Medical aesthetics clinics require a high level of coordination and organization to ensure the highest customer service standards and a comfortably stress-free experience for your patients. Now that a fresh new year is well underway, it’s time to turn the focus towards technology and internal systems of information and organization. Give your medical aesthetic clinic a 21st-century upgrade with these top tips for improving organization and flow for improved profits.
Take Scheduling to the Screen
For those medical aesthetics clinics still keeping appointment books on paper, it’s time to give in and opt for a computerized scheduling system. Taking scheduling from paper to screen is the first step in improving the overall client experience and optimizing clinic hours.
By improving organization and flagging open appointment slots, computerized scheduling opens the door to more appointments and less lost revenue due to unused slots. It also provides the option for online bookings for standard services or consultation appointments, decreasing the number of calls that your staff have to take and freeing them up to cover other important tasks. Likewise, with online booking, clients have the ability to book during a clinic’s closed hours, filling in last-minute cancellations and open slots. In fact, according to one survey, of all clients booking online, 26% opted for same-day or next-day appointments. With 77% of consumers researching providers online, meeting clients where they look for you will make the next steps easy.
Automate Appointment Reminders
For those providing phone call reminders—or no reminders at all—automated text and email solutions may be a more effective solution. It’s all too easy for patients to forget about their appointments, especially if phone calls go unanswered; there are advantages to ensuring that clients have their appointment information in writing.
Automated text messaging systems can also offer patients the opportunity to reply to the message to cancel or confirm, making it easier for staff to manage the schedule and fill in newly opened slots from text cancellations with last-minute bookings. Of course, this system can only be as accurate as the information it’s provided, so it’s imperative to keep mobile numbers and appointment information up to date.
Taking it one step further, there are patient relationship management solutions that let you conduct surveys and manage online payments and bookings as well. These systems tend to be relatively low-cost, and can help save your clinic money in the long term by reducing the rate of no-shows, so it’s worth investing in the right automated solution for your medical aesthetics clinic.
Convert to a Responsive and Modern Website
Clients do most of their research (and their booking) online, so it’s imperative to keep websites up to date and streamlined so readers can easily book a consultation. Websites shouldn’t be weighed down with an excess of technical information (though some patients will be looking for services using a specific device, so that’s one detail that should always be included).
Finally, make sure that your site is optimized for mobile. Over 77% of millennials—a major growth segment for medical aesthetics—spend more than two hours per day on their mobile phones, and prefer to access content on mobile. That means that if a clinic’s website isn’t responsive and optimized for mobile web traffic, it can easily get lost without a second thought.
Website building companies and hosting platforms like Squarespace and WordPress offer plenty of free and paid upgrade responsive website templates to get started for clinics on a budget. For those with more money to invest, a web designer may be the best resource to create a well-branded website that works great with all devices.
Make Communication in Consultations Even Easier
Conveying the overall outcome of a treatment plan while also offering accurate comparisons of alternative treatments and services may be the most difficult aspect of any consultation, next to nailing down what the client’s ideal outcome might be. Photos can make the communication process a little easier, but introducing tech solutions to this step can increase ease of communication even more.
Uploading images to apps on an iPad can allow treatment providers and patients to visualize treatments and identify spots of concern. All of these edited images can then be saved on file to ensure the treatment plan is in line with the patient’s aesthetic goals. Likewise, there are apps that can predict treatment outcomes based on fillers offered via augmented reality, and even offer filing and export features, that can help to clearly demonstrating the overall outcome of a custom treatment plan. These time-saving solutions are easy to integrate to your existing process.
The Bottom Line: Find a Custom Solution
While all of these solutions may sound great, it can be overwhelming, particularly to budgeting, to change everything at once. To effectively bring your medical aesthetics clinic into the 21st century, first identify weak points in the system that appear to be impacting conversions most or slowing down staff. Observe the flow of business for a week and ask for feedback from staff on areas they feel could use a little technological boost. Once these weak points are identified, create a to-do list by priority and ensure the solutions chosen are right for your medical aesthetics clinic.
Not all of the services listed in this article will be the right choice for every clinic; there are plenty of options out there that offer alternative features that may be more suited to your clinic. Use the above suggestions as a jumping-off point for research and only opt for solutions that suit your clinic’s priorities to effectively boost business.
Practice Enhancement Tips
