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Healthcare practitioners are in a strange place. On the one hand, they’re in the business of offering services. But on the other, they have a lot of ideological baggage they must carry around with them. The Hippocratic oath, for instance, is a great philosophy. But it also means that many healthcare professionals see themselves as medics first and service providers second.
You see this playing out all the time on clinic websites. The tone is different. It’s not about trying to find the best solution for the customer. Instead, there’s a lot of chat about the staff’s expertise or the need for patients to improve their lifestyles.
Much of this comes out of the fact that healthcare practitioners’ primary goal is to help make sure that people get better. It’s not just about trying to figure out what they want, but what is good for them at the same time.
That psychological setup does lead to some odd behavior and remarks, but it doesn’t mean that practitioners have to abandon the idea of treating their patients like customers altogether. In fact, in many areas, it can help.
See Your Clinic Through Your Patients’ Eyes Boosts Revenue
Healthcare professionals often view their clinics through purely clinical lenses. Their priority is that it remains clean and hygienic and that practitioners speak to patients authoritatively.
But is this really what patients want? For many, the experience of the doctor’s office is far from ideal. It doesn’t feel homely at all. And the average person feels like a dog at the vet.
Try putting yourself in the patients’ shoes and ask yourself what it is actually like to interact with your enterprise. You usually find that the experience is less congenial than you think.
Making Your Website More Feature-Rich Encourages New Sign-Ups
Clinics need to recognize that their clinics are more than just brochures for their medics and services. They’re also portals that patients can use to arrange services, especially during a pandemic. Often, it is just a case of seeking out healthcare IT support and implementing the various features you need. Often, you don’t have to do any work yourself, and you can provide your patients with the sort of convenience they expect from modern businesses.
Focusing On Relationships Strengthens Your Brand
Whether you like it or not, your clinic has a brand, and it projects a specific set of characteristics that people associate with it.
While you might like the idea of patients considering your office “clinical” and “efficient,” it might not be the best image for your brand. Those words are good from a medical point of view, but they don’t appeal to your customers’ emotions. They’d prefer your establishment to be warm and inviting, pleasant and warm. Associations like those are likely to mean that they’re much more likely to visit in the future.
So, in summary, treating patients like customers can be a great way to improve your practice’s success. Furthermore, it doesn’t necessarily conflict with your medical oaths. In fact, it complements them.
