Ep. 230: Your Clinic's Hidden Growth Engine: Front Desk Training That Turns Calls Into Patients

Patient Care Marketing Pros (00:01)
And then our zoom decided that I don't know what just happened, but I hope you're still with us. Yeah. The point I'm trying to make though is even if you recovered 50 % of that of the missed calls, not, not the full capture, but just half of what we're talking about. That's $82,000 back in your pocket. That's 540 patients. It's, it's an unreal number, but it is a, also a very real number. And these aren't like extravagant numbers from the standpoint of three patients.

three calls that could have been changed, right? Where a day and we're also we're assuming you're open 30 days out of the month. Yeah, I may vary. But just think about this, like, this is somebody's payroll for a couple of people potentially this is pure this could be pure profit. Sorry to interrupt. This is built off six days open. Yeah, yeah, exactly. like, there's this could make a ⁓ we barely scrape by this year to Hey, that was pretty good year. You know, like

that much of a difference. I'd love for y'all to go play with this because I'm giving you some averages here. Let's drop that down to five per day. And let's just say that we're being super conservative. That's still even conservatively, Hey, if we just did a little bit better, we're putting $50,000 back in your pocket without you making changes. Yeah. We're not asking you to change your personnel. We're not asking you to change just marketing dollars. is simply chances are it's already there. Priority one, urgent care. Yes.

Yes, you should. If you're not going to answer your phone, yes, you should. The question is, should not just buy one of the AI telephone packages. Listen, Ava over at Flip AI, we love her. Flip does great work. Can it be expensive? It's not going to cost you $54,750. I can tell you that. And it'll recover and it'll have a 100 % answer rate. So my answer to you, priority one urgent care, thank you for dropping that. Yes, I think you should. If you don't want to tackle answering the phones in person, put an AI in.

Now if you do have good people and you have the idea like you're comfortable the idea some trainings and things like that It can't make the difference. So I would incur So I changed it on what also we recognize who there are your demographics of your where your patients are coming from may not respond Well to AI either so there's a line. Yeah, there is a line And then the best thing you can do is to help you identify your missed call stuff So the people are just if you're being slammed in person and where the calls are just being ignored

AI starts to make a little more sense. But if it's like where they're picking up the phone, they just don't know what to do with the phone call. This could probably be make more make more sense for now before AI could be intercepting some of it. So there is a there's a balance, not like black and white, just like business. Everything's kind of gray. But we recognize that. All right, back into the presentation.

Yeah, that's okay. We're good. We're gonna make this work. There we go. All right. Then we're back. All right. So and that that's a live link. So at any point, if you want to go back and revisit that link, you absolutely can. So don't think you have to get it right there. That's not a link we're going to turn off. So if you need to go back to your manager, say, Hey, this is a problem. Look how much money this could be costing us. Right? It's there to calculate. You can play with it and say, Okay, well, if we did this, we did that. If I have a bunch of locations, because each location could be unique.

in that sense. So it's there for you guys. It's a resource to you guys. And for us, it just kind of helps paint the picture. And last but not least, again, going back to priority one urgent care. ⁓ This is a great tool to decide whether or not buying a software does make sense. Yeah, because it'll allow you to put in the math that makes sense. OK, so there you go. ⁓ Cool. Let's keep going on one of ⁓ Hannah's going to drop a chat. What do you think is the biggest issue at your front desk? Yeah, so you have.

Are you hiring wrong type of staff? No scripts, lack of accountability calls feel like they're just interruptions. So accountability is popping in. What's got some, here we go. Got some response. Thank you for responding. It actually really helps us. So helpful. Hey, I love that lack of accountability. You know what that tells me? Here's what that tells me directly is that you're owning the fact that there's a problem. You're not putting it fully on your team. You're saying, ⁓ there's no accountability in place. I can do something about

Yeah. I love that. So from leader to leader right here in the eyeballs, I love that. That's a great response. Absolutely. Not that the others are bad. I just like that saying, well, as an editor, I'm sitting here at the front. My first thing is not to blame someone else, but just to say, maybe this is a me thing. Same with hiring with the wrong type of staff. That's still, that's a me thing. I can control that. love that. But no, yeah, that accountability. And what's, what you probably said to yourself, I've never listened to a single recorded call or I trained them on day one or week one.

