* The following transcript is computer generated and may contain errors.

Stewart Gandolf
Okay. Welcome. Hi. Welcome to how to convert inquiries into new patients. I'm Stewart Gandolf. I am looking forward to working with you today. I am going to go to the next screen. So for those of you who have not attended our webinar, I don't know of our firm. I'm Stewart, I'm CTO of Healthcare Success. We are an agency that works obviously in the healthcare or probably obviously working in the healthcare space.

Stewart Gandolf
I'm joined today. This is going to be a fun one for me by a colleague I've worked with for decades. So that looks like it, of course. So, Kathy, do you want to do this yourself? And kind of a quick version of your experience before I jump into the meat of this?

Kathy Gaughran
Yeah. Thanks, Stewart. happy to be here today. Kathy Gaughran, I have been working, as Stewart said. We've both been in the healthcare space and strategic planning and working and application of campaigns and all sorts of things over the years. with Stewart for several decades. So we've seen a lot of practices struggle with phone conversions. And we thought it was really important to just share our experiences and provide some assistance in a very changing landscape right now.

Kathy Gaughran
So we're excited to to talk about our experiences and share some tools.

Stewart Gandolf
So that's actually a good note to talk about. So this particular meeting is about converting inquiries into patients in most cases. So this applies to hospital systems, health systems Multi-location practices. As Kathy referred to. smaller businesses can take some, good stuff away from this as well. also other forms of retail businesses. So it's not as applicable to, specialties that aren't working with consumers.

Stewart Gandolf
This is definitely a B2C issue we're talking about today. So we have a lot of B2B clients today is really B2C focused. And how do you handle inquiries to your business from the consumer side. And so, we're going to talk today, a couple other things in housekeeping. We have to remember, because the most common question is always will there be, you know, recording in case I have colleagues I want to share this with or if I have to leave early, the answer is yes.

Stewart Gandolf
We do provide a recording of this meeting, to participants and people who registered it. It will also be on our website for a period of time. so you can get the recording of the, material. we will have some time for Q&A at the end. so if you, go ahead and add into the questions.

Stewart Gandolf
If you have questions, we'll try to address them. Typically we do that at the end just to keep our flow going. Although, Kathy, tell you what, you can, if you like, if you kind of monitor that as it comes along, if there's something you think is timely, it's. Feel free to interrupt me. if I'm the right.

Stewart Gandolf
Yeah. I mentioned, you know, Kathy and I've worked for decades, so she's kind of like my sister. So we step up other. It's okay. We're not being rude to each other. Just use them. And we both like to talk a lot. So, I'll be leaving today. And then I've asked Kathy to speak to some color commentary as well.

Stewart Gandolf
Kathy, you know, I it's I often tell people I've worked with over a thousand clients over the years and Kathy's worked with thousands. So she's actually on the, worked on the ground level with her clients more than I have. So she has a wealth of knowledge on this. And so I'm leading today just for the sake of organization and time for Kathy has some mad, intense experience on this and a lot of real world experience that she can bring to bear.

Stewart Gandolf
So Kathy will, ask for your comments along the way. And that's, what the format looks like today. So jumping into it, just before we go any further, again, this is we're speaking today from experience, our company's been around for almost 20 years now. 18 years. and before that we did, Kathy and I did this for another firm.

Stewart Gandolf
So we're pretty experienced at this. The agency we work with does not, we're not a training or consulting agency or truly a more integrated marketing agency. And so, each of our specialties include things like branding, strategy, creative, paid search page, social SEO, programmatic advertising development, all these different things. We spent 18 years building as the best team we've ever had.

Stewart Gandolf
And we talk about a lot that in the world of marketing, it's just like in health care there are specialists. And so our team, the the way our business model works, is all about having specialist at every single position. Not easy to do. It took us a long time, but we're here. So one of the specialties that, is sort of unrecognized is, you know, how do we answer the phones?

Stewart Gandolf
And in the old days, we used to actually have a staff of trainers because it's such an important issue these days. We don't really, have employees that do this, but we have relationships with people who have asked for many years. So if you're interested in, you know, executing on this and, you know, we're going to give you all the big picture stuff today.

Stewart Gandolf
If you're interested in execute ING, some of these strategies and either need a referral or need to work with us through some of our team, that's available to you. But this today, we're going to give you the most important stuff, all for you today on this webinar. So. And it's not working. There we go. So this is going back to what I said a moment ago.

Stewart Gandolf
I think this is one of the key blogs that we've written in recent years. So the concept here is that there are really only four categories, especially when you start thinking about online marketing. But this concept applies to other endeavors. If you think about it and you break this down. Let's talk about pay per click just for, page search, just for the sake of argument.

Stewart Gandolf
the first category that impacts the results of paid search is what's the consumer demand that people know they should be searching, right. That has to be there. What's interesting about consumer demand is it's largely fixed. You can increase demand through push advertising. But consumer demand you can pretty obvious if you just think about this is a pretty critical function of like a paid search campaign.

Stewart Gandolf
And so that really matters a lot equally matters to that is how is the campaign managed? in other words, you know, the Google ads, who's managing that campaign? How what's the bidding strategy? What's the geography, time of day, all the technical things that make a Google Ads campaign work that matters. The next thing that matters is the landing page you drive them to.

Stewart Gandolf
It's absolutely vital. and so, you know, it's not just enough to get them to there has to be demand. They have to click, and then they have to, you know, fall in love with your landing page and have to inquire. So the landing page matters. And finally, the conversion process we're talking about today matters. But here's the key insight I want you to have.

Stewart Gandolf
This is really important. If you're new to us. Each one of those boxes is equally important. So in other words, if let's say consumer demand is zero out the back end, the results are zero. and the, the thing here is each of these components is multiplicative, not additive, meaning that a zero you can't. Everything else adds up still to zero.

Stewart Gandolf
It's not like you add zero plus five plus 550 times five plus five times five is all still zero. So if you increase your effectiveness, for example, on your Google campaign management by 20%, immediately you're going to see a 20% increase on the back end of results. If you're able to increase your landing page conversions by double, you just double the results of your campaign.

Stewart Gandolf
So and here's the last thing. If you're able to let's say you're spending a lot on one lots relative of course, but a lot on, you know, managing and landing and, you know, building your marketing campaign. If you're conversion processes zero, everything you just did is still a zero. So the biggest failure that we see with marketing campaigns is not sections one, 2 or 3.

