Ep. 142: Proximity Principle: Navigating Networking in Urgent Care

Participant (00:00)
Hey, what's up everybody? You're listening to another episode of Walk -Ins Welcome where we help you triple your patient volume. Our goal is to help you get more patients, deliver better care, get repeat visits and scale your clinic. I'm Nick. This is Michael. What is up my friend? What is happening? And I feel like we need to interject a news report saying do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. So today is August 1st, 2024. And Google has made a change. Surprise. Shock and all. They removed stuff.

which is a little different in the Google world. Sometimes they don't tell you about it, but they gave a warning. They gave a three, four month warning on this one. So as of today, August 1st, your call history is gone and your ability to do Google messages is gone. What does that mean to the world that's listening to this podcast? If you were getting call history data, like how many Google business profile calls are happening, that's gone now. So that data is gone. For us, it's actually kind of

We never qualified those calls per se from our standpoint because we could never figure out like if they were actually because we generated it or because it was an existing customer calling by like in our urgent care space, hundreds of calls a month per client that we have. For clarification purposes, they're still going to be calling your clinic. Yeah. And but it's just not going to be tracked through Google's platform. Google. And it's a good thing personally, I think because

it won't be tracked to a platform, yes, but also that means your real phone number will start showing up again. It's not like their Google number for to call. Cause you've ever like, everybody got mad at us for that. got mad at Google for that. Yeah, I know. Cause I couldn't fix it, I guess. Anyway, so that's gone. So your true phone number should, what best I can tell should start showing back up as your true phone number, not a Google recommended call history recording number or whatever. And also too, if you've ever had missed

calls or calls that say, you have 400 calls this month. I was like, I only got like 100 of those. Well, like there were some known bugs in the system where we actually had a client that's local to us. It's not in urgent care space. They're actually in the mechanic space. And their call history phone number in Google would not ring or their phone would not accept the call sometimes. It would just because it's a virtual number. So sometimes virtual numbers kind of get lost in the way sometimes. And so they miss

legitimate calls and they couldn't rep. We couldn't replicate like I don't know what tell you then I realized. OK, let me just turn off call history and see what happens in boom it magically fixed itself right so there's actually opportunities here for improvement. So if you all of a sudden have more calls coming in than you're used to that actually maybe why yeah because they have known bugs where it would actually call the wrong business because they were routing it incorrectly right and we have no control of that. So so that's gone goodbye call history well.

I have a couple of theories here. One of the theories is simply they ran out of phone numbers, like for the market. know here in Birmingham, Alabama, we track a lot and I'm now, so if there's Birmingham, just think of where you live. You know, there's little micro cities all around and we're not a big, big town. We're not. like a place like Atlanta or New York or San Diego or Houston, Texas, or something like that. Like their suburbs are probably massive one and they probably have multiple area codes, right?

So if you think of it from that perspective, you're pulling area codes. At this point, Birmingham's run out of phone numbers. They're about to crank up a new area code. They already did. Okay. it goes like Devon got one. All right. So we're 205 and now it's what? Six, five, nine. Okay. It's a random weird number. I remember living in Knoxville and I had an eight, six, five area code and then he changed it to like two, seven, six or something or they added to it. why do I bring that up? If I have a two, five area code business and I need to get a tracking number,

and that tracking number isn't my area code, that's problematic for a business. Because now you can no longer appear local. No, so we deal with that too. So we have call tracking for lots of our clients outside of Google Business Profile. And we've now had to go multiple times now to our call tracking provider and say, I need a 205 number and they had to do a special request in to get more unlocked.

That's what we're dealing with right now. And it makes sense. mean, because now we, because phone numbers were invented before households. there's 10 numbers, right? Yeah. So like, only matches up so many different ways. There's a physical limitation there. for 205, there's really just seven. Yeah. And so physical limitation. And then like they were built for households. Well, now it's built for everybody in the brother to have a number. Like I have a great story to tell on

the frustrations with a phone number, with Courtney's phone number. I'll actually do that story, it'll be fun in a second because it's stupid. anyway, that being said, I like that theory, I do. So I think it's a combination of that. I think it's a combination of they probably had a lot of bugs going on and Google's really bad about releasing beta stuff for us to test as a public and it didn't work out too well. But they also turned off messaging at the same time.

