Health 2.0 | WhatClinic.com

The First Deal Breaker – Customer Service

On April 25, 2012, in Health 2.0, Stuff we've learned, by Philip Boyle

WhatClinic.com Customer Service Award Winners 2011

Every day at WhatClinic.com we pass on thousands of enquiries from consumers at various stages of their decision making processes. Whatever stage they are at they all have one thing in common. They want to know that the person at the other end of the phone or replying to their email cares about them and their needs.

Clinic staff can demonstrate this in any number of ways:

By answering phone calls politely
By replying to emails quickly
By answering personally, not just with automated answers
By helping to put any fears to rest

How clinic staff handle that first enquiry can make the difference between a patient booking and a lost opportunity. It is the first real deal breaker in a consumer / clinic relationship, so in order to maintain high standards it is essential for clinics to know how consumers feel. This is why we poll consumers and publish their customer service feedback on our site, so both parties can find out how they’re thought of.

Every year we analyse the data we have about consumers’ customer service experiences and identify the clinics that are consistently rated the best and reward them with our annual customer service award. It provides consumers with a strong indication that a clinic will handle their enquiry quickly, professionally and politely.

With less than 1% of clinics receiving the award it is a real mark of excellence, so it is no wonder that clinic staff love to display the award both in their clinics and online. Above you can see some of our most recent proud recipients from Armley Dental Practice, Stetic Implant & Dental Centers, Bangkok International Dental Center, and Secret Surgery Ltd.

Failing to provide customer service to a high enough standard is like falling at the first hurdle in a race. All other effort and preparation goes to waste as a result. So the question today for clinic owners is how would you rate your own staff in the customer service stakes? What one thing could you do today to make it more likely that a consumer receives a quick, professional and polite answer to their enquiry?

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

Visit Authors Website

Why Pricing Matters

On August 11, 2011, in Health 2.0, by Philip Boyle

Any time we bring attention to the fees that dentists, doctors and other medical professionals charge we are given out to. We are told there is a lot more to medical treatment than just the cost involved, and by putting an emphasis on the fees being charged we are encouraging patients to choose the least expensive rather than the best quality treatment.

The fear among medical professionals is that open price competition will lead to a race to the bottom, where quality no longer matters. But this fear is blinding the same professionals to the reason that we are obsessed with price at WhatClinic.com:

This information is what the consumer wants.

Consider the following:

55% of all enquiries sent to clinics specifically mention the price, cost or fee being charged. This figure is even higher when the price has not been published.
84% of our visitors from the UK admit to having delayed dental work because of the costs involved. This is a shameful statistic.
Nearly 100% of consumers who travel abroad for medical treatments cite price as their primary motivation, and yet they are generally unaware of affordable treatment options at home because of the dearth of price information available locally.

After 4 years of running WhatClinic.com and over a million patient introductions to clinics we know that price is the number one piece of information potential patients are interested in. They want price transparency and we intend to work continually to provide it.

The Information Vacuum

We understand that a price alone can’t tell the whole story. There are different material options available, providers can have different qualifications and experience, and facilities can be state of the art, or decades old. This information is difficult to communicate to consumers, but the answer isn’t to create an information vacuum.

It is a simple fact that the clinics that share the most information on our website are the same ones who gain the most new patients. Their openness and transparency builds trust before the consumer even picks up the phone or types their email.

And it’s not just prices we are interested in publishing. We want to encourage clinics to share as much relevant information with the public as possible. What brand of dental implant do you use? How many times have you performed a tummy tuck? What specialist training do you have? How long have you been practicing?

The fact remains though, “How much do you charge for… ?” is one of the most common enquiries that clinics receive from patients, and if you’re going to tell patients how much you charge, why not tell them why you charge that much by providing a little extra information? Prices don’t tell the whole story, but they are a starting point.

Obviously not all treatments can have a fixed price, but they should all have a fixed lowest price. Price ranges give patients a clear idea of what to expect even if they’re not exact. By not publishing any prices at all though patients often feel that the price they are quoted has more to do with their ability to pay than the treatment they will receive, and ultimately encourages them to “shop around”.