And all of a sudden I have nothing to say. Like I haven't been seeing them in months in terms of training or like, or if you're the only one, how do you have your own self accountability? Are you documenting any of this stuff? mean, if you're the only one, this is, this is a challenge too. This is where you go. I either need to hire somebody else or I need to get one of these call, uh, AIs that's going to help me out. There is no shame in getting support. No, not at all. All right. Moving on though. So here's the shift and we, we touched on it, but gotta make it real. So

Currently the mind shift, the mindset is if you're a front desk, this reception is driven, it's administrative task, it's processing patients coming through the door. ⁓ Let me go verify something. Let me check the labs. Let me check some billing. All these different things, all these little admin tasks. And those are important. Can't just, you know, we'll never discount that at all. But what we're trying to say is that front desk could actually make or break your business because they could be

unintentionally throwing away some potential patients. Like they're not trying to just happens because there's been a mind shift of like, I answered their questions. They asked if we did x-ray, we had an x-ray tech on staff today. said, yeah, we're here. And what time do y'all close? 6pm. Okay, thanks. And like, technically there's nothing wrong with that, but there's something wrong from the standpoint of the are they going to come in? We do not know. And this is where we're trying to fix that problem. So that's the mindset shift.

is simply you can have the same people. You just need to say, hey, we got to tweak some things. Technically speaking, the conversations won't be any longer, right? Maybe even shorter. But we're just changing the conversation inside of that. And so making the context a little better and pushing toward, well, you can definitely come in and we're going to help you come in by doing these things. So anyway, when I worked in retail, I've told this story before. I'll tell it really, really quick. When I worked in retail, it was my job to make sure that I offered a credit card to everyone.

Because we weren't in the closed business. We were in the credit card business. But the point is two things. One, it was required to celebrated. Yeah. Right. So as you review these front, these front desk calls, you can just simply say, one, did you do the job? That's a verification. And two, congratulations, you did the job and you did it well. Yeah. All right. Keep going. Exactly. All right. So we've talked about this. So chances are whether you're doing marketing or not.

There you probably have a lot enough traffic from phone calls and just interactions that you may have more patients there than you think you do. We know that if this part is fixed, we just magnify it with marketing. 100%. Well, what usually happens though is that we expose this problem with marketing because then we say, hey, this is a problem. And you know, there's a challenge if you're multi location because you may have chances are if you're multi location, half your locations are carrying your other half because they're killing it and things are doing well.

and the other half not so much. And so like we help expose that when we take you on as a client from marketing standpoint. But no, like the reality is you probably have enough patients potentially coming in. It's just they're not being pushed over the line just enough to actually make it all the way into your clinic. They may be calling in information, but they're not making that final step. And that's what we're trying to push on you guys today is like your front desk can help fix that. And we got some things to give them to you. So let's go right through that. All right. So here's the things that we're going to focusing on today.

We have the four pillars of high performing front desk, but hiring started at very beginning, hiring for the conversion side. So like you are making a hire not so much on the admin experience, but more on the selling experience. If you get a resume that shows that they've done selling of some sort, you're in the right spot. And now here's the thing that comes with that. There are things around costs. there's expectations around. We'll talk about that on the next slide, but just like just giving you upfront.

hiring for that conversion type of person is a little different. Next is performance tracking. We already talked about accountability and the importance of that, but like, what's it look like? We have scripts, like some actual scripts that make sense. And like why they, we want them to work the way they do in the ongoing training, ongoing training. So I think, so these are the four things like if you're, when you're going in and you're reviewing your front desk, these are the four things you need to care about from the very beginning of hiring to how you track this and are there being scripts being used and how often are you training them? If at all.

because that's just part of the game because things change on regular basis. But also too, you may have been great at this thing six months ago, but over time, everybody kind of falls off a path. You got to bring them back in, a little bit extra training and all the things. So that's where we push on that. So let's get right into it though. Hiring for conversion. So as we said, stop hiring the passive order taker. There's nothing wrong with these wrong with the mindset of that, but it's just

it's not going to accomplish the front desk side. This may be really good for billing and some internal admin stuff, but if they're, there's the front line of taking phone calls and interacting with patients walking in the door, a passive personality that's, that's not going to fly. It's just not. And it's, and you say, well, you know, it's hard to find people who are high energy. You're right. It's not the easiest find because they're actually more, you know, they may not be looking for this type of job. So you got to think about your job descriptions and all things that go into this because it's more

about a cell style job and less about just picking up the phone type of job. You know, on this hiring side, we talked about they need to be high energy, they need to be confident and communicator. So when you have that first interview, are they confident? Are they polished? Are they asking you questions? That's actually one of the easiest way to tell if it's a true salesperson. If if you're going to an interview, you have an interview interview coming in, and halfway through the interview, you say you any questions, they better out questions if they don't have any questions. No, this is good. That's passive.