So it's almost like they're saying, we don't really want your data like that particular part of data. Well, they have been on a search. You know, they were about to kill cookies. And I tell you what, I could explain it. I think it would be better if you explained what a cookie for a website is. You deal on websites all the time. Just try and give like a very low level, easy like cookies on the bottom shelf. Yeah. You know what saying? So we've all heard the phrase cookies or tracking cookies.

I can't tell you why it's called actually a cookie. I'm sure there's a fun little story behind it. But what is a cookie? So basically it's allowing your browser and the website to know more about you and hang on to you. So an easy, simple way to show that if you've ever gone shopping for shoes online and then 10 minutes later you get an ad about that same shoe you looked at, that's cookie related. Google is like, Ben said,

We're, you know, we're a safe browser. getting rid of all this stuff. Like we're anti -cookie. And then what? Two weeks ago, like just kidding. They had to man. like that was their bit. They were literally stabbing themselves because that was their business model. If you want, I think I know we're deviating off course a little bit. Now we're talking about Google, but well, I mean, I'm about to talk about Apple for a second too. You know, cause they made the big iOS update that changed everything. And you know what? Apple is known for what? Security and privacy. Yep.

Like they've built a brand on security and privacy and people who hold that in very high regard go to that platform for that reason. Or that's one of the, one of the top reasons they go to that platform. Anybody who is on Google or Google's platform, they know they're in Chrome or they're using an Android device.

they are not expecting privacy. No, we're not. They're not expecting it. I want the experience of not having privacy. And so from that perspective, and by the way, it's a real thing. The more you open yourself up to exposure, a lot of times the better result out of a platform you'll get. Now, if that's a totally different story, the reason I bring that up is why can't Google just authentically be Google and quit trying to be Apple? People get frustrated with Apple trying to be Google. Yeah. Well,

nobody has said anything to Google about trying to be Apple in this area. And I don't think they should. I now I think it's I like freedom. I'm a fan of it. Which is weird because you're a big Apple person. I'm stuck is what it is. I do like Apple, but I'm also stuck. Your freedom is in these box, in this little box. it is. But what I mean by that is like, I feel like it's incumbent upon me to protect myself. Yeah. That's what I think. Yeah. Right.

Yes, think corporations have responsibilities and stuff. I'm not going to be stupid here. But what I'm saying, though, is it's my responsibility to take care of my data and who I share it with and what I give it to and what I click on and where I go. Exactly. We just had a client get email, get hacked. think, yeah, got hacked and all of us got the same because at first, like, this seems legit. And then I looked at the link and I like, well, it's actually technically a good link. I to that link. was like, that's a bitly.

Yeah, touching that. So no, it's funny. just really connected the dots about the cookie thing. We've been watching the Olympics and we watch on Peacock at home. I guess most people probably do right now. And they obviously did not sell enough commercial spaces because we get like four to six ads the whole night. Like I know a whole lot about the Alvin School of Fine Arts right now. You have Home Depot, Chase, three or four other advertisers that because of the opening ceremonies have pulled

Yeah, I don't want to get into that discussion. that's why you're missing them. Yeah. Lots of the big donors. And it goes into coverage returning soon with Eiffel Tower picture. Anyway, but one of the commercials I've been seeing is Apple's commercial on Safari. The flying cameras and they tap Safari and they all blow up and just click. I was like, they're doing that because the cookie thing's coming back and they're like, don't have worry about crap, you know, crap like that with us, which isn't true. Like they're still

Lots of tracking going on. Apple is gathering its own data. Period. You know, it'd be real interesting if Apple came out with their own search engine. I would. Well, I mean, or advertise. They are. Do you know what it's called? What's that? Apple Intelligence. AI. They're not calling it AI. They're calling it Apple Intelligence. that technically speaking, that is. It's included. AI Pro.

