share their opinions, and many consumers choose to post reviews without any prompting from businesses. Politely request reviews after successful appointments. Studies show that the best time to ask for reviews is directly following a satisfactory visit.

4.Request reviews by text

Text messaging is becoming a favorite form of communication with businesses, especially among the younger generation of customers. If your office is set up with VoIP phones, it can use these phones and associated software to text review requests to customers. Texted review requests contain a short message and a link to a popular review site.

Review requests sent by text allow your customers to post their reviews at their own convenience. They also save your front office team significant amounts of time to focus on more pressing tasks. Texted review requests open up the opportunity to have a two-way conversation with customers and discover their thoughts on your practice.

5.Automate your review requests

With the right software, your staff won’t have to worry about asking each pet owner to share an online review. They can set up review requests to go out to customers in advance, protecting them from forgetting about requests after appointments. Automation is a powerful tool when it’s employed properly, and using it in your text outreach is a great place to start.

6. Reduce front desk visits

During the COVID-19 pandemic, veterinary offices have attempted to cut down on the number of people in their waiting rooms by implementing curbside waiting rooms. A curbside waiting room keeps pet owners out of your office unless their animals are being seen by your staff. Offices ask customers to check their pets in from their car, then bring them back with a text once the practice is ready to receive them.

Texting review requests allows your clinic to mirror the curbside waiting room protocol. Instead of having clients stop by the front desk after appointments, your team sends them a simple text message. Contactless payments are an additional tool for those practices hoping to eliminate unnecessary traffic in their waiting room.

7.Personalize your review requests

Personalized messaging performs better than generic communication. As your office sends out review requests by text, try to include references to your veterinary practice. Match the tone of your other communication, and, if you have time, bring up the pet owner’s recent visit to your office.

Text messages can be customized using templates in communication software. These templates let your team compose personalized messages in a short period of time. Thanks to automation, personalized review requests are able to be saved and scheduled to go out to customers at specific times on specific days.

8.Get notifications about online reviews

As your veterinary practice garners more and more reviews, you’ll want to keep tabs on your rating across various review sites. Asking administrators to regularly bounce between your profiles on review sites is a bit time consuming. The job of checking your review status is simplified by notifications.

Your office should set a weekly or monthly goal for reviews. Using review monitoring software to get notifications on newly posted reviews will make sure you have an accurate idea of how your business is faring. Review notifications will also help your clinic keep an eye on extremely positive or negative reviews.

9.Share positive reviews on social media

veterinarian-doctor-monitoring-google review

In the process of monitoring reviews, you will come across some remarkably strong reviews that capture exactly what your veterinary practice does for its clients. These sorts of testimonials are great fodder for social media posts and website quotations. This is the point where online reviews begin to inform and shape your other marketing efforts.

Before you share a customer’s review on social media, please be certain that you have their permission to publish it. Don’t offer benefits or prizes for positive reviews, either. Giving clients discounts or free services for their opinion is seen as a violation of protocol on most ethical review sites.

10.Respond to negative reviews

Negative reviews also require your practice to take action. Negative reviews are a necessary part of the online review game, and you shouldn’t be discouraged by a few bad opinions. In fact, consumers are more wary of businesses with perfect star ratings online than those that score closer to four stars on average.

A trusted member of your team can reach out to negative reviewers to ask how to improve your customer service. This practice can yield new insights and possibly inspire the unsatisfied client to remove the negative post. If you encounter false or libelous reviews of your veterinary clinic, the best course of action is to report those reviews to Google or the administrator of the review site you’re using.

11.Find a user-friendly interface

All this monitoring of online reviews necessitates an interface for ease of use. Just as notifications help your office keep on top of its review progress, the right interface can save team members from having to bounce between review sites. This interface should give you concrete statistics and analytics for understanding trends across sites like Google and Facebook.

13.Use CTA buttons

CTA (Call to Action) buttons are fancy links that catch the attention of email readers. Emailing is a supplemental option for veterinary practices trying to gather online reviews. Your email marketing campaigns can be enhanced by providing customers with professional-looking emails that ask them to share their reviews online.