Stewart Gandolf
It's with number four. So today this is a very unheralded topic, not a sexy topic. Like when we talk about SEO or paid search or conversion rate optimization or whatever. But without that key puzzle place, everything else you're doing is a waste of time. It's really vital. So of all the webinars we've done, even though this isn't the sexiest topic we have, it's absolutely one of the most important topics we're covering in our series.

Stewart Gandolf
So, before we jump into the housing wise, I want to talk a little bit with Kathy and Kathy. I've noticed this. it was hard pre-COVID, but people are different. Post Covid, their expectations. You know, I was talking last night. I saw an old friend I haven't seen since before Covid and we're talking about, wow, the world sure has changed.

Stewart Gandolf
and, you know, like how people are literally different, both since before Covid and there's data to support that. That's not the point of today's webinar or to cover some of the key factors to keep in mind. So, I think a lot of these trends were in place pre-COVID, but they are now just, vastly accelerated.

Stewart Gandolf
It was a, accelerated Covid to making these things happen. So we've talked about this in other webinars. But, you know, again, just as a reminder, consumers are not just, patients are no longer just patients. They're consumers. They choose they listen to their doctor's advice, but they will excuse me. They will make their own decisions. Thank you very much.

Stewart Gandolf
Today's consumers are digitally empowered and enabled. They have higher expectations. You know, they used to put up with the fact they can't get into your office. That's not the case anymore. Let us find somebody else. convenience at all stages of that patient journey is just paramount. they're far less loyal. disruptors love when traditional providers fail at this because they're disruption.

Stewart Gandolf
It's not the right. They're they're counting on traditional providers to screw this up because that's why they exist. Right. So that's why even though CVS and Walgreens, those guys are taking over the world a couple of years ago, they're struggling a little now. Still, there's thousands of them right? They're not going away. So, you know, these disruptors rushed in to fill the void, and to give consumers a convenient experience.

Stewart Gandolf
And in, survey after survey, a common theme emerges. When we look at it, it's like, wait, I'm a customer here. I'm not just a piece of your puzzle here. I'm a customer. I'm not just a patient. So I want you to keep that in mind as we talk about this topic. One other thing I wanted to.

Kathy Gaughran
Add to that last slide is just thinking about the last time you had to make a decision for a new service provider. what resources do you use? Who do you talk to and what your thought process is during that, that journey? because this is new to them. You know, and they're just using the resources they have.

Kathy Gaughran
So it's just critical that we make that accessibility easy. And our differentiation, you know, clear upon connection. So I'll go ahead and start.

Stewart Gandolf
Makes sense. So today another thing that, you know, in the olden days we talked solely about phone inquiries. But of course today there's lots of ways consumers can engage with you. And so, you know, breaking this down simplistically, phone inquiry still matter. There's still a lot of them, online inquiries with our campaigns that we do those top three, can be pretty well distributed.

Stewart Gandolf
Phone inquiries and online inquiries are oftentimes the way people engage with the, business online. when new patients can schedule a appointment online. We'll talk about this in a moment. They prefer that it's actually a really important topic. And then we can drill down on another day in more detail. and then the final category is a patient portal.

Stewart Gandolf
And my advice quickly is please, please, please don't send a new patient to your existing poison portal. Your patient portal is far too complicated and not really meant for this, so you have to find a way to handle new patient appointment scheduling or inquiries or phone. And there's technology behind all of this. There's lots of different options. I wish I could give you one singular, solution.

Stewart Gandolf
We work with clients that have many different ones. so as part of as an agency, we work with them. We can share advice when people ask us, you know, but the at the end of the day, that's a more complex decision. And which phone system should I use or which, tool should I use? Most of our clients definitely.

Stewart Gandolf
We talk about phones. We talk about online forums and new patient online scheduling. We recommend whenever we can get it online appointment scheduling. So when that happens, a lot of this we're talking about today is moot. And the consumers prefer it. However, one of the jokes that Kathy's heard me say this for years, you know, if you ask patients, what are the things that, how do patients want to interact with their, medical providers?

Stewart Gandolf
And the answer, the two things that I hear most often from consumers is, well, I want to be able to schedule an appointment, and I want to be able to communicate with my doctor. And what are two things that providers have steadfastly either refused to offer or resisted offering, allowing them to communicate with the doctor and allowing them to set appointments on their own.

Stewart Gandolf
Now that's changing. It's evolving. Certainly through EMR, as existing patients can communicate with their doctor now and that's just become more standard. But man, did providers resist that. But still, online patient appointment scheduling and I get all the reasons why that's complicated. But if you ask consumer what they want they want online patient appointment scheduling. So keep that in mind.

Stewart Gandolf
so setting up the problem, why are we talking about this? Well, because it's a huge problem and it hasn't gone away and it's not any better. So this, couple of slides here are from my friend Rob Klein. You may have seen Rob speak with me and in multiple different venues with podcast webinars or whatever. Rob's an awesome researcher.

Stewart Gandolf
He's a brand researcher. And so this is from one of his recent studies. And so, and just using primary care as an example on these matrices here we have importance and then satisfaction. And look at the read over. They're highly important to patients and highly dissatisfied. Oh what is that online appointment phone appointment scheduling check in waiting room.

Stewart Gandolf
exam room waits nurse professionalism. But the one that's the very worst is the topic of today's webinar. So, if you just if you thought there's might be a little problem. Well, if you look at the consumers, they're telling you that, appointment scheduling is the biggest, highest importance and least satisfaction, combination. So, I hope I have your attention right.

Stewart Gandolf
This is a big deal. We're just getting started. Secondly, Rob once again goes back to Rob. shout out Rob for this great research. The you know, this is a journey. And Rob did a great job of pulling together different data, different surveys and, you know, reviewing satisfaction along the path. And you can see here is, rad would be a primary opportunity.

Stewart Gandolf
Highly importance but lower satisfaction. And where is the red on this particular scale. Oh phone answered. no voicemail. physician returns call an agreed upon attitude a staff member phone answered by live person. phone answered no voice mail. You can see that the satisfaction on this is, all the scheduling, the phone calls, the arriving, these critical first impressions are where the most dissatisfaction is.

Stewart Gandolf
So pretty amazing, right? Like, this is, common throughout health care. And looking at it another way, if you're good at this, this can actually be a competitive advantage because people are so unhappy with the status quo that it can be a competitive and just to do a decent job at this. switching gears, this is from press Gagne.

