00:00:04:10 – 00:00:49:06
Jay Shorr
Welcome to Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. And I’m your host. Jay Shorr, CEO and founder of Shorr Solutions. We are a team of national and award winning practice management consultant with experience running a multimillion dollar cosmetic, dermatology and plastic surgery practice. We’re here to share strategies and insights that will help you grow your practice efficiently and profitably. In each episode, we’ll explore the steps and actionable insights to guide you through your journey to increase efficiency, boost revenue, and decrease costs. Tune in and discover how to improve your patient experience and take your esthetic practice to the next level.
00:00:49:08 – 00:01:52:00
Paige Hamilton
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. My name is Paige Hamilton, and I’m the marketing and advertising manager here at Shorr Solutions. And today I will be hosting this podcast episode and I’m joined by two very special guests. I have Ana Suarez, who is a partner and the Director of Client Development. I also have Cristian Devoz, who is also a partner and our senior client Success Manager. So today we’re going to be talking about somewhat of a hot topic that’s been discussed on our team a lot, and that is AI answering the phone as well as just phone etiquette in general. So let’s get started. And the first question I have for Cristian and Ana is going to be, how often do you think that practices lose patience? Not because of price or competition, but because the phone was never answered, or worse, if it was answered incorrectly?
00:01:52:02 – 00:02:33:14
Ana Suarez
Well, that’s a that’s a great question, Paige, and thank you so much for having me here today with both of you. I’m really excited. Your question is right on. You know, we do lose a lot of our practices. They do lose a lot of business. Yes, because phone calls, they you know, they don’t get answered right away. Or maybe they have the right on first impressions. They forget to follow up. So this is actually a problem especially for like super busy practices and with AI now in our lives then this is an opportunity. So we could utilize it to maybe, the overflow calls or maybe after hours calls that we receive just using AI to help us out with those specific calls.
00:02:33:15 – 00:04:16:22
Cristian Devoz
Yeah, I totally agree with Ana. I love that because, you know, many people ask us, hey, should I implement AI in my practice? And I ask that you have enough staff answering the phone and they say, well, I had, you know, Lindsay, the one person in my practice answering the phone, and she also handles our marketing, and she also handles the front desk and all these different things. And then I ask them, well, how important is it for you to have a great patient experience because you’re either going to have patients waiting on hold so that Lindsay can do these multiple things, or she’s not going to be able to greet the patient when they walking by the door. So you should really have a staff member who is just doing phone calls and handling that aspect of the practice, making sure that you’re getting new patients. And then when you’re not in your open hours, then you would definitely want to have some sort of way of responding to patients. In the past, we have recommended having text messages, but now with AI you can actually have an AI person meaning it’s AI, but it sounds like a real person, and it’s very interesting because it’s in the course of a few months, I have noticed how we had gone from very easy to catch AI to actually, it takes you a few minutes to realize you’re talking to a to AI, and Ana had a recent experience about that way she can share that with us. But it’s very interesting how we’re now seeing that these AI is getting much, much better and you can actually have it answering the phone calls when you’re not in the practice, and actually scheduling patients for appointments and doing all these different things. And it’s quite amazing. But Ana, can you walk us through what you told us the other day about your experience with AI? Because I remember that’s a very interesting story.
00:04:16:22 – 00:05:27:14
Ana Suarez
Yes, yes, for sure. It was. It was interesting to say the least. But I know that we usually talk with our clients about how we could start implementing AI within the practices, how it could help them. It was something that we always mentioned as AI, making sure that we’re training AI properly so that it doesn’t sound as AI and it sounds as human as possible. And like you said, Cristian, we’ve seen the transition and the progress with that. However, recently I had to call one of the, you know, I had a doctor’s appointment, but I had some questions and I call the practice and it was actually an AI, representative. And at first I didn’t pick up on that because the person had a very human, natural type of voice. And I’m like, wow, this is amazing. But there were a couple of things that made me wonder. And, you know, part of that, I was like, about a process that I had to go through, something that I had to fill out. And then I asked the question and then, you know, the way that the the agent spoke back to me, I’m like, wait a minute, this is a little bit robotic. It’s not a it.
00:05:27:14 – 00:05:29:08
Cristian Devoz
Sounds too good to be true.
00:05:29:10 – 00:05:59:07
Ana Suarez
Yes, exactly. So but but with that said, the automation, the agent was able to get through the entire call and actually give me what I was requesting so that I could complete that process and then go to the doctor and have my my appointment. And I was very surprised. I was very surprised. But I can see how this is progressing so quickly and how it’s going to be a huge change, you know, within our industry and our and the practices.
