How To Book More Clients by Responding Faster

Uriah Guilford

Hello. Welcome back to the podcast, what some might call the most Fun Business podcast for therapists. I don't know. Did I write that? Yeah, I did.

Luci Carrillo

I would agree with that. I think that's fair.

Uriah Guilford

It's aspirational as well, of course.

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, exactly.

Uriah Guilford

Well, Lucy, thanks for joining me again.

Luci Carrillo

No problem. My pleasure. Yes.

Uriah Guilford

We are continuing to record podcasts on our Intake podcast series, which is very exciting because we love to talk about it, and we're super happy to share with you the next installment. But just as a reminder, the goal of this podcast This series is really just to help you streamline your intake process so you can turn more calls and clicks into clients. That's what we all want. Today, we're actually going to be talking about creating a quick response strategy, which I think is a simple but important topic to talk about, right?

Luci Carrillo

Yes, absolutely. If you're not quick enough, the client or the potential client is going to go with another practice, or they're going to lose courage, get busy, and just drop off.

Uriah Guilford

Yeah. It is actually tricky to provide a quick response, especially for small to medium-sized group practices and even solo practices. We'll get into the nitty-gritty of that, but I thought it might be fun to talk about positive customer service experiences that you and I have had. One of the ones that comes to mind, I love these, by the way. I don't know why. I just think When a company or a restaurant or even a freelancer gives a really amazing experience to their clients or customers, it just feels great and it stands out. As a client or a customer, I enjoy it. For about, I don't know, eight or nine years, my family has been going to this same chiropractor, and we love our chiropractor, have a very strong connection to this particular business. The entire time that we've been with them, they've had the same person working the front desk. Nicole She's fantastic. She's always cheerful, great for conversation. She almost always somehow, picks up the phone and like live answers when I call to schedule. She responds to the emails. Then when we get to the office, we sit down and we always I always chat with her.

Uriah Guilford

She's a local musician, and she's just a lovely person. That has made my experience, in fact, my whole family's experience, of going to the chiropractor just that much better. It's really nice.

Luci Carrillo

That's very, very cool. It's amazing. The the personal interest. What a difference that can make. I would say it's basically the underlying thing for my story as well. I was thinking of American Express. My husband and I went to Japan last year, which was an amazing, life-changing experience on its own. But we desperately wanted to get into this one particular restaurant, and they had no availability. And one of the perks on our American Express card was they have a concierge service, so you can call in and ask if they can do something to help with certain things. We called in about that, said, There's no availability. Can you help? The woman was lovely. She said, Leave it with me. So we did. Days went past and we thought, as with most companies, she forgot about it. Someone more important, someone more important came along. She's not going to follow up on this. And about a week later, she called us back and she said, I've managed to get you a reservation. Will this date and time work for you? And we were like, Yes. And it was just incredible that she remembered us. She remembered what we wanted, and she took the time to follow through on it and call us back.

Luci Carrillo

So that personal interest, that personal touch, it makes such a huge difference, doesn't it?

Uriah Guilford

I didn't know that was a benefit of that. Oh, yes.

Luci Carrillo

That's really cool. Oh, yes. American Express are amazing. I know they have some challenges like any company, but their customer service, I've been with them for nearly 20 years, and they are incredible.

Uriah Guilford

I have to make a confession to you, Lucy. I'm definitely not... I don't think I'm a bougey person, but I love to be a VIP or to be treated like a VIP for some reason. That is just the best. It really It is. I know you love Disney, and I don't know if you've ever been to or heard about the concierge level at the Disney Resorts. We have a close family friend who always goes and stays on property and upgrades to the concierge level, which means basically they feed you breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and you get all kinds of cool benefits, and you get treated like the best of VIPs at Disneyland. She actually snuck us into the concierge lounge the last time, and I was This is great.

Luci Carrillo

Did you get all the free drinks? All the free drinks.

Uriah Guilford

We ate all the cheese and crackers we could. Yeah. No, it was great.

Luci Carrillo

That's very cool. Vip all the way.