but you bringing that up, like that is going to be their search engine. makes sense. I mean, there will be a point where your device, you'll just do a search and you won't know what's actually searching for you. This episode is all over the place, but we're just going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. And I have to make a mention real quick because we're talking about search engines. We won't have to know the title of this, I guess. Well, good luck, Hannah and Alyssa and whoever else is touching this this week. When

When I, I use Chrome as my browser, but when I do a Google search, I'm now getting Google's Gemini results before I get anything else. it's not always right. No, no, no, it's not. And they're making strides in it. And sometimes I really like the result that I get. Yeah. Like there is one I was looking at. had some, I used to watch a show called like horsepower TV as a kid and one of the hosts died. And so I was doing a search on the other host. I was like, I haven't heard about the other host.

And then Jim and I said, he died. you look at the, said blah, blah, horse power died. And then you look at the link, it links to, it links to a guy's name that died that is not as, it wasn't on the show. Not the same guy. I was like, Ooh, that's a mistake. Cause I've seen things like that happen. It's not perfect, but anyway, let's go back. All right. So phone numbers are dead on Google all the way back to the beginning. Phone numbers and messaging. So Google is very, very, very on top of user experience. One of the things that we've run into with the phone numbers.

Not just the idea of the area codes, but everything runs through Twilio. Everything. Yeah, so to get a perspective, what is Twilio? Twilio is like the AT &T of virtual phone numbers at the end of the day. if AT &T is the hard line, South Central Bell, if you're back in the day. Or Southwest Bell, or whatever you want to call it. So you view AT &T as the physical lines in the air that have connected all these phones by plugging in.

when you think of AT &T. Well Twilio is I need a phone number that's not physical. It's a virtual number. What does that mean? Basically it lives in software. cannot be ported to certain devices like it lives in a piece of software and usually it's a masking number. What does that mean? It's there to swap out a physical number for tracking purposes. So you ever get those spam texts or spam calls or

the ghost voicemails that your phone didn't ring, but you got the voicemail. That's a voicemail drop. Yeah. Yeah. That's what meant. And so that's Twilio's backbone that's doing that. And Twilio is interesting because it's really its own entity. But like A2P came out last year now is because of AT &T and Verizon. Like we need to regulate the spam crap. And that was their attempt to do that. But at the end of the day, Twilio is everything. And if Twilio has a problem,

Virtual numbers have a problem. Yeah. Which brings me to the point on Google is that you said you would get like twice as many phone calls. Well, Twilio will actually record an inbound and an outbound. Yeah. It doesn't count. Like it doesn't merge those. No, no. Right. So if two connections are made. That's true. We had a big issue with our tracking on that. We totally changed our situation because of it, right, for our tracking. And we don't use it today because of it, even though I really wish we could. But we can. Yeah. We haven't fixed it. But

two phone numbers connect, you have an inbound and an outbound, it's two calls, even though it's one call. Which is why your number is two instances. So that is why also, think that one, you were getting bad data and two, they didn't have a path to fix that with Twilio. And so they probably scratched that. so, then, so they scratched that. And I think you're right in sense of if it's not a great experience, it's not going to last.

I mean, I could argue I'm curious if they're going to make the LSA a better experience because it has its limitations too. They're tweaking it, but they're making money with it. It's very effective while at the same time being a complete train wreck. Yeah, very clunky. anyway, it's an LSA's local service ads. It is actually in the urgent care space. It's been kind of hard to get into. just on the primary side. Anyway.

