Think about all the interactions you have with your patients and where you could possibly elevate your service.
This is something you should discuss with your whole team, and it doesn’t need to cost you money, but if an idea does cost money, it’s okay if you’re getting a return on your investment.
Having a bar fridge in our reception area filled with branded bottled water was one of the best marketing and service ideas we ever did, as I will explain.
26th – 27th of July, 2024 – CAIRNS
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Transcript
Giving Patients A Little Bit More Than Expected
[00:00:00]
[00:00:00] Tyson E FRanklin: Hi, I’m Tyson Franklin and welcome to this week’s video. Today I want to talk about giving your patients more than they expected. And it’s sort of along the lines of under promising and over delivering, but it is a little bit different. Now, when I do my podcasts. At the end of some of the episodes, not every episode, but some of the episodes, I will have a secret message and it could be a business tip or it might just be something that I’ve read recently.
[00:00:27] And I do that because I want to give the listener just that little bit more than what they were expecting. And I’ve had a lot of feedback from people when they’ve heard those messages saying, Hey, sometimes they are really good and I wasn’t expecting it, which is what you want to do. I think it’s one of those things where you need to get together with your team and you need to think about what else.
[00:00:45] All the interactions we actually have with their patients and where can we elevate our service just that, that little bit more, where can we take it? Just that, take it up one level that they weren’t expecting. And I’ll tell you right now, it will pay dividends and [00:01:00] it doesn’t need to cost you a lot of money.
[00:01:02] Now if you want to spend money. To give a little bit more, that’s fine. As long as you’re getting a return on that investment by feedback from the patients. Now I’m going to give an example. I was invited to talk at the Mareeba Chamber of Commerce Business Awards a few years ago. And who would have thought, a podiatrist to come in and be the guest speaker.
[00:01:20] I had to talk for 45 minutes. There was no PowerPoint. It was purely, it was an outdoor presentation at night on a boardwalk, you know, the wooden floorboards. So I decided the topic was nine things I’d learned in business. So I wrote down nine things on little pieces of paper and I put them in my left pocket and I thought, I want to give them a little bit more.
[00:01:40] So I had a bonus tip, bonus tip number 10. Even though I was only going to talk about nine things I’d learned in business, I was going to have a 10th tip that I had in my back pocket. So as I’m running through the tips and I’m going through it all and I’m pacing and timing myself because I knew I had 45 minutes and each thing I pulled out of my pocket in random order, there was no, no order to what I was [00:02:00] going to say.
[00:02:00] So therefore I could time myself really well. But what happened is as I went to pull out the ninth tip, it fell out of my fingers and it fell on the floor, but it didn’t just fall on the floor. It slipped in between the, the, the boardwalk in between the boards and it disappeared. And I looked out at the crowd and the crowd looked at me and we, we sort of all had a bit of a, I had a big smile on my face and they sort of laughed.
[00:02:23] And I went, don’t worry, I put my hand in my back pocket and I pulled out my bonus tip. And when I pulled it out, I said, without looking at it, I said, Tip number nine is always be prepared and you don’t know what’s going to happen. So I, I explained that a little bit, got a bit of a laugh from everybody, but then I said, okay, now I’m going to read my bonus tip.
[00:02:40] And the bonus tip was always give a little bit more. So everyone was expecting the nine tips, but already had a bonus tip because I wanted to give them a little bit more.
[00:02:51] And in the end, it ended up working out really, really well. And I had people coming up to me saying, out of curiosity, that ninth tip that fell on the floorboards, what was [00:03:00] it? And I couldn’t remember, but it didn’t really matter because the ninth tip was always be prepared. And then I had the bonus tip in the back pocket.
[00:03:07] So what can you do in your business to give that patient or give your patients a little bit more, a little bit more than they were maybe expecting. And like I said, I’m going to go through a couple of things here that will not cost you any money. I’m going to talk about one other thing that may cost you just a little bit.
[00:03:23] The first thing is greeting your patients with a big smile, a big friendly greeting costs you nothing, but there’s a little bit more sometimes than what they get at other places. It doesn’t mean setting off fireworks and being absolutely over the top with what you’re doing, but a big smile and a big welcome to your podiatry clinic.