00:05:59:09 – 00:07:07:15
Paige Hamilton
Yeah, that’s an interesting story. Know. So you had a good experience with AI but I know sometimes it can be frustrating. And maybe people are hesitant about wanting AI to be on the phone because maybe they don’t think that it’ll be able to answer the questions naturally or maybe they think that it’s going to be the robotic, or it’s going to cut people off in the middle of what they’re saying. So maybe it’s not ready to take over our jobs just yet. But I think as AI keeps developing, there’s definitely programs that are already ready, especially if it’s already in place in some practices. The more you train the AI, the better it’s going to get in. The longer that it’s around, it’s going to just keep developing. So even though there might be some hesitations with AI, it definitely is going in the direction of being a good option. Especially as Cristian was saying earlier, if you have someone who needs a little bit of extra help at the front desk, maybe they’re managing to need things, or even in a busy practice. Do you want to expand on that, Cristian? How could it help a busy practice rather than just maybe one person whose role is too tight?
00:07:07:17 – 00:09:38:19
Cristian Devoz
Right. That’s that’s a great question. And going back to that then. Yes, I mean, you’re getting all these phone calls instead of putting someone on hold. You can have. I started that conversation then if at some point they request to talk to him and then of course you can, you know, have AI tell the patient that you will put them on hold and the next human available will handle the call whatever. Right. So that could be a way to kind of help you manage the volume of calls when you have very few staff on the phone. The answer to that is always going to be make sure that you’re properly asked for your volume for the actual level at which your practice is at, because if you are a multimillion dollar practice, you should have more than one phone person. Definitely. And we actually call them directors of first impressions, because they really are the face and the voice of your practice. When the patient first calls your practice to when the patient first walks into your practice. So you have to have enough people to handle the volume of calls that you’re getting. And there is a term in the call center world called service level staffing, which in other words, basically means having enough agents or enough people on the line available to answer the calls that are coming, the cold volume that is coming in. So you got you have to have the right level of staffing. So once again, if you’re a big practice, you want to have definitely two or more people. If you are a small practice, having one person is good to start with and you can have AI as a complement to that so that you know what the person is talking to a patient. You can have AI talking to another patient or when you’re out of the office, then the AI can handle those calls. And then of course there is also something called occupancy rate. And that is also making sure that you don’t have a lot of, people that are only handling phone calls, but they are not very occupied. So now you’re on the other side of the spectrum. So you got to find that right balance for you. Then of course, you want to make sure you’re prepared to handle that and you’re training your staff accordingly so that they can handle those calls. And that’s funny because we always end up talking about training for some reason in these calls. But it’s so important that you train and cross-train your staff so that anybody in your practice knows how you should be answering the phone call. Because if the first impression is not available for whatever reason, maybe a nurse can answer the phone and they should be able to have the same level of customer service, and they should be able to know the scripts, and they should have the knowledge to be able to answer the patient’s questions and get their scheduled in the book. So there’s what I would say about that Paige.
00:09:38:21 – 00:10:00:18
Paige Hamilton
Yeah, I would say the phone etiquette, patient communication, front desk training is one of the most common areas that we work with. The practices for coaching and making sure that their staff is enhancing the patient experience. So we’ve seen over the years, and it’s rarely one mistake that causes patients to practice is to lose patients.
00:10:00:20 – 00:10:02:19
Cristian Devoz
What is that mistake Paige.
00:10:02:21 – 00:11:45:20
Paige Hamilton
So it’s small overlooked habits of like answering the phone incorrectly. Or maybe they’re not credentialing people. The tone of voice, Jay [Shorr] always says you should be smiling when you answer the phone. People can tell when you’re smiling versus not smiling. You don’t want to hesitate in answering questions. You also don’t want to miss. If they’re asking for something, try and upsell them. So it’s all there’s a bunch of different things that you can do that if you don’t have this training or you haven’t created those habits, then you can answer the phone incorrectly and maybe lose a patient to another practice who didn’t do those things. So we have one on one coaching that we do all the time with practices where we can listen to phone calls, and you have to have a phone system that allows you to do that. But we can listen to the calls, basically audit your employees to make sure that they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, see where they might need training, see what they can enhance further, and whether it’s a new hire that would need this training or even a seasoned team member, anyone can benefit from refresh in coaching that’s tailored to the specific challenges of your practice. So if you want to learn more with that, you can visit our website and schedule a consult with our team. Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about answering the phone, it’s about getting patients in and procedures booked. So you want to make sure that you’re doing that all the way from first time they come into practice all the way until the end. So Cristian can you and Ana, can you both talk about what should they be saying when they answer the phone? What is the good etiquette that they should have to sound very knowledgeable and approachable in a practice?