The other one that went down is Google messaging. down at the same time, which is Google chat. What does that mean? You ever gotten a message on your... So if you own a business profile, so if you're the business owner and you set up your Google business profile and you have that email on your phone, at some point you may have gotten a message, hey, do y 'all do this or hey, can I ever... That's gone. I'm actually pretty thankful for that because that was super messy because none of our clients responded to people. Which is exactly why I think they

Yeah. User experience. I bet it was a very one -sided conversation. Me, the patient, asking a question on Google, you, the provider, not even getting a notification that it happened. Yeah. I don't think it was, I don't think it was you, the provider, ignoring it. I think you never knew it happened. You didn't have it set up properly. had notifications turned off or not properly turned on. Well, they killed the Google My Business app. Yeah, they killed the app. And put it in Maps. And migrated the maps. And then, so what does that mean?

you have to have your phone on you to make a send that message. Maybe on an Android, but it doesn't even give notifications on an iPhone. I'd have to walk around with a laptop. Yeah, and that's not practical. Also, for HIPAA's sake, I bet there were lots of conversations. Hey, I just broke my leg or how's my x -ray? Whatever. Like there were probably some PHI information that was floating around in there and they couldn't control that. And so at the end of the day, there were more problems it was creating than

and good stuff. so they pulled it. I think it's funny they pulled the same time. Yeah. So it's interesting. Well, it would make sense because you have to have a phone number to have a message. Well, no. Well. In Twilio world. Well, yeah. Like every day. So for our clients, when we go in, we set up like a bot or we set up an automatic responder message. Yeah. I have to set up the phone number, get it to be verified, and then we can use the messenger. I even have to tell people now it's going to take five to seven business days for me to be able to get your messenger set up.

So either way, so they killed those things. So let's think about this. So they killed chat. They killed call history. Earlier this year, they killed Google websites. And I was checking back when that actually was. So they announced in January. And it went down sometime in the spring. And so they're adjusting their profile features, which I find interesting because they've been removing a whole lot more than adding. And I'm trying to figure out why. God, give us an outback. Please, God, give us

yeah, that would be nice. Everything has become more difficult since they removed the app and added everything to Google Maps. Yeah, they've I mean, I get the mindset behind it, I guess, especially when you're on a desktop. It makes a little sense because from our standpoint, we like dashboards and things to work on, but an individual user may enjoy just the there's my location. But like they remove stuff and then they made it even more difficult to verify things like we're still in verification.

roundabout right now that we can't seem to figure out. You're talking about for our location. our own location. We moved the office in January. We've been trying to get it from marketing agency with hundreds of business profiles that we manage. Yeah. And we can't get them to verify our business and our location. I literally attempted today because I'm the only Android user. it not work? No, I don't know. It accepted it. OK, good. So I'm the only... because your iPhone quit working on... it just blanked out,

it will not activate the camera. Yeah. And so they're like, well, you want to try your only Android in the office? Like, yeah, sure. It does work. Imagine that Google liking Google. And we'll find out in a couple of days. But it's stupid because some of the things that requires out a video, some business simply won't have. And so you're just like, how is this smart? Anyway, so here we go. Like we're seeing reductions.

and Google Business Profile, which probably means we're going to see new features following up sooner than later. We don't really know what they are yet. Well, for speculation purposes, I would love for them to just like improve the existing things they're keeping. I wish it was a simple way to report reviews and get them quickly removed from like spammy stuff. Wouldn't that be nice? It would be glorious. But at the same time, I know why they keep them on there. Yeah.

Because most businesses, if it wasn't a five star, they're going to report it. Yeah, exactly. Or maybe we can just submit a business license and a driver's license if we get a verified profile. That'd be great, too. Yes, exactly. Simple. That would be ideal. But yeah, so that's going on there. So let me go to my story talking about phone numbers earlier. I want to go to my little personal porting of phone numbers situation. This is just a fact. Here's some fair warnings to people. You could lose your phone number.

And you have nothing you can do about it. Fair warning. Also, as I've learned through this, you can opt for Google Authenticator instead of 2FA text message, I would recommend that. Because if this happened to my phone number instead of my wife's, I would have been kind of screwed. Like, there have been so many things I couldn't log into anymore. I've been locked out. I didn't think about that. Right? Because 2FA relies on a phone number that you have in your platform.