The Language Problem

Another issue that gets raised time and time again is the wording used when talking about these issues. “Patients aren’t consumers”, “we have fees, not prices”, and “dentistry isn’t a commodity, you can’t compare prices” are common complaints.

The problem here though is that patients, or consumers, or visitors, or whichever word you want to use to describe them don’t care which wording is correct. They talk about prices and they talk about cost. They nearly never talk about fees.

Moreover, how they talk is how they search on the internet, so in order to get the information to them today that’s how we talk too. If and when the public start talking about fees instead of prices or costs, then we will too.

Of course dentists are right when they say “dentistry isn’t a commodity”, but unless they publish qualitative data too, which the vast majority don’t right now, then price is the only piece of information the patient has access to, which effectively results in a commodification of the market.

Helping Patients Get Treated

It’s our view that getting hung up on semantics does nothing to help patients get treated, and really that’s the common goal that we share with the clinics and health professionals who use our service.

We want to share price information because patients want it. We want to share quality information, because patients should know about it. And we want to share availability information because it makes all our lives that little bit easier.

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

Visit Authors Website

What Patients Want

On July 4, 2011, in Health 2.0, Stuff we've learned, by Philip Boyle

Here’s a little reminder to us all that no matter what business we’re in, if our customers can’t find the information they want on our websites then there’s a good chance they’ll go somewhere else. Make sure you know what they’re looking for and make it easy for them to find it! (With a hat tip to XKCD for the inspiration.)

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

Visit Authors Website

Why Groupon Secretly Prefers Selling Beauty Deals To Hair Deals

On May 17, 2011, in Health 2.0, Web/Tech, by Philip Boyle

Today we have a guest post from Ronan Perceval of Phorest.com.

According to a recent article on TechCrunch.com 20% of all Groupon and CityDeals worldwide are for hair and beauty treatments. That is a lot of money: approximately $1bn a year if you count all the deal sites and growing fast.

But of this 20% the majority are for beauty treatments rather than hair. This is because beauty customers are less loyalty to one salon than hair customers. According to data collected from 1,000 salons using Phorest.com salon software an average of 45% of customers who visit a hair salon in any one year will continue to visit that salon. For beauty salons the figure is only 30%.

This is because when people find a stylist that makes their hair look good, they are much more likely to want to return to that particular person than they are to the therapist that gives them a spray tan or massage that any therapist in a particular salon can be expected to carry out to the same standard.

Loyalty To Groupon

Groupon likes selling beauty offers because customers go from deal to deal, from salon to salon. In this way they stay loyal to Groupon rather than the salon after getting a deal and Groupon can continue milking those beauty customers for buying offers.

Groupon doesn’t like hair offers as much because customers are much more likely to stay with that salon after the deal and not use Groupon again for a hair offer. I was chatting to a hair and beauty salon owner yesterday who told me that they had run a beauty offer on Groupon CityDeal and wanted to run a hair offer next but the Groupon salesperson was adamant that they run another beauty one.

We ran a survey of 1,000 salon customers last week asking them how they chose their current hair salon and their regular beauty salon. The results are interesting. 9% of people first experienced their current hair salon because of an internet deal but only 4% had experienced their regular beauty salon for the first time this way. And this is despite the fact that there are 9 times as many internet deals for beauty than hair.

Be Careful What You Offer

For the dental and cosmetic beauty clinics on WhatClinic.com the advice is clear: if you are considering running a group deal think carefully about the treatment or service you are offering. Are customers who use the deal likely to return to you for this treatment again, or when the time comes will they just use another deal to go to another clinic?

Try to think of a way to make the deal depend on return visits in order to get the best value from it – maybe offer a 10% discount on all treatment for a 12 month period? And make sure you get to demonstrate why they should come back – excellent customer service, skilled staff, modern equipment, etc.

About the author: Ronan Perceval is the CEO of Phorest.com, a leading provider of salon software to thousands of salons and spas in the UK and Ireland. Phorest also operate MyZanadoo.com, the UK and Ireland’s number 1 destination for booking salon and spa appointments online.

