The Best Software For Your Intake Process

Uriah Guilford
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. So glad that you're listening in today. Today is actually a pretty special day because we are starting a new podcast series on Intake Process, and I'm joined today by Lucy Carrillo. Hello. Hello. This is exciting.

Luci Carrillo
It is very exciting. I am inordinately excited about this.

Uriah Guilford
Technically, here at Productive Therapist, my title is Head Nerd because I do all kinds of things, but that's what I affectionately call myself.

Luci Carrillo
You really are. We couldn't function without you in all your nerdery glory.

Uriah Guilford
People listening will obviously recognize your voice instantly from the amazing intro that you do, but there's obviously a lot of other things that you do here. So what is your title currently?

Luci Carrillo
Well, let's see. So my scary official intimidating title as Director of Business Development. Sounds very fancy. But secretly, behind the scenes, I am also the Director of British Accents because every company must have a Director of British Accents.

Uriah Guilford
It's a role that encompasses lots of different things because there's a wide variety of British accents. It's important to choose the right one for the right context, right?

Luci Carrillo
Yes, absolutely. You and I were just talking about this before we hit record, but The accent that I have is technically BBC English, which is supposed to be an absence of an accent. But of course, in doing that, it becomes an accent all on its own. But there are so many, like you said, There's so many regional accents in England. It's fascinating. You can go down the road and someone has a different accent.

Uriah Guilford
It's very cool. I think it's amazing. It makes everything sound better in my ears. So today we're going to get into talking about your ideal text stack. But just to set up this podcast series, we are diving deep into all things related to your intake process. The goal here is we just want to give you some practical tips to help you streamline your intake process so that you can turn more calls and clicks into clients, which is something that we all want. So today we're talking about the ideal tech stack. And you may not have heard that term before, right? Obviously, we talk about that around here.

Luci Carrillo
We do. I like how you liken it to a stack of pancakes. Because everyone likes pancakes.

Uriah Guilford
Yes. Well, as the head nerd, I do love software programs, and I constantly have to stop myself from switching to new ones and purchasing new ones. When we talk about a tech stack, it's really just a collection of software programs and platforms that you use to run your practice. It's funny. I was thinking about this not that long ago, 10, 20 years, therapists really didn't need technology to run their practice. We really just needed a phone. Maybe going back, we just needed a yellow pages ad, and we needed maybe a printer. That's about it. It was very low tech. Obviously, a lot of things have changed, and People do expect convenience, and they want a simple process. We want to make it easy for clients to reach out and to become a new client. We want to choose the best software platforms and then put them together in a way that in a way that makes that client journey as smooth as possible, right?

Luci Carrillo
Yeah. Like you said, it's very subjective. It could be incredibly simple, or it could be really complex, depending on who you are, your preferences, how you like to run your practice, but the end goal is to make sure that it's as smooth as possible for the client.

Uriah Guilford
Absolutely. I wanted to ask you a question because one of the things that you do for a productive therapist is you do discovery calls with practice owners and you talk to them about their practice, about their intake process, and what's going well and what's not going well. I'm curious, what are some of the challenges that you hear folks talking about when it comes to their technology?

Luci Carrillo
Yeah, that's a really good question. I would say the two biggest ones are probably tracking metrics and and having a phone system that doesn't drive them crazy. Those are the two biggest things. And of course, we have solutions for those, which I'm sure you'll share shortly.

Uriah Guilford
Yeah, one of the things we do for folks is we help them get set up on platforms that will work better for them. We're not constantly switching EHRs or phone systems necessarily, but people do consult with us about what's a better solution for this or that, and we love to help folks with that thing. So like I said, the goal is to make it seamless for the new clients. We don't want them to be really even aware of any of these things. We want them to go through our process. And really, what I want is for people to say, Wow, that was easy. That was a good experience, right? Yeah. No, like, not necessarily complicated steps, no frustrating things. I'm always paying attention to this when I'm purchasing services or products and the flow of how things go. And you notice when things don't go well, right?

