Your response time can send a good or bad message to those interested in your services. Learn why response time matters and how it can push people away!
A study conducted by Lead Connect found 78% of customers will buy from the company that responds to their inquiry first. But how come? What are the reasons behind this?
Often times, new patients have already looked into multiple places to go. If they believe your office can help them, a poor response time can send them someplace else or push them away. A poor response time can make a person feel unimportant and not worth much of your time. For new patients who have contacted more offices at once, they usually feel more drawn to going with the person who responds to them first.
When it comes to emails, we usually see a message on the brand’s site stating they will respond within 24 hours. While replying within 24 hours is a great sign, consumers appreciate hearing back within an hour. The first responder might already sell them on the fact they can help them with their situation and if it is urgent, they might already create an appointment with a different office before your office responds. Sometimes a potential patient does not know what they need to help their current situation, so the first person to let them know what they should do is often the one they trust first.
Better response times also opens your office up to more customer feedback. If your office is on social media and patients leave complaints or positive comments on your page, it is important to respond to all of them. For positive reviews, you do not need to respond to them right away, but for negative reviews – complaints are seen to be more urgent matters. If something went wrong, potential patients who view your page and see the negative comments would want to know if it’s been fixed and how long it took to be resolved. Did they have to wait a day or two? A week? A potential patient wants to ensure that if something goes wrong it can be corrected immediately. This lowers their risk involved in visiting a new practice.
Commenting and thanking those that leave positive feedback will allow your viewers to see they are appreciated as well. This, in return, can spark others to leave more positive feedback they want to share. It is important to never ignore the positive. Do not give too much attention to complaints and overlook the positive. Positive feedback is very useful to growing your practice so make sure to respond to it.
While fast response time is great, do not try to be too fast and overlook what the person is trying to say. Take the time to read and understand the situation before responding. Not all “fast response times” are “quality responses”. In order to make sure you have time to respond quickly without losing quality, we have made a system to take small tedious office tasks into its own hands.
Digital Patient Chart saves you time, money, and keeps your team productive. With time you will be saving, it will become easier to handle new patient inquiries. Your focus should be on your patients and their experience with your chiropractic office. With that being said, Digital Patient Chart does have automatic generated emails you can put in place for new patient inquiries to ensure they receive something from your office right away before you are able to get back to them. This is incredibly useful if your office is closed on weekends but they still want some type of reply. Having a response, even if automated, lets them know you have received their message. In the auto-response, you may also customize it with photos and links to other Frequently Asked Questions in case the answer to their current question could be found there while they wait.
On busy office days, the Digital Patient Chart system will help you stay focused and remove unnecessary work off of your shoulders – allowing you and your team to respond to your patients without additional stress or rushing with them. Potential patients are already there for a reason, so if you slow down and take the time to focus on them, it will help them relax and feel appreciated. Remember, it’s not only about how fast you respond but how you respond to them. If you make them feel comfortable, important, and build up that trust with them, you will stand out to them.
Fast response times also help with your word of mouth. This is priceless for any office. This is the most purest form of marketing: a peer’s opinion. How does someone trust you enough right away if your office is completely new to them? If they hear someone they already trust recommend your services, that person already helped build that trust factor for you. When someone hears back from an office quickly, it’s not uncommon to rave about. When someone leaves a positive review, they often say “and they got back to me right away!”. They love to add response time as being one of the positive factors that played a part of their overall experience.
The Digital Patient Chart system also allows you to take notes to keep up with your responses. Did someone online who left a complaint get a response that allowed them to try your services again at a discounted rate? You can find that person’s profile in the Digital Patient Chart system, or create one for them if needed, and make a note about the offer you sent to them.
If you want to create a better response time without losing the quality of your responses or would like to improve them, consider getting a system that works with your office to handle all the grunt work. Your potential patients and reoccurring patients are extremely important to your office’s success. After all, there is no office without patients!
Digital Patient Chart can help you respond to inquiries right away, giving your team more time to spend on conducting thoughtful replies and giving patients the attention they deserve.
Tags: automatic automatic software Chiropractic Software Digital Patient Chart practice Response time software