The success of your business depends on your patient base and their satisfaction. To acquire more patients and keep your existing ones, you need to keep them engaged. The journey of customer engagement begins with searching about you on the Internet through the end of their treatment. At every step, you need to remember that engagement should empower and satisfy patients regarding improvement of their health. So, how to go about it?
Create online presence
Today, most people make a decision to visit a doctor only after their online investigation. This makes it essential for you to be present online and offer relevant and genuine information. To this end, you can put Symptom Checker on your website or blogs to attract a larger crowd and present yourself differently from your competitors.
Always talking about yourself is not a good marketing idea, so your blogs and emails should focus on patients’ benefit and act as a knowledge dispenser.
Create better bonds
Your communication should not be limited just to your office/practice. And a ‘one size fits all’ communication strategy won’t work here. Use different strategies to reach your patients and talk more often with them over text messages, emails and social media platforms, etc. Also, you should make use of services such as telemedicine.
Use new technology
Your website should have space for scheduling an appointment, payment, etc. that does not make patients feel burdened with formalities and forms. Allot space for patients to upload their information and health history. Do your homework so that you have more face time with patients.
Stay mobile-friendly
If you are not on mobile, you are losing a large segment of your target audience. For this, you should introduce a mobile health app to discuss new prescriptions, a diet chart, improvement status, disease education, etc. Instead of creating a disease-specific app, it is better to have a general wellness app.
Make them feel motivated
Motivate patients to follow the instructions you give for early recovery. Ask them to monitor their progress. This will generate their interest in the treatment and they will track their progress. In every follow-up meeting, appreciate their efforts and boost their confidence. This will grow a friendly bond instead of just a doctor-patient relationship.
Train your staff
Train your clinical and non-clinical staff on good conversation that engages your patients and offers them the desired care and support. In the same line, you must consider a few aspects while hiring your staff. Here, the nurses should have a good five or more years of clinical experience. An experienced staff will help non-clinical agents such as care representatives. Your non-clinical staff should have good and compassionate communication skills.
Do campaigning
Campaigning is the most effective way of engaging your patients. Your campaigns should be patient-specific. For a successful campaign, you need to have a clear segmentation of the target audience based on their sex, age, education, gender, address, etc. Further, you must have a campaign-specific script to attract and engage readers.
You need to remember, irrespective of the channel, the message should be focused and meaningful. Also, remember to monitor your campaigns to know the level of engagement created. This helps you improve your performance and work on any loopholes. In any activity, don’t forget to abide by HIPAA rules and regulations.