It's not probably not the right person. One thing that I absolutely think you need to add into your hiring conversation is a quick role play. Yes. I'm going to be the patient. I'm going to call you on what you answered the phone and that be it. And we can do this super quick. Michael, ring the phone. Ring, ring. Hey, Nick, Sergeant care. How are you doing today? Feel terrible. Man. I hate to hear that. What's going on with you? I have stuff. I can't breathe. Absolutely need to get you in. That's going around right now. I understand that a lot of respiratory things are going on.

I tell you what, the doctor is busy at this very moment, but we can see you at 2 p.m. today or we can see you at 4 p.m. today. We close at 6. Good. I could do like 430. Hold on. Let me check. I can get you in at 430, but it'd be right at 430. OK. All right. I'm going to send you a link. What is your cell phone? Give the cell phone number. OK, great. I'm going to send you a link. Can you tell me that you got that?

Yep, there it is. Great. What I do with it. All right. So that's that's a link for you to be able to go ahead and put in your insurance information and give us your information so that when you get in, you can come right on back. Michael, we'll see you then. Awesome. 430. So simple example there. There's some little details we'll talk about in a minute. that conversation, that little role play, it feels awkward, right? Like if you're interviewing somebody like you didn't know we were going to do that. No, didn't. But I knew where it's going. And so but what happened would be

We flip it right. So, you know, basically you're trying you're being asked as like potentially high like how would you interact with this? Now you expect them to stumble a little bit here and there because on the fly. But if they sound confident because if they're good at what they're doing, like they're going to have some confidence, you're going to have confidence in what they don't even know. That's right. Like that's the real sales personality right there. The confidence is high despite the actual knowledge sometimes because like we're just going to move this ball forward because that's my goal. So anyway.

That sounds awkward, but it does work because if they say, ah, and it's kind of freeze up, it's probably not going to be the best fit. Yeah. Generally speaking, nothing against them. It's just may not be, they may be miserable when they come on because that's not what they were hoping to be hired for. I mean, sometimes you can train some, some of it in there, but it usually doesn't work out that way. It's a pretty low barrier of entry. Y'all. isn't, this isn't huge training. The only way this will be a challenge is if people are already setting their, yes, if you, you set the standard,

from the hiring process on one is going to weed out the wrong people and it's going to bring in the people that you're looking for anyway. Let's keep going. All right. So scripts. So the script side of things. Now we'll have a slide toward the end that will give you an opportunity to hang out with me and get some scripts customized to your location. But what are scripts? So not prescriptions, by the way. I think that's obvious, I wanted to say that out loud. But scripts. Yeah, call scripts. So scripts matter because when you're trying to create a consistent experience.

Two, you want to build confidence. if the front desk person knows what they're supposed to be saying on regular basis, it will start to sound smoother, more confident, better, and move the ball a little further down the line. And the thing is, the script doesn't have to be followed word by word. They will customize it a little bit to their personalities. There's wrong with that. But there are some key things in that script that does matter. So here's the thing when comes to scripts. So you just heard us role play for just a minute.

A couple of things that I would critique on was inside any any call there should be can I get your name out of the gate? So you understand that you're talking Nick, but I want to know who I'm talking to as such a sad person. Exactly. So that was that'd be critique one. But the other side is giving them times and options, not just saying come on in. Because yes, you are a walk in clinic. Yes, we understand that. But you can take appointments as well.

And here's why you take appointments is makes us to the patient. It makes it smoother, faster, and just a better experience. And you can say yourself, well, you what if they show up and five other people showed that wasn't expecting and now that 430 appointment becomes 445. That's fine. Technically speaking, it's still faster because they probably filled out a little bit of paperwork before they got there. I hope so. Yeah. Send them a link. Right. And then on the closing side, verifying you have the link.

Great. You have, know where we are. Cool. Let me explain what happens when you get here. Those are the type of conversations you have to have. So in the side of the script side of things, you need to identify here's the main opener that they all should be doing. The in-between is trying to answering some very finite questions, you know, that come up regularly. What kind of insurance do you take? All the different things. And then the closing is sealing the deal. Right. Just like anything else in like selling, you may love me in the front.