Stewart Gandolf
we pulled together sources from a variety of different stats today. This is a press Gagne slide. so they were talking about, here is patients evaluating doctors and clinics based upon patient experience. I should mention that, clinical care and quality presume that's table stakes they have. You don't have that. You're dead.

Stewart Gandolf
You know, you're completely dead. But even if you have great clinical care, these things are what people can evaluate, right? Patients can evaluate what's a great gastroenterologist, but they can certainly evaluate how they're being treated. And that's, and so, you know, a gastroenterologist should tell you why they should care about that. It doesn't matter. Well, it's, you know, shouting at the ocean, the patients do care.

Stewart Gandolf
So, you know, again, these are things where they're, that matter to patients. Quality of customer service, communication, ease of appointment booking. You can see all three of those things that are among the very most important things, to patients.

Kathy Gaughran
And that's serving correctly. Our reason they'll refer so these are things I'll talk about if they have good experiences in these categories. The pendulum swings back the other direction. that will cause them to become ambassadors. Yeah.

Stewart Gandolf
And then, two thirds of people essentially say they prefer scheduling an appointment online versus over the phone. So even though we're gonna talk a lot today about phones and online form pills, keep in mind that most people want to do that. So if you want to skip over some of the what we're talking about today, get online, you know, a good, online conversion system.

Stewart Gandolf
Again, I recognize that's not always easy or possible, but that's what consumers want. another survey by press Gagne. this is a great question. After searching for a health care provider online, you know what would discourage you? Oh, number one, difficulty contacting the office. It's like the theme is over and over and over again. the number one thing, two thirds of the time, that initial experience, they're telling you they'll bounce, right.

Stewart Gandolf
The data is here. so what's going on? Oh, why is it so bad? Well, this is some data that we collected, years ago. It's still relevant today. our trainers went back and just kind of evaluated, like a thousand phone calls and sort of scored calls and compared to where they should be at these kind of critical factors.

Stewart Gandolf
So information gathering, calls are below standard almost 100% at a time. Most of the time they did not offer an appointment. taking control of the call. Most of the time that didn't happen. they, provided too much info, happened a lot. and most didn't even have a decent grading. So, you know, this is, cause the research that we've done in the past, you can just see the research we just showed you.

Stewart Gandolf
this just continues to be an ongoing issue. So, you know, again, why are these things happening? Well, you know, this is a customer experience. They get long holds. they can be forgotten. You ever have that? Isn't it great when that happens, you wait on hold for a long time. This has had to have happened to you personally.

Stewart Gandolf
Right? And, my wife downstairs will shout some turnover on this happens. Turns pretty frequent. you know, busy signals happen. Still, nobody answers at all. Voicemails that never get returned. a lot of times it, you know, if you're telling the provider level, you get some very nice, very helpful people, but they're confused. They don't really know what they're to do.

Stewart Gandolf
So they're very polite. They just can't really help you. sometimes the root, and a lot of times you can kind of just feel this is a very harried environment. So if you're too busy for me on the phone, how's it going to be when I show up in your office and people are looking for clues and they do this about how they'll be treated?

Stewart Gandolf
Another thing we see a lot is, the people answer the phone, they think, oh, well, you know, especially if they start answering a lot of calls like, oh, these new patient inquiries aren't any good unless they're being referred by their friends or their doctor. These are just terrible patients. And, we see that on average, at least, if we break it down, about 50% of patients decline to a business aren't being converted.

Stewart Gandolf
And it's a shocking amount of the time. Most of the time, unless the patient volunteers that they're not even asked to schedule an appointment. Now, I want to point out here, too, I'll talk about this in a moment. These concepts we're talking about today apply at the ground level. And there's still maybe some of you that have answered your own phone in an office by office level, but it also applies to call centers.

Stewart Gandolf
And I'll talk more about that in a moment. So, this is just an important insight. one of the takeaways I hope you believe with today that when you're working, when you're if you're a team is used to only working with doctor referrals or patient referrals, those are easy. Those are layups. Those are really, really simple because there's an implied level of trust there.

Stewart Gandolf
But the moment somebody calls you called from an an or from a on the internet, there is no implied trust. That doesn't mean these are bad people. That doesn't mean they think you're a bad provider for having advertised. It just means there's no pre, established trusts or lead on. So they're far more difficult. Kathy you're smiling.

Stewart Gandolf
You want to share a quick anecdote here or comment.

Kathy Gaughran
Yeah. It's just just some of the calls that we've heard and we've done a lot of mystery calls over the years, and it's just so critical that you have the right people in these positions that understand your campaigns. They know what's going on so they can be in alignment with the messaging and the offers. Potential offers are scheduling.

Kathy Gaughran
So we've heard some pretty crazy stories, from our mystery calls. there was one big group I called a big group of origins in Arizona. And, they didn't think that they needed help on their phones. And one of the questions I asked was, is he good? Is one of the doctors good? And the girl said, I don't know.

Kathy Gaughran
He's not my doctor. So we hear crazy stuff. and you just you need to to keep in mind that we're going to get to that slide later. But that's the first touchpoint these prospects have with your business. And it starts to shape their brand, how they feel during that process, how easy you are to, communicate with.

Kathy Gaughran
So all these things are starting to shape how they feel about you, what they say, what they post on reviews. So it's a really important turning point. And these callers don't know you at all if they've responded to your advertising. So just really important to be stating your unique value proposition and listening to them so we can, provide a solution to their specific problem, but they're harder to convert for sure.

Kathy Gaughran
That's what I was a soft not start.

Stewart Gandolf
So I would say here one, another insight to take away that when you get you may your, your doctors may be very proud of the fact it takes a month to get in to see you. Then if that's the case, you will miss these calls. They will they will bounce in a heartbeat. So when, you know, again, people will put up with a lot if they're being referred by a trusted friend or trusted doctor, but if they're being if they're coming to you, I so many do today drag they will bounce.

Stewart Gandolf
So I have here in the slide I chose to put less than three days, three days or less, maximum time to get them in when they call. And thinking about that, I really should have said to I mean, it has to be really, really fast. Like, ideally you can get them on the same day because it's just too easy to call the next person.