You have to go through support and supply stuff to them to get you back in. But for some, that may never happen. I never thought about that to happen, because you don't think about losing your phone number. just a quick story on you can lose your phone number. So I got AT &T Fiber put up my house a couple of weeks ago, 1 gig up and down. It's pretty cool. Now I need better Wi -Fi to fully utilize it, of course. That's the way it goes. Your router. Yeah, I need a full mesh system at this point.

Anyway, so when they were there like, Hey, AT &T is doing a 20 % off deal. If you add a wireless line, we'll give you 20 % off and it ended up equaling out to what we were paying for Courtney's phone because she was on straight talk. I was like, shoot for 50 for the same price, I get a free phone and it's one less bill I have to keep up with. It's all built in one spot. I'm okay with that. Let's do it. So he starts the porting, like he's at her house with an iPad. He's like, okay, cool. Just give me your IME ID off your phone. It's an iPhone.

Let me plug it in. And he's like, Huh, that's a little weird. It's probably because of straight talk. I typically can port right in five minutes, but I can't because straight talks holding it usually takes a couple hours. Okay, he said, just go here and check it until it says it's okay. It was like their transfer port status thing. Sure. Next day goes by and it comes back says sorry, we need the wrong account number from straight talk, please submit one. Okay, sure.

Another day goes by. So her phone's been working this whole time, which is fine. There goes, but hey, we need your original billing zip code from 10 years ago. Well, I'll make a good guess. Here you go. it worked. Is it great? You are now able to transfer your phone to AT &T. Cool. So I started and the guy told me when you get that notification, just hit add eSIM on your iPhone and it should recognize. Hit add eSIM. It said, hey, we need a QR code scan. I'm like, well, that's not it. So I called a guy and he's like, I don't really know.

And then he said, let me, I don't have my iPad for me to check some stuff, but I'll let you know. Never calls me back. He just goes to me at that point. That's on brand. I think he knew he screwed up. And so we're like, okay. So it's transferred. This is how the events went. On Monday, it officially transferred. Straight Talk took my money for another 30 days because they're a prepaid to refill plan system. On Tuesday,

They sent a text, hey, we've canceled your account at straight talk, even though you just paid us like, okay. And so I go then I was talking to the 18 and went the whole thing. 18 didn't know what to do. So then I was like, Courtney, we gotta just go to an AT &T store. so that following Saturday, we go to AT &T store. And the guy's like, he didn't call you back. I will fix this right up for him. Plugs in her number. He's like, I know why he didn't call you back. We can't do anything. It's like, we can't do anything.

He's like, yeah, we can't do anything because of this, this and this. Basically, her, even though she had a straight talk number, it was originally an AT &T number that was purchased by Core Wireless from out of Coleman 15 years ago. It was a rented AT &T line, and then it got transferred around when Core got sold. All that being said, in AT &T's world, it was an existing number and they couldn't attach an activation to it. So it was

And I said, okay, can I transfer this number to like Verizon and get it out of your system and then maybe bring it back later? Yeah, sure. Fine. So we will go over to Verizon and they're like, yeah, we're busy. Come back next day and got an appointment. So I come back the next day and they're like, Hey, before you come, bring a transfer pin and your account number from straight talks. Like, okay, I can do that. I tried to log into straight talk. It says resource not found. I was like, that's new. So I chat straight talks, chat bot and they said, sorry, we have no records of your phone.

And when they canceled, they deleted it. They deleted it. They really did. So we go to Verizon and I said, because I talked to the guy Verizon for a minute. Yeah, I'll be there. I said, cool. So I get there and I give him the whole spoon. I say, here's the problem. I can't get my account number transfer pin anymore. He said, what do you mean? He's like, I can't log in. And so let's call straight talk. So we call straight talk. And they said on Courtney's phone with her phone number. And they said, we have no records of your phone.

or your phone number and like, I'm literally talking to you through straight talk lines right now. Well, we can't see anything. Let move you to our high tier support, getting the high tier guy. He's like, we have no records of that phone number on our system. I wonder if like that's now a free line for you forever. that'd be funny. That'd be pretty cool. Well, it's sitting on a SIM card right now. So I got a phone at the house. Yeah. You want it? But no, it's not that just to see if we can get it to work.