And you love me all the way through. But at the very end, if I don't push for the ask, it doesn't happen. Right. If I just assume they'll show up. No, they probably won't. There's probably tons of calls that come through and say, yeah, we're you a close six o'clock. Okay, I'll try to be there by 530. They never showed for whatever reason. Maybe nothing negative. Just simply they got distracted and they looked at I'm not going to make I'll try a different one. Right. Or whatever. And then all of they're gone. Or like we have coworker he said I had

I got an appointment and then I got distracted because I have three children. And I looked down, I had their appointment reminder pop up, say, yeah, I forgot. And then I had to go to it. So life happens. so anyway, but you know, when it boils down to it, the scripts, though, they're there to help get those patients to commit and kind of move that ball forward and not just assume it's going to happen. And then it does build confidence over time, because right now, if you're trying to train somebody on this, that they've never done it before.

A script will feel really good to them for a second. And they'll help see it. training wheels on the They'll usually take them off. And they'll take them off and say, got this. And then that's fine too. But it is that like structure piece that's super important. And I really hope you guys do have scripts out there already. If you don't, I can help you with will by the end of the day. Yeah. All right. So this is what happens when people don't have scripts or don't have any training toward conversion. Caller comes in.

says, do you take walk-ins? Yeah, it depends on how busy we are. You know, just like, I don't really want to talk to you, but sure, we take walk-ins, but I can't tell you what it's going to be like when you show up. And then that's about it. So there's a lot of uncertainty inside of that. That's where that script kind of trolls that conversation a little bit. So just, this is just a simple example of this. And then on the opposite side, the person looks super happy. They're excited to be calling. And same question, do you take walk-ins?

Absolutely. But we can get you in what time would you like this time or this time? So it's answering the same question, but it's answering in a more forward thinking way where I'm going to you sound like you want to come in here. You sound like a patient. I'm going to make you a patient on this call. Right. And so and what we've learned, this is one of those tricks inside the script itself. Offering somebody two different times is more powerful than asking offering one time simply because you give the power back.

to the individual and allows them to make a decision and don't feel forced at all. So anyway, I just want that's just a simple example inside the scripting side of things. This is some sales 101 stuff that I myself have learned over the years, but it's just it works. And I've heard it live on other calls where they tried this and the patient seemed relieved to be able to answer it. Right. I literally heard a call the other day where they said,

Yeah, we just take walk ins. But you how far are you from the clinic right now? Oh, okay. That's about 30 minutes. So we can take you at 430. Great. Let me get some information. And I heard the patient say, Oh, good. Like basically that comes, Oh, I'm locked in. I can go do this now. And it was, and it wasn't even for the person. It was for their child. And so like, it just made them feel so much better. And you're already winning on the experience side, just run up first conversation. So this is where it starts to matter. All right. Moving forward for time. So

Performance tracking, got call conversions, missed call percentages, booked versus inquired. This is some basic call, but performance tracking stuff that matters. Call conversion rates, so how many of those calls, if you had a hundred calls come in, how many does convert into actual patients? Pretty straightforward. So, but you gotta track it. If you don't track it, doesn't expand, doesn't get better over time. It just gets ignored. So let's say your call conversion rate is 20%. So 20 calls out of hundred calls became patients. That's a cool number.

What would it take to get to 25 %? How can I get five more out of that? And can we say, hey, if I tweak something, did we see an increase or did we see a decrease? Or are we seeing, hey, so and so showed up instead of this person. we saw an increase. Maybe this person has no something that the other person doesn't. Let's find out and let's do some training opportunities there. Missed call percentages. We went through that missed call calculator. That's the most painful thing to look at when you're looking at numbers. It is, but it's so real. It's so real.

So missed call percentages. So how do I track this though? How do I figure this out? Well, you have a call system. You have a phone call system or phone system. Chances are you have a log into it while you can go into that log in. And usually it shows you how many calls go to voicemail. That's a missed call by the way. If it goes to voicemail, they're not going to interact with you. It shows how many just left were left unanswered. need to say something real quick. If you're sending them, if your phone tree picks up by default,

That doesn't count as an answered call. That's not an answer call. All right, we have to use an AI tool that we've built to separate out the front desk call, the bot that tells you to call 911 and all that. We have to use a tool to separate that out. That's not an answered call. Yeah. Okay. And for a quick sake, know, go call your client right now. Measure how long that initial message is.

