Man, I can’t tell you how many times we listen to calls and hear answering services…that just ABSOLUTELY suck!!!
The staff hired for these companies do not care about you, your customers or anything other than clock in, clock out. They get off the phone as fast as possible, (probably to get back to gossiping with the other call room staff).
The last 2 chunks of calls I listened to had the answering service losing 40% of the NEW PATIENT calls to “Never Call Back Land” which is a terrible place to go. New Customers want to ask the staff questions. When the answering service can’t answer those questions, they hang up and call another Doctor.
Think about it…what does 1 new customer bring to your office in collections? $1k, $2k, or more? Well how much are you losing if you lose 1, 2, 3 or more new customers per month or per week even? That is literally between $50,000 and $100,000 or more per year!
Sadly the last doctor I talked to that had the following issues:
1. Never listened to her calls.
2. Was having money issues. (or lack there of)
3. Was making more bad decisions by NOT using real data. (which caused #2)
Guys, you have to record your calls, your real life data, stats, etc. and review everything. Then you have to act correctly on this data to win at the game of business.
Cutting ones budget to save a few hundred dollars, only to lose thousands or tens of thousands of dollars down the line is about the dumbest thing a business person can do.
Hiring an answering service is on the TOP 5.
Get a cell phone. Give it to a staff member, forward them your calls after hours. Bonus them for New Customers Scheduled After Hours.
This solution will cost you less than the answering service when there are no calls, and will make you WAY more money when there are calls because your staff member will want the BONUS and you won’t be losing customers!
Capitalize on your efforts and maximize your returns.
Best of luck,
Matt Prados