Stewart Gandolf
So this is like this little thing here kills so many campaigns. You know, we set launch a campaign. We talk to them, they tell us they have this all together. We call back, we oh, by the way, our team actually listens to real calls. So we don't listen to every call that we generate for our clients. But we do periodically actually sample the calls, unless we have all the Hepa stuff in place to have our, to sample the calls and hear what's actually happened, and we'll get on the call.

Stewart Gandolf
They tell us they all have it right, get on the call, and they are asking patients to schedule in a month. And like, not one converts and they're mad at us. Like that's not out.

Kathy Gaughran
You know what I'm saying to Stewart is if they don't know enough about you and that's going to be this, they're going to shock you based on price and location. And that's not how they want how they should be choosing a health care provider. And it's not how we want them choosing us. So it's important that your again, your unique value proposition, why they should choose you should be part of that dialog.

Stewart Gandolf
So think about like all this money is spent to generate all this money you spent to build your brand. Their first experience is terrible and doesn't result in a patient is really a fail, right? It's just a fad. so, you know, I talked about what's happening. So why in terms of what are the obstacles? Well, first of all, this, you know, category is not the sexiest category.

Stewart Gandolf
It's not our best well attended webinar. We have others to do, you know, generate a lot more inquiries. But it's so it's so unheralded, so unsexy. So people tend to really just sort of ignore it. And so that means they're they're handling this part of their business with zero strategy. Really zero thought, zero serious thought. typically there's poor systems or no systems to handle patients.

Stewart Gandolf
no one's accountable. Insufficient training, by hire, really friendly but ineffective people. very, very common or, you know, effective but not very friendly people. So that's another problem. Kat, who's going to speak to the cultural shift in just a moment? Generationally, a lot of times on a smaller level, like, you know, there are still some multi-location businesses who work with and send all the increase to each individual office.

Stewart Gandolf
And so when we see that kind of thing, typically they're it's like, okay, fill out this paperwork, enter this data in a computer, you know, file over here. Oh, and by the way, order pizza for the office party. So they have too many competing tasks. So that does it. Not so much of a problem in the call center, but for sure on the local level, if you're doing it that way.

Stewart Gandolf
And then, Kathy, love you to expand on some of this too. Like, you know, we've heard patients, you know, a lot of times the staff is trying to educate the patient on their health care over the phone. Sometimes they try to get they get lost answering complex insurance questions. They don't really have the answers for. And oh my gosh, we hear people diagnose patients over the phone.

Stewart Gandolf
Oh, Kathy, do you want out of that?

Kathy Gaughran
actually, one of the things I see, particularly in hospitals or larger systems, is, a qualified a clinician ends up sort of rolling downhill into that phone position. Also not qualified, doesn't really want to be there. So you want to look for those pitfalls because again, it's that first impression. And Stewart's talking about the phones people don't think are that big of a deal.

Kathy Gaughran
And I was talking to a large multi-location group yesterday. I just thought the very basic rudimentary asking for referrals and some of these human connection strategies and tactics have sort of fallen off the table, particularly after Covid, because we've gotten into so much online exchange of communication and people like that human exchange. So if we find ways, opportunities, times to make that happen, people typically buy people and get comfortable with individual relationships.

Kathy Gaughran
When they're buying you, they're buying a service, a relationship, not just a transactional product, although they might think that. So it's also establishing yourself as a long term health care partner. That all starts with that first phone call and how they feel.

Stewart Gandolf
Very good. So, okay, we talked about, oh, excuse me. getting over a cold. Thank you Scotland, for a couple of weeks ago.

Kathy Gaughran
Stewart, we have a question. is this particular specialties or all MD appointments in the three days or less. So three days or less that really across the board. so.

Stewart Gandolf
It's ideally it's everybody. Now there can be something like, my wife had some obscure endocrine things, so she had away for an endocrinologist and this was still doctor referral. And it was just brutal. So broadly speaking though, anybody it's like the more you can get your leadership team, your doctors, everybody on board looking at your business like a business, the better it will be.

Stewart Gandolf
So if you've got somebody like some obscure, you know, specialty or subspecialty, then, you know, it may have to be, but it just isn't ideal. And if they have these, you know, so what you could do though is, you know, always build, for example, a strategy. There could be if you just have such limited availability, always leave a little bit of extra time in the schedule for new patient inquiries and then fit everybody else around it.

Stewart Gandolf
Because what's it we've repeat patients. You can schedule those a little bit easier. It's the new patients. You only get to be new ones. So I would just say work very, very hard at at that.

Kathy Gaughran
And the other comment on that, Stewart, for behavioral health, mental health and addiction should be same day if possible for obvious reasons. So those are a much quicker turnaround. We don't want to leave those patients out there looking for care. And often that can involve an influencer. So that's something else to consider when you've got residential skilled nursing addiction, mental health, primary dental, you'll often have an influencer involved in that conversation.

Kathy Gaughran
So just be aware of what role that individual plays financially emotionally so you can involve them in that decision as well.

Stewart Gandolf
That's a great point, Kathy. We do a lot in the field of addiction with some very big businesses, in that field. And, this role, just as a quick aside, you know, this matters in every single business we work with. But in a field, like anything where it's elective and the dollars are big. So, you know, addiction, bariatric surgery, plastic surgery, this becomes that much more important.

Stewart Gandolf
And also the follow up becomes that much more important. And with addiction is is a specialized, unique industry. Because, you know, a lot of times the caller does want to come in at all anyway, give me an excuse not to come in. And if it's the family member, they're panicking, then usually with good reason. They want to come in right away and just.

Stewart Gandolf
And, by the way, there's other providers in addiction, if you didn't notice. Right. There's a lot of people that could see them faster.

Kathy Gaughran
That's also start across all the specialties. So while we're on this topic, we had a meeting yesterday with one of our internal team members, with a big dental group talking about how he'd rather do anything than go to the dentist. So people when people are buying health care, they're they really rather be doing just about anything else with their time and their money.

Kathy Gaughran
We don't typically see people really excited to go to the doctor for any reason. Even in plastic surgery, ObGyn for deliveries is always an exciting time, but there's always a level of stress and fear when they're reaching out to a health care provider. So it's just it's up to us to be accommodating and feel like we're the only choice that they should make when that call happens.

