Clinical Solutions Blog

I recently talked to a frustrated clinic owner who had many people at her clinic leave recently - front desk, clinicians and unfortunately, customers too!

When we drilled down into the problem, she revealed that, behind the scenes there was a lot of betrayal going on - rumors, and bad gossip. You get it. That awful stuff that just shouldn’t happen.

Another clinic owner I spoke with a few months ago, found out their most senior physiotherapist - who had been loyal to the business for years and is the highest biller in the business - was partnering up with the office manager to setup a clinic across the street! 

This is like your worst nightmare. And when this stuff happens to you, you start questioning your leadership abilities, your ability to positively influence people and why you became an entrepreneur in the first place.

I totally understand what this feels like because I’ve been there myself. Over my many years of being in business I’ve learned many things the hard way, which is why I often share them with you - so you can take the easy road.

Seriously though, I lost a lot people over the years. In fact, it took me 5 years of constant bad leadership to finally get it, for the light bulb to switch on.  

Today I want share how I managed to turn it all around and how you can get your staff fully engaged so that both your staff and your customers absolutely love your business.

We’ll cover:

• The most important factor to win over employees and customers
• How focusing on these factors dramatically improves your business
• Some critical steps to focus on first to ensure success
• 8 effective strategies to give and get customers to love your business

First Things First: Core Values and Company Culture

Before you endeavor to get customers to love your business, you need to create a company everybody loves!

That story above, where I shared all my mistakes and bad leadership over the years...that’s bad company culture.

And quite simply: Bad Culture = Bad Business

“Culture happens whether planned or not, all companies have a culture. So why not build one that you love?” ~ Hubspot

The truth is, your company culture is the center of everything. When your employees are happy, they will take pride in helping you build your business and in turn, that makes incredibly satisfied customers.

I recommend these resources for developing your company culture:

The HubSpot Culture Code: Creating a Company We Love

10 Steps to Creating Core Values

Why Core Values are Central to Company Culture

CSC Core Values and Culture

A few years back we took the time to develop core values for CSC.

Here are the core values we now live by: 

Create Magical Experiences

We love people and our goal is to provide our clients with magical experiences that make them say “Wow!”.  

Think Forward

We are trendsetters. We are constantly challenging status quo, listening to our clients feedback, and validating our assumptions to build the best solution for our clients.  

Make it Happen

We have the ultimate control of what we do. We are accountable to our peers, our clients, our organization and more importantly ourselves. Making an excuse is easy but making it happen is what give our clients stunning value.  

Build a Team we Love

We are a group of people who value personal growth and love to have fun. Encouraging each other to challenge the tasks that we love doing, and inspire each other to pursue our area's of strength

We appreciate the honor of being able to serve clinic owners, clinicians and front desk staff, and we are always trying to find creative ways to show our appreciation. We recognizes the hard work running a clinic and taking care of patients all at the same time. 

Take our recent Beach Getaway Contest as an example.

We’re giving away a free trip anyway, for one of our lucky blog subscribers or customers to take a much needed holiday.

For us, this is an opportunity to get clinics involved and drive higher engagement, to show there are other clinics just like them that CSC serve, and also to provide a genuine reward of appreciation.

Look at some of the photo submissions people have sent in.

As you can see, everyone is having lots of fun!

Entries are still open over here if you want to play to win.

We love our customers and wish we could reward everyone. Of course, none of us could give away a free trip to each and every customer. But the point is, the act of giving things away is a way to impress customers, to show you care, and to live your company culture.

Core Values and Culture Produces High Results

As a result of focusing on living our core values, we’re proud to say that CSC is Canada’s fastest growing healthcare supply company, experiencing a growth of 65% annually, along with a 300% growth in SEO and sales in 2015.

CSC has the highest number of Google reviews in the healthcare supplies industry - boasting a perfect 5-star score with over 39 reviews. No other supplier can match the level of customer service we provide. We’ve made it our priority to live and breathe exceptional customer service!

All of this is proof that what we are doing is working to build a highly reputable company that are the best in the industry.

So how can you do the same?

Let’s talk about that now.

How To Get Employees More Engaged With Your Business

Once you develop your core values and have the basis for the kind of company culture you want to live and breathe, the next step is to begin with your staff. They are central to the success of your business.

Small gestures of appreciation (done regularly) help bring your culture to life and get staff fully engaged.

One of my biggest takeaways from Tanja Yardley’s talk at the Canadian Physiotherapy Association Mastermind Workshop was “High Five Fridays.”