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

Visit Authors Website

Irish Dental Practices Obliged To Display Private Fees From June 1st

On April 12, 2011, in Health 2.0, by Philip Boyle

The Dental Council of Ireland has issued its first ever documents aimed at patients and members of the public. The three PDF documents cover the display of private dental fees by practices, advice on choosing a dentist at home or abroad, and information about the different roles of a dental team.

As expected the issue of private dental fees has gained the most coverage in the press today, with dental practices keen to highlight how many more people will be subject to private fees thanks to the recent cutbacks to the PRSI dental scheme and the Medical Card dental scheme.

The display of fees at all practices will at least help those in need of dental treatment know what to budget for, and allow them to compare the fees at different practices for the same services. It is interesting to note that in the case of services with variable fees such as root canals and extractions that maximum fees must be set.

The second document released provides valuable information about what to look for when you want to choose a new dentist. It also pays particular attention to how to choose an overseas dentist if that is your choice, and it’s great to see a document like this from a respected body such as the Dental Council that avoids resorting to fear, uncertainty and doubt to dissuade patients from travelling abroad. It raises all the serious issues patients should consider when making their decision and should be a great help by way of guidance. We covered a number of these on our own document from 2008, “10 Questions To Ask Before You Travel Abroad For Treatment“.

The final document goes into detail about the different roles that each member of a dental team is supposed to perform, and helps clear up any confusion that patients might have about who they expect to be treated by when visiting a dental practice.

It’s great to see the Dental Council of Ireland engage with patients like this and hopefully there is more engagement to come in the future. Share your thoughts on the Dental Council’s new advice documents in the comments below.

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

Visit Authors Website

How To Protect Yourself From Negative Reviews Online

On April 11, 2011, in Health 2.0, Stuff we've learned, by Caelen King

Be careful how you handle negative reviews

Online reviews have really taken off over the last 5 years and there are countless studies (here, here, and here [pdf link] for example) showing how they influence consumers’ purchasing decisions.

Similarly, patients looking for a new doctor or dentist are being influenced by other patients who review their treatment online. These reviews present both an opportunity for and a threat to the businesses of doctors and dentists. In this article we will look at how you can protect your reputation and career from negative reviews online.

The Four Types Of Reviewer

Members Of A Review Community (Yelp, Qype, etc) – They have reviewed large numbers of businesses and services and their review style can be easily profiled. Looking back at their previous reviews it is easy to see if they are fair and reasonable, and their reputation is built upon being consistently unbiased. Their reputation in turn adds considerable weight to the strength of their reviews. Some doctors have over 100 reviews on Yelp.
People Who Are Encouraged To Write A Review – Businesses often ask previous customers to review the product or service delivered. For instance WhatClinic.com asks patients to review their treatment experience. As you’d expect there is a fairly normal distribution between positive, neutral and negative reviews.
Superfans – They have had such a great experience that they actively want to share their experience with other people online. These people are very rare and are usually created when a clinic far exceeds the patients’ expectations.
The Very Unhappy – People who for one reason or another feel they have had an exceptionally bad experience. Thankfully these are also very rare, but in many instances they will try and post their review on as many sites as possible. Unfortunately this means their negative review can affect you and your clinic’s reputation disproportionately.

How To Protect Yourself Online

Everyone gets bad reviews at one stage or another. It’s never nice to see someone talking negatively about your clinic, and it’s even worse when a colleague or patient is the one to bring it to your attention. The secret to protecting yourself from bad reviews though is to start to build your online reputation before this happens.

Negative reviews only have real significant power if they stand alone. Believe it or not single negative review in a sea of positive reviews actually adds authenticity to the positive reviews!