DigitalNewSoftwareVoIP
10 Strategies to Help Your Patients Keep Appointments

Everyone is busy, and convincing your patients to keep appointments, especially for routine and non-urgent office visits can be a challenge. Looming work deadlines, family obligations, and social commitments can all seem more important in your patients’ minds than a routine oral hygiene appointment or an eye exam.

However, missed appointments can be detrimental to your practice, and your clients also suffer by not getting the care they need. If you’re dealing with cancellations because your patients are busy and strapped for time, we’ve got 10 tips that can help you increase your show-up rates while also strengthening the relationship you have with your patients.

1.Remind Your Customers About Their Appointments

Arguably, the most effective strategy is to simply remind your customers that they have an upcoming appointment. Relying on your busiest customers to automatically remember their appointments is going to result in a lot of missed and forgotten office visits.

Even your most organized customers will probably appreciate a quick call or text reminding them a day or two in advance. But before you start bombarding your patients with appointment reminders, there are some best practices to keep in mind. For most scenarios, there’s an ideal window of time to reach out to the customer. That timeframe is typically 24 to 72 hours before the appointment. It’s close enough to the appointment time to serve as a reminder, but far enough away for them to make rescheduling arrangements with your office if that is necessary.

With today’s systems and technologies, you also have several options to deliver your appointment reminders, such as:

  • Phone calls
  • Email
  • Text messages

Texting is a convenient method that’s easy to set up, and with Weave’s smart appointment confirmation options, it can be configured to work with almost any customer base. If you’re not sure what your customers prefer, ask them. For more tips on best practices for using your appointment reminder software, check out this article called Three Reasons Your Practice Should be Using Automated Reminders.

2.Make it Inconvenient for Customers to Cancel

As much as we dislike it when customers cancel, we often make it very convenient for them. A cancellation call often goes something like this, “hi Jenny, this is Jared. I have an appointment scheduled today, but I am not going to be able to make it.” To which Jenny would respond something like this. “No problem Jared, let’s go ahead and find a time that will work for you.” At first glance, this seems like a great way to handle a cancellation call. But, if you look a little bit closer, you have made it very convenient for your customer to reschedule which will likely lead to more reschedules and cancellations in the future.

Instead of letting customers do something very inconvenient for your office while finding another time that “works for them”, set some rules about how your staff is able to reschedule customers. Those rules could look like this:

  • If a customer cancels their appointment, they are not allowed to get back on the schedule for at least three weeks. This communicates that your time is scarce and in high demand. Your front office could say, “is there anything we can do to help you make it to your appointment because we wouldn’t be able to get you in again for at least three weeks”. The customer might still cancel their appointment, but they will be less likely to cancel again next time.
  • If a customer cancels their appointment, they are not allowed to take a prime-time appointment spot when they reschedule. Again, you are communicating scarcity and making it inconvenient for them to reschedule. If they ask for a convenient time slot, your front office can say something like, “that time is very popular and is typically booked months in advance”. Then they could give them some options for other times that are available.

Many offices are hesitant to implement a policy like this because they are worried about offending customers. This is a legitimate concern, which is why having a policy that is adhered to with every patient is so important. If you have the policy set in stone, you can train your customers to understand that your time is valuable. If you adhere to this policy with every customer, you may lose a few customers over it, but your schedule will be significantly more productive because of the time that you won’t lose to broken appointments.

3.Ensure Your Information is Up to Date

If you’re sending appointment reminders, it’s important to remember that this system is only as good as the accuracy of your contact information. If your customers’ phone numbers and email addresses are outdated, then they’re not going to get your messages.

We recommend checking in with customers every 6 months to 1 year and asking them to confirm that their contact details are current and accurate.