Let's say it's 20 seconds. It better be less than 20 seconds. We've seen some like 60 seconds like no, no, no, you're losing if it's around the wait that long. Anyway, let's say it's 20 seconds. We'll call go to your calls, your phone system software, filter the calls by duration and anything that's below 20 seconds. Like, okay, they just hung up. They didn't make it very far. But anything beyond 20 seconds, but only made it to like 40 to 60 seconds. Oh, well, that they just didn't answer phone. Right. My people didn't answer. They didn't have a conversation.

at all. So there's your opportunity to go check that out. It may be a little painful to go through, but it'd be totally worth it because you got to measure it somehow. Because right now, if you say you're doing everything right, but you're probably not. This will tell you that. Fine measure improves. Yeah. Finally, it's the book versus inquiry part. So this is the actual like active proactive approach, right? Where a patient called in and they got their information, but did they actually book or not? Like did that phone call actually turn into somebody who booked an appointment with you versus

Yeah, we're walking. We'll see you in a few. So like that's that's like the nitty gritty. Like is my training working on the fly or not? And this is something you can start measuring. And it wouldn't be that hard to measure. It would rely on the front desk person to be involved with the measuring as well. Like, hey, I got you know, tag it in your EMR from like, hey, this person was booking the calls in. We can see that. And we can line up the call volume as well. Check phone numbers and all the stuff. So but you got to do it. You can't just say, I hope this works. This is part of that training piece.

which goes into the actual if you don't track it, you can improve it exactly. But then goes on to the ongoing side. I'm just going to be straight with you. You know this one time training doesn't work. Hey, I got this. I came up with a really cool webinar. We're going to do this. And then you do the training and then it seems cool. And then 30, 30 days later, it's not, I didn't see any improvements. Well, did you follow up? I'm just going to say having a plan in place to

sit down on a weekly or at least a regular basis to review. Here are the results that we tracked. Let's go listen to calls together. One of the best things that you can do is if you're recording your calls is to sit down with that front desk person and just review the calls. Yeah. And just say, and not, don't beat them up, but just say, here's the one you did really well on. Here's one you could have done better on. ⁓ Hey, and you know how we role played this a few weeks ago? Let's role play again. I'll see how well you're going to do because if they've improved,

That role play be super smooth. You know, what's funny going back to the recordings for just a second, we record our, ⁓ not only our sales calls, but we record our client calls and I have my team do this. It's recorded on video. They turn those into me. They were so resistant, so resistant. ⁓ yes. And the reason why is because for whatever reason, I hadn't built trust there yet. Here's what I mean by that. ⁓ they weren't under the impression that they were going to get berated, corrected.

⁓ all these different things, like held accountable because people hate accountability is wild. By the way, I didn't berate anybody. did correct, but also celebrated. ⁓ we highlighted wins. We celebrated those publicly. ⁓ we also graded them and now there is a goal that they're all trying to hit without us trying to provoke it because they want to improve why I've built trust by telling them, Hey, I'm reviewing it. And here's all the things you did. Well, by the way, here's some areas that I can see that can improve.

they're seeing this and they're wanting to do better. One, because they want to serve our clients really, really well. So they want to get better because they care about you. ⁓ Secondary, they want to get better because they know the better, ⁓ the better they do with you, the better they do here. So, I think that your front desk is going to act very similar, but you're going to have to build trust. It doesn't happen when you just hand it to them. It happens when you hand it to them, you coach them on it, you review it and you role play. Yeah, exactly. Where you're in the trenches with them.

You're not there just like here. Here's something new to learn and go have fun. But you talked about the scoring side. The scoring side was really entertaining. Once the was built and then we started saying, man, if we can just hit a 91 out of a hundred on the score. And it became like a competition a little bit like a friendly competition. Like, well, you got to get a 91. I can get a 91. Let me try. And so, and it's just, but it's just nature, right? We all like being a little competitive. It makes time go by faster. It makes it more enjoyable. And it's like,

where if I tweak this one thing if I can score out score them just a little bit. So it does matter. Celebrating matters. Because if you just don't celebrate it, then I will. I got a pat on the back. It's the most corporate pizza. Here's a pizza party. We do like pizza, but let's be better than just a pizza party. And then like it says here, consistency over time drives the performance of it. Because you don't need somebody knocking out a part randomly, you need to be hitting good consistent runs there. And just being like in