00:11:45:20 – 00:13:10:04
Ana Suarez
Well, there’s many things that we take into account when answering patient calls. Something that is huge. Many times that we, call practices, and they don’t even say good morning. And they don’t they don’t even introduce themselves. So we always recommend saying, for example, good morning. This is “Shorr Solution Surgery Practice”. My name is Ana and I can help you. And so we listened to what it is their requesting, the concerns that they have, we made sure that we get their name, you know, like whoever we’d speaking with, just making sure that is is a Cristian. Is it Paige and how do we spell the name. Because sometimes we think that he’s spelling specific way and then it’s another way of spelling it. And then we make sure that we’re listening to their concerns. Were smiling throughout the call and just addressing the the issue that that they may have or the need that they have. Right. It’s making sure that you always remember that we’re speaking to another human being and, you know, due listening to their needs and being polite and having pleasantries with them, it just makes a difference, because we never know when the person is going through and they’re calling the practice because they need help with something related to their health or how they feel or and their confidence, whatever it may be. So we want to make sure that we providing the best possible service.
00:13:10:05 – 00:13:16:05
Paige Hamilton
Yeah, that’s a really good answer. Cristian, do you have anything else you’d like to add to that?
00:13:16:07 – 00:15:16:08
Cristian Devoz
No, I agree with everything that Ana said. This is something that we always go through with our clients, right? We give them these trainings. And the easiest way that I have found that people remember the different stages in a call is you first gather, then you give, and then you get. What do you gather the patient’s information. You want to gather their name, you know, their phone number and their email address. So then you can target them for email marketing. And then of course, you want to gather what it is that they are inquiring about. So once they tell you what it is, then you can give them information, right? And you can answer their questions. You can give them details about what it is that they are asking about. And then you finally get them on the schedule. So gather, give, get. Get them on the schedule is the most important one of those three, because at the end of the day, your job as a director of first impressions is to get patients in the door. So that’s basically you know what, you want to make sure that your phone people are trained on how to gather, how to give that information, how to get the patient on the books. And they should always have great customer service, and they should have knowledge of the services that you provide. They should know your website. They should know everything that you can offer the patient, so that it ends up becoming an opportunity for them to also cross-sell to the patient when they walk in the door, because the patient will have questions and they can maybe offer additional information about other treatments and procedures that can be provided for them. Now, something that I wanted to ask Ana, going back to the AI is, what’s the difference between training a staff member on all the different things that we’re talking about and training AI because at the end of the day, that’s the topic of this conversation. And right, how can we implement AI in the practice? But what’s the difference there between me training an AI agent and training an actual human impression?
00:15:16:08 – 00:18:08:06
Ana Suarez
That’s a great question. Just because obviously humans are humans and AI is a this new, technology that we have now that is amazing. It’s very, it’s quick in learning and I like fast learning. So I would say that that’s one of the pros about AI that once you’re able to set up the right tone, kind of like the way that you want to, explain things or even and your branding within that AI so that everything is unified with the rest of your branding, then is like kind of like you do it once or twice and it’s done because AI is really good at remembering what it is we are teaching it. And so we don’t necessarily have to do like multiple training sessions as we usually do with humans. So I would say AI is very effective for based on the training that you do, it will be able to like your learning and to be very consistent with how it’s providing that, those responses or the way that is, say, speaking back to the so the patient, how they’re asking the questions and gathering all of the information. However there’s a big you know, there’s a lot of room for improvement there. And that’s why it was so surprising when I spoke, with this AI agent when I previously called the doctor’s office. The way he spoke and the way he managed the conversation, it felt like a human conversation for the most part. But then there were like, other areas where you could see that it was very automatic, a little bit robotic. And so that’s the part that maybe we have to be a little bit more careful when we’re training AI to see if we could kind of like, reflect and translate some of the human emotions. So for example, if you say I’m doing a well, but I’m a little bit worried about a test that I have later on today, we want to make sure that the AI is not ignoring that information, “oh okay. I can understand you’re a little bit worried, but I’m still here, and I kind of help you with this other situation that you have. I hope everything goes well with your test later on.” And bottom line, we have to make sure that we’re taking the time to train AI just because it’s still a technology and it’s pretty efficient, you still have to take the time to train it to make sure that I’m speaking the same language, the same terms that you utilize in your practice. At the other directors of First Impressions are using so there’s a uniform, cohesive way of answering those calls in treating the the patients. And we need to make sure that if we’re going to be using AI now and incorporating that as part of our general processes in the practice that a really strong, solid training is put in place, because the last thing that you want your patients to feel, they said they’re just like talking to a robot and that’s, you know, they’re not being understood for whichever issue or frustration they may have. Right. So just kind of like keeping that in mind.