Each Friday since the workshop, I now take the time to sit down and write an email that reflects on the week. The email takes me about 10 minutes to write, includes a cool high five photo, and it shares the small wins and gives the team a big high five for an amazing week!

My staff absolutely love it!

Another example is how we stopped having farewell parties for staff who were leaving, and started having welcome parties for new people who are coming onto the CSC team. It makes more sense to welcome people with a big bang and show them how much our company is here to WOW both staff and customers.

We have daily team huddles, we have a wins board on the wall, we share regular lunches, we make team member birthdays a special event. We take care of our people!

If you have a team of clinicians at your clinic, could you put together a "High Five Friday" email each week? Share your wins and send people off for the weekend feeling pumped. And think about other ways you can show appreciation. Even just saying thank you is something that isn’t done enough.

Sure people are working for you and being paid to do a job. But they also need meaningful work and to feel part of a bigger something that matters. That's what gets them commited!

How To Give and Get Customer To Love Your Business

Here’s a list of things CSC do to delight our customers with examples on how you can use these strategies in your practice.

1. Quarterly Giveaways

Contests such as the Beach Getaway Contest are our quarterly initiative to show appreciation to our customers and subscribers.

Each quarter we do something different. The next one will be about your favourite charity. We are all in the helping industry and we believe in sharing.

In your practice, could you use a quarterly giveaway to inspire your customers and get them more engaged?

Here’s a great tip: If you can’t afford a cash giveaway or prize outside the clinic, offer some free services or treatments every quarter.

2. Offer Treats, Sweets or Indulgences

Everyone loves ice cream and pizza, so we offer customers who visit the office unexpected treats on a regular basis.

Could you offer patients a cup of herbal tea and a piece of dark chocolate after their treatment? Think of small things you could do to surprise customers with that extra level of customer service.

3. We make returns hassle free and pay for your shipping back 

When we look at the lifetime value of a customer, they are worth a lot more than a single purchase. This is the same as your patients, they often come for more than one treatment so your goal is to keep them happy and focus on those long term gains. 

If they love what you do, they will tell their friends and they will come back for more treatment, give you Google reviews and so forth.

Put a process in place for customer complaints where they get free treatment to make up for their dissatisfaction. Think about other ways to make sure your patients are happy throughout your treatment process.

4. We are constantly finding ways to save you time shopping on our site

This also means constant website upgrades to improve your shopping experience. We are always investing to make the website faster and easier for you to buy things.

Our goal is to make CSC the fastest and best shopping experience for users, which is why we are constantly optimising the CSC website.

By using the search bar at the top of the CSC site, you get quick links to popular products and searches, along with direct links to entire categories.

Take this knee brace snapshot as an example:

We're always trying to think of how we can make it easier and faster for you.

As a clinic owner you can find ways to save patients time and make things easier. For example, being on time for appointments and making patients booking and after treatment process should be a focus for you.

How can you systemize your booking process to make it easier for patients? Could you take payment and reschedules before appointments to make their post-treatment discharge easier?

There are always things we can do to make things smoother for our customers. It begins with thinking through the customer experience and walking in their shoes so you understand what’s happening at each touch point.

We’re not just here to sell you clinic supplies. We want your business to be more successful.

The Clinic Accelerator Blog is our way to share the 10 years of mistakes I have learned so you don't have to waste 10 years. And to share the things that are working and not working in the healthcare industry.

We have created a range of forms (free downloads) to help you improve your business

• Patient compliance form
• Equipment checklist for starting a clinic

And of course, we share great weekly info that you can take away and apply to improve your business!

If the CSC store is missing your favorite product, we can get it. We really are here to help simplify clinic supplies and your account manager is here for you anytime.

If we don’t currently have what you need, our account manager can source products for you and we can add a new product on our site within the same day.

Here are a few ideas on how you can serve your patients more:

• Be better at the front desk
• Supply more products they will go and buy elsewhere
• Make using extended health benefits easy for patients
• Become your patients most trusted health advisor

And we have a panda as our mascot!

On your website and welcome emails, could you create a simple video that shows the personality of your clinic? You’ll be amazed at how beneficial it is.

On our website, in our videos, in our emails - we are not strangers to our customers.

The first place you want to have your picture is on your website, yet surprisingly many people don’t. As a customer, I want to know who I’m doing business with.

And don’t be afraid to show your personality. Photos don’t have to be conservative and boring. Try injecting your sense of culture and personality into your team photos, like we’ve done here at CSC.

As you can see, there are LOTS of simple ways you can get staff fully engaged and make sure customers absolutely LOVE your business.

Take some of these strategies and use them in your practice. Trust me, these small things make a BIG difference!

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