4.Manage Your Schedule

No one likes to be kept waiting, and while some wait time is inevitable, take a look at your office flow to make sure your customers aren’t waiting longer than they should. If your customers are waiting for several minutes, then they might feel like their time isn’t’ being valued. They’re busy, remember?

dentist schedulingAnd, if they don’t get the sense that you value their time, it’s going to be harder for you to convince them to value yours. By having your office staff greet them promptly and then allowing them to be seen with a minimal wait time, they’ll be more willing to sacrifice time out of their busy schedule to keep their appointments.

Make sure you let them know that you appreciate their promptness and attention to their health. Again, when they know that you respect their time, they’ll be more likely to respect yours in return.

5.Implement a Cancellation or No-Show Policy

If missed and canceled appointments have gotten out of hand, you may need to implement a cancellation or no-show policy to deal with these extreme cases. Some offices institute a nominal fee ranging from $5 to $20 to enforce their policy.

Other offices, understandably, elect not to fine their customers. Instead, they find that just publishing their policy and displaying it prominently in the office and all written customer communications is equally effective without seeming heavy-handed.

Most people are happy to comply with a request if you simply ask. So, why not ask your customers to notify you at least 24 hours in advance if they won’t be able to make their appointment? You can explain that it opens up space for other customers to be seen. When they understand that it’s polite and the right thing to do, they’re more likely to comply.

6.Offer Fun Rewards for Showing up on Time

Many offices have seen excellent results in show-up rates by doing raffle drawings that incentivize customers to show up on time for their appointments. An example of this in action would be to give a raffle ticket to a customer for showing up on time for their appointment. Each month, one or more tickets could be drawn, and the winner gets a prize, like an iPad, a gift certificate to a local restaurant, or some other desirable prize.

7.Fire Customers Who Repeatedly Miss

It can be tough to “fire” a customer, but if one of your business has clients who are constantly missing appointments and not showing any improvement in behavior and attitude, it might be time to let them go.

Consider the effect they have on other customers who aren’t able to get in to see you because this person has taken up an appointment slot. Consider the negative effect it has on your staff’s morale when they have to monitor this customer and handle no-show appointments and rescheduling challenges. Consider the example it sets for other customers who might observe this patient breezing into the office 20 minutes late or hearing your staff on the phone rescheduling yet another missed appointment.

If this person is harming your office or having an effect on the care your clients receive, then it could be time to refer them out.

8.Nurture Customer Relationships

Work on having a positive rapport with your customers. Make them feel like welcome friends in your office. By showing that you value the relationship you have, they’ll, in turn, enjoy coming to your office. It’s easy to cancel an appointment that you don’t look forward to, especially if you don’t like going to the office. However, if your customers genuinely enjoy seeing your staff and chatting with you about tennis (for example), then they’ll be less likely to dismiss their appointments.

9.Schedule Appointments When They’re Still in the Office

Before your customer walks out the door, make sure your staff schedules their next appointment. It can be helpful to discuss the calendar in person and having a conversation with someone face to face can be more compelling and memorable than a phone call, email or text. This also helps the patient experience momentum and the positive reinforcement that comes with taking care of their health.

For example, if your patient has just had their teeth cleaned, your staff should schedule their next cleaning on the spot. The patient is already feeling great about the steps they’ve taken to maintain their oral care, and they’ll be more likely to take the commitment of their next appointment seriously when they make it in your office rather than waiting three months later when they schedule a cleaning just because they know they’re supposed to. This also gives you and your office staff a chance to explain the importance of the appointment, so it’s etched in their mind. This applies to any service that your business has provided.

10.Identify and Track Cancellation Reasons

Using a system like Weave, you can easily document and track cancellation reasons. Taking a data-driven approach allows you to identify patterns and then proactively adjust your procedures to increase show-up rates.

For example, let’s say your office staff notices an increase in cancellations between 5 pm and 6 pm. Maybe your clients are having a hard time getting out of work or they’re stuck in traffic. You could consider moving these customers’ appointments or building in a time cushion and explaining to your customers that you know traffic can be hectic and that you’re okay with them being a little bit late in these instances.

Whether you choose a low-tech or high-tech system to manage your appointments, the key is to pick a method and stay consistent.

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