From The Trenches

Poor communication techniques can cost even the tiniest office $1000s per day, and most practitioners don’t have the foggiest clue about what they are missing until they hear it with their own ears…

I can talk to an audience of clinic owners about receptionist scripting until I am blue in the face, and no one will implement a single suggestion; but when I shut my mouth and play one three minute recording of a typical prospective patient call, many will rush to turn their office upside down. What could they possibly hear in a three-minute recorded call that would cause such a resounding sense of business urgency?
It’s really pretty simple; when you realize how much potential business tugs at your sleeve every day through your phone and how much business you may be missing, if you don’t get agitated, then it’s time to check your pulse. Let’s take a closer look…
With the exception of your vendors, incoming calls will fall into one of three basic categories:

A) existing patients or referral sources,
B) prospective patients, and
C) prospective referral sources.

If you are not consistently marketing your business, chances are that 98% of your incoming calls fall into category A. The kinds of questions “A” callers have usually relate to appointment scheduling, insurance, or some other customer SERVICE related issue. As your marketing operations mature, more callers will be from categories B and C. B and C callers have more specific questions about treatment options and the potential benefits of care, or what marketers like to call FEATURES and BENEFITS. If you don’t satisfy the needs of all caller categories, then guess what? They will get their information somewhere else. If you think that’s a good thing, stop reading.
Customer service calls, type “A”, are not the same as prospective patient/referral inquiries, type “B” and “C”, but most businesses treat them like they are the same. To demonstrate the difference, and to show you how you can generate more business with ALL categories of callers, let’s look at some actual examples, and then add some receptionist scripting to show the different potential business outcomes.

Example 1 – Caller Category A, Existing Patient (names have been changed):

Example 2 – Caller Category B, Prospective Patient (names have been changed):

In both situations, caller category A and B (we’ll leave category C for another time), the business result is clearly different.
The unscripted calls both had a negative impact on the business. In the first example, a booking is cancelled, and the unscripted poorly-trained receptionist affirms the consumer’s impression of physical therapy as an inconvenient, unimportant piece of the rehab formula. In the second unscripted example, a prospective patient who has responded to advertising gets discouraged and hangs up. No contact information is captured, so the business has nothing to add to their marketing database of people interested in information about headache diagnosis and treatment options.

The scripted receptionist with training, on the other hand, positions physical therapy as an important process with many benefits that may not be fully appreciated. The receptionist takes command of the call. In addition, the trained receptionist sets up a learning conversation that will continue after the caller hangs up. This learning conversation will frequently result in saving the patient from opting out of therapy. Even when the callers do not immediately translate into bookings, the scripted receptionist has captured contact information that can become a valuable asset.

So what does it take to script and train your receptionists to become cash contributors rather than cash drainers? Here’s a quick list:

1. You need consumer friendly marketing tools that educate on the benefits of care. These pieces need marketing handles like the “Headache Survival Guide” that quickly communicate value, and can be quickly described by all your staff. These tools should be in both printed and electronic versions for your website.
2. You need to understand what works and what doesn’t work when implementing scripts. The most common mistake: Creating a script and just asking your staff to follow it. It’s not that simple. To pull this off, it takes leadership, experience with call center training, and practice.
3. Take control. Many clinic owners are told by my colleagues that therapy clinic receptionists CANNOT and SHOULD NOT be expected to do this. Instead, they are told to outsource this critical business function. If you want excellent results, and strategic advantage, then outsourcing this important function is a mistake – trust me.

Complete training, call tracking and scripting is just one component included in your full service PT Referral Machine program.

For a more complete list of services included with the PT Referral Machine program and information on how to implement cash-generating training and scripting in your business, visit www.PTreferralMachine.com/free_webinar and sign up for a 60 minute interactive demonstration.