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Hey, welcome to October’s, Look to the Children. My name is Dr. Erik Kowalke. This webinar is hosted by ChiroSecure and Dr. Stu Hoffman. Thanks so much for all that ChiroSecure does for this profession. We use them in our clinic in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And I meet doctors all the time that have fantastic stories and Results at experience with Car Secure.
So thanks for putting this show on. We do the first Thursday of every single month, and bringing you relative content that you can take back to your family lifetime wellness practice and implement to help you see and take care of more people. So today, specifically we’re going into October, November, December.
So q4, everybody’s ramping up holiday season. We have. Fall, October Halloween. Then we have November, Thanksgiving, and then we have Christmas season in December and holidays. So the next three months are all holiday theme stuff. So I wanna give you four tips that we focus on in our clinic. Seeing 1600 plus people every single week, and 800 and 900 of those are.
So we do a lot of really fun stuff in the office and I wanna share some of, with some of you guys the intentional things. We’re going to do October, November, December, this year in order to increase compliance and engagement and accountability ultimately for all the people coming into the office because they’re really hiring us and hiring you for accountability.
Cuz they want, health and they want to live a healthier, better life. And in order to do that, they actually have to stick to their. Because not coming in to see you isn’t gonna help them get what they want. So we gotta go back and focus on their goals and your findings and what are your recommendations.
And a lot of times we focus really heavily on that on day one and day two we, chiropractors, and then the ball gets dropped and people don’t know their frequency anymore. So number one tip for Q4 is focus on compliance on. Just getting everybody that’s already committed to you like saying, Yes, I want to come and I’m agreeing to pay you this and I’m gonna come this.
Just getting them to actually show up to their visits and helping them do that. So the traditional way is to discipline them if they don’t, so there’s a cancellation policy and if they don’t show up, then you find them. And what happens with that is it de incentivizes them to schedule their appointments ahead of time.
Because if I don’t schedule. Then I can’t get penalized. So then you get more people that just don’t schedule their appointments. So you have to think of creative ways to make it more convenient for them to, number one, know when they’re supposed to be there. And number two, actually show up. So the first one is how many people do you think are coming in your practice and they don’t really know their current frequency or what their frequency is going to be in the next couple.
So these are the people that started in the last three months, four months, typically in a chiropractic clinic that are coming three times a week and they come twice a week, or they’re coming twice a week, then they come once a week. Or if you’re a family wellness practice like ours, then you have mom and the dad and multiple children that are at different age levels.
And some of them might be on different frequencies. Like our family recently, my wife and my, all of our kids came in, got evaluations, my wife and my daughter, Stella. Should be coming every, twice a week for a little while, and the rest of the kids are coming once a week. We’ll try to get her to remember which kid is supposed to come more frequently and all of that stuff.
So as an office, we’re like, Okay, how do we make this easier for them? Number one is clarity in the agreement. So the moment you’re scheduling those out, you, you verbally get clear, agreement. Hey, this is the plan. This is how long, and you’re getting confirmation and agreement across the desk person to person.
Number two is think about is there an electronic way to do this? So we use the SC app for this, where there’s actually a care plan. So the SCD platform is showing her twice a week, and these are, the appointments are supposed to be coming for each person. And if it’s, if she’s not scheduled twice a week, it’ll tell her she’s not scheduled twice a week.
So there’s an electronic solution to her not knowing. What’s my frequency? What are the kids’ frequency? So that’s the second way we do it. The third way is you can print something off for them. And even if you wanna just do it, gone are the days of here’s your 12 month calendar for the whole year and you know when you’re gonna, your visits are gonna be scheduled.
People’s lives are crazy. Soccer’s going on baseball season, holidays, Christmas parties, everything else. Just do one month at a time. It would greatly help them if you gave them some postcard or a printout or a flyer, even if you just hand wrote something on there on a business card. For a while we did little business cards.
You could do a little holiday, like holiday adjustment schedule card and actually write on there for them who, and what their frequency is. They can put that in their car. They’ll keep that little car just for this month to remind. Helps as well. So you’re just being proactive Oh, how can I help these people remember their frequency and remember their current recommendations is super good.
So the second part of that is they know how often they’re supposed to be coming in. They have clarity, they remember, they know are you syncing their appointments to their calendars. So the second reason is they forget, I know, but I forgot today, or I forgot this week. So the solution to that, Somehow we need to remind them.
So how do we remind them so they never forget? A lot of people use Google Calendar, ICA Calendar, or Outlook calendar to run their whole life. Everything is in the calendar. Our family uses Google Calendar and ica, and we have a family calendar. We have business calendars, we have personal calendars.
We have calendars for our kids. We have sports calendars. If you have kids, you have Team Snap all linked together, some baseball, Sports Illustrated app schedules, all linked together. We just connected our EHR appointment schedule into our Google Calendar. So if I have an appointment, shows up on my chiropractic appointment, it shows up, but I have an adjustment appointment in my Google calendar.
