Let’s walk through an example of how I helped an Ergonomist and Occupational Therapist working in the field of injury prevention for hi-tech, insurance and healthcare enterprises.
The basic idea was to do the following:
- Acquire – Generate more leads with a “foot in the door” offer, at a low cost of acquisition
- Convert – Provide tangible value to these new customers with this low priced offer. This is serviced with minimal effort from our client’s side.
- Nurture – Be in regular contact with these new customers, provide tangible value and aim for the larger business – being introduced to the companies these customers work for.
- Up-sell – Present these initial customers with a slightly higher priced service offering that isn’t a big ask from these new leads. For this, only two pictures were required from the customer to get a “paid consultation”. Again, this was also serviced with minimal effort from our client’s team.
This practice used a simple mobile app that allows their providers to achieve all of the above (it doesn’t necessarily need to be a mobile app)
The mobile app presents 4 paths to help someone with aches/pains (patient)
- Self assessment – the patient is asked a series of questions to help them with their aches and pains
- Solutions for body discomfort – wherein the patient can click on various body parts to identify self care and ergonomic tips.
- Help videos – helps the patient make immediate changes to their posture with self help videos
- Ergonomic equipment recommendation – helps the patient choose from various products to ease their aches and pains.
The app was then distributed to their patients.
My findings showed that:
- Approximately 80% of people that downloaded the app used both the self assessments.
- Approximately 20% of these users also used the various solutions / suggestions that the app provides for body discomfort.
- About 35% of these users that downloaded the app also signed up to hear more directly from the practice
- About 20% of the users that answered various assessment questions, also signed up as a “lead” to hear more from the practice
To service this “foot in the door” offer, the practice owner and their team didn’t have to spend a single minute.
These assessment questions and the solutions for various body discomfort were all canned responses.
In other words, the initial “foot in the door” offer was a raging success !
Everything after that was pretty simple and can be automated by leveraging technology.
People that signed up to hear more were sent personalized emails and were constantly nurtured with help videos.
When a patient is seen using the app within the past hour (i.e. they are actually active), a push notification is sent to remind the patient to take a 2 min break and stretch every 30 mins of sitting at their desk.
This has a dual purpose.
First, for people that are really using the app, it keeps them engaged and helps them achieve their goals.
On the other hand, if someone hasn’t opened the app in the last hour, it doesn’t bother them at all.
This helped keep the patients engaged with the app and therefore, with the practitioners daily.
Once we saw that people were interacting with the app and using the various self help and self assessment areas of the app, it was now time to up-sell these patients to a personalized recommendation / consultation.
We called this “Ask an expert”.
Of course, for their regular practice, this required an in-person visit from the patient or if this was being done at a contracted enterprise, the team would have to make in person visits to their offices.
The patient could simply connect with the provider group and make an appointment.
At the same time, there was another option that patients could choose for – instead of coming in for an in-office visit.
The patient was asked for a single side view picture – of them sitting at their desk (capturing the computer, keyboard and their feet).
This allowed the practitioner to “virtually” see the patient and immediately recommend posture changes, recommend any changes to various equipment in use in addition to recommending any alternate desk/chair options.
This was a very easy up-sell as the patient had just undergone self diagnosis, already obtained a lot of tangible value from the get-go.
This is just the start of the journey. There is so much more you can do with very little overhead.
Showcase & democratize your knowledge to folks that could be your future patients
Much like every other professional services firm, most patients reach out to you (providers) after they have researched you and are comfortable with your expertise.
Most of this research happens without you even knowing it.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to share your knowledge.
Does this mean that your patients would just solve their problems without consulting you?
That couldn’t be further away from the truth. If that were the case, you wouldn’t have a business due to WebMD or google.
Rather, patients would be connected ever closer to you and your business.
When the time is right and when they feel comfortable with your expertise, you’d have a customer that already knows you and trusts you.
This increases your visibility and increases your branding..