The success of your practice is dependent on your patients. The more loyal patients you have, the better your practice’s growth. But good treatment alone is not sufficient. For loyalty, you need to build an emotional connection with your patients that makes them feel valued and cared about.
Establishing an emotional connection helps patients remain stress-free, adhere to your advice and talk about their health issues honestly. Let’s see the possible ways to create a connection with your patients when they visit your practice and after they leave.
During visit to practice
Stay calm: Off course, you have a very limited time of 15 minutes for face-to-face interaction with your patient. Being in a rush and showing impatience would look awful. Instead, you should stay calm and make your patient feel relaxed with a warm handshake or a pat on the shoulder.
Be empathic: You need to offer an empathic response, especially when discussing life-threatening diagnoses. Likely the response of patients get better and descriptive. You and your team need to develop empathy skills. Also, make conversation with patients; don’t conduct an interrogation. Along with health issues, discuss different subjects such as pets, celebrations, etc. that makes them feel comfortable and more like they’re talking to a friend. Be an active listener. It gives your patient silent support. Instead of looking at your watch or a laptop screen, nod in agreement to what your patient says. For emotional connection, it is necessary to listen to your patients, express empathy and offer personal warmth.
Follow-up plans
To ensure loyalty, you need to make efforts to stay in touch with your patients after their visit to your practice. This makes them feel cared for. Below are some robust follow-up plans:
Emailer: Email is one of the best marketing mediums to interact with your patients. Connect by sharing health-related newsletters that focus on patient ailments or general health issues. Don’t send out the same mailer to everyone; rather, use segmentation. Craft each mailer to focus on a set of people based on age, gender, geography or ailment. Also, keep your newsletter crisp and concise instead of publishing long stories.
To get more leads, put a call to action (CTA) button at the top. Another major characteristic of a successful mailer is a catchy subject line. Set regular intervals for email campaigns. Too many mailers can get you dumped in the spammer list, but too few mailers can make you lose potential patients.
Social media: Another way to connect with your existing patients and potential ones is via social media platforms. So you need to stay active on your social media accounts. Follow a trend in your posts such as daily posts, weekly posts, etc. Showcase your thought leader personality by sharing your blog posts or webinars. You can send appointment reminders or general health tips via social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Website: Your website should have a patient portal where they can post their question, check their appointment schedule, view their test reports and much more. This is a kind of communication initiator that helps you connect better with your patients.
Seminars: Last but not least, participate in local healthcare campaigns and seminars to get involve with people living around you. Participate in school and college health camps. These places help you to interact with more people and showcase your skills and knowledge to your potential patients.
A connection is necessary for building any relationship. The better connections you have with your patients, the stronger your relationships will be. Subsequently, they will do word-of-mouth marketing for you, thereby building your practice.