00:18:08:08 – 00:19:22:21
Paige Hamilton
I think training AI is more of a front end training where if you’re training people, it can be a long term. Obviously, you want to prepare them the best you can at the beginning. So that way they know how to handle the situations. But as things come up, a human can ask questions and say, maybe, how could I have handled that differently? Or in the moment, ask someone for help where AI doesn’t do that, they’re just going to make the spur of the moment decision on its own. So I feel like when you’re training AI, you really need to think through every single scenario that could happen or has already happened in your practice. So that way you could say, you know, this one random thing happened this one time, but if it happens once, it can happen again. So you have to make sure that you would prepare for those weird scenarios or train your AI to say at that point, if it’s stumped, rather than just coming up with a random answer to the question that they would then transfer you to a human, or they will get back to you or something along those lines. Just like Ana said, just making sure that the training is thorough, but probably more front end training to establish your AI before you trust it with your your customers. I would just test it yourself.
00:19:22:23 – 00:21:59:06
Cristian Devoz
And then of course, as you continue to use it, make sure that you’re continually improving it, because you mentioned something that is key when something happens. Maybe it was in protocol before, but now it happened. Now is a protocol. How do we stop it from happening again? And I was actually listening to another podcast the other day, and it was talking about planes and how in aviation, all the manuals and the protocols all came to be because of crashes, right? Things going wrong. And every time that something goes wrong, they try to find the black box right? And they try to figure out what went wrong. And they come up with all these protocols. And how do you train your people so that that does happen again in the future? And then they came up with AI autopilot so that it can help the pilots. So it doesn’t have to be so heavy for them psychologically and also just mentally. Because humans get tired, right? They get sleepy. They made mistakes. So you have to have a combination of both to be able to get that plane to takeoff and to land safely. And you have all these protocols to avoid bad things from happening. Your practice is no different. You got to have protocols and processes in place so that you can ensure that you’re taking your patients to where you want them to be, and they’re getting the results that they want, and you’re mitigating any potential risks, any potential unhappy patients, by making sure that you have things like checklist and ensuring that when you’re in the O.R., everything is done the right way. And, you know, don’t overdose your patients. You get the idea. You basically got to have protocols for everything in your practice. And your director of first impressions is no different from that. You gotta have a protocol for them to have what to answer, when not to answer. If they don’t know how to answer something was the protocol, then because they got to know how to proceed with that call. So even with AI, you also have to train it, and you have to retrain it and keep training it until it gets so refined that before you know it now, we’re not gonna say you need to stop something robotic. You need to sound more like AI now, because now they’re going to do a better job that we do. And I can tell you sometimes I get, you know, actual humans answering the phone call, and they sound more like a robot than AI so sometimes they even ignore. I mentioned something about my day and they don’t even say anything about it. Or I just complain for 2 or 3 minutes of our problem and they are not even apologizing for the issue, or reassuring me that they understood the issue by repeating back to me, or just taking those steps to get it so it just feels like they’re not even listening to me, right?
00:21:59:06 – 00:23:15:10
Paige Hamilton
If you’re. Wondering maybe how you could put this in place is going back to kind of what we said before is listening to your phone calls. So if you don’t know what your people are saying and what they’re doing to answer the phones, that’s how you’re going to be able to put that process in place to have protocols. As Cristian saying, to figure out what’s wrong and then how to move forward. So you have to listen to the phone calls to then figure out what exactly is going wrong and how you need to train or retrain either your AI or your staff. So the closing question that I have is not one for us, but one for all of our listeners. So think about if you were to call your practice and you are posing as a new patient, would you be impressed enough to book? Because if the answer is no, then you’re probably not impressing people who are actually calling. So either call your practice or just listen to the phone calls that have already been happening and ask yourself that question. And maybe you need to reevaluate what you’re doing. So that way you can improve and move forward. So that’s going to wrap up today’s episode of Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. We hope you enjoyed listening. Good luck and God bless.
00:23:15:12 – 00:23:53:16
Jay Shorr
Don’t go anywhere just yet. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure to subscribe so you never miss the latest insights! New episodes are released every two weeks. For more valuable information and resources to elevate your practice. Sign up for our newsletter. You’ll get the latest industry updates, expert tips and exclusive strategy straight to your inbox. Also, don’t forget to follow us on social media at Shorr Solutions. If you’re ready to take your practice to the next level, schedule a free consult with our team today. Thank you for joining us on Shorr Solutions: The Podcast.