They're not going to get every call. Some calls the patient doesn't want to talk. I just want to verify and hang out like that's real. It's not going be a consistent like every single one's going to matter. But if they do it over time, it will absolutely make the impact. Like I said, if we can just recover 50 percent. Yeah, exactly. So when you're actually implementing all this. So what's happening? So you are getting more patients from the existing traffic. So what's already coming potentially to your door now you're increasing that conversion, then you're going to have

confidence build up when you have a staffing that a staff that's really confident. The patient can feel that like when they walk into the your clinic when they talk to him on the phone, they can feel that it makes them automatically feel a little better. I mean, one of the biggest things I like I know because ⁓ my wife has like a heart condition and when I hear the confidence pouring out of the doctor that's doing something that makes me feel better. Right. And that was at default to better reviews, better surveys, all the things it just builds over time. All right.

Talk about the experience and of course just growth as well. Because if you can get this engine firing right, then as we always say, you you may be driving that Ferrari, but we're pouring the gas on the marketing side. So as long as it's moving and purring the way it should, it makes all the difference. And as a manager owner gives you that confidence saying, maybe I can add another location now. And then am I attaching to that vision casting that I did at the very beginning of all this?

And as there is all lining, so then we're all excited, not just one person excited, but everybody's excited. And that really makes a difference. The reason you need to put this into a system is because you're going to have turnover. Yeah. Right. You're going to be exhausted as a clinician and a business owner. If you have this person that you've trained and that you went through this process with them, they got better and they wind up going a different direction. You need to systemize this.

And so it can't just be, I've got this person trained or done. No, it is a on the calendar, ongoing, predictable system of training people in your clinic. If you don't put it into a system, it's not going to happen for the next person. And you're right back to where you started. going. Exactly. Cause the goal would be, we made a new hire. Great. You are plugged in. And by the end of week two or three, or whatever it ends up being, you will know these things. And if they're not

getting it because your system has proven itself with other people and they're just not getting you say, Hey, maybe that was not the best hire. And as we all know, hire, we say hire, slow, fire, fast. And that's a common theme throughout most businesses. So when you have the opportunity to say, Hey, this may not be fitting like we thought it was. Let's cut our losses now before it becomes a bigger problem. Cause it is hard to somebody go that's been around much longer than somebody brand new that like, that may have been a bad hire. Didn't mean to. All right. Popping into a question right here. Just as we're

coming up toward the end. Which area would you make the biggest? Which area would make the biggest impact your clinical right now? Hiring better front desk, doing the scripts, training, tracking performance. What's out there to you guys? I will give it feedback. Yep. Common make those scripts. Yep. See a little bit of that. Y'all are mixing in a little bit there. You know what is surprising me so far is hiring better front.

desk staff tells me you already have a good front desk staff. love your front desk. And one of the things that it comes across when we're doing this training, typically when we're doing this training, the impression is given that we think your front desk sucks. And we don't think that we just think they can improve if they were given the proper tools. Exactly. So tracking performance, implementing scripts, ongoing training seems to be the common theme here. Yeah. And it's real because I ongoing training

is not effective if you're not tracking stuff as you go. That's because what can you train on if you don't know what their problems are? That's right. So it's really cool. I think you guys for participation on that thing. We always like to see the instant feedback. And I'll say because we've spent so many times or so much time talking about phones in the first place. ⁓ Yeah, you have to answer the phone, but it's really not necessarily about answering the phones near as much about capturing the opportunities that you have answering the phones as one part of it. Yes, absolutely. Because the other side is just

There's layers to it because I always get that conversation. What do I do if somebody walks up and they're really mad and I'm trying to answer the phone? Well, you need a system there to help capture some of that. That's right. Where it's impractical to have one person try to handle a very upset person in front of them and somebody on the phone at the same time. Like you need a system and a process there because you need to have, I need to port the phone back to somebody in the back so I can handle a person in front of me and take care of this.

And because I get that feedback of, it happens all the time. And then when you bowl down, it doesn't happen all the time. It happens a couple of times a week, maybe or whatever. But it feels like all the time. Right. And so it's just that process like, let's put a system in place. Let's have some help. Right. Like, where's our layers of backups and all the things like is or can you force somebody to come up and like to help take care of something like put that in place? It's just it's not fair to lay it on all one person. That's right. We know that it's just nature. All right.