Stewart Gandolf
And by the way, Kathy, thank you for reading the questions. That really helps me because I can stay focused. So feel free to me as questions come in relevant. That's really great because otherwise I'll miss them. I won't see them to the end. Yeah. So all right. So the next thing is okay, so what does this costing us forget, you know, the fact that we just, you know, hurt our brand and wasted money, like, what does this mean?

Stewart Gandolf
And really economically, on a wet, tangible way. So there's a couple ways of looking at this. So taking, and I if you're small, this may sound like lots of money, but this is, you know, pretty sort of common. we say we have a multi-location business is investing 50,000 a month about, on, a given strategy or tactic to support its offices.

Stewart Gandolf
And if its tail, if its team fails to convert 25%, we could do some easy math. 600,000 divided by four is under $50,000 wasted advertising budget, not to mention all those new patients. But that's chump change. Sadly, that's nothing compared to what you're really missing. So let's talk about that for a moment. So let's take, you know, another example.

Stewart Gandolf
again, Multi-location business. Let's say that this multi-location business still has offices very common. They still allow the new patient, inquiries to go to each individual office. Now, let's say they're average at best of each of those offices. And let's say they only lose one prospective patient. A day, which for busy offices isn't very much right. So there's a patient a day.

Stewart Gandolf
So each patient so 20 patients times per day. So a patient per day times 250 business days a year. If the patient value lifetime value was 5000, you do the math and see it's a $25 million recurring loss each year. Right. I think most businesses of any size would really like to have an extra $25 million. So this is a problem at the individual offices for smaller businesses.

Stewart Gandolf
But it's an insane problem for larger institutional businesses. And so, you know, there are times when people don't want to pay, you know, $20,000 for a training program is like.

Kathy Gaughran
ROI.

Stewart Gandolf
Wise. I might want to look at this or whatever. I know. So there's a huge opportunity cost for not doing this. Well. And, you know, again, we're talking today about just the bigger picture. But just keep in mind, this is an extremely expensive problem. And you may not even know you have those problems. And it's just a simple one patient per day per office.

Stewart Gandolf
That's how much money it would cost. So time to adopt a new mindset I hope. Well agree. Right. And I certainly hope I have your attention by now. Kathy talks about this and that metaphor a lot. So Kathy.

Stewart Gandolf
You're on mute Kathy got that.

Kathy Gaughran
Sorry about that. So I, I discussed this a lot. This as I said in my last couple slides, this is their first impression of the business. It's their first impression of how you're going to be treating them. So we can build campaigns and strategies that drive leads and create interest. But it really comes down to this interface, whether or not we book the call, if they are, if they are scheduling on a on a phone call.

Kathy Gaughran
So, it's really important that they're set up to win. Sometimes we've got medical groups that have their phone staff in the front office where patients are coming to be checked in, sometimes are in a call center. So it's just really critical that they're they're set up in a situation where they can win and they understand how important their role is to the overall health of the business.

Kathy Gaughran
You know, they're the backbone of these marketing campaigns. So it's really important that they understand that that they take that role, passionately and are geared up and ready to help you convert the calls that are coming in from your, your efforts.

Stewart Gandolf
Yeah. So everything that it all starts with that same call and we'll talk about this in again in just a moment. But just to keep in mind, there's nothing more important going on than having those new patient inquiries. So, I would also say, as you think about training your team and as you get your my reminder on this topic is to just remember that patients, when they're inquiring, they're ready to buy.

Stewart Gandolf
So they recognize the need. They've done research. They've called you. They don't not ever, they don't know how to ask. They are judging you based upon what happens. And they have other things they want to talk about. So you have to recognize that this is really important. You have to sort of figure out how to communicate with patients.

Stewart Gandolf
But please, when your team tells you these are all a bunch of, you know, crappy followers calling you, you need to do a little more homework to see what exactly is going on. I mentioned a moment ago we mystery shop clients or we like prospective clients. Typically they call us, and Kathy. Remind me to bring that up.

Stewart Gandolf
I could do that for a limited number of people after the call. So sometimes the prospective client will mystery shop them. Kathy or somebody on our team will call and act like they're a patient. just to come back with feedback. but we prefer and these days it's a lot more, common to listen to actual recordings.

Stewart Gandolf
So we handle all the privacy stuff and we typically record every inquiry are from generates. So we can actually listen to real calls and provide real feedback and oftentimes written reports on how things are going really. you know, it's funny. just an aside, I remember one time I was working with a client, was new to our program.

Stewart Gandolf
We were I've happened to fly out and meet with him as a CEO. I played the first two calls and he put his head in his hands, and then he said, stop. I can't take it anymore. So, I'll never forget that. So it's just really important to find out what's actually happening in those phones. recording is better.

Stewart Gandolf
So, the a couple other comments on this before we transition here. remember the apathy of this? What your you're is calling about could be terrifying to that patient. You know, it's like, oh, you're right. You have no success, right? I mean, it could be absolutely terrifying or cancer or whatever. So it needs to be empathy. And even if it's a routine to your team, they have to have that empathy constantly, forever.

Stewart Gandolf
They need be judged on that. so true empathy, active listening skills. We're not just this isn't car number 46 of your very busy day. This is a real person and they're aligned. Who trusted you enough to call you. And it is that first impression and it begins. That is like one of the most important things to shape that brand perception.

Stewart Gandolf
So it's really, really, really important. All right. So we've talked about the problem. We've talked about consumers. one thing that I want to talk about briefly is responding to consumers. So ideally you take that call immediately and you jump on it and you hear it live and you handle the issue and you book them on the appointment.

Stewart Gandolf
However, we to know that first of all, with our clients that aren't doing online, a patient patient, scheduling about half the inquiries we get on average or our online forums so they don't call the office today. People love to send emails or through a forum properly to inquire. So somebody has to follow up on that form or possibly if you missed that opening call, you need to follow up.

Stewart Gandolf
So and so if you're following up or if they you can't resolve something, you need to get back to them. You need to get back to them. Right away. So it turns out there's data on this. So the best data comes from people who are on. It's a it's a kind of a corollary. Online businesses that make their living off of nothing but, you know, inbound inquiries off the internet.

Stewart Gandolf
So the data isn't relevant or isn't specific to just doctor's offices or multi-location businesses or hospitals, but the data is intriguing. The case is compelling, and this is 100% consistent with my experience. So when this has been studied, the sources are here. This is inside sales.com. There's another company called vendors. uh.com. You can look it up. but this has been studied over like thousands or hundreds of thousands of calls.

