How to build trusting relationships before you have met the patient!

For dental or aesthetic clinicians, your clinical and business success is strongly related to how well you build and maintain relationships with your patients.  To do this well you need to consider the different stages of the patient journey and be aware of every stage that your patient interacts with your service.

There are 5 stages of a patient journey

Awareness Stage – Before they have made contact with you

Pre-joining Phase – When they interact with you prior to joining

Joining Phase – When they attend their first visit

Using Phase – When they become a regular patient

Leaving Phase – When they leave

In some practices, the sum total of relationship-building is carried out in the joining phase and in the highly valuable clinician time.  Often prior to the patient's appointment, the clinicians receive a name and a chief concern if they are lucky and so have to begin the whole process themselves.  Of course, there is always an exploration with the patient in the clinical area, but time is better spent if you are clarifying and validating and building upon what could be established prior to the new patient appointment.

In this post, we are going to explore what you can do to attract patients the type pf patients you want and how to begin to build a relationship before you have even met.

Awareness Phase

If you rewind back 15-20 years or so, most new patients discovered you from:

• Word of mouth
• Yellow pages
• Advertisements

The yellow pages or advertisements didn't allow many opportunities to build a relationship and so more of the pre-qualifying relied on the call handler. It used to be considered that the first opportunity to make the first impression was on the initial telephone call.

Social media now provides us with information at our fingertips, a few clicks and we can find pretty much anything!. Patients are doing far more research than ever before, and will select a practice ultimately based on whom they connect with.

We now know that relationship building begins with a patient before they have made direct contact with you.

70% of any buying decision for a product or service is made prior to the patients contacting you.  To attract your ideal patient, begin by thinking about 'what you want to be found for' in terms of social media searches. You will then be able to influence your prospective patients and build relationships.

We recommend that you look at your website and any marketing material and try to put yourself in your prospective patient’s shoes.  Is it how you want to be represented?

If not, consider this:

• Articulating your brand message
• Using the language on your website, social media and connect it to your internal communication.
• Having a welcome video on your website and social media channels
• Developing content in the form of blogs and videos that answer the common questions that you hear from your patients or that talk about the procedures or services that you want to be known fo
• Team awareness to ensure they can ascertain the exact source of the patient (saying the website isn’t usually good enough)

You need to reach a stage that you are happy with the impression that your prospective patients can make of you and that it is connected to what they will experience.  The next stage is the pre-joining phase.

Pre-Joining Phase

Let’s begin with the new patient telephone call.  Friendly and nice are must-haves but to continue to build a trusting relationship you will need to find out about the patient and also be able to validate that you are a trustworthy expert. 

Patient-centred relationship building is key – patients will care about you when they know you care about them.

A really good framework to a successful new patient call that is built around building a trusting relationship is the who, what, why, where, when questions. 

WHO

Are they?

Told them about your practice?

Are you reaching out to in your marketing efforts?

WHAT

Are they looking for?

Is important to them?

Is their knowledge and understanding of?

Has been their experience in finding out about this treatment?

WHY

Are they looking to have this treatment?

Are they making contact now?

Are they choosing you?

WHERE

Do they live?

Is their area of concern?

Where did they find information on the treatment they are exploring? (Get really specific – if they say they found you on the internet, respond by being please that they found you and dig a bit deeper by asking what it was you were specifically searching for) 

WHEN

Do they want the treatment completed by?

Key point These questions should not be asked in this order and of course, there are many more pieces of vital information that you need to ascertain.  The whole call should be a conversation and definitely not a tick-box interrogation.  This information needs to be documented and passed on to the clinical team for them to be prepared for the patient’s arrival. 

Once you have completed the call, you will send the patient out relevant documents to complete and if you do your exploration well and ascertain any fears, doubts, or questions that they have, you could send a related content piece that they can watch prior to their visit that alleviates or answers their concern.  This is where any content you produce can be used in many stages and is very powerful in building positive trusting relationships.

So, what about other ways that your patient could get in touch with you?

Traditionally, a patients first port of call would be the telephone or in-person, although now we have so many more mediums.  You, therefore, must consider all of the ways that a patient could get in touch with you and ensure that the patient experience is matched regardless.  Here are a few different entry points that you should give consideration to:

• Website contact forms
• E-mail enquiries
• Business social media messaging
• Personal clinician social media accounts
• Online booking
• Chat boxes

Once you have completed the pre-joining phase and have scheduled an appointment, the final stages prior to the patient meeting the clinician are:

1. How you introduce and frame the new patient appointment to the patient
2. How you pass on the rich pieces of information to the clinical team
3. How the clinical team use that information to build upon and create the great experience. 

Summary

Get your voice and message to resonate over all platforms including your people to be able to connect with your ideal patient. Develop content that you can use to help to build trust and positive relationships with your patients and audience, and finally connect all of that to the new patient call.  This will enable you to have more pre-qualified and ready patients that value your recommendations and service because they TRUST YOU!

What ways have you discovered to build trust outwith the clinical area?