Luci Carrillo
Absolutely. I think as practice owners, and even just as a therapist, you know that for somebody to make that first phone call or to reach out to a therapy practice for help, it takes courage, it takes humility and modesty to recognize your own limits and to be willing to do something about it. There's a lot of bravery involved in making that first contact. So if you, as a practice owner, can make that journey as simple... So they don't even notice they're on a journey. It just happens. It magically happens without them having to stress about paperwork and checking boxes and making sure all the ducks in a row. Everything you can do to streamline that is going to be great for your clients.

Uriah Guilford
Absolutely. I want to tell you a quick story before we jump into the client journey. Here in California, we have an insurance provider called Kaiser. We're Kaiser patients, my family and I. People have negative things to say about Kaiser like any insurance provider and positive things. But I will say they have really done a good job with their mobile app and with their systems around appointments. The other day, I went in for a regular checkup with my doctor. Prior to the appointment, I got a text notification that the appointment was coming up. Then I was prompted to open the mobile app. I didn't have a copay for this particular one, but you can pay the copay on your phone prior to getting to your appointment. And then there's a text message that says, Let us know when you're in the waiting room. And so you respond to the text message and say, Basically, I'm here. So you don't need to stand in a line. You don't need to talk to a person. I know it's impersonal, but I liked it because I just show up and then I'm there. I open up my phone, let them know I'm there, and then I'm all set.

Uriah Guilford
I'm all checked in. I was like, This is really nice. It's really easy.

Luci Carrillo
That is really nice.

Uriah Guilford
Yeah.

Luci Carrillo
You've just reminded me, oh, my goodness. Yeah, while we're talking about terrible apps, I mean, amazing apps/terrible apps, I tried to get some information from my patient portal for my general provider. And they've just merged with a big company called Optum. Probably a lot of people have heard of that. But nothing works. I tried to log into my portal. It doesn't work. And they sent me an email probably two weeks later and said, sorry, you can't get in. We can't make it work, basically. You have to reach out to your provider. And of course, when I do that, the provider doesn't really know because they're a provider. That's not their specialty. So because of all that, I'm thinking of switching general providers because I just can't handle their app. It makes a big difference, the tech stack.

Uriah Guilford
It does. So what we're going to do is just give you an overview of the most important elements of your tech stack. And we'll also give you a few recommendations if you're considering a new phone system or a new a new CRM or something like that. We're going to put this in the context of the client journey. It's not always the same, but usually people will land on your website first. The first element of the tech stack is actually your website. Most people will get there, whether they're coming there from psychology today or Google or someplace else. They're first going to land on your website. Then what's going to happen next is they're going to be prompted by your website to get in touch. That's likely going to happen It will happen either through phone or email. You'll need a phone system of some sort, and you'll need an email system. Then what happens after that is the intake coordinator, or you, if you're handling this for your practice, you will log that information in probably a spreadsheet or maybe a CRM, which is a Client Relationship Manager. We'll get into that a little bit.

Uriah Guilford
Then if that person becomes a client, then they're going to be created as a client in your electronic health record system. That's the end of that client journey from first contact, hopefully to first session. Then the other thing that we're going to chat about briefly is some place to store your SOPs, your standard operating procedures, like the instruction manual for this full intake process. There's easy ways to do that, and we'll give you some recommendations on that. But that's the general client journey as far as I see it.

Luci Carrillo
Yeah, I would agree with that. Definitely. Good summation.

Uriah Guilford
Yes. Thank you. There is a visual to this. One of the things we're going to be sharing with you is our newest course called Intake Accelerator, which goes into these topics even deeper. There's some visuals and some fun stuff that goes along with that. We'll tell you more about that later.

Luci Carrillo
If we have to, I suppose.

Uriah Guilford
Yes. Tell me what you think about this, Lucy. Do most people, at least most people that get in touch with us, do most of them have a website?

Luci Carrillo
Yes.

Uriah Guilford
That's pretty standard now. Yes, they do.