Uriah Guilford

Yeah, VIP all the way. In your My Story and my story, there's a human connection. There's a human element to that, right? I mean, I'm perfectly happy when my problem is solved by an AI chatbot, but you feel more connected to people when it's a person delivering that outstanding experience, right?

Luci Carrillo

Absolutely. Yeah.

Uriah Guilford

Okay, so imagine this scenario. A potential client has been struggling with anxiety for many years, and they finally mustard up the courage to reach out for help They go online, they send inquiries to a few different practices in their area. Which practice do you think they're most likely to choose?

Luci Carrillo

The one that responds last.

Uriah Guilford

Exactly.

Luci Carrillo

It's the one that responds first, obviously.

Uriah Guilford

Yeah, it's a no-brainer. Strangely enough, there's never been more options for therapy, like a lot of things in our lives, but it's also never been harder to find the right therapist. Oftentimes, it is the first person to call back, email back, or pick up the phone. If there's a reasonable connection there between the potential client and the therapist, or the practice for that matter, it's likely that they're going to become a client, right?

Luci Carrillo

I feel like that shows something deeper. If a practice has got it together enough to respond quickly, it shows that they care, they have systems and processes, and they're most likely to be able to help you reach your goal with therapy rather than just having endless therapy.

Uriah Guilford

Definitely. I always think the person calling or reaching out is never going to be more motivated than that moment. Exactly. Literally that moment, right? The sooner you can respond to them and provide a solution, provide a couple of options for therapy, a pathway for them to get the transformation they want, that's going to be much better. I was talking to a practice owner this week who has a waitlist of a thousand people.

Luci Carrillo

Oh, that's so stressful.

Uriah Guilford

Can you imagine being number 997 on that waitlist?

Luci Carrillo

I hope they don't know their number 997.

Uriah Guilford

No, of course. Goodness. We were talking about how to prioritize, obviously, people who are calling or reaching out today versus weeks or months ago, because those people may or may not be motivated at this time. They may have found another solution. The concept here is very simple. We want to respond to people as quickly as possible while keeping in mind, obviously, your own well-being as a therapist, the well-being of your team, and all the other things that matter. We're going to talk about a couple of solutions for solo practices, and then we'll talk about a couple solutions for group practices. For a solo practice, and I remember back in the day, back in 2008, I had more time than I had money, and I had more time than I had clients. It's easy to just make sure my phone rings and I pick up the phone. If you are new to solo practice or you just have availability in your calendar and you can pick up the phone and talk to people when they actually call, I think that's a great idea.

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, absolutely. It's so simple. Yet so few practices do it, and they don't have other options in place for the person if they aren't able to answer the phone. It's such an easy way to lose a client.

Uriah Guilford

There are so many times in the past when I would pick up the phone and have a nice greeting of some sort. The person would be just so surprised because they probably called a couple of other practices and left a voicemail, waiting, waiting, waiting. I pick up the phone, and that's a That's a good bit of surprise and delight to provide for them.

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, absolutely.

Uriah Guilford

Problem with that, of course, is it's not scalable. No. Once you get busy, you won't be able to do this.

Luci Carrillo

Yeah. It also becomes expensive if you're having somebody do that for you because you're paying them to basically sit in front of the phone for hours and hours, even if they have nothing to do and the phone doesn't ring. So that can get expensive, but it does work.

Uriah Guilford

Also expensive for you if you're the therapist who could be making quite a bit of money providing a session versus answering the phone. Of course, that's the reason why a productive therapist exists, and we will get into that.

Luci Carrillo

Oh, yes. Shameless plug.

Uriah Guilford

I know, right? Yeah. So the next option is to use an online scheduler. And we have some great resources on this past podcast episodes and blog posts that we can link in the show notes. But we couldn't be more of a fan of online schedulers than we are, right?