If I move it or something, then it moves. So when I’m looking at my schedule Sunday night for Monday, I can see in my Google calendar that I have an appointment, and I don’t have to manually put that in there. It just syncs real time. So we use the ski app for this as well, but if you have a software that you can sync your patient’s appointment times to it, you should do that.
So Genesis, Platinum, Chiro, Touch, and kg, we created integrations with those to be able to do that for you really quickly and easily through scd. So that’s the second one is they won’t forget if it’s on their calendar. If it’s somebody that doesn’t use a calendar, then that’s where you go into text message reminders.
So text messaging them, Hey, you have an appointment. This is really important. If you want to get to the next level, this is how the whole world is changing. Two years ago, you could have just sent an employment reminder by text that says, Hey, Jim, you have an employment tomorrow at three o’clock.
Now people’s attention span is down to five seconds or less. Two years ago, it was like 20 seconds, like people’s attention spam. So if you send them an appointment reminder, Hey Jim, see you tomorrow at three o’. The first two or three times, they get the appointment reminder. It’ll register in their brain as they’ll think about it past three times on the fourth time.
If it’s not personalized and they feel like it’s automated and it’s the same, they’ll see it, but they won’t see it. They’ll see it, but it won’t register in their mind. So then you get people that are like, Oh, I just forgot. So this is if you’re in office at Send Sex Reminders, and it’s just the same bulk.
Hey, you got employment at three o’clock? You’ll start at right when you start using it. It’ll be like a hundred percent everybody’s showing up. And then after, a couple weeks, you’ll go down to 90% and then a couple weeks you’ll be done to 80% of people that see, cuz they’re not seeing it anymore.
So this is where you gotta get really creative and use automations to help you, but not replace the things that you do. This is very important. This is like where we’re going. As a society, and you wanna be successful messaging from a business, you can’t just rely on a hundred percent of the automation anymore.
You have to make it personalized. We get so many business texts and political texts that we don’t even look at those anymore. We don’t see those like a person. So text messaging, 98% of ’em are red within two minutes. So they’re marking it as red, like they’re clicking on it or swiping. and you have less than five seconds to catch their attention to where they’ll see it and actually acknowledge it and think about it so that they can take action on either in their mind Yes, I can make that, or I can’t make it.
I need to reschedule that, or move that appointment by an hour or something. Today, you want them to take action and engage with your content, so obviously using their name, a software that can link, Hey Eric. They’re like, Oh, that’s to me personally, And linking the appointment day and time, not just We’ll see you tomorrow.
It’s like you have a three o’clock appointment for a specific adjustment. But the best way, and this is the perfect time of year to start this, if you’re an office that can do text messaging, is theme it with a holiday theme October, November, December. So October is fall into health. So our opponent reminder might be, we’re all, we’re falling into health.
Look forward to seeing you at three o’clock. Just simple one sentence changing it, or three to four words that something different will catch their attention and drive the engagement that you’re looking for, which will create them to take action and move their appointment or just show up to their appointment.
November is something thankful. This is where we will, we’ll change things that have anything to do with turkeys or Thanksgiving. We’re thankful for our health thankful that we’re seeing you today, something like that. When we do confirmation text, this is where instead of just saying reply c to confirm, we’ll say reply Turkey to confirm or yes, to confirm our Turkey to reschedule or something like that.
And then in December, the same theme with the rescheduled confirmed ones. You can have respond grinch to reschedule or confirm or. Something fun like that engages people and they think, Wow, that’s cool. And it’s out, out of the automated realm of just a robot doing it.
It’s like a real person. It’s like your office is intentionally engaging with them in a cool, fun way. The other December one is, Hey, Jim, sometimes we can get wrapped up like W R A P E D, like a Christmas present during this time of year. We look forward to seeing you at three o’clock today or something like that.
So take advantage of this holiday season changing up your messaging, missed appointment messaging. If you have a system that automates your missed, if they haven’t showed up in seven minutes or arrived in seven minutes, it automatically texts them. Those ones you want it to really feel like it’s coming from you as the front desk.
Check in ca if ours is Rebecca, so it. Hey Jim, do you need my help moving your appointment, Rebecca, or are you on your way? Jim, Rebecca. So it feels like Rebecca’s actually texting her in seven minutes, even though she’s not. So the key here is just be clever with your themes. This quarter. Use the holiday season.
People are excited this time of year. They’re excited. They have energy. They like fall, they like Thanksgiving. They, you got four weeks of each one. Use it in your office to engage families and. In a lifetime family wellness type practice. So that’s the second one. Number one was focus on compliance.
Number two was themes for the quarter. Make sure you’re using those in your messaging. Number three is fill up the beginning of your week so people get busy. Things come up this time of year, it’s going to happen if you schedule them on Thursday or Friday. If they’re like once a week and their appointments on Thursday or Friday, something comes up, chances are they’re gonna not come in that week at.