Luci Carrillo
They have a website. Whether it's well-constructed and laid out or not is a separate matter. But yes, most have a website.

Uriah Guilford
Do most people have some phone system and some email system?

Luci Carrillo
Yes. I would say that that is fewer than the number of people who have websites. But yes, again, most do.

Uriah Guilford
Okay, that makes sense. I think almost all therapists in private practice have some EHR, although I have noticed that there are some holdouts. There's some people still using paper.

Luci Carrillo
There really are. I spoke to somebody last week who still uses paper. They don't have an EHR.

Uriah Guilford
Sure.

Luci Carrillo
Yeah, that's very challenging for us. We're 100% virtual to scan those things when we're not there.

Uriah Guilford
It is. In my practice, I recently hired a contract supervisor to supervise one of our pre-licensed therapists. I've known her for a while. She's wonderful, but she confessed to me that she's still using paper. I was like, Wow, that's amazing. But she's thinking about moving over to simple practice. And so, of course, I was encouraging that.

Luci Carrillo
That is the right answer.

Uriah Guilford
I think it is. Yeah, definitely. There's so many benefits that come along with a modern electronic health record system that it's best for the clients to have that experience for sure. So most people have a website. Most people have a phone system of some sort, email system. I think there's a lot of therapists out there that are still using a Gmail account for that.

Luci Carrillo
Yeah, that works. It It does. Yeah, and that can work great, especially if you want to integrate the phone system and the email. If you want to use Google Workspace, use Google Voice. A lot of our members use Google Voice, whether they're solo or large practices. And it works fantastic. You can sign the BAA with Google. You can use Google Workspace for the intake log if you're not using a CRM. It's reliable, it's HIPAA compliant, and then it all integrates if you use Gmail as well. It's awesome.

Uriah Guilford
We are fans of Google here. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Then if folks want to move from a simple spreadsheet for tracking to something a little bit more feature-rich, they can use a CRM, a Client Relationship Manager. There's actually a few options now that we can point you to. There's at least three or four companies that are providing HIPAA-compliant CRM services. I would say that that's certainly not a requirement. It's an upgrade, but it's not a fundamental requirement. If someone was starting a practice today, they would need to I think, all these things, but a spreadsheet would be just fine for some time. Would you agree with that?

Luci Carrillo
Yes, absolutely. It's actually surprising to me the number of practice owners I speak to on discovery calls who don't even have the spreadsheet. The idea of tracking metrics is an ideal to them, but they haven't set up an intake log of any kind. If that's you and you don't have one, Yuraya, what would you say are some of the most basic things things to set up in your simple spreadsheet.

Uriah Guilford
Yeah, I agree with you. I'm also surprised when I hear people are not tracking and they have no idea how many referrals they're getting and how many new clients they're getting, and they have no concept of that conversion rate, how many referrals are becoming clients. It is the simplest thing to track, and I think it's important for a number of reasons. I remember back in the day, I did have a work journal, and I would do all my intake calls and I would write down the details. And then, of course, I was always filling out spreadsheets every week for my practice because I'm that guy. You don't become the head nerd. Yeah, you got to put in the work.

Luci Carrillo
Without prior experience.

Uriah Guilford
Exactly. But at the very base level, you would want a Google spreadsheet, a spreadsheet that shows the date of contact, contact information, name, phone number, email, and then some status field of what's the current status of this referral. Those are the basics, right?

Luci Carrillo
Yes, absolutely. And obviously, On that point, once you've set that up, you can add more fancy things to the point that you add a CRM. But the benefit of just having an intake log on its own, yes, you can make sure that a lead hasn't fallen through the cracks, that person has been gotten back to, they've either been scheduled or they've been referred out. But also over time, if you're tracking that with every lead, you can start to see trends in your practice. What months tend to be busier? What specialties are people asking for the most? What are they not asking for? That can help inform you with hiring decisions down the line as well.

