10 Things Our Top Offices Do

I determined our top offices for 2012 by allocating 1 point for every $100,000 in Net Revenue/Doctor and 2 points for every percentage of growth in Net Revenue.

I took the financial information for the top 6 offices and I also interviewed the doctors and some staff to determine a few things that they are doing that might have contributed to their success.

1.   Staff Meetings – All 6 offices had staff meetings at least once a month and 3 of them had staff meetings twice a month.

2 & 3. Goals & Bonuses – All 6 offices had posted or discussed goals in some capacity.  They also had some sort of bonus system that was tied to their goals in one way or another.

4 & 5. Managed Accounts Receivable & Adjustments – The top 6 offices had an Average Days in Accounts Receivable of 21 days and as a result their adjustments averaged out at 33%.  

6 & 7. See 12 Comprehensive exams/day & Work the recall system – 5 of the 6 offices saw at least 12 comprehensive exams a day and they all stressed the importance of working their recall system for getting patients in to see them.

8.   The Right People on the Bus and the Right People in the Right Seats (“Good to Great,” – Jim Collins) – A common theme in my interviews was the importance of the staff, them working together/gelling, and their happiness. 
3 of the 6 offices had let people go for negative attitudes in the last several years and 3 of the 6 offices had shifted people from one position to another that was better suited for that person.

9.    Optical Handoff – 4 of the top 6 offices regularly performed an optical handoff and their average Optical/Professional fees were 158%.  Before COGS and Adjustments, these 4 offices combined for a total of $3.8 Million in Optical.

10.   Have High Tech Equipment and they use it – Between these 6 offices 5 of them have an OCT and 5 of them have an OPTOS.  The capture rate on OPTOS/Comprehensive exams was an average of 59% for the top 4 offices. 

Bonus: 2 of the top 6 offices even went so far as to send thank you letters to their patients.  

Ready-made Facebook Posts

So as a small business owner you may not have enough money to hire a social media marketer and you don’t have the time to come up with facebook posts every week.  While it very important to have a social media strategy, here are a few ready-made posts that can help get you started and fill in the gaps. 

Holiday posts – Veteran’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, 4^th of July, Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco De Mayo, Mardi Gras, Groundhog Day, labor day, Daylight savings, Earth Day, & Martin Luther King Day  That’s almost 20 days out of the year you want have to create content.  Post pictures to have more impactful content and let your clients/patients/customers know how your schedule corresponds to these holidays.

News articles that relate to your company, profession, community, staff, customers, and schools.  Try to steer clear of negative or political articles and you will save yourself some headaches. 

Funny Pictures, Memes or Jokes.  Everyone wants to laugh including your clientele.  One of the many reasons people go on facebook is for entertainment, so why not entertain them. 

Pictures of you and your staff.  Your patients love you and your staff, well they at least like you and your staff and these pictures will get a lot of activity.  You can post pics of staff on their birthday, you can introduce new staff, you can use your staff to highlight a new product or asset that you have, and pictures of your staff dressed up for holidays or awareness.  There is a reason people keep coming back and sometimes it’s good to remind them with a face.

Tips – Any kind of tips that relate to your product or area of expertise.  The easiest way to find these good tips is to follow other businesses in your industry and see what they are telling their patients.

End of the year Flex Spending account reminders – Post reminders about patients flex accounts at least once a month in October, November and December.  You can even link patients to articles, or your own blog, that explains what a flex account is and how it is beneficial.

Using Patient Surveys to Build Revenue

Today’s blog is taken from an optometry marketing blog called Optometry Practice Marketing, sponsored by Solutionreach. Solutionreach is a marketing and communication company that is focused on acquiring, retaining and reactivating patients for your practice. You can find out more about their Vision Marketing services here. 

This blog focuses on the Importance of Patient surveys.

·         Companies like Solutionreach currently provide an easy-to-use survey section, if you aren’t using an outside company, you should set up a survey portal on your website.

·         Take time to review these surveys and find out what you are performing well at and what areas of business that you are performing poorly

·         Listen and React - Review these surveys with your staff each month.  Praise the positives just as much as you highlight the negatives.  This should not be mainly about the negatives and the vibe of the meeting shouldn't be negative, however you should discuss openly how to be proactive with these issues.

·         How to Get More Surveys - Make sure you are asking for sincere revues at some point during your exam.  Try it for a month or two and see how many more people respond to the survey.

·         After a few months of this routine you can even think about tweaking the questions and making them more open ended so that patients get more specific about their wants and needs. 

·         With companies like Solutionreach you can tie your surveys to your Google Plus page, which will help with SEO and Google searches

·         Your reviews from your patient scheduling company can also be tied to facebook for optimized social media marketing.