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, absolutely. Online scheduling is just... It is a brilliant solution for so many things. I'm sure that you, as a practice owner, have had the experience where somebody calls in, you or the intake coordinator can't handle the call because you're on another call. You call them right back, but now it isn't a good time for them anymore. Maybe their work break has ended or they're surrounded by people. And so you end up in this vicious cycle of phone tag where you can never get a hold of them. And eventually, they either go with another practice or, like we said earlier, they lose courage, They give up on therapy, and you've lost that potential client. So online scheduling solves that for you because the person can book a day in time that they know is going to work for them. They know they're going to speak to a human being. And more often than not, we all know this, a person is going down a list of therapy practices, whether that's one they got from their insurance company or one that they've compiled from the Internet. The first person that they actually speak to, as we just said, is likely to be the practice that they go with.

Luci Carrillo

So mentally, if they know that they're going to speak to a human being at your practice, that problem tends to be solved for them, at least mentally. And so they stop going down that list because what's the point? They know they're going to speak to a human being at a practice. So online scheduling solves that problem brilliantly. It's also great for you because you can plan your day or your intake coordinator can plan their day around these schedule calls, which leads to much less brain fatigue and stress.

Uriah Guilford

Have you ever heard the phrase, What you want to do is... Something like, What you want to do is end the search? That's what we're trying to do here, right? Yeah, exactly. So once they reach out to you in your practice, you want that to be the last call or contact. I love everything you said about online scheduling there. The nice psychological thing about it is it allows a person to complete an action which feels like they did something to bring about the help and the healing that they need, versus if you leave five voicemails or 10 voicemails for 10 different businesses, then you're just left with this free floating anxiety of, I think I did a thing, but I'm not sure if I did anything. Versus I have something on my calendar, hopefully somebody that can help me. I think that's huge.

Luci Carrillo

Yeah. Everyone loves to check a box.

Uriah Guilford

I do. The other similar option is to use self-scheduling. So Previously, we were talking about using online scheduling for that initial consultation call with you or with your intake coordinator. Some practices, a minority, yes, but like to use self scheduling for the actual first appointment. I think I've said this before, maybe even recently on the podcast, but if I was going to start a solo practice today, I would use online scheduling for the consultation call, and I would 100% use self scheduling for first time appointments and ongoing appointments, because that just streamlines the It's a full process. I think it's a good idea. What do you think?

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, I agree. It removes a big barrier to entry because it's all on their terms. The challenge with that comes when the people that you get booking with you are not ideal clients. Maybe they're your private pay, they want to use insurance, you don't find out until the first session. It's like, Oh, my goodness, a whole hour just wasted for them and for you. If you're going to do self-schedule for the initial appointment, I would think that having good filters in place to make sure that that person is an ideal fit would be very helpful.

Uriah Guilford

Right. Some people use that first intake appointment. Well, it's always an assessment appointment, right? To figure out if this is the right fit, if the therapist is going to be able to help the client. So I think that's okay. And a good therapist will either refer out or make other recommendations. I think that's okay.

Luci Carrillo

Yeah. As long as they know they're going to pay for it.

Uriah Guilford

Absolutely. Yeah. This makes me think about my backup hair stylist, which is a funny thing to say.

Luci Carrillo

You have a backup hair stylist? I do. I need to get me one of them.

Uriah Guilford

And the backup hair stylist is Max. He's great. And he works for another company across town. And they have a stellar online scheduling system where you can, if you're a brand new, what do you call it, customer, you can go on there and you can fully self schedule a haircut and just basically choose your provider, right? Of course, I have a schedule with Max, but I don't need to do anything except for go through their website and complete the entire thing. That's great.

Luci Carrillo

That's awesome. I want to know, in what circumstances would you use the backup hair stylist? Why has to go wrong?

Uriah Guilford

Nothing's gone wrong. It's simply that my hair stylist is on vacation.

Luci Carrillo

Oh, okay.

Uriah Guilford

That's a good reason. Or sometimes it's been like, I need a haircut right before going to a conference or getting head shots or something like that.

Luci Carrillo

Yes. All the normal reasons.

Uriah Guilford

I promise you I'm not high maintenance. I promise.

Luci Carrillo

We'll ask Max about that.

Uriah Guilford

I know, right? Yeah. Those are a couple of solo practice solutions for you. Number one, answer the phone. Number two, use an online scheduler. Number three, consider using self-scheduling. If you have a group practice, we have some other tips for you. Of course, our number one top tip is to hire an intake coordinator. I know you're surprised that we would say this.