Uriah Guilford
As far as the client experience, the clients never know that you have a tracking log or a spreadsheet of some sort. The main benefit for them would be if you create a system that allows you to consistently follow up with those folks, like the way that we do it, at least in my practice and most of the folks that we work with, there's a specific guidelines for follow-up. We do three follow-ups. If somebody reaches out to us today, We will respond to them, and then we'll respond to them tomorrow, and then the next day. Of course, not weekends. But the tracking log or the CRM that you use just helps you keep track of those follow-ups so that people get that... I think that's good customer service, right?

Luci Carrillo
Make sure they're all right, make sure they got what they need.

Uriah Guilford
So do you think, should I share with folks the software platforms that I use just as a...

Luci Carrillo
Oh, please do. The head nerd. What does the head nerd use? Everybody wants to know. I want to know.

Uriah Guilford
Everyone wants to know. So for For the website, actually, we use Squarespace. I love Squarespace. It is a good recommendation. I have to say I do recommend Squarespace over WordPress for most folks unless they're really fairly technical. It's just easy.

Luci Carrillo
It is easy. Even if you don't know some aspect of it, say you don't know what a DNS setting is, I can hear the palpitations all the way across the line. Squarespace has a guide for that. They have videos step by step, click here, click here, do this, do that. They make it possible to build your own website. I completely agree. They are fab.

Uriah Guilford
And it's pretty affordable, too. So I think it's hard not to recommend Squarespace. Although I told you this the other day, I bought another software platform called Breezy, right? And I'm just going to test it out for myself. And I think I'm going to help my kids build some websites because I own their name, firstandlast. Com. Did I tell you that?

Luci Carrillo
Oh, no.

Uriah Guilford
Buy your kid's name if you can get it. Domain name. Wow. Yes.

Luci Carrillo
That's really Be smart. You never know when they might want to create their own business and need that. Right.

Uriah Guilford
For now, for the near future, it's just going to be like an online resume for them, essentially, like a landing page for who they are, showing what their skills and services are.

Luci Carrillo
Oh, my goodness. That is brilliant. College fund and URL. And that means, too, if they build their own business, that website has existed for years, which will really help with SEO.

Uriah Guilford
Yeah. But the point that I was going to make there is that this new platform and some other new platforms allow you to put in some minimal information, and then it uses AI to actually build the website. Oh, wow. This one, I didn't tell you this, but this one, you can plug in, I'm not sure, it must be a link, but you plug in your Google business listing. Let's say you already have one, right? And then it will pull information from your Google listing and then build you a website in minutes. And then you just have to change it.

Luci Carrillo
Is it any good?

Uriah Guilford
Actually, yes, it is.

Luci Carrillo
Can you spell that for us? Because I don't think it's spelled the way it sounds.

Uriah Guilford
B-r-i-z-y. Ai. That's the website is Squarespace. Then for a phone system, we've just always used Grasshopper for a long time, and we don't recommend it, mainly because they don't advertise as being HIPAA compliant, but I was able to get them to sign a BAA, so I feel comfortable using that. It just works. It works well. We'll give you some other recommendations for that. Then for email, we use Google Workspace, again, with a signed BAA, of course. We really try to avoid therapists emailing clients. For that communication, we try to keep that primarily inside of simple practice with secure messaging so that it's really It becomes a part of their client record, and it's pretty simple.

Luci Carrillo
Just a thing to note on the Gmail side of things. I've spoken with several therapists who, they started out solo, like most. They created a Gmail account for themselves because it's free. But when it comes to grow the practice, well, even as a solo practitioner, you shouldn't really just use a free Gmail account because it's not HIPAA compliant. It's only HIPAA compliant if you sign the BAA and if you use Google Workspace. So if you're just starting out or if you're planning to add a dedicated intake email address, the best and simplest way to do it, save yourself a headache down the line, is to create a Google Workspace account and create the Gmail account within that.