Stewart Gandolf
The chances of reaching somebody if they leave a message or if they, fill out a form, decreases by a factor of eight after five minutes. That's not 8%. That's a multiple of eight. That's astounding. The odds of receiving. So again, this comes from e-commerce where people are looking for insurance quotes or I don't know, low end websites or whatever, but it applies to health care.

Stewart Gandolf
So even if it's only two times decrease after five minutes, it's huge. And for sure. And your own experience, I can tell you that I'm sure you've had experiences where you try somebody, they don't pick up, you go on to the next person in seconds. It's just too easy. So there's a tremendous drop off within five minutes within our own company.

Stewart Gandolf
thoughts like reminding our team to, you know, that's the goal. Five minutes, not five days, not five hours, five minutes to follow up. So that's a huge issue. again, just some other data points that's been studied. Sales conversions are 391% higher if you get them in the first minute. form pills, as I mentioned, need to be answered immediately.

Stewart Gandolf
and 78% of customers before they buy from the first person who follows up with them. So if they're following three doctor's offices, they get yours then. And yours is the one that responds, and that's the way the business goes. Typically, some more data on this. Similarly, if we look at this, in terms of following up again, this is more businessy, but the concepts apply.

Stewart Gandolf
Think about addiction, think about, you know, bariatric surgery or orthodontics or plastic surgery anywhere you have more of a consumer direct buy and ticket competitive advantage of it, you need some follow up and treat this as a sales process. It's not just a phone answering. You have to have somebody to actually follows up. And so here again, you know, if you have a practice rep or a business developer, 81% of, these kinds of folks make less than five sales attempts or follow ups.

Stewart Gandolf
Yeah. you know, seven or more tenths yields more conversions if you want to speak to that or speak to the audience.

Kathy Gaughran
But I wanted to kind of I'm glad you got to that point because it's, in the B2B space. I just remember years ago, a client reaching out, it looked like a, you know, a little small. was it a clinical trial? it ended up being a wonderful client for us. And his response was, you called us back because a lot of people didn't.

Kathy Gaughran
So it's it makes a big difference. You'd be surprising how often people reach out and just don't get a response. so yeah, it's going to put you at the front of the line if you just take the time to call back. So on more on B2B an elective. so Stewart was saying.

Stewart Gandolf
But and then, I just again, the same theme again, the, you know, in terms of following up, like, what do people actually follow up in the world, while less than 1% are calling up in that first five minutes and 57% and it can be later than a week. So again, these data, if you feel like this doesn't apply to your business, the same principle applies.

Stewart Gandolf
Guarantee like your I assure you, anything that you can make stronger here, overwhelmingly the better you'll do. And these could be you've already spent all the money to get them to call you. Don't you want to take advantage of that? All right, so how do we improve besides the need for speed? What else can we do to improve?

Stewart Gandolf
So this is one of my favorite slides that I teach to, this slide goes back years but it's still true. So number one get the theme that new patient inquiries are a top priority. It's absolutely vital to show me something. It's more important than getting the new patient. the objective is here. The key is, whether it's on a form fill or a phone or whatever.

Stewart Gandolf
The objective is not to inform, not to educate, not to tell them how nice you are. The objective is to get appointment. That's the person on the phone should recognize. Their goal is a first appointment. If you just do those two things, you'll do better. I mean, honestly, just two things you'll do better. remember that the best page to educate at some point is to get them in the office.

Stewart Gandolf
You educate an office, not on the phone. if you're still stuck with, you know, taking patient calls at the front desk, you know, like old, fat, old timey offices that do that, you know, about an office by office location, transfer it away, from the busy front desk to somebody can spend time with you for free.

Stewart Gandolf
If you're in a call center. Many call centers prioritize, so they may have all the routine. Stuff goes one way, but the new patient inquiries goes to a special 18. so call centers, that's a really good strategy. remember after hours, depending on the specialty or huge, that's often lost revenue and almost nobody calls back on those, and those are really critical.

Stewart Gandolf
track the sources of the calls, electronically, as we do with digital marketing, and also track your outcomes and, you know, add math to this and reporting and set your team up to succeed. That means things like, for example, not giving them too many competing tasks, training them, you know, all the things that we're talking about here.

Stewart Gandolf
Kathy, you want to speak to the slide?

Kathy Gaughran
Yeah. so it's it's important that you look through the entire buyer's journey. the phone call is a very important first contact, but there's there's a lot of interfaces that happen throughout that scheduling all the way to the point of committing to treatment. So we want to look at when that inquiry was received, where it came in from.

Kathy Gaughran
You know, we might be converting more effectively from certain strategies or tactics or channels. So always keeping eyes on that on the front end. whether or not we responded, how quickly we responded, who responded, whether or not we were able to reach that prospect, whether or not we were booked. If not, why not? What's the follow up strategy?

Kathy Gaughran
did they come in for a consult? Was there a no show? Was the procedure then booked as a result of that consult? If so, why? If not, why not? And then was the procedure completed so that we can see the true life cycle of that opportunity and that we're making sure we're optimizing each and every opportunity and seeing each of these touchpoints as a chance to win them and keep them for life, hopefully, and get them referring, or, lose the opportunity altogether.

Stewart Gandolf
My my is a time where about three quarters of the hour we have a few about a handful of slides left and we will have time for Q&A. So that's coming right up. So stand by for that.

Stewart Gandolf
So going back to call centers, I alluded to that earlier. And you know, when working with we work with multi-location businesses, you know, in hospitals of various stages of, starting. So we have some that are brand new and they're trying to think bigger. We have others with hundreds of locations or more. And, we find that sophistication varies a lot here.

Stewart Gandolf
Some really still send a lot of large surprise, and large ones still use the front offices of each individual office. You can do that. But most would agree. And anybody that's really more sophisticated, I find that all the more sophisticated businesses use call centers. It's just a way to scale. It's a way to manage. you know, we have some, of the advantages of a contact center over there.

Stewart Gandolf
And by the way, we usually try to call them contact centers versus call centers, because usually it's more than just phone calls. It could be text, it could be chat, it could be email, some center to take care of the people that are handling our inquiry. So, you know, you can read all those things over on the right hand side there.

Stewart Gandolf
There's lots of advantages to call centers. but, you know, typically it's control and scaling are the ones that I think are the most important, that you're able to create processes. It's really hard to do that with individual people. And a bunch of different offices. and so this is a big, big topic. How do you do it?