[00:03:43] is giving the patients a little bit more.
[00:03:45] Running on time costs you nothing, but it is fantastic for the patient and it’s also great for your reputation. So to me, that is giving it a little bit more. And in fact, if you’re running ahead of schedule, instead of [00:04:00] thinking, Oh, okay, I’m ahead of schedule 10 minutes, I’m now going to have a coffee, sit down, I’m going to wait till exactly the patient’s scheduled time to take them in.
[00:04:08] If the patient’s already here, Bring them in early. That is giving them that little bit more means they see you earlier. You can either spend more time with them if you need to, or you can let the, you can finish a consultation in the allocated time and let them leave a little bit earlier. And they will feel fantastic about that.
[00:04:25] If you say to a patient that your orthotics be ready on Wednesday, think about when you think they will be ready. So it might be Monday and in your head you’re thinking, I could probably have these done tomorrow. Tell them Wednesday, but then ring them up on a Tuesday and say, your orthotics are already ready.
[00:04:41] Or that report that they requested. Instead of saying, okay, yeah, it’ll be ready Thursday, but then ring them up Tuesday or Wednesday and say, we’ve already done that report. That is giving them a little bit more. It’s giving them something that they were not expecting. And once again, it makes you look good.
[00:04:53] And in our clinic, when we had it in Cairns, we had a bar fridge set up in the reception area. The reason we had the [00:05:00] bar fridge set up is Cairns is quite a warm place. A lot of times patients would walk in and say, Is there any chance I can get a glass of water? And the receptionist would go and do that.
[00:05:07] They bring the glass of water back, the patients would drink it, then they’d think, where am I going to put the glass? They’d put it on the reception counter, then leave the round mark there. And, but if the receptionists were busy, sometimes the patients wouldn’t ask for it. So we thought, why not put a bar fridge right in the middle of reception?
[00:05:23] And we had all our own labels on the bottle. It had ProArch Podiatry, keeping feet hydrated since 1992. When patients turned up, we said, oh, by the way. This bottle of water, take as many as you want and most patients would grab one and what I loved seeing them is grabbing one and then walking out with it because I knew no matter where they were going next they were going to finish that drink bottle.
[00:05:45] And they were going to leave it somewhere that was marketing for us. But if they’re going back to work, if they’re going anywhere else and they’re drinking that bottle, it meant other people would see it. It did cost a little bit more to do that. It was like, say $400 for the fridge, but each bottle of water that we had and had with the printed labels, I think only [00:06:00] costs us like 80.
[00:06:01] But knowing that they could come in and just grab a bottle saved time for a receptionist having to go and get them a drink. So just think about that. Like I said, get with the team and think about what are all the little things that you can do just to elevate your service or some of the things that you do to just give the patients a little bit more that is sort of unexpected.
[00:06:20] That is more than what they would just get anywhere else.
[00:06:25] And the final tip I just want to talk about giving patients more is giving a patient a discount. Is not giving them more. What it’s actually doing is taking away from you. And if you constantly give out discounts all the time and you don’t have that additional money, then you don’t have the money to invest in like a bar fridge, free water, and some of the other things that you probably should be doing for all your patients, because sometimes you’ll be discounting certain patient.
[00:06:48] But not discounting others. I think all patients should be treated equal. So give that some thought. Think about what can you do to give your patients that little bit more, a little bit more than they’re expecting. [00:07:00] It’s here and now, when they leave your clinic, they are going to talk about your practice, no matter where they’re going.
[00:07:05] And I always say that when a patient leaves your clinic, there’s multiple places they could be going. They could be going to work, they might be going back home. They might be catching up with family and friends, or they might be going to their lawyer’s office. Hopefully they’re not doing that, but they might be seeing another health professional.
[00:07:20] Imagine them walking in, say with a bottled water, seeing the physio, the doctor, the chiropractor, and they’ve still got the bottle of water on them. That person is going to notice that. Their work colleagues are going to notice, their friends and family are going to notice that. So that’s my message for this week’s video.
[00:07:35] Give the patients a little bit more. Do things that are unexpected. Elevate your service wherever you can. Hope you get something from that. I’ll have another video for you next week. Okay, bye.