Re-engaging your existing patients amid COVID

Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Business of Aesthetics podcast show. This is Naren, your co-host. Today, I'm super excited to be talking about a very important topic in these times of COVID with my dear friend and co-host, Jeff Richman. Jeff, how are you this afternoon? Good. Thank you, Niren. The topic today is titled re-engaging your existing patients during COVID. You know, we thought COVID is going to be done. It's not done all across the world, all across the US. Many, many people still are dealing with, many, many states are still dealing with it. So we're going to be jumping in and talking about, you know, where are things today? What do we see successful practices doing, including Jeff's practice Thrive Portland? And we want to share some knowledge and some experience over the last two to three months. Before we talk about tactics and before we get into, you know practices can do to you know come out stronger and come through this better off in the other side of this this long pandemic let's talk about where things are at across the u.s so you live in portland portland was one of the you know states i mean cities affected the most i mean early on early on, right? Just like Seattle was, I guess, the first place to get infected by COVID. And I guess Portland is right behind there. So, but of course, you work with clients all across the country, and so do I.

So what, where are things at for the different practices and with regards to COVID? Yeah, I think you said it, we thought we were going to be past a lot of this stuff. We're still just so amid, amidst it all. And it's been difficult. Let's talk about a little bit what we're seeing. I think plastics have been pretty busy. There's a bubble and we're still at the end of the bubble. You know, pre-COVID, patients still had scheduled appointments, the bubble. You know, pre-COVID, patients still had scheduled appointments. They had put down deposits. They had prepaid packages for services. And we're still seeing the redemption of that happening. We're still, we're seeing the rescheduling of scheduled surgeries happening. We're seeing new scheduled where the consultations were already done, still happening. Well, what about a month or two from now? Stimulus money starts going out, the backlog of patients. I think we're still, at least in the plastic world, seeing some of the backlog rolling through. What, you know, what are the new patient consultations look like? Are there a lot of those happening?

do the new patient consultations look like? Are there a lot of those happening? Are there as many on our books as there were pre-COVID, I think is a big concern for everyone. And then how are we going to engage these patients differently moving forward? So a few things have been established really quickly. One, Zoom or talking to your physician electronically. I think none of us were really that comfortable having a one-to-one conversation with each other or certainly our authority type people. But over the last few months, really quickly, we've all adapted to it. So now I'm more than willing to have a conversation with my physician over the telephone, and I feel just as good about that conversation as going into the office. So I think that's one thing we're going to see change a lot is all of us are going to have to adapt to tele-appointments and tele-consultations so that just out of convenience for patients, they do not want to come see us as many times. In that same vein, I think we need to think about how many times we were having patients come to the practice before.

So we always said, you know, we wanted patients to come as much as they patients come to the practice before. So we always said, try, you know, we wanted patients to come as much as they possibly could to the practice. Every few months they come and they do other things. Now I think we need to be more creative. Instead of having a patient come to the office eight times, can we have the patient come to the office four times and then maybe we coach with them an additional four times or we do tele-appointments with them. They appreciate it. They still pay for it. And we're able to stay engaged with them without having to have them come in the office as much. Thank you, Jeff. Those are excellent points. So what you're saying is you are seeing a trend towards tele-appointments, tele-consultations, plus you are seeing a trend where patients would prefer to reduce the number of visits. So they want the same service, but in fewer visits, fewer in-person visits. They don't mind doing a tele-meeting, but they don't want to meet with you unless it's really, really required in person. Yeah, and I think our challenge is going to be, they don't necessarily want the same service, but they have the same expectation. Right. Now, I think our challenge is going to be, we're going to see a shift back towards some of the more aggressive treatments that we saw in the nineties, in early two thousands, you know, in through the mid 2000s, where prior to having fractional CO2 and LED and the explosion of IPL, intensive flight, and some of these technologies, where we were doing straight CO2, and you know, several months of downtime, patients were, you know, were seven

days or 10 days of downtime, 14 days of downtime, where there's over the last decade, there's been a trend to less invasive, you know, lunchtime type procedures go back to work. Now, I believe that we're going to see it shift again. The advantage will be to the core specialists who are comfortable doing the more aggressive treatments, patients are going to rather come a couple of times and then they're still going to want the hand-holding. They just won't want to come into the office for the hand-holding. So to the extent that we can offer those services to them remotely, those are going to be the practices that really stand out. Let's switch gears and talk specifically about what can doctors do, practice owners do to drive revenue, right? Because of some of the challenges, economic challenges, many things you touched on so far. So a place where I want to start is, you know, let's say you have phone calls and you have email engagement. So in other words, you got leads, but you didn't have unscheduled consultations.