Stewart Gandolf
Do you do a virtual do it all do in a physical facility? Where do you do it? How do you handle issues like, you know, like directions, for example, like how does the call center know how to give somebody directions on a location by location basis? this is a much deeper topic than we have time to go into today.

Stewart Gandolf
I can just tell you these are all solvable issues. if you're interested, we have a blog, slash podcast. We, wrote about this with Kathy Davis, who's one of the leaders, and Contact center consulting. And so we work with Kathy Severe interested in this. We can talk to you about, you know, how to create a proper contact center.

Stewart Gandolf
And it's a big deal. It's not a little deal. It's a big deal. And you want to do this, right? we refer it. We work with our clients to create contact centers periodically because it's, again, it's a key linchpin to their business. So thinking about contact centers again, if it's not a location, businesses are far more complex.

Stewart Gandolf
It's, exponentially more complex than individual offices. we want to do the same stuff we've been talking about all the way through this. Prioritize new patient inquiries. Think about how do we respond to text chat, you know, cell scheduling, all these things. one impediment to contact centers are the politics. Typically, you know, especially a newer, PBMs or DSA.

Stewart Gandolf
they, they have a bunch of individual doctor offices they've acquired, and they all feel like their scheduler is the only person they trust. And so they're going to push back hard on the contact center. But as a growing business, at some point you're gonna have to think about this. And again, if you're gonna invest all this time and money and so it's a bewildering labyrinth of decisions, technology wise, people wise, economic wise.

Stewart Gandolf
You know, I'm not a big you know, I if I were building a contact center, for sure, I'd find an expert to help guide that. It's a great investment to the long term growth of your business. some scripting advice, which is very broad, of course, because we're talking about the generic case. this is just one of my favorites we talked about forever.

Stewart Gandolf
You know, establish, rapport, discover needs. You know, we want to establish value. You know, I'm so glad you called. Our doctors are fantastic, that kind of thing. I we talk about do alternative clubs. Okay, great. I get you Monday morning or Tuesday afternoon, which would work better for you. That's a do alternative clothes either is a yes answer.

Stewart Gandolf
Objections follow up nurture if appropriate. I mean there's a lot to this, right? More than I have time in a little webinar. But creating a script, creating a process is absolutely vital. But you notice here it's not just a health care thing, it's also a communication thing and a sales thing to create this appropriately. This requires deep thought process.

Stewart Gandolf
You know, this is too important. This is your business. We're talking about to let this just sort of evolve and let everybody freelance. some last thoughts before I get into the Q&A. these are likely questions. I'll jump to some of the questions we're probably going to get, live chat. You know, when the live chat first came out?

Stewart Gandolf
I love the idea of it. I still think it's a cool idea. I wish I could say have dozens of success stories and most of the success stories I have, they're out there, but most of the response I get when people integrate live chat to their business, this includes us as a B2B company or B2C as Mer in terms of sales, Mer like it's good for customer service potentially, but in health care it's super complex.

Stewart Gandolf
Anyway, you have to be careful what you say, and what we find is so often live chat just brings in people that you know are afraid to call. They're too early in the funnel, they're not really ready to buy anyway. So it's a matter. Kathy, you had a comment or question?

Kathy Gaughran
I have a question. someone just asked for a clinic just starting out and not ready for a contact center. Is there a tech stack you recommend?

Stewart Gandolf
I talked about that earlier. You know, just starting out, I don't think it's as important to have the tech stack. I think it's more important to train your people. and so there are, you know, lots of lots of different program providers out there. If you're interested in that more, you can email, the number we have at the end of the, webinar.

Stewart Gandolf
We can kind of go down, you know, give you some quick advice on that more detail. There's lots of different providers out there, though. They all, you know, some of the good ones are more expensive than others.

Kathy Gaughran
So specialty.

Stewart Gandolf
Yeah. Yeah. It's my specialty. You know there's companies out there that often offer like a range of things, you know, like solution range has like, you know, sort of an email program to follow up. And, you know, it has scheduling. There's lots of different people out there. It's really depends. and it but the so the focus the tech is important for a smaller business.

Stewart Gandolf
But for the larger ones, you know the tech it's really important. But it's really important in every size business is what we're talking about today. How do you handle what's the strategy? Who's answering the phone? Why? How? All of that's really, really vital. because we've been doing this for so long. We did this when we had a lot of smaller businesses with no tech stack.

Stewart Gandolf
They still had to get the same things done. be sure that everything is super compliant. I would say 50% of the prospective clients to call us. We just take a peek. Oops. By the way, did you know you're not compliant with your form? Little problem you might want to avoid. So I make sure that that's all compliant and call reporting forms all that is super compliant.

Stewart Gandolf
I mentioned self scheduling is ideal. don't try to send your patient inquiries through your regular patient portal is far too many hoops. People will bounce. That's a disaster at time and time again. I've had people insist on this. We have to prove it to me. A lot of months go by and nobody signs up. Okay, maybe that wasn't a good idea.

Stewart Gandolf
After all, patient portals are designed for existing patients, not new inquiries. Kathy.

Kathy Gaughran
Yes. And then also be sure you have a follow up strategy. If they do not convert when these calls come through, which is another webinar in and of itself. But just make sure that you've got, a tracking, protocol established and that you've got some way of following up. If they called you, they have a need. If they didn't appoint, they're either dealing with the problem or going someplace else.

Kathy Gaughran
So we want to catch them. While that problem still persists, try to get them in.

Stewart Gandolf
So I actually goes to my next bullet. So we almost are designing this, webinar. We thought about talking about the case conversion process. the sales process. We chose not to do that because a that varies so much by specialty. And there's just a million nuances there. So it didn't really fit this webinar, but if you're interested in more than that, you know, for example, orthodontics, or plastic surgery or anything where there is a, you know, again, typically high dollars more consumer direct, that's conversion process or sales process is vital to your success.

Stewart Gandolf
that would be a question for us offline. And we can see about, you know, training that because that's a big deal. you know, like people, for example, bariatric surgery often get there. They're not good at follow through it, right, by definition. So you need to have a sales process that kind of is thought of at every single step of the buyer journey.

