How Online Scheduling Is Destroying Our Profession And Your Personal Life
Allowing your patients to schedule online might seem like a cost-effective and convenient option, but that’s only because most of you struggle to answer your phone.
Or let us put it another way…
Would you just give strangers the keys to your house for them to drop by unannounced whenever it suited them?
Having an online scheduling portal is just that - you allow random, often unqualified, prospective patient come in whenever they want and interrupt your day.
(What exactly is an UNQUALIFIED prospective patient?” We’re gonna cover this in the near future. But for now let’s stick to phones.)
If you’re marching solo in a one-man band you’re thinking - ‘and how do you suggest I treat patients and run my practice AND on top of everything else, answer my phone?” The short answer, you’re not. And that’s why you should hire staff.
But that’s a lecture for a different time. Yes, another lecture for another time! We have thousands of theories that are vetted, tested and are what has enabled us to bring well over $1M revenue into our personal acupuncture practices each year.
Here’s a little secret.
Not answering your phone is costing you thousands of dollars each day.
That’s right.
Thousands. Each. Day.
A LinkedIn study from 2016 estimates that small businesses miss about 22% of the phone calls that they receive. And based on our statistics that number is substantially higher when it comes to acupuncture practices. In our role as practice management coaches we ‘secret shop’ our new clients to help them identify areas of improvement and address clinical challenges.
We put ‘secret shop’ in quotations because that would imply we actually get to speak with someone.
An alarming 87% of our new clients failed to even answer the phone.
Let’s break this down shall we.
A potential patient gets your voicemail (if you even have one) and one of two things happens:
- The best case scenario, they leave a message. But this doesn’t happen as often as you think. And instead of onboarding them as a new patient you spend the rest of eternity playing phone tag. Which actually costs you more than just money.
- They hang up and call the next acupuncturist on the list who will pick up. In this want-what-they-want-and-they-want-it-now world, they’re not waiting for you to call them back. Unless of course you’ve established brand loyalty through creative and captivating omnipresent marketing campaigns. But let’s face it, if you’re struggling to even answer the phone, you’re probably not doing this.
In attempting to find a solution to all this, you opted for online scheduling. What a marvelous thing it is for you to open your EHR each morning and find random appointments on the books. Or at least it was, until you realized that you’ve completely lost control of your schedule. Now, you’ll spend all day at the clinic because the three patients who scheduled themselves didn’t bother to coordinate with each other. So instead of being conveniently back-to-back, they’re scattered throughout the day. You call your mother-in-law for help with school pick-up because you definitely won’t be available. You skip your morning workout because you won’t have time. You hope there’s enough money in your bank account so you can Uber Eats dinner since you’ll barely make it home for bedtime. And don’t forget to cancel lunch with your girlfriend for the third time this month. Also, better confirm with another parent that they can take photos of your kids' swim meet because you’ll be absent once again.
And then acupuncturists the world over wonder why burnout is an epidemic amongst our profession.
So now, not only are you out thousands of dollars because you didn’t answer your phone. But because you’re letting a bot handle your schedule, you’re being robbed of this life’s most precious commodity, time. And that dear friends, is something you can’t recoup.
At this point you’re throwing up your hands to the heavens and shouting “why wasn’t I taught Business Management in school?” And probably wondering if there’s a solution in here somewhere or are we just here to rub salt in your wound?
The silver lining here is that you’re not alone. Just like your colleagues, school taught you how, why and where to stab and not a whole lot about how to run a successful business. That’s where we come in. At Mitowi Management, we teach you everything else. Including a proven solution to answering your phone and still having time to enjoy dinner with your family every night. Or attend that yoga class. Or be front row at your daughter’s gymnastics meet. Or take your grandma to her eye doctor appointment. We’re not here to tell you how to spend your free time, but we are here to help you get it back. We’re here to help you Design Your Life™ through running an effective and efficient practice.
Join us at #SHIFT®, our flagship two-day seminar. January 27-28, 2024 in Myrtle Beach, SC. Visit MitowiMgmt.com to learn more and register. And go ahead and close the books on online scheduling and take back your life.