When working with new client enquiries, we have found that most practices are solely interested in converting that client to a booking. When this happens, the clients who are calling to enquire make a booking, without the real drive to commit to therapy. Thus, the client is less likely to attend their first appointment.
When you think of the client journey, the client moves through the stages of change. Your reception team need to understand is this client ready or is this client still contemplative? The only real way to know is to build rapport. So what should they do to build this rapport?
Understand that not all clients are ready to make a booking.
If the reception team can stay curious with the client, ask questions that answer questions, you will find that clients are more willing to open up. For example, if a client calls and asks what the fees are, if the standard workflow is to say, "$220" clients will often say thank you and hang up. If instead the reception team say, "Our fees do vary from service to service and practitioner to practitioner (or location to location) may I ask you a few questions first as I'd like to provide the most accurate information around your enquiry." You've opened the pathway to continue to speak to the client. You will quickly know if the client isn't ready to make a booking.
Stop restricting the time the team can be on the phone.
We find that most practices try to minimise their administration costs and thus discourage long phone calls. Whilst this does make sense in some cases, new client enquiries need to have this restriction removed. When building rapport with an enquiry, regardless if they book or not, our role is to help the client through their client journey. Sounding knowledgable, answering questions, being helpful and useful are ways to ensure that the client does eventually attend a therapy appointment. If it isn't with your practice, it doesn't mean that time is wasted, it only means that your part in their journey was to provide education.
Up-skill your team
When your reception team have a difficult time answering questions or are fumbling to find the answers, the client can pick up on that. As the second point of contact (usually it's a website or the referral source that is the first point of contact with your practice) and first point of human contact, your team should know your practice inside and out. If they are learning or if your practice is consistently changing, then providing a knowledge base or a source of data that is easy to access for your team is vital.
Take-away
A few key points for engaging enquiries are the following:
1. Your main objective should be to ensure that when an enquiry converts, they attend their appointment. It makes no sense to have an enquiry book and then cancel (that costs more as you have to spend administration dollars on reworking the client's appointment).
2. By marketing correctly, you will have the right enquiries coming into your practice. If you are marketing services that you aren't providing or that your administration team doesn't understand, enquiries won't book. Then your google ROI (return on investment) is much higher than your marketing team can even fathom.
3. Your reception team should be focussing more on what the client needs and less on what the practitioner or practice needs. This is a challenging thought for practice owners. Our consulting service works with our Principal Psychologists to understand how to implement this and ways to do it right.
By providing a step-by-step workflow process your reception team can engage with your enquiries in a way that encourages the right clients to book an appointment. Training your team is vital.
