EyeBiz Success Strategies

No race actually begins at the starting line. So where does it start? The answer is not as exciting as a new laser. It’s not as widely talked about as new technology. It’s not nearly as flashy as a new marketing campaign. But without it, invest in any of the above and expect problems. What am I talking about? Preparations … Internal operations. Your practice is the race car. Internal operations make up the engine, making your staff the pit crew. Let that sit for a minute. The performance of this engine plays a huge part in the bottom-line results – negative or positive. Is your pit crew prepared?

Imagine you plan to begin a simple marketing campaign. You have a new laser and you can perform Lasik in your office (or premium lens upgrade or dry eye clinic – it’s all the same). This is an exciting opportunity and marketing is an important step on the path to increased profitability. You meet with your marketing group to review ads, and radio campaigns and work through the budget. You know how many leads you need to generate the volume of surgery to break even and then see a profit. Decisions are made and the campaign begins. At the end of the first month, you review “the numbers”. It seems the leads you generated were more than expected so that’s great news; however, these leads don’t seem to be converting to surgery, so the income fell flat of the projections. Did you just waste that marketing investment? What went wrong?

You guessed it .. internal operations. You see, it’s great that those phones are ringing. Your marketing team did a great job and you know the potential is there for your success. What is not so great is what happens after the calls are received. Any number of problems could pop up throughout the patient’s experience that could cause the breakdown. Stick with me and let’s take a look at just six common breakdowns that hinder your pit crew.

STAFFING: It’s possible you simply don’t have enough staff to adequately handle the increase in calls. Again, great news that calls are coming in, but it does you no good if the calls are dropped.

EQUIPMENT: Maybe you do have enough staff, but your telephone system is not capable of or maybe it’s just not set up to handle the increase in calls or the routing of the calls. Again, dropped calls.

TRAINING: Let’s assume you have staff to handle the calls. Were they trained? Do they know what type of calls to expect? What if someone wants to talk about the procedure but the counselor is not available? Do they know how to gather names and call back numbers? Do they know what information to share so the caller feels you are being transparent? Does this patient feel you are competent?

SCHEDULING: Another problem is scheduling. Did you create special appointment times for these visits? Are you monitoring to make sure these times meet the needs of your prospects? What happens when callers want to schedule but appointments are not available soon enough? Waiting is just not something we do these days without losing interest. Is someone monitoring?

Let’s say you did a great job, your phones were handled well, the schedule had the right availability, and your laser candidates were booked. That is great! … but we’re not done.

PATIENT EXPERIENCE: Your patient now arrives at your office. These patients are interested in LASIK, and they are ready to write that check for thousands of dollars. What about their experience will make them willing to do so? Is it the fact that they were greeted quickly and with a smile? Is it the fact that the check-in process was handled online before arrival? Maybe it’s that there is no wait time, and your high-touch technicians are waiting to begin the workup. Whatever it is, did you create a high-touch experience for your patient?

COUNSELING: Wow! We’ve made it to counseling. What now? Was the patient asked to share their reasons for wanting this procedure? Have you learned about their lifestyle needs and understand their fears? Is all this information shared with both the doctor and the counselor to assist in walking through the decision-making process? Is the counselor conversation scripted? Again, you must be intentional in your expectations and training. When is the last time the team evaluated this process from the patient perspective?

This is the beauty of excellent internal operations. When done right, all of this would have been evaluated on the front end. Expectations would have been set and training provided. You must make sure your team (the pit crew) has the knowledge and the tools. You must make sure everyone understands the flow to work in conjunction with one another. When you have strong internal operations working hand in hand with your marketing campaign, your new laser purchase becomes a profitable investment.

As I said earlier “internal operations” doesn’t sound that exciting (at least not to everyone) but truly, it should be exciting because this is the engine under the hood of your race car. The race to increased profits cannot be won without a high-performance engine so ask yourself … “how do we create high-performance internal operations in my practice? … how do we create a high-performance team?”

In closing, let’s reflect on Marcus Telles’ insight: “A company can seize extraordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations.” Let’s be very good!

Hacking Success Together

Connie StClair, COE
StClair Success Strategies
cstclaircoe@gmail.com