A great receptionist requires many skills in order to efficiently coordinate and organise the routine tasks, daily events and varied personalities that make up a ‘typical’ day! This series of three webinars will explore the concepts of marketing and customer experience in more detail, with practical tips to help receptionists manage customers face-to-face. We’ll also look at your crucial role in recruiting and retaining owners as loyal clients.

• Join Onswitch’s Alison Lambert for 3 2-hour sessions
• Comprehensive notes to download
• Self-assessment quiz to ‘release’ your 8 hours CPD certification (don’t worry, you can take them more than once if you don’t quite hit the mark first time)
• 12 Months access to recorded sessions following purchase for reviewing key points
• Superb value for money – learn without travelling
• Watch the recordings on your iPad!
• This Mini Series was originally broadcast in November 2015

Programme

Practice Marketing and Client Engagement – Why it Matters

Marketing used to be about telling potential customers what you do. Now it should be much more about how you do it, why you do it better than anyone else in the area and how it feels to be your customer. Recommendation is a key factor for pet owners when choosing a practice – it matters what your current clients think about you because they’ll be telling others. You might have a whizzy website and a flashy new logo, but if customers are regularly kept waiting and don’t understand their bills, these experiences say far more about your practice. We’ll look at the fundamental principles of marketing before sharing some practical tips that will help you recruit and retain clients through consistently great customer care.

Learning outcomes:

• Assess the demographics of your practice’s client base
• Tailor communications to the specific needs and background of your target customers (budget or exclusive, retired or young families etc.)
• Understand the principles of a marketing plan and begin to create one for your practice

Your Role in Practice Marketing and Client Engagement

Effective marketing will bring new owners to you, then you have to keep them. The receptionist is the first member of the practice most new clients will meet – if she is warm, friendly and efficient then the owner confirms their initial impression of the practice, and feels that her high expectations of the service she will receive there will be met. However, most receptionists meet these criteria (hopefully!). What really sets your practice apart is a personal service – recognising familiar faces, greeting owners and their pets with genuine warmth, making eye contact, using their names – these show that you really care about their customer experience.

Before the internet, the recession and the proliferation of new practices, owners would visit their local practice for every aspect of their pet’s care, and stay loyal to that practice for life. Now there is more choice – you can’t rely on owners choosing and staying with you. Before they can choose you, they have to know about you, and marketing your practice begins long before the client comes through the door through routes such as social media and an online presence. Once the owner becomes a client, it’s all about retaining them by providing superior customer care at every point of interaction. And the receptionist interacts with each client more than any other member of the team.

Learning outcomes:

• Manage warm and engaging practice social media communications
• Deliver an excellent face-to-face customer experience
• Engage better with ‘difficult’ clients

Measuring the Client Experience – You Can’t Control What You Can’t Measure

Word of mouth recommendation is both powerful and profitable. The number of new clients coming to you via this route could be significant, and their recruitment is very cost effective. We know this because we’ve measured it; we’ve seen the results at practices up and down the country. This session will show you how to measure the success of your marketing activities, as well as how to measure the resulting client experience. Because when you know how you’re doing, you know how much better you can do.

There are several ways to capture client data easily and effectively, and this session will look at the kinds of data you should be routinely collecting, and also (crucially) what you do with it!As a bare minimum you should record email and mobile numbers for all clients, and ask for their communication preferences. Text message reminders are a very cost effective way to boost compliance, and email newsletters can be produced for a fraction of the cost of printed versions. We’ll also explore some established models and methods of collection for customer experience data, many of which you can measure and monitor yourself.

Learning outcomes:

• Understand the principles of the Net Promoter Score and implement an ongoing process of data collection
• Identify the most effective routes for data collection at your practice
• Measure your customer experience and set realistic targets for further improvement

Course Feedback:

“Great for those with little experience or to help head receptionists/managers improve workforce and customer satisfaction”

“This course has helped me realize I need to put into practice the marketing information in our own practice so we can get more customers in”

“It will help me realize NPS and use of the Index will help to determine who needs more training, should it be used”

The price includes all 3 sessions, notes and quiz – 8 hours of CPD

*No traffic jams, accommodation hassles, pet or childcare, rota clashes, locum fees ……….. just great CPD and a valuable ongoing resource.

*overseas customers will not be charged VAT