Stewart Gandolf
so it's like this we talked about today squared, in terms of complexity and follow through. there are other services out there that specialize in this, by niche. So we could talk to you about as well. the, like for example, my mad ladies. Bruce bariatric. There's a bunch of different things out there, but it's more than just software.

Stewart Gandolf
It's like the whole system. so we need to think through that. difficult to outsource. answering services. So if you're trying to just send your inbound leads to answering services, that's almost always a failure. I've been looking for somebody that I could just blow this problem off and just take it away from the offices and send it to some fantastic company to handle these inbound leads and can be done.

Stewart Gandolf
But I can just tell you, after 20 years of doing this, I don't have somebody jumping to mind that I would refer. It's like I've seen some success, but it's usually mixed. It's really hard to delegate this vital function someplace else, even in some place like addiction, where it's highly specialized, there are firms that do this. A lot of our clients may use one of those services just for the late night calls, because those inbound calls are just so important.

Stewart Gandolf
So if you have a service, you have an exception. I would love you know, to email me afterwards. We would love to just skip this whole thing and delegate it to a massive company. this is such an important issue. I've thought about creating my own call center, but I like what I do. It's just not our thing.

Stewart Gandolf
So, we want to make sure we teach our clients to handle this. And again, in my experience, it's just really difficult to outsource this vital function to another company. And then I highly recommend you clients, HIPAA, and disclosure, as you record every accounting query and analyze the results, actually listen to them, analyze them and come up with solutions.

Stewart Gandolf
That's yet another whole topic. There's even some call recording platforms out there now that can do that at scale for you, Kathy.

Kathy Gaughran
Yeah, there's another question. from Neil, what do you consider the most important take home message of this program? Telephone etiquette, access, follow up marketing staff motivation or contact center?

Stewart Gandolf
I would say there's nothing more important than a new patient inquiry. If you start with that promise, everything will fall in place. There's nothing more important than a new patient inquiry. So all those things matter, right? Like you just you have to take this seriously. This is a serious endeavor. and I just feel like it's so underestimated.

Stewart Gandolf
This is not a sexy topic. I'd much rather be talking to you about, you know, SEO or programmatic or, you know, conversion rate optimization. The marketing me loves that. But we chose to do this webinar because it's just it's the linchpin to everything, and it has to be done. Well and it has to be treated with the same care and expertise.

Stewart Gandolf
Is everything else we do right?

Kathy Gaughran
There are still people on the phones, so we can't. Yes, there's a lot of ways to communicate online. Absolutely. And people like that. But you're still going to get phone calls. So it's just critical that we we, you know, can treat and convert each and every call to its full potential.

Stewart Gandolf
And the last thing here is that, before we take additional questions, doing a good job of answering a lot already. So maybe we've already satisfied everybody. But the consulting and staff training, so if you're interested in, you know, a call center or you're interested in someone training your team, these are things that we have different people on our team, both employed and also people who work with as partners.

Stewart Gandolf
it's really unique to the situation. So I would suggest, if you're interested in this sort of thing, to call us Kathy, probably take this call because it's so specialized. And Kathy does this even more than me, to, you know, talk about, you know, what do you have what's the current situation, you know, do you have a call center or how are you handling things where your objectives, what?

Stewart Gandolf
And then we would typically, work with you to come up with a solution on this. It's typically customized. We have different trainers that we think are better for different situations, different consultants. So it is pretty customized. It depends. I'm not selling you on this and just telling you it's vital to success like this. It's not a big part of our business.

Stewart Gandolf
It's something we do not because it's a super profitable line. sometimes I joke with Kathy. It's like swamp warfare. We go in to help a client, and it's like me to start getting shot at, and I get mosquito bites. So it's not. It's not an easy thing to solve. But again, there's nothing more important than a first patient call and everything else falls apart.

Stewart Gandolf
If you don't have that into place. So here's our contact info. Most people just simply email us, or you can directly just go to if you want to. Kathy at Healthcare Success is just go straight to Kathy. Otherwise the general number is info. and you know, we're happy to answer questions about this. I hope this was valuable to you today.

Stewart Gandolf
Kathy, any additional questions as we wrap up here or add additional thoughts from your standpoint?

Kathy Gaughran
Well, yeah. One additional thought. we have done extensive training, and one of the things that led to kind of in and around Covid was culture training. So also something something to think about with your staff is your culture. And does everybody know what that is? So it goes back to your internal vibe and your mission statement and those kinds of important that people know what you stand for when they're communicating your unique value proposition on these phone calls.

Stewart Gandolf
I would just add one last comment. Going back to training and consulting. a lot of times it may be depending if you're at a large business to do a, specialized program just to get your leadership on board with how important this is. So sometimes we get hired for that because there's a lot of stakeholders here. They have to understand it.

Stewart Gandolf
So before you jump to worrying about how to train your staff, you may have to get internal alignment. And that's really, really important. last thing I do want to make the offer I referenced earlier. If you have access to, call recordings, you can assign, you know, can handle the perfect the paperwork and have us listen to a couple to make sure we're doing it.

Stewart Gandolf
You know, type A regulations. better yet, what we typically do with new prospective clients is just simply, you know, Kathy, if somebody on our team can actually call a few of your offices and come back to you with a report. so if you're interested in getting a mystery call, which is a little easier for non clients, we do usually do the call recording, listening to current clients but prospective clients.

Stewart Gandolf
And if you're interested in this in a deeper level and you're interested in maybe having us help you or in some way, we're happy to have a, you know, a quick call or two to your staff and come back. Just my advice is be sitting down. On that second call us.

Kathy Gaughran
Shocked what's happening on their on their phones. It's it's amazing.

Stewart Gandolf
Again a lot of times people use the and then like what we'll do. Oftentimes they ask us to do the mystery call. We have to get written permission from you to record the call into the mystery call. But they may use that mystery call to help, you know, align the team and the management on the need for this problem, because nothing like a real live call to their office to demonstrate this.

Stewart Gandolf
And it's almost always terrible, very rarely above a five on a scale of ten. So if you're interested in that, let us know that would be a Catholic question or wanted somebody else on our team to talk you through that. Okay, so it sounds like we answered all the questions today. with real time management. Okay. Our time is actually an hour.

Stewart Gandolf
So, we covered a whole lot of ground today on this very important topic. I want to thank you for listening and best wishes. Thank you, Kathy, for your help and joining.

Kathy Gaughran
Thank you Stewart.

Stewart Gandolf
Yeah, right.