Luci Carrillo

I know, shocking, right?

Uriah Guilford

We were talking about this earlier, Lucy, but for us, it doesn't really matter if it's someone that works in your office, if it's someone that's local remote, meaning they're close by and they can come in a couple of times a week, Or if it's 100% virtual with a company like Productive Therapist, we just want therapists who are growing a group practice to take this roll off of their plate and hand it to somebody to competently take that over, right?

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Whatever is going to be best for your practice, that's what we want as well. It could be in-house, absolutely, or local remote, like you said. It doesn't always have to be one of our amazing intake experts. But whoever you end up going with, you just got to make sure that that person is an intake expert, an intake specialist, because I can't tell you the number of discovery calls I've had with frustrated practice owners who've hired somebody who seems like a a great person, and maybe they are a great person, but they're not a great intake coordinator, and the practice suffers when that process gets interrupted. It's worth making sure that whoever you work with is an intake specialist.

Uriah Guilford

I'm going to put a link in the show notes to one of our previous episodes called The 14 Qualities of a Great Intake Coordinator. That's a good one.

Luci Carrillo

That was a great one.

Uriah Guilford

Yeah, because there certainly are things that you want to look for, and it's so easy to hire the wrong Like you said, somebody who probably has a great experience, they're a lovely person, but at the end of the day, they're not right for that position for one reason or another, and that will hurt your business.

Luci Carrillo

It's a big decision.

Uriah Guilford

Hire an intake coordinator. I think Some people will ask, I'm sure they've asked you, When is the right time? Or, Am I ready for an intake coordinator? Of course, we have a quiz on our site that you can check out at productivetherapist. Com/quiz. I'll put that in the show notes as well.

Luci Carrillo

I do love a good quiz.

Uriah Guilford

Right. To find out if you are ready for a virtual intake coordinator or an intake coordinator, period. But I usually like to say sooner than you think.

Luci Carrillo

Yes.

Uriah Guilford

Because if you're asking that question, it probably means you're a busy therapist who is answering your phone and/or handling the entire intake process. It's probably too much.

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, absolutely. I would agree with that. It makes me so sad when a practice owner comes to me and they've grown the practice to three, four, five clinicians, and they're just realizing they are drowning in everything. They're drowning in doing intakes, in doing the follow-up paperwork, doing even the basic billing on the back-end, and they realize they need help. Whereas If you start your practice, if you have the luxury of being a solo practitioner at the moment, one or two of you, build systems into it. And that's one of the things the intake accelerator is so powerful at doing because it helps you to create those systems from the get go that you can then build off of as you scale the practice. But having somebody who's an expert at intakes, huge part of that.

Uriah Guilford

It's like being in a sinking ship and thinking like, When should I be bailing water out of this?

Luci Carrillo

As soon as you decide, it's sinking.

Uriah Guilford

That's probably not a great metaphor for a therapy practice. Hopefully, your practice is not a sinking ship yet. Hiring an intake coordinator, obviously, great idea. The next one is using a a virtual receptionist company. I don't think a lot of practices that we've come into contact with do this. There's a handful out there that do. But some folks want live answer, and they want it as close to 100% as possible. The good news, I suppose, is that you can have that. It is somewhat costly, but it's definitely possible. The best way to do that is to use a virtual receptionist company. I've been so tempted to turn this on in the fast. I just wanted to test it myself to see what would actually happen to our conversion rates. I just have never done it.

Luci Carrillo

I can understand that. It's nerve-wracking because your choices are to either have those calls go to voicemail when your intake coordinator is not working, or like you said, you can have a virtual receptionist company take care of that for you. The virtual receptionist company is not going to do the intake for you, obviously. They're going to take the person's information, forward that to the intake coordinator for them to respond to. You're capturing the call, but you're not actually helping the client yet. That will happen, hopefully, the next morning. But it's scary. What effect is that going to have on your intakes? Is it going to be a positive thing or could it potentially be a frustration for the client that they've got to do this additional step? So it is worth thinking about, but you're absolutely right. We have practices that we work with who use virtual receptionist companies, and it works for a lot of them. But it's definitely something to think about before you commit to it.