And on September 1st, we'll try and see if it works. That'd be really funny. I'd love to do that. I've got an iPhone sitting at the house collecting dust. And so then we're like, crap. So I said, we have to get her a new phone number. He's like, yeah, it's gone. Like your phone number is gone. I'm like, how does that happen? Like, how did this actually happen? And he said he has seen this before. I was like, that's scary. Not where you want to be when you have all of your data in one

Right. And so like all your stuff is in one spot. It was kind of an innocent thing of because she was on straight talk for 10 years. You don't think about it. Right. And then you're like, I want to go to a new plan or a new provider. And then, boom, it blows up and frame and literally lost the phone number. Like, can't go back because straight talk will not help me. AT &T that can't help. I guess it's just sitting in AT &T's lost world of phone numbers and in purgatory. It is. It kind of is. And

So we're getting a new phone number. And I said, all right, so I'm getting a new phone number. just want to do it. I think I made a mistake. I think they tricked me at this point. So it was Verizon. So I said, to be honest, if I'm having to get a new phone number, I'm just going to go back over to AT &T and just do that and go that route. And he's like, well, hold on. Let's see if we can still help you. I made a mistake at that point. Because the guy was super nice. But I was like, I don't want to transfer back. So do you have like a Verizon phone now? Yeah.

And so here's why. he questioned if he was lying to me. So he's like, all right, well, give me your IMEI number and let's see what we can do with your phone. And then he checks. He's like, that's weird. So your phone's technically carrier locked. I'm like, how is it carrier locked? I bought this thing three or four years ago, unlocked. And it says here, unlocked. He said, well, I think there's a temporary carrier lock on it because it was trying to transfer

calling shenanigans. And now that I think about it, like, did you screw me? But at the same time, was Sunday at like 3 30. I quit carrying at that point. at that point, you just like get me out of here. And said, just, he said, let me see if it works on Verizon. So they go and grab a demo phone and pop the SIM card out and pop it in her phone and do the 611. And it worked. He's like, OK, we can activate on Verizon. So you want to go Verizon? Sure.

get me on a prepaid plan so can get away at some point. Absolutely. So I got into a prepaid plan. It's fine. It works fine now. But all that story to say, holy cow, you can lose a phone number with no ill intentions behind it. You just simply can lose one. Right. So like even when you were telling me, I want to get away from our call provider for our phone, business phone, I'm like, gun shy to the mindset, could we lose the number? Well, I remember porting it from Google Voice over to where we

I just cannot put it back there because it'd be so much easier. Yeah, and now we don't like how easy can it be? But all that being said, like we even have a client right now that has been Google decided never to verify their phone number. We would give them the phone number, give them the utility bill and all the things they say now we're not we don't verify it. Remember with our urgent care right? Right. New Orleans. So phone numbers are a little weird thing that we have to deal with here. Digital pieces of information that are held on a system by

Yeah, exactly. Like we're ultimately leasing these numbers from somebody. You don't own anything anymore anyway. No, not at all. If it's tied to a data something, you don't own it. No one else does. Not at all. So anyway, that was my story on that. I know we talked about business. We kind of went all over place today, which is always fun to me. And also as a side note, y 'all are really enjoying our how to get rid of employees or high turnover rate. I haven't looked at the numbers of that yet. So on TikTok, it's like a number one video at the moment.

it gained a little traction out of the gates. That was pretty fun. But we have a lot of fun with that. So if you're curious of what not to do when it to employees, we got you covered. We had good time with that. Well, listen, we want to invite you to our Facebook community. It's Walk -Ins Welcome, which is a marketing resource. Please go check that out. is other urgent cares collaborating together on what's working, what's not working and how you can grow your clinic. we have

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Love to help you out. Love to see what's bothering you right now because at the end of the we can only see so much, but there's something in the back of your head. Like, I wish I knew why this was a thing. We could probably explain it. Love it. Awesome. Thank you all for listening, and we'll catch you next