Moving forward though, so here's the thing. Looking at your front desk, is it a cost center where it's costing you not only just from payroll, but just the opportunities going falling out the door? Or are you trying to make it your most valuable growth asset? That's your mindset right now. Where do I need to go with this? We're telling you to go toward the valuable growth, but it's a big change from the idea like we just have to pay for somebody at front desk.

And so like this is that final shift like does this make sense or does it not? So that's what we're pushing for you guys because where if you say yourself this makes sense I need to focus on this I need to make it happen This is what we can help you and actually have a slide about two slides from now It's gonna give you an opportunity to work with me on this. So real quick. We love one more pull out of you So how's your front desk currently operating? So you just heard everything That we're talking about are they administrative are they converting are they mix? I don't really know

So we got some mixes. That's good. I would expect that's probably going to be most of the answers here. Yeah. The mix is probably going to be the most common just because it's kind of happening, kind of not. Yeah. We've got some administrative on that side. A little bit more. It's good. I love that you guys are responding. Thank you so much for doing that. I like the mostly converting. That's awesome. Yeah. Mostly converting. All right. So we got one of those coming in. That's cool. I love to hear from that clinic actually to see how it's doing. But anyway.

Very good. Thank you guys for that. But yeah, a mix is the most common response, which we understand where they're kind of converting, kind of not. I will ask you, though, for the ones that are saying a mix or mostly converting, have you listened to your calls? Drop that in the chat. If you're listening to your calls, drop it in the chat. Yes, or put a one in chat if you're listening. Yeah, because I'm curious if you're actually listening or not, because you may feel like they're converting, but sometimes you got to go investigate. Yes, we're listening. yeah, there you go. Absolutely. I know Andrew.

listening to buddy. Yeah, exactly. That's so funny. We're listening to, but a very good. Thank you so much for that. Awesome. Good. We're listening in. So you're confident in your answer to that response is what I'm hearing. Perfect. I work with Andrew. So yes. All right. Moving forward here. Come up to the very end. So this is what we're talking about. Get some conversations down in the chat. That's so good. So what are we talking? What did we go over today?

Are you going to be training your team for this? Are you just going to assume it's going to happen? Are you using scripts? Are you not? We can help you with that. I have the next slide for that. ⁓ Are you tracking your performance or not? And then are you doing the ongoing practice and providing that piece of there as well? Are you doing this or not? And if you're saying so, I've never thought about this way. This is our indicator to you saying, please go try this.

at the bare minimum, go listen to calls and then that may give you enough itch to say, I should probably be looking at this little closer anyway. So I just worth it. Y'all. It's worth it. You got some Alabama there. I threw a y'all in there. Yeah, exactly. It's worth it. It's going to make a difference. Yeah, exactly. But very good. All right. So moving forward over here at the very end. So here's my little offer here. I put a $1,500 value. If you are a current client, you already get this option worth more than that. Yeah. But anyway,

Here's the thing. It's a $1,500 value, but completely free for our webinar attendees. Just drop the link in there. It's my calendar, so you're going to write to my calendar and here's what's going to happen inside that calendar. Now if you're existing client, you may have had this training already, which is great. I appreciate it. But if you're not existing client or you're on this webinar right now, if you're watching replay. Hop into my calendar. So what happens on the first meeting? First meeting is evaluation, so I sit down and I get an understanding from you from your voice saying this is why things going on.

This is where I think we're having issues. This is where I think we couldn't improve and you may even name off certain people that are doing well who aren't doing well. I'll say cool. I some clarifying questions on your policies and your expectations of training and all the things because it may be a missed expectation that you said in your brain, but you never told your people and that is a real problem. So that's meeting number one also includes if you're not a client of any sort. have to get a BAA sign with you because I want to listen to your calls if

You do not have any call recording software turned on right now. I am limited how much I can help you. First meeting maybe more like here's some scripts that make sense based on what you told me, but I can't go evaluate for you. All right. Second meeting is I went and listened to your calls. I could find these potential problems. This person is great. This person not so much than you need to start with them probably. And here's some things that they're, they're just stumbling over. And then we talk about it and then have scripts usually based on that conversation.

And then after that, depending on how you want to do it, I either say I will train the trainer on some of this or I will train your people. Most of time it's trained a trainer because scheduling is so hard with multiple people and the way you guys operate 10 to 12 hours a day, have split schedules on that. So I'm just going to say like after that, it kind of depends on what your clinic can and cannot handle from a scheduling standpoint. But my offer to you, scan that, go find time on my calendar, go blow up my calendar. I'd love to help you guys out.