If you can move them to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday is the best. Tuesday is second best Thursday, Wednesday is third best for their first appointment of the week. You’re setting them up for a rhythm that week, so this is really important. If at twice a week their first appointment has to be on Monday, if at all possible, three times a week, for sure, Monday.
and they start in a rhythm. They’re like, Okay, I went once boom. If you work out at the gym, if you’re a gym person, you’re like two to three times a week person, and you miss Monday, the whole rest of your week’s kind of off, you, you just feel like you’re playing catch up the whole week.
And those are the weeks that you tend to not, you miss one one day in the gym that you should have been there. Same thing psychologically for chiropractic care. You gotta get people in the first visit. If they’re coming once a week and they’re Monday, Tuesday and they can’t come in, then you got a chance they can make it in Thursday or Friday.
So this is just part of scheduling in a chiropractic clinic to maximize show up rate and adjustment rhythm, which ultimately maximizes results. Cuz if people aren’t coming in, you can’t help them if they don’t show up. So you’re just helping them show up front, load The schedule on the beginning of the week is, Probably one of the most important things you can do, especially in the holiday season.
So focus on that with your team. Talk about that with your team. Bring up just exactly what I just said Hey, this is the holiday season. This is what’s happening. Let’s focus on getting everybody to at least have first appointment of the week, cuz on Monday or Tuesday we’ll help you immensely. Number four is this time of year people love to give back.
They love to be part of something that has something to do with charity or giving back. To families that need, Thanksgiving meals or kids that need stuff around Christmas time or they don’t have clothes or blankets or coats or homeless people. You need to be a place that can connect those charities in need with people that want to give back to their community.
Everybody, I guarantee you, coming into your office wants to be part of that. If they’re not, it’s just because they don’t have the time or the resource. Like time wise, or they don’t know somebody close enough to actually be part of something like that. So all you gotta do is find the charity and be the connection.
So while we do something six times a year probably, where we give back to the community, we get these huge clear garbage, like 50 gallon plastic garbage drums, and. They’re clear so you can see what goes in them. So we have three of them, depending on what we’re doing. So for like school drives, all the backpacks go in there and the goal is to fill it all the way up.
So every time somebody brings one in, you can see it filling up and it’s a visual cue. And we set up a little table. So October, November time usually November time is when we’ll do Thanksgiving dinner drive. So that’s a charity that works. We deliver baskets of Thanksgiving dinners to families that otherwise wouldn’t have a Thanksgiving meal.
And the best place to find these is you go to local food shelters or anybody that’s serving in low income like poverty areas, find people or organizations serving in those communities and they’ll connect you to the right people. You just tell ’em what you wanna do. So this is what we did in Thanksgiving, the week before Thanksgiving.
We. Have people bring all this stuff in. We’d give ’em a list. You gotta be basically picking a family and then you buy all this stuff for the family. And we’d give ’em a checklist and they would bring it all a Wednesday night, the week before Thanksgiving. And it’s all canned and boxed stuff mostly, or it’s know, we try to make it easy as possible for people to make the food.
And then we package it all together in a basket. We buy the baskets and shrink, wrap that thing and tie it off with a bow, and then we just go deliver ’em all that night. So everybody comes in the office and helps put them together and assemble them and then goes, delivers all them to the families and it’s really fun.
So that’s an easy, actually, it’s not easy, It’s a ton of work, but it’s very impactful and it brings people together in your. And then Christmas time is usually, we live in Michigan’s freezing cold here, coats, hats, gloves are like what we do. Fill garbage bag full of gloves, coats and hats. And we find a local school.
Actually, this is probably our best route for this as we find a school that is in an area that’s not so great in our neighborhood or our community, and they know tons of kids that desperately need gloves and snow pans and coats and stuff for winter. So we’ll donate some to them and some to another one.
But it is just a really fun opportunity to get back to your community. And I guarantee you that people love it. They love being part of it. They love giving back. They love, just knowing that they’re doing something to serve somebody else. Serving other people is what we focus on every day, and you’re just giving an opportunity for other people to serve people.
Through that. So food drives and charity events are really fun. So number one was focused on compliance this quarter. Number two was make sure you’re having fun with themes. This is the best time of year cause it’s all holiday. Everybody’s excited for it. Number three is front load, the beginning of your week.
And number four is make sure you’re doing a charity drive or some fun event that people can give back this holiday season. So hopefully that was helpful for you guys. Go into this quarter, plan it with your. If it’s not scheduled, it’s not gonna happen. It’s not hard work if you have it scheduled and organized.
So getting it organized, getting it scheduled is the most important things that you can do for this quarter, and it just started the quarter, so you have lots of time to get ready and prepare for it. Make sure you’re tuning back in. Look to the Children webinar in November 1st, Thursday of November will be back the third Thursday of November.
Is Dr. Monika Buerger. You’re not gonna wanna miss her. She’s fantastic. Yeah, so have a fantastic rest of your October.