Building an effective team in a healthcare setting is no easy feat. In healthcare, teamwork can positively or negatively affect your patients’ experience. A positive experience leads to more online reviews, less no-shows, and an increase in revenue.
As a leader, forming and developing an effective team will help you achieve exceptional care for your patients. Most practices are a team in that the optometrists and staff members work together each day and generally get along quite well, but genuine team-based care requires much more.
Embrace AI as part of your team
Securing patient bookings is the lifeblood of any optometry practice. For businesses to be successful, team members should ensure that all information is stored accurately. One way to ensure the data is accurate and stored securely is by using cutting-edge technology to incorporate an AI team member into your organization. Ensuring that your AI team member is accountable for keeping accurate, validated, and up-to-date information means more effective patient communication. For example, automated communication with your patients may be appointment reminders, new bookings and birthday messages, creating a better overall customer experience.
Adding to the Human touch
An AI staff member will assist your staff, but nothing can replace the smile of a warm team member. Patients also crave human interaction when dealing with the stress they often feel whilst at a medical practice; having a team with good communication skills builds the foundation for a great practice-patient relationship. People want to feel cared for and feel that they are receiving the best care possible. Well-cared-for patients will remain loyal to your business, increasing patient retention.
Nothing replaces that human touch, but using technology adds that AI staff member to your team, assisting in delivering that human touch. This is helpful when staff are busy with face-to-face customer engagement and may be unable to tend to other customers.
Automated tasks include sending out reminders to patients to rate your practice on Google reviews. It’s important to note that AI is not a replacement for people but merely a part of your team to assist in improving your customer experience.
Serve your customers around the clock
Having a team member generate new patient bookings outside of office hours is is highly valuable to any medical practice. Small changes within your business, such as a great website, can have the power to extend your team's ability to serve patients and attract new ones around the clock.
People often think about making a booking for themselves in the evening and the next day life gets busy, and they forget. Creating the convenience of booking an appointment anytime online will secure more bookings, especially with load-shedding where there is a possibility phone lines are down. The last thing you want is to lose a customer simply because they couldn’t make an appointment.
Educating your patients
Patient education is an integral part of the patient's consultation experience. Studies show that patients who understand their condition and why they need to return are more likely to return timeously. As consultation time may be limited for you to explain their diagnosed conditions and prescribed products in detail; however this process does not need to end with you. Using a website with a customized patient portal can act as a team member who can do all the explaining required. - even whilst you are at home!
Directing your patients to your offsite team member who has unlimited time to explain and present all the information to your patients’ questions in the comfort of their own homes is an influential part of any team.
