Training your team should be one of the top priorities of your practice, right next to patient safety, and providing a great customer experience. Part of developing a great plastic surgery practice is building a strong team around the plastic surgeon so they can make him or her more efficient and more profitable. In order to continuously improve your practice, you should incorporate multiple types of training for all members of the team. Our industry offers so many great tools, both paid and free, from a variety of semi-unbiased sources, meaning some of the training includes sales pitches, but still provide a lot of value. By taking the time to schedule weekly training sessions, for yourself and your team, your practice will be able to learn about new and exciting industry trends that will help your practice today and in the future. Your staff should be your biggest asset since they talk to and see patients before you do, and complete a lot of the day-to-day work needed so that your practice can meet its daily business objectives. Effective training designed specifically for your plastic surgery practice can provide your team with essential next-generation skills while bringing with it a host of business benefits.
Here we outline 5 critical reasons why you need to invest in employee training and some ready to use industry sources:
1. Enhance Operational Efficiency: Training your staff can increase their efficiency and productivity in completing their daily projects, along with reducing negative patient experiences. Training can also help your organization achieve greater consistency in process adherence, making it easier to standardize the patient experience and meet organizational goals and targets. We recommend practices use a HIPAA compliant software product to record a small percentage of new phone calls and listen to them for quality assurance. Usually, calls under three minutes are not good, over three minutes are ok, and over five minutes should lead to a booked appointment. There are many call tracking software available and some of your current website vendors may offer this service already.
2. Exceed Industry Standards: There are many great tools available to your practice through your vendor’s websites like coolnet.force.com, www.patientnow.com/training-webinars/ or nextechsupport.force.com/nextech/s/login/ These websites, along with dozens of others provide webinars about industry updates, best practices, and software or product updates. We recommend about 1 hour of training per week, per employee, which is about the length of most webinars. Training can come in many different forms including, industry representatives training, webinars, or article review. The best investment you can make is in education, so share industry news and articles weekly. Almost daily, website vendors, marketing agencies, and product vendors put out great content that should be shared, reviewed, and discussed with your team members. Here are some of our top industry resources.
3. Improve the Patient Experience: The worst employee engagement strategy is to leave them to sink or swim without any guidance. If you don’t provide on-going training to new hires and long-term staff, you not only risk eroding your company standards but also reduce the ability to further improve performance. Training your employees in our industry’s best practices can help build your reputation as one of the top plastic surgeons in your area, giving you an edge on your competitors! Many plastic surgeons operate in saturated markets, so often it’s the small things that will set your practice apart from the rest. Often times, one-star reviews are written not because of the result of the procedure or treatment but the experience a client had with a member of your team. Taking the time to learn from negative reviews and improve the patient experience through training can help your practice be in a position to continuously improve.
4. Improve the Practice Conversion Rate: There are several industry-specific sales coaches for aesthetic practices, many of which offer free webinars and industry articles. By hiring an outside consultant or training company you can alleviate some of the burdens of implementing new policies and finding out best-practices. Several companies have recently started to provide training to patient care coordinators and front office staff on an ongoing basis like Yellow Telescope, Sales MD, and Terri Ross Consulting to name a few.
5. Increase Productivity: Training can increase the well-being of your team and increase communication within the practice while reducing mistakes and stress in the workplace. The majority of employees value learning new skills at work and it’s much better to train and retain your people in the first place. Companies can be negatively implicated with every mistake employees make. Some examples include:
· Front office members who do not follow the script with a customer or collect the proper information from new clients
· New patient coordinator that does not follow the pre-screening protocols and lets unqualified prospects into the office for consultations
· Team is unaware of changes that are taking place with a vendor that materially impact the practice
These types of situations happen all the time. If your team is properly trained, their personal productivity and the company’s revenue will increase. Improved production quality, advanced business communications, increased sales productivity, and better service—all this can be achieved through ongoing staff training and development, offline and online. Aside from weekly training, we also recommend a monthly staff meeting, which should happen at the same time of day and time every month. During the meeting discuss any protocols, explain the new process to the team, and why management created this specific process to increase productivity or the patient experience.
We at MD Internet Marketing take time each and every day to improve our knowledge of the digital landscape and build on the knowledge and experience we have with over 10 years in the aesthetic industry. Your team should be your biggest asset but at times it can be your biggest burden. Don’t be afraid to invest in your team, as you want them to grow, in order to help your practice grow. We have partnered with some of the aesthetic industry’s top thought leaders to bring knowledge and best practices to each of our plastic surgeons and their team members. Contact us to learn more about various training or coaching opportunities for you and your team members.