And to the clients are on the call as well. This offer is always there for you. Our CSMs, you have to bring it to your attention. But if you're like, hey, I want to do it anyway, hit my calendar up. So there's a code there. Three, two, One too far. All right. Finally, we love giving you guys resources outside of what we just did there. Here's everything we've ever talked about from the standpoint of this could help build your business. You run into a problem. We can help you with that. ⁓ If you just.

We have a list of all our webinars, our podcasts. And if you want to call and talk to us about your marketing in general, like you need us to go audit your ads account, whatever, we can help you with that. So scan that now goes to our link tree stuff and you can pick from there. But we're here to give you as much as we can. And I hope you guys enjoyed today's presentation. All right. I know we have a couple of questions that were popping in there. We could have missed some of those. Hannah's going to drop those in the chat. If you have a question for us, drop those in the chat while she's doing that and organizing that.

It's 12 o'clock our time here Central. We told you we'd keep you for an hour and we did what we promised. So thank you for coming. We're glad you're here. If you need anything from us, let us know and Hannah, we can open up. What's that first question? Yeah. ⁓ no, I'm going to move stuff. Yeah, just get that.

All right. So we're Q &A. I thank you, Andrew. But we're a mental health substance abuse and intellectual development disability aftercare clinic. That is a mouthful. We have five clinics in our call center numbers for last week were total incoming almost 2000, answered 1340, abandoned 234. Can you work with these numbers? Yeah. Anything that you measure can and will improve.

Right. The fact that you're measuring and you know your metrics from that standpoint, you can improve one. You're already one step ahead of most. Correct. And I'm not sure who asked this question, but I would just say, ⁓ now that you have the data, let's go see what the data is telling us. Right. Are you able to, out of these incoming calls, you can see whether or not they were answered or abandoned, but can you listen to them? If you cannot listen to them, let's turn on, let's turn on call recordings.

Make sure that your system is HIPAA compliant before you do this. Exactly. Go confirm that. I don't want to give you bad advice. ⁓ Secondly here, so you said five clinics with a total number of incoming calls of 2000 calls, which clinic had the most calls and then which were answered versus the vet? Because you may have a problem clinic. Like that you said that. Right. Because in my mind, it could be divided where you have four or 500 calls per clinic.

But it may not be true. may have a, when I did an analysis with a three-location or four-location urgent care, that's not a client. And they had, ⁓ they assume one of their clinic locations caused all the problems. said, nope, it was actually this one where the missed call rate was over 50 % and they couldn't believe it. And they went and they said, yeah, you're right. And then, cause I thought the one that was going to have all the problems actually did okay. And so that's my question on the multi-location.

How far can you go in the location details on that? Because you may have one that's killing it and then the other one just maybe it's the wrong person. Also too, you said last week. So my question would be, is this trending consistently over time? Because by chance, did you have somebody running the phone system last week differently from the previous week? You gotta run some historical data if you can and kind of verify, is it trending or is it just anomaly? All these things.

I'm going to do some math while you're talking. Exactly. Cause I want to actually help. Let's just say for a second that you answered all of those calls. Um, that is 234. I'm going to divide that by 30 days. That's 7.8. I'm going to bounce to somewhere between five and 10. Let's go to 10. All right. And let's just say that the, uh, the conversion rate is 30 and the industry average. Um, let's just say by those, the, numbers that you were asking of the 1995, 1340 were answered 234 were abandoned.

If you just answered those 234 that were abandoning, you solve that one problem, you would put roughly 164,000 back in your pocket over a year's time, right? And technically that'd be higher for this particular scenario. do agree because it's multiplied across locations, right? But I'm going to go back to the conservative numbers because I think that's the best way to do it. And just click that down to five per day. And you're looking at, you're going to capture back by solving that problem. Even if you solved half of your problem,

You're looking at $27,000 back in your clinic's pocket. That's not going to cover a whole salary, but 54 probably cover a front desk salary just by answering the phone. So yeah, what you measure will improved and you have enough good data. You just have to ask questions of the data that you have. And then you got to take action with that because that is great unless you don't take, if you don't take actions, right. That matters. But fantastic. All right. Thanks for the question anymore. Yeah. Yeah. other, any more of that?

I know we answered a few on the fly. do think that was all. Okay, awesome. In that case, I want to thank everybody for joining the webinar today. And if you have any questions, reach out to us. Appreciate you giving us your time. I hope we gave you value. We'll see you on the next one. See ya.