Growing your optometric practice by adding new patients is an important benchmark to monitor for your optometric practice. Many practices focus on marketing strategies that bring new patients through the practice doors. Unfortunately, there’s little focus on retaining your current patients, which could be costing your practice money.
According to one article, it can cost five times more to attract a new customer than it would to keep an existing one. This post provides a few techniques you can use you build patient loyalty in your optometric practice.
5 Ways To Build Patient Loyalty In Your Optometric Practice
Increase Communication
Relationships are built on effective communication habits. Keeping in touch with your patient through regular communication outreach will keep your practice top-of-mind for the patient and will improve the doctor-patient relationship.
Using optometry software, you can delight your patients with personalized recall messages and secure access to a patient portal where they can communicate with you and your staff, and you can share patient education materials to improve communication.
Keep A Pulse On Needs
Taking the opportunity to get a patient’s perspective on what your optometric practice is doing right and where you can make some improvements will give you the information you need to make positive changes to your practice and build patient loyalty.
Do your patients need late day, evening, or weekend office hour options? Surveying your patients and giving them a platform to rate their experience at your practice will give them the opportunity to voice their opinion and for you to make changes before it ends up on an online review.
Create A Comfortable Environment
Designing your eyecare practice to provide an environment where your patients feel comfortable will help build loyalty and keep patients coming back. When designing a practice, incorporate your patient’s needs into the layout and work to create a space that is relaxing and organized.
Reduce Wait-times
When your practice runs efficiently, your patients notice. Minimal wait-time and streamlined appointments help get your patients through your practice quickly without having the appointment affect their typical schedules.
To reduce wait times and streamline the patient journey consider the following techniques:
- Give patients access to a patient portal to complete pre-appointment paperwork
- Pull patient benefits a few days before the exam
- Decrease inefficient hand-offs
- Use a cloud-based practice management solution and EHR software with embedded tools and clinical decision support to help you accelerate the patient exam
Monitor Your Online Presence
Online review sites can be a great way for your patients to share positive experiences with your practice to other people in their community. Unfortunately, it can also be used to share unpleasant experiences and sometimes fabricated stories. Taking the time to monitor your online presence will give you a chance to quickly respond to bad reviews and correct situations before you lose any current or future patients.
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