Uriah Guilford
That's a solid recommendation right there. Although the caveat that not everyone knows, I answered this question for one of our new therapists in the practice. She was asking if emails going from her work email address to external folks, like a school counselor or something like that, are encrypted and secure. Yes, they're secure, but they're not covered under the BAA because the BAA only covers emails between people inside of the organization. That's why there are add-ons like Pilebox and Luxe. You could check the show notes for those spelling and links that technically encrypt your email out of the organization and back into the organization.

Luci Carrillo
That's nice. That's a good recommendation.

Uriah Guilford
And then for CRM, we've used Google Sheets for a long time. And also Therapy Flow, which is one of the CRMs that we recommend, is fantastic. I guess we might as well mention the few that we are that are HIPAA compliant and really built for therapists. Therapy Flow CRM is one. Therasas is another one. Again, check the link in the show notes if you wanted to figure out how to spell that one. And then there's another one that we became aware of recently, which Which one is that?

Luci Carrillo
We just became aware of Admira. That's A-D-M-I-R-R-A. I wanted to say T-I-R-R, the Admira. They are particularly great because they are the first and only CRM that I'm aware of that also integrates with Simple Practice, which is amazing. If you've used any CRM, you know that there's a challenge with synchronizing it with Simple Practice or your EHR. If you're thinking about a CRM, Admira definitely wants to check out. We hear so many good comments about Therapy Flow. We have members that use Therasas. They're all really good options.

Uriah Guilford
I'm very curious is how they are integrating with Simple Practice and how that's working. That's really good news.

Luci Carrillo
Very cool.

Uriah Guilford
Then a long-time Simple Practice user. For some reason, I looked it up this week. I started using that platform in 2014, and they've developed it wonderfully. I still think it's one of the best ones, if not the best one out there. Then obviously, there's lots of options for EHR more than ever before.

Luci Carrillo
Yeah, it's crazy that. There's a lot.

Uriah Guilford
Choosing an EHR is not as simple as it used to be. They're It used to be three or four, maybe, and now there's quite a few.

Luci Carrillo
Simple Practice, the clue is in the name. It's simple. It does tend to be one of the pricier options, but in our opinion, based on working with hundreds of therapy practices and hearing from all those practice owners about their EHR, their complaints, Simple Practice has the fewest complaints. It just works, and their support system is excellent. Changing your EHR down the line is a nightmare. So try and think ahead, plan ahead when you're picking an EHR and our recommendation. Yeah, absolutely simple practice. It's just so easy to use.

Uriah Guilford
Therapynotes is really good, too. I have a lot of friends that are very happy with TherapyNotes, so that's a solid recommend as well. Then as far as documenting and sharing standard operating procedures with your team, of course, if you're a solo practice, you don't need to have this built out as as you do if you have a group practice. But we recommend a tool called WayBook, and they call it the one source of truth. We use it for productive therapist. I also use it for in-tune family counseling. It's just a really nice platform that helps you document, organize, and easily share all the things that you need to share, from employee manuals to HR-related things to systems and processes for everything that you do in the practice. Love that platform.

Luci Carrillo
Yeah, way Weybook is fantastic. Yuraya, I feel like you have created a fancy pants thing that other practice owners can get their hands on with Waybook. Can you tell us about that?

Uriah Guilford
Oh, yeah. Thanks for prompting that. The owner of Waybook does happen to have a wonderful English accent and be based in London, just as a side note. I mean, you know that as a director.

Luci Carrillo
He's the director of his British accent.

Uriah Guilford
Yes, of course. I created what I felt like, what I feel like is an excellent template for a group practice, specifically. I reached out to my friends at Wey Book, and they said, We can definitely take that template and allow other people to use it. If anybody wants to sign up for Wey Book, you can use the link in the show notes down below. You can also one-click, basically, Upload my template into your Waybook account, and then it gives you the skeleton of all the things that I think are important for a group practice. Then you can fill in, obviously, your details for that as needed.

Luci Carrillo
That's awesome. Does Do you have a name, the template?

Uriah Guilford
That's a really good question. I think it's group practice template or something like that. Yeah. Okay.

Luci Carrillo
Should be very, very obvious.