As a clinic owner or manager you should start soliciting reviews now. Find the websites that Google sources its reviews from (including WhatClinic.com) and point your customers to those sites. Print a message asking them to review your clinic online on the back of your receipts and reminder cards, and remember that repeat patients are your best bet for favourable reviews. After all, if they didn’t like you they wouldn’t be coming back. Develop your online reputation now before someone else starts doing it for you in a negative way. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

What To Do When You Get A Negative Review

Most negative reviews occur because the patient feels like they have been mistreated somehow. How you respond to the negative review can either compound their grievance or potentially convert them into a positive advocate for your company. There are two clear steps to follow:

Reply To The Review Online. You need to publically acknowledge the grievance in the same place that the review appears. In fact you should try and reply to all reviews, positive and negative. By replying to negative reviews you are demonstrating that you care about the patient’s issue and that you want to address it rather than hide from it. You should apologise, tell the patient that you are upset that they feel this way, and that you would like to speak to them personally about their issue.
Contact The Patient Directly. You need to let the patient speak at length about why they feel the way they do. You need to listen carefully and suggest a way that you might be able to address their grievance.

Typically if you can manage to resolve the issue the reviewer will be happy to revisit their review and either edit it or amend it. Even if they don’t your online reply at least informs potential new patients that you care enough to try and resolve issues when they come up.

Don’t Make These Mistakes

It’s very easy to make a bad situation worse by reacting without properly thinking through the consequences. Here are some of the most common mistakes you need to avoid when replying to negative review:

Do not breach patient confidentiality. Even if the patient publishes personal medical information online, you may not.
Do not be confrontational or aggressive.
Do not suggest that they are lying or call into doubt any aspect of their review.
Do not engage in an online conversation. Reply to the review once and contact the patient directly, you should not discuss with a patient in a public forum even if they want to.

Going Down The Legal Route

If a review is defamatory, then a letter from your lawyer may get the review taken down. This only applies if the website operates in certain jurisdictions though. Most notably it won’t work if the website is based in the US.

Even if you do manage to get the review removed, this kind of action typically animates the reviewer into publishing similar reviews on multiple websites. This not only makes it more likely to be found, it also means you have very little chance of turning the patient’s opinion around. On balance, going down the legal route carries as much a risk of worsening the situation as it does of relieving it.

Actively managing your clinic’s reputation is more important than ever. Be sure you give your happy customers every opportunity to tell the world that they are happy, and start doing it now. When you are unfortunate enough to receive a negative review, deal with it publicly, professionally, and politely, and whatever you do, don’t panic. Share your experiences with online review in the comments below.

About the author

Caelen King

Caelen King is CEO and founder of WhatClinic.com, the medical search engine that helps people find clinics anywhere.

Visit Authors Website

How Do Clinics Manage Their Appointments?

On February 10, 2011, in Health 2.0, by Caelen King

How Clinics Manage Their Appointments

We recently ran a survey about what system our clinics use to manage their appointments. The results revealed quite a lot about how fragmented the industry is and about the difficulties that technology solutions face when replacing paper and pen solutions.

29% of clinics that responded use some form of clinic software to manage their booking. What we found amazing is that out of ALL of the respondents only 3 clinics used the same software. We were also surprised at the number of clinics that were using bespoke software.

The most reveling statistic is that over 50% of all clinics still use a desk diary to manage their appointments. When we followed up the survey with some telephone interviews we found a general belief that no software could match the flexibility of a desk diary and that software solutions couldn’t be used without training. In fact many respondents that used a desk diary had previously bought a software solution but no longer used it.

Unsurprisingly we found that Microsoft Outlook had reasonable penetration at 13% and its integration with the email client was quoted as a key benefit. Google calender had far less penetration that we were expecting which we speculate is because of the lack of an offline standardized client.

Do you have trouble persuading clients to ditch old fashioned solutions? People still demanding IE6 compatibility? Fax integration? Let us know in the comments.

About the author

Caelen King

Caelen King is CEO and founder of WhatClinic.com, the medical search engine that helps people find clinics anywhere.

Visit Authors Website

Add A Map Of Your Clinic To Your Website

On October 5, 2010, in Health 2.0, by Philip Boyle

If your clinic is listed on WhatClinic.com you can add a Google Map of its location to your own website just by following these easy steps.

