How do you follow up your clients? It can be a fine line between stalking and actively taking responsibility for your client’s engagement.
Coreplus and Apollo have teamed up to share with you some fresh ideas on how to actively engage your client once they’ve started to disengage. This post is to address clients who have not attended an appointment on the day or a client who hasn’t scheduled a follow up appointment in which you were expecting they would.
Phone call:
Once the client hasn’t attended, you can mark your calendar non attended, (to see how to manage your calendar check out this article) we suggest you call your client within 15 minutes of their non attendance. But you know that already. What you might not know is what to say. The call is firstly to check in with the client to make sure they are okay. If the client you are reaching out to is not a client who is in your calendar currently, but a client who has fallen from your radar, then a call is important to evoke a personalised immediate response.
SMS/Email:
After a respectable amount of time, we suggest one week, if you still haven’t heard from the client, follow up with an SMS or Email. This approach is a bit more 21st century and will appeal to anyone with a busy schedule. To remind yourself to do this you can set a client reminder in Coreplus. (See this article). Due to this being a short and simple way to follow up, busy clients will be able to respond quickly and/or within a time that suits their schedule. If you aren’t comfortable sending an SMS from your personal mobile, Coreplus has a feature to allow you to SMS the client, see this article.
Letter:
Lastly, as a final attempt to re-engage your client, we suggest sending a letter (to set a template in Coreplus see this article here.) When the letter is written correctly, (see our suggestion here) you can send the same letter to the client as you send to the GP. This snail mail letter can explain that the client should continue in therapy or see their GP. It will also encourage the client to come back when they are ready.
Download a free tool to help you with your active client follow up, here.