Customers are going to Complain

Here’s a straight to the point article about how to handle a customer complaint.  This would be a great article to share with your staff at your next staff meeting.  You may think this should be common knowledge, but clearly outlining how you would like to handle certain situations can save yourself some headaches and hopefully help retain patients.  You could even role play past customer complaints to explore the best ways to respond in the future.

Make a customer mad and they’ll tell 10 people!  Make one happy and they just might refer a friend.

It cheaper and easier to retain the patients you already have than it is to get new ones.  I’m not saying we shouldn't try to get new patients, but our current patients should definitely be a priority.

This article gives a little five step program but I want to add one more to the beginning:

1. Don’t get defensive – It’s pretty natural for us to take pride in our practice, but being defensive does not help when it comes to dealing with a customer.  EVEN IF THEY ARE WRONG don’t get defensive.

2. Listen & Understand – “First, always listen to the customer. They are concerned about an aspect of your services. Let go of the temptation to respond in any quick fashion. Take the time to listen and truly understand what is driving their concern.”

3. Empathize – Put yourself in their shoes and bond with the customer.  Let them feel that you understand and that you want to help them

4. Offer a solution – Always focus on what you CAN do for them as opposed to what you can’t.  It might not be exactly what they are asking for, but staying away from “No” will always help.

5. Execute – You’ve done the hard part, but if you don’t do what you say the next storm will be twice as bad.

6. Follow up – Send them an apology card or call them and ask them if they are satisfied.  Extend an extra peace offering and they might just remember you for bending over backwards rather than the original complaint that they had.  

12 ways to get more fans on facebook

Over 60% of your customers/patients are on facebook so doesn’t it make sense for you to be there too?  Here is a list of some ways to get fans to like you on facebook.

1^st and foremost ask your friends and family to like your page

Have a competition among the staff to get the most likes

Put a sign up in your office

Encourage Patients to "Check in" on facebook so you get exposure to their friends as well

Include your facebook page address in your phone waiting music

Put a facebook link on your website

Put a facebook link on your email

Put a facebook link on your business card

Put a facebook link on your mailouts

Have your front desk person tell people about your facebook page

Hold a contest that centers around sharing and liking your page(be careful with this because facebook has some crazy rules about running facebook contests.)

Pay for advertising on facebook – You can get very specific as to who sees your ads

Staff Meetings

Prima EyeGroup puts out a weekly blog and Staff Meetings 101 is where the meat and potatoes of this post comes from.

Weekly Meetings, Biweekly Meetings, Monthly Meetings, Daily 5 minute tune ups        
You can be different, but you should have some sort of office meeting.

Decide when and how often you want to have meetings.  Check out your long range and block off the time for the rest of the year on the decided days.  Committing yourself to these meetings is the biggest part of the battle.

Don’t worry about losing revenue because improving your staff and the operations of your office will result in happier customers which will equal more $/Patients, more Wowing and more referrals.   

Hold the meeting during office hours but designate someone to handle phone calls and foot traffic.

Why should I have office meetings?
To improve communication, Provide leadership, improve office culture, educate staff, provide better customer service, have better attitudes and get more enjoyment out of work.

How do I start?

Jot down notes about the good and the bad in your office.  Write down specific instances where your office really shined and where they might have dropped the ball a little.  Also think about asking your office manager to do the same. 

    - Focus on the positive and tell them what they are doing a good job at.  They will listen to more of what you have to say if most of the feedback is issued in a positive tone. 

    - Don’t single people out during meetings.  Bring up office problems and have “Blameless Autopsies” Good to Great

    - Let others talk.  Encourage questions.  Ask questions that promote interaction. Role Play. Invite office members to speak about certain situations. 

Ideas for meetings.

    - Customer service issues

    - Office Procedures

    - Provide Staff training

    - Present new products such as contacts and lens designs

    - Review patient feedback (try not to single anyone out)

    - Brainstorm new ways to grow the practice and improve word of mouth referrals from patients

    - Ask employees to describe something they have noticed that makes patients unhappy. Overcoming that problem is a great topic for the next meeting

    - Do a SWOT analysis or have your staff do a SWOT analysis of your practice

If you are not having staff meetings you are not investing time and effort into your people and they are not performing or striving to perform at the highest level.

Welcome

The CEO has challenged me to help raise revenues and to make the individual offices more successful.  If any of you have any ideas or suggestions on how I can help you individually please let me know because I would love to help. 

I currently read a bunch of different articles about the eye care industry and management and I have decided to share the “Best of” articles that I have come across.  My hopes are that you can take some of these articles and apply them to your own office.  Or maybe these articles spark a conversation that leads to other insights and revelations.

Going forward please let me know if you have any questions regarding the articles, anything to add to the articles (especially personal experience stories), or suggestions and questions about other things you would like to hear about.