Login To Your Account Click on the login link. If you’ve forgotten your login details, call or email us and we’ll sort it out right away.
Check Your Location Is Correct Click on the Map tab and check that the pin for your clinic is in the correct position. If it’s not, you can either drag it to the right place on that screen, or go to your Profile tab and edit your address. The system will then attempt to place the pin at the location of the updated address, but it’s not perfect, so check it and adjust it as needs be.
Get Your Map Code On the Map tab, click on the “Add Code To My Site” link at the top of the page. This opens a pop up about which contains the HTML you need to embed your map on your website.
Customise Your Map If you want to make the map bigger or smaller, or zoom it in or out before you put it on your own website, you can adjust the values shown in the pop up, and then click on the “Generate” button. You can also preview the map with the new settings by clicking on the “map preview” link at the bottom of the pop up.
Add The Code You Your Website You might be able to do this yourself, or you might need to ask your webmaster to do it for you. Either way, all you need to do is open the source code file for the page you want the map to appear on and paste in the code from the pop up where you want the map to appear.If you have any problems doing this, please contact us by phone or email and we can talk you through the process.

Simple as that! Adding a map not only helps visitors to your website see your exact location but also lets them work out travel directions without having to call your clinic.

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

Visit Authors Website

Linking To Our Search Results

On August 11, 2010, in Health 2.0, by Philip Boyle

We’ve had quite a lot of interest in the last couple of days about our name change. If you’re thinking of writing a blog post or tweeting or sharing on Facebook, why not give an example of why the site might be useful?

For instance, my friends are always asking me about finding a good dentist in Dublin so I point them at:

http://www.whatclinic.com/dentists/ireland/county-dublin/dublin

No one I know admits to using Botox, but if they did they might like to see the list of Botox Clinics in the UK:

http://www.whatclinic.com/beauty-clinics/uk/botox

Just do a search on our homepage for any treatment in your location and copy the resutling URL to get your link.

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

Visit Authors Website

Introducing WhatClinic.com

On August 5, 2010, in Health 2.0, Start ups, by Philip Boyle

On August 10^th we are changing our name from RevaHealth.com to WhatClinic.com.

The reasons behind the change are very straightforward. WhatClinic.com is easier to remember, easier to spell, and it does a much better job of explaining what the website does.

These reasons are important because each of them helps increase the traffic to our website, which now stands at over 500,000 people per month, up from 190,000 at the start of the year.

We really want these visitors to remember the name of “that really useful website with all the clinics on it” so they can come back and use us again in the future, helping us to cement a solid user base over time.

Once our visitors can remember our name then they can also recommend us to their friends, and that means even more traffic. With such a simple name there should also be no confusion over the spelling, maximising the effect of any word of mouth recommendations.

For new visitors the name gives a really good indication that the website provides a choice of clinics, which will lead to even higher organic click through from search engine users and help us continue to grow our traffic in yet another way.

In the three years since RevaHealth.com launched we have made fantastic progress towards providing comprehensive information about English speaking health clinics in the UK, Ireland and further afield. As WhatClinic.com we will be taking on that challenge on a global scale.

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

Visit Authors Website

Email:	info@whatclinic.com
Phone:	+353 (0) 1 6520 520
Twitter:	@WhatClinic
Website:	www.WhatClinic.com
Postal Address:	WhatClinic.com 12 Duke Lane Dublin 2 Ireland

WhatClinic.com Blog

The First Deal Breaker – Customer Service

Philip Boyle

Why Pricing Matters

Philip Boyle

What Patients Want

Philip Boyle

Irish Dental Practices Obliged To Display Private Fees From June 1st

Philip Boyle

How To Protect Yourself From Negative Reviews Online

The Four Types Of Reviewer

How To Protect Yourself Online

What To Do When You Get A Negative Review

Don’t Make These Mistakes

Going Down The Legal Route

Caelen King

How Do Clinics Manage Their Appointments?

Caelen King

Add A Map Of Your Clinic To Your Website

Philip Boyle

Linking To Our Search Results

Philip Boyle

Introducing WhatClinic.com

Philip Boyle

Visit WhatClinic.com

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