Uriah Guilford

Those are good points. I think about as a client, whether they're a new client or an existing client, whenever they call that practice, they're going to talk to a different person. So unlike my experience with my chiropractor, always talking to Nicole, it's going to be different. It'll be less personal, but still, it's someone that can hopefully answer a question or help them. So, yeah, there's trade-offs for sure. But I recommend that if live answer is super important to you, we don't actually think, here's a little secret, we don't think it's the most important thing. But if it is to you, understand. Check out some companies like Conversational and Gabbyville. One we've come in contact with recently is called WellReceived, and I'll put that link in the show notes. They're a 24/7 medical receptionist company that works with medical practices as well as mental health ones. So take a look at those.

Luci Carrillo

That is a cool thing about the Live answer. We don't do live answer for any of our members, and they're all thriving. The secret's there. If you want to book a discovery call, we'll tell you all about them.

Uriah Guilford

We have solutions for you. The last one that we're going to talk about today is adding more automation. I think that's generally a good idea. Modern mental health-specific CRMs can help with this. The first example that comes to my mind is the automatic text back. If somebody calls your practice and they don't leave a message, you can have either your phone system or your CRM, automatically text them back and say, Sorry, we missed your call. Do you have any questions we could answer? Then that person can actually text the practice, and then the intake coordinator can carry on a conversation and hopefully move them towards scheduling. That's just one example. But I think people appreciate those kinds of things. It appears to be high touch, even though it's low What would you call it?

Luci Carrillo

Time investment?

Uriah Guilford

Yes.

Luci Carrillo

Something like that.

Uriah Guilford

Right. I think that's helpful. There's a lot that current tools can do, like I said, whether it's your phone system or your CRM, and in the very near future, AI tools that will be able to have full conversations with potential clients before they get booked with your practice. That's something we haven't talked about too much, but we're looking into because it's pretty powerful and it could be a game changer.

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, we are shooting towards the future.

Uriah Guilford

That's for sure. I know. Progress is not stopping in terms of technology and industry and changes. That's one thing that's for certain, right?

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, it's exciting. It's a Loving because you don't know what pieces are going to change for you, especially in a high touch field like mental health. But it's very cool for sure, and the possibilities are very exciting.

Uriah Guilford

I would say at Productive Therapist, and with me personally, I am very interested in technology and innovation, but we believe that the human connection is the most important thing. I believe that it's the relationship between a therapist and a client that really provides the actual healing, and as well as the human intake coordinator or the person responding to the potential client that gives them a sense of relief of like, help us on the way. I have connected with someone. I think that, hopefully, fingers crossed, will never change, right?

Luci Carrillo

Yeah, I would agree with that. Mental health is just so personal. Like you talked about earlier, Yuraya, it takes so much courage for someone to pick up the phone for the first time and call a therapy practice. You want them to feel like they're seen and heard as a human being. Maybe AI and bots will do an amazing job with that in the future. Who knows? The future is long. But yeah, it is a high touch field, and you want to make sure that they feel seen and cared for.

Uriah Guilford

Definitely. There are a few tips for solo practices and group practices. We actually have some bonus tips, but we're not going to tell you. Lucy is going to tell you about how you can get more information from us and more support on improving your intake process. Take it away.

Luci Carrillo

Oh, my. This is the fancy pants clothes, isn't it? Okay, here we go. All right. Are you getting enough calls but not enough new clients? Intake Accelerator will help you sign up more ideal dream clients with a beautifully streamlined intake process. This short course covers the seven ingredients you need in place to have a conversion boosting, time saving, and money-generating intake process. For more information and to get access, visit intakeaccelerator. Com. How was that? Is that okay? Fantastic. Does that work? Okay.

Uriah Guilford

Very good. Well, thanks for joining me on this episode and for this whole series, Lucy. It's been a lot of fun so far, and we're not done yet.

Luci Carrillo

 We are not done yet, and it's been so fun. Thanks, Yuraya.