Maximizing The Intake Process

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A good intake process is crucial for elective medical practices that focus on specialties like plastic surgery, LASIK, and oral surgery. To effectively grow, practices need to focus not only on marketing but also on converting their incoming leads to patients. Intake teams are thus critical for a medical practice; intake teams are a potential client’s first point of contact when inquiring about a particular practice’s procedures. Therefore, having a simplified and seamless intake process is necessary to have a high conversion rate of leads to patients.

Following Up With Leads

Lead follow-up is a crucial part of the intake process. To be successful, this follow-up must occur quickly and efficiently. Practices can immensely improve their conversion rate by putting together a web form for potential clients to fill out. The practice must then respond immediately—or at least rapidly—in order to improve its conversion rate. Having an automated email or text follow-up can improve this response time and lead to more success in the first touch points of reaching leads. However, while email follow-ups are helpful, it is easier to call someone and talk to them on the phone. It is more effective to connect with potential clients over the phone than it is over email.

Training Intake Specialists

It is important to have trained intake specialists who can control the conversation with a lead. This means that a patient is asking questions, and the staff member is able to be consistently friendly and helpful when answering them. At the same time, the staff member must be able to turn the conversation toward scheduling an initial consultation. Many opportunities to turn potential leads into clients are lost during calls because the intake staff misses this critical step.

A key phrase can help your intake staff can leverage to take control of the conversation is “I’d be happy to help you. Have you been here before?” This allows the patient to respond yes or no, which can help staff decide what information would be essential to share. If you control the call, you are able to determine which questions are asked, and you are able to provide good information the potential client might not get from other practices.

To learn more about designing an effective intake process, check out the most recent episode of our MedShark Insider with Charlie Winn, Chief Revenue Officer of Liine. Liine is an AI-powered software that simplifies and improves how practices acquire new patients by capturing all inbound leads.

Contact the marketing specialists at MedShark Digital to help you simplify your intake process and map out a symbiotic marketing and intake plan.

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