What would you advise Jeff? Right. Easy, easy first start. And so I think that's a, it's just the great first place to start, which is pre, we should be doing this on an ongoing basis. We just don't all the time and we don't always have the time, but now maybe if we're not as busy, we should theoretically have more time. We want to go back every 30 days or so and look at our unscheduled consultations. So these are either telephone inquiries or email inquiries that came in that did not convert to either a teleconsult or an in-person consultation. So someone who was interested in the service, but they didn't schedule with you. That is, we should always be re-engaging those. But then there's that other subset of group. They did come in for a consultation. Hopefully this is a smaller group, or they did an online consultation, but they just didn't schedule the service. I would start with that group. That's the lowest hanging fruit we have. In a thriving practice, that may only be about 10 to 15 percent of the consultations we've done that have not scheduled a service, but we want to re-engage them. Hey, we saw you a month ago.

We had something going on, you know, or COVID came and we just wanted to check in with you, but come up with a reason to re-engage that patient. The second group is that other group, the ones that have done inquiries, but not done consultations. So, hey, we're offering tele consults now. We weren't able to see you personally, but I know that you emailed or we know that you called in. If you would like to schedule an in-person consultation over online, we can do that right through your cell phone. Here's the link or jump on our online scheduling system and you can do it from there. But re-engaging in these people that have already reached out to the practice, without question, the lowest hanging fruit. And Niren, a lot of the things we're going to go over today, marketing didn't change amid COVID. Marketing is the same. The principles of marketing are the same. So a lot of this stuff is just rethought from a perspective standpoint, but it shouldn't be, we're not reinventing the wheel here because we know that influencing people and getting them to know, like, and trust us and come into our practice is ultimately what's going to drive.

Absolutely. So we have to keep focusing on the fundamentals. What do you think about some fundamentals like, you know, digital marketing and, you know, reviews and, you know, amazing customer experience. You need to stay focused on the fundamentals, you know, ranking highly on Google and all the other pieces that goes along with it. What do you think about special pricing, promotions, et cetera, Jeff, in this time of COVID? You know, now's the time. We need to bring people out. So they're not just like, unless it's a maintenance type treatment, which we discussed before, Botox, those types of things they are coming out for. But the, you know, the filler appointment, if I'm religious about every nine months or 12 months, I'm getting filler. And now I can push it another couple months, I may. So we need to get these people out. Sitting here looking at myself on Zoom, it makes me think about Zoom neck. We've all heard about it or Zoom eyes and Zoom face.

So promoting around that, we've all seen more of ourselves in the last few months than we normally do on a regular basis. I don't think we look in the mirror as much as we use Zoom. So we're seeing ourselves in an unprecedented way. So suggesting to patients, you know, utilizing that and the play on Zoom. I think post-COVID, you know, lots of us have been at home and there's a lot of discussion about packing on a few extra pounds. So for those of us doing body contouring to invite people out and work on their post-COVID body. One thing we missed on our websites, on the telephone, anywhere we're engaging patients now, it's important that we have a COVID policy and that we let them know that our facilities are safe, that we consider, that we've considered their safety, that we've made the necessary changes, and that we have a safe environment for them to come. So I don't want to jump over that, but I forgot to mention it up front, but it's an absolute must. You're absolutely right, Jeff. Like, you know, saying here are the three things or four things we are doing to protect you, protect our team, and protect the doctors, I think is a brilliant idea because it reassures patients that they are going to a medical establishment that is, you know, taking extra precautions, not just doing the bare minimum.

And let's be real, they're not looking at the specifics, they just want to know you're doing it. So by saying it, does that already. Right. One other thing we should touch on is, you know, before COVID, paper and print were, you know, widely used, right? Because we didn't worry about viruses, but now people don't want to touch things. So brochures, posters, counterstants, those types of things perhaps are not as effective. Even in the old days, we had printed brag books. Now those should be digital. Can you talk about these two topics, Jeff? Absolutely. I mean, just go ahead and throw the paper away and don't even reorder it, right? It's gone. Even counterstands. I mean, counterstands relied on us having 50, 60 patients through the office and some of them seeing that in-office publication. Now we're not seeing those types of numbers. So our voices become more important, you know, in office, more customized, more thought about what that patient needs and presenting to them directly. But I don't, the patients coming in are already coming in for a procedure. So we're not loading them up with eight or 10 patient brochures anymore.