When engaging with chiropractic practices, patients expect more than just treatment – they want a star-worthy experience. While care, data privacy, and professionalism are fairly obvious, with the digitization of chiropractic practices, access to accurate and timely information, seamless communication with providers, and convenient options to schedule appointments and pay online are becoming increasingly important.Unfortunately, customer experience in chiropractic clinics can sometimes get overlooked. Between patient collections, treating patients, and dealing with insurance payers, it can be easy to let it slip through the cracks of everyday practice life.
What Does Customer Experience Mean for Chiropractic Providers?
Customer Experience is the sum of all interactions that patients have with chiropractic clinics across the continuum of care, from searching online for the best clinic, booking an appointment to paying for their treatment. These positive interactions influence patients’ perceptions about your clinic, the quality of care, and the value of services.
Why Customer Experience is Now More Important Than Ever Before for Chiropractors
Patients are your customers. With easy access to information online, patients are now more aware than ever of their choices and costs regarding their chiropractic visits. The internet is becoming a patient’s new best friend. Patients now have free access to look up information and read reviews and ratings about their providers and clinics. Today, patients want chiropractic clinics to show they care about the individual’s needs, convenience, and experience, which is demonstrated during every interaction. When patients have a great experience with you and your clinic, they may:
• Continue returning to your practice, allowing you to fill your schedule.
• Refer friends and family members to your clinic.
• Leave positive reviews, improving your online reputation.
How to Improve the Customer Experience in Chiropractic Clinics
The first step to improving customer experience is nailing down customer expectations and what patients want. Take the following customer experience measures to improve the way you interact with patients, retain existing patients, and attract new ones.
1. Provide more convenient options for patients.
One form of convenience for patients is having easy access to appointment scheduling. Many patient experiences can be tainted by having to call the clinic to book an appointment or having appointments run long. They should be able to quickly and easily book their appointments online from anywhere, change them, or cancel them without any hassle. The second form of convenience could be provided in the form of a patient portal that allows them to easily access their own care information. No longer do they need to call to check their past notes or have correspondence with their provider. Instead, they can just check or update their personal information and past notes from their smartphone or computer. Digital patient intake puts more convenient options in the hands of your patients which can increase their experience ten-fold. They can complete their intake paperwork from the comfort of their home. They don’t have to fill in their details at your clinic while waiting for their appointment time. This helps them save time and effort and enables them to complete their intake paperwork with ease, exactly when they want. Telehealth services also help patients, who are isolated by geographic distance, lack of transportation, and other personal problems, to easily connect with your chiropractic clinic.
Tools that can help in providing convenient options
• Online Appointment Scheduling Software
• Patient Portal
• Digital Patient Intake
• Telehealth
[Also read: The Correlation Between Patient Experience and the Success of Your Chiropractic Clinic]
2. Make communication your top priority.
Lack of proper communication can make or break the customer experience cycle. Patient communication includes text and email appointment reminders, 2-way text messaging, feedback messages, educational emails, and so on. Leveraging communication technology to communicate with patients can make them feel more at ease and boost their experience of care. Make it easier for patients to communicate with you and vice versa. Some don’t like receiving voice calls or feel anxious about calling to reschedule or cancel appointments. Sometimes, patients want to instantly message their providers to know about their treatment, care, and recommendations you provided. Sharing educational materials over email enables patients to actively follow your recommendations and treatment regime. Having all the necessary communication tools integrated into your chiropractic practice management software can make it easier for your clinic to communicate effectively.
Tools that can help in improving communication
• Automated email and text appointment reminder
• Two-way text messaging solution
• Patient portal
• Patient education tool
• Patient reactivation or recall software
3. Digitize and automate processes to spend more time with patients.
Imagine if you have hired a staff member to just call patients and manage appointments. Remember, today, patients want to schedule their appointments online rather than calling a clinic to do so. Hiring an extra staff member to manage appointments through calls is a waste of labor costs and time. Digitizing the process of managing appointments with scheduling software can save you hours in a week and extra labor costs. Now, imagine if you need to answer your patient’s queries regarding the treatment and you’re busy completing the notes. Using voice dictation to dictate your SOAP notes helps you complete the notes faster and spend more quality time with patients. Let’s take the example of Infinite Life Chiropractic. It is a specific Upper Cervical Chiropractic office in the heart of Orange County that is dedicated to revolutionizing holistic health through specialized and individualized chiropractic care. The practice was facing significant challenges, such as time-consuming patient intake paperwork and patient communications and managing paper SOAP notes. When Infinite Life Chiropractic Clinic started using zHealth Software’s all-in-one chiropractic practice management software, they were able to streamline their scheduling and patient communications, increase office productivity, and ultimately, enhance patient care. The customized digital SOAP notes in zHealth helped them save more time and effort. After they switched to zHealth, they started spending more quality time with patients. As a result, patients are happier and they are seeing more patients on a day-to-day basis.
Watch this video to learn how digitizing and automating processes with zHealth Software helped Infinite Life Chiropractic.
Tools that can help in improving practice operations
• Digital SOAP Notes
• Voice dictation embedded into SOAP Notes
• Customized SOAP Notes
• Appointment Scheduling
4. Make it easier for patients to pay.
With most customers going online to pay bills and shop, it’s no surprise that a growing number of patients of all ages say they would prefer to pay bills through a secure portal. Because it’s faster and often more convenient than making offline payments. In terms of customer service, this is a considerable miss. Patients don’t want to waste time at the check-out counter making a payment that they could easily send from their mobile device from the comfort of home. Implement online bill payment to provide a modern customer experience to your patients. Patients will love the modern experience you’redelivering and your practice will reap the benefits of improved revenue cycle, efficiencies, and record-keeping.
Tools that can help in improving the payment experience
• Online bill payment
[Also read: The Future of Patient Experience for Chiropractors]
5. Seek Feedback, Every Time
On average customers tell 9 people about your practice after a positive customer experience. Don’t overlook the post-appointment experience by not seeking feedback from your patients. Even if you’ve delivered the best services and quality care, if your existing patients are not posting their positive experiences on online channels like Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc., nobody will know what and how you offer.
Seeking feedback from patients shows them that you care. If patients are satisfied with your services, they will submit their reviews. If some of your patients had a somewhat negative experience, you can follow up with each patient and take steps to change your existing processes for providing excellent services.
Tools that can help in improving the patient feedback process
• Review automation software
• Two-way messaging tool
Wrapping up
From integrating technology at every customer touchpoint to addressing patients’needs, there are no limits to what a chiropractic clinic can do to improve the customer experience. So go ahead, and give your patients the experience that they want. If you want to know how your chiropractic clinic can improve customer experience, talk to an expert at zHealth. We will answer all your queries.
