Answering Service Case Study: Appointment Setting Services Help Chiropractic Clinic Grow

By Peter Lyle DeHaan

Doctors Martin and Trish Resnick started their chiropractic clinic two years ago, this May. After earning their doctorates they moved to Alexandria, Virginia where they opened their clinic. Their mission was to promote health and wellness through natural, non-invasive techniques.

Newly married and fresh out of graduate school, they were eager to build their practice. They began on a tight budget—too tight to hire support staff. Dr. Martin and Dr. Trish took patients on alternate days. While one attended to patients, the other took care of administrative issues, answered the phones, assisted in X-Rays, and marketed their business.

“For the first three months or so, it was really exciting,” Trish recalled. “Then we realized that doing clerical duties ourselves, such as answering the phones, hurt our image as professionals.”

“We were just starting out and counting every penny,” Martin laughed. Skeptical of the cost, he looked for an answering service to relieve them of juggling calls and patients. He also hoped to pick up some afterhours calls their answering machine missed. “It was quite affordable, especially compared to hiring a receptionist. But what really surprised us was they could set appointments, too.”

The answering service used an online appointment-scheduling portal so both the answering service and the Resnicks could access the same scheduling database to set and change appointments. The answering service scheduled patients whenever they called, 24/7, and the Resnicks scheduled follow-up appointments after they saw a patient. The process was smooth.

Then after a casual comment from a busy patient, they began offering Wednesday evening appointments, too. “That’s when things really took off,” Martin said. Soon every Wednesday night was full—for both of them—so they added Monday evening and eventually Fridays, too. They scaled back their slow midweek morning schedule to balance out their workload.

“It was working great. We had a full schedule,” Trish said. “But the no shows were killing us.” She mentioned her frustration to the answering service. The service suggested a solution. They began making appointment reminder calls to patients the day before each appointment, as well as sending reminder texts one hour prior.

“Our no-show rate dropped to near zero,” Martin said. “It was amazing!”

The answering service handled all of this. “I can’t see how we would have grown like we did without them,” Trish added. “Our answering service freed us up to give our patient’s the one-on-one attention they deserve. That’s the part of this job I love—helping people stay well.”

 

Peter Lyle DeHaan is a freelance writer from Southwest Michigan. Contact us to learn how a telephone answering service can answer your calls 24/7 to better serve your customers

Use a Telephone Answering Service to Increase Availability

Most Businesses Are Only Open Part of the Time Their Customers Expect

What are your business hours? Is it 9-to-5, Monday through Friday? Or you might open at eight in the morning and even add Saturday mornings to your schedule. At best this is fifty hours a week. However, a week has 168 hours, which means you’re closed much more than you’re open.

At one time customers accepted this as normal, but those days are gone. Now customers expect you to be open when it’s convenient for them, not what works best for you. If they want to reach you before their workday starts or after it ends, you better be available for them. If they want to contact you late in the evening, on weekends, or even in the wee hours of the morning, you better be there for them. Else they’ll go to someone else who is available.

It’s costly to staff your business to be open additional hours. It’s not cost-effective. That’s where a telephone answering service comes in. An answering service allows you to extend your hours and increase your availability.

Open Earlier

An answering service can answer your phone calls prior to you opening your business for the day. As far as callers are concerned this allows you to open early. You’re there for them when they want to call. This makes them happy, builds trust, and helps ensure their repeated business.

Stay Open Later

In addition to allowing you to effectively open earlier, a telephone answering service can answer your calls after you close. Again, this lets you stay open later in the eyes of your callers. This is what they want. And with a telephone answering service, this is what you provide.

Be Available Evenings, Weekends, and Holidays

With an answering service you can answer your customers’ phone calls before you open and after you close each day. Extending this concept around-the-clock allows you to be open to receive their calls on evenings, weekends, and even holidays. And who among your employees wants to work on a holiday? They don’t, but your answering service has you covered.

Provide 24/7 Access

Combining these coverage outcomes results in around-the-clock telephone access for your customers, callers, and prospects. Being available 24/7 is what most people today expect of the companies they do business with. And with an answering service, this is what you can provide.

Conclusion

With a telephone answering service, you can be open to receive people’s calls 24/7, meeting a critical expectation in today’s marketplace. And what’s this 24/7 availability cost? Surprisingly little.

For most business applications, a telephone answering service can provide this around-the-clock access for a small fraction of what it would take to hire just one part-time employee. It’s too good of a bargain to pass up.

 

With a decades-long record of offering telephone answering service to the northwest region and across the United States, Redding Answering Service is committed to providing advanced, first-rate telephone answering service to your company. Let us help you maximize your communication effectiveness—at a cost-effective price—to drive bottom-line results. Peter Lyle DeHaan is a freelance writer who covers the answering service industry.