Uriah Guilford
The alternative to using a tool like Weybook, of course, is just to use Google Docs and Google Drive to organize all the things, which definitely works. It can get a little bit scattered and a little bit hard to find the things that you're looking for. But if you're trying to go for the budget option, that is what I would do if I didn't use Yeah, I would agree with that. Those are all the tools that I use. Of course, there are other things that a therapy practice might want to use. Can you think of any tech tool that a therapy practice might use that's outside of these basic things?

Luci Carrillo
One that I know we're going to get into a bit more in an upcoming episode in this series is online scheduling. And specifically, our recommendation for that is schedule once through onceHub. There are other options available. Availity is also good, but schedule once and Availity are the only two that we know of at the moment that are HIPAA compliant. Calendly integrates with Simple Practice quite well, but it is not HIPAA compliant at the moment. But yeah, online scheduling is an answer to so many prayers for a practice owner, and you'll just have to tune in in a couple of episodes to find out more about that one.

Uriah Guilford
Yes. Small correction, Availity is an insurance benefit checking platform, and Acuity is a scheduling platform.

Luci Carrillo
That's the one. Oh, my goodness. I always get them muddled. So many names. Thanks for catching that.

Uriah Guilford
So many names. I know. Goodness gracious. The other one that comes to mind, too, that we're not going to talk about too much, but if you look at two episodes ago or so, We talked about this, AI note writing tools. That seems to be one that a lot of therapists are interested in adding to their tech stack.

Luci Carrillo
Oh, that's a good one.

Uriah Guilford
I just saw some news that I'm going to have to double-check this, but Alma partnered one of these AI note writing tool companies, and they're integrating into their platform so that if a therapist is using Alma to provide services and handle their insurance billing, this AI note writing tool is built into their system. I was just waiting. This is going to happen eventually, and it's starting for the EHRs, essentially, and these other companies like Headway and Alma to combine with AI note writing tools and other AI tools. It's happening.

Luci Carrillo
That's very cool.

Uriah Guilford
There you That's our overview of the most important tech tools to use for your intake process. Like I said before, the ultimate goal is for the potential client who becomes a client to have just a beautiful, streamlined, easy experience. Once they go from first contact to first session, you want to make that as smooth as possible. Our recommendation is that you find the best tools that you can afford now and you integrate them into your practice. Then Number two, you learn how to use them to simplify the client journey.

Luci Carrillo
That sounds like a great idea.

Uriah Guilford
Yeah, I'm going to give one more tip before we sign off, and I'm going to hand it over to Lucy for our voiceover ad break.

Luci Carrillo
Oh, my goodness. This is the moment.

Uriah Guilford
Yes. Prepare the British accent of your choosing.

Luci Carrillo
Yes, exactly. Roll it up. Get it ready.

Uriah Guilford
Some of the best advice that I've been giving folks lately is to secret shop yourself. My recommendation is pretend to be a new client and go through your intake process, as much of it as you can. Listen to your outgoing voicemail message. Take a look at your contact form. Actually, fill it out. See what happens. Schedule an intake call. Do all the steps and even set yourself up as a client in your EHR and then look at the emails that you get to fill out paperwork for appointment reminders, et cetera. If you go through that process, I can 100% guarantee you that you'll find something that's a hiccup, like a bump in the road that you'll want to change. That's my best advice.

Luci Carrillo
That's a great tip. Okay, you want me to do the thing?

Uriah Guilford
I'm going to hand it over to you to tell folks about the awesome thing that we have.

Luci Carrillo
Okay. All right, cool. British accent, locked and loaded. Here we go. 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 your access, you can visit intakeacelerator. Com. How was that?

Uriah Guilford
That was brilliant. I loved it. It's so interesting to see how you kick into the announcement voice. Thank you so much for listening today. This is part one of a multi-part series. We're going to dig into at least six or seven different things that will help you and give you practical tips making this just a beautiful experience for your clients, and it's going to benefit everyone. Thanks for joining me, Lucy.

Luci Carrillo
Thanks Uriah!