Patient Surveys - Online vs Hard Copy

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald. Tyson and I are back. Tyson, what's been going on?

I have had a really, really, really good week. You know, one of weeks where you just you have everything planned out and it just falls into place, and then you get to the weekend and you get, right, I deserve the break. So, yeah, it's been great. How's your week been?

A little chaotic. Not gonna lie. Like, combination of work, Zoom school with my first grader, but oh, blah, d, oh, blah, Life goes on. Have my health. Have a great family.

So so no worries about that. I'm just you know, it's it's it's winter time in Canada. I'm excited to have things start warming up, but at the same time, excited to talk today a little bit about patient surveys with you. I think that's a really important topic and something that and knowing what your patients want, you can think they want one thing, but until you ask them, you really don't know what they want. So how would you kind of just lay lay out the groundwork for us as far as, you know, what we're gonna talk about today?

Okay. So we're gonna talk about surveys in general, and I was mentioning off air that there's three types of surveys that I think you can do with your patients. And it's not just your patients. You can also do this with professional referrers, which I will touch on a little bit later. But with your patients, you can do online surveys.

You can do a hard copy survey where you post something to them, and I'll explain the process that I used to use, or you can do a face to face survey. While the patient is actually there with you, it's not so much a survey, it's just asking the question that feels like it's part of a conversation, but you're recording the results. And over a period of time, it can actually give you a really good picture on on how things work. So actually, I'll talk about that one first, the face to face surveys, if you don't mind. Is that alright?

Yep. That sounds good. I think that's a great place to start because each of these different types of surveys, you know, kind of warrant a different type of question. So I'm curious to hear, you know, what your strategy or what you know, how you approach this face to face survey.

Okay. So it could be either the podiatrist could do this or the receptionist could do this. And it wasn't at any particular time, but we'd say with all the patients coming through, we want some a couple basic questions answered. For example, you may have come into the clinic and you may be sitting there, and of course, I'm running on time, you're not gonna be waiting for very long, Jim, when you turn up. So you sit in the reception, and the reception's, hey, Jim, how's your morning been?

You go, it's fantastic. Hey, Jim, by the way, do you do you listen to the radio in the morning on the way to work? And your response would be?

No. I'm more of a podcast guy, but occasionally a little bit of classic rock. So some Shom ninety seven seven.

Okay. So yeah. And that'll be the next question. Also, what radio station do you listen to on your way to work? And if you said, oh, no.

I'm more of a podcast person. The next week, oh, okay. If you did listen to the radio, what station would you listen to?

Sure.

Simple question. Now to you, it just just it's just conversation. But for us, because we used to do a lot of radio advertising, we needed to know when especially when our best patients are coming in, what station do our best patients listen to and when are they listening to it? So you might find that you might listen to a podcast in the morning to get yourself fired up. But in the afternoon, when you've had a long day, if you've gone in the office and you might be driving home, you're thinking, you know what?

I really don't need any more information going in my head. I want some talk back show. I want some loud music. I just want something to get me going. So over a period of time, by asking this question, we would find a lot of information about our best patients, what they listen to and when they listen to it.

We did the same thing because we advertised on TV at the time, what TV station you listen to. Now going back ten years ago before streaming really took off over here in Australia, you would get a definitive answer. I listen I watch these shows on this station. Now it would be so spread out. It would be a lot more difficult to actually do.

Did you but you you would have just asked your patients questions in general, wouldn't you?

Yeah. No. For sure. I mean, it makes sense when you have them in there, you know, in your waiting room or in the room just like a low pressure question that actually provides a lot of valuable information for your practice. So I think that's a that's a definitely a great place to start off.

Well, imagine asking a simple question like, hey, Jim. What's your favorite coffee shop in Cairns? Now, I've already identified that you are my ideal patient, and we've spoken about it before. So Jim is my ideal patient. He's in that age bracket.

He's got money, and I know Jim knows a lot of other Jims. So I go, Jim, what's your favorite coffee shop?

So, like, mine is Cafe Nive in in Montreal here. I think I think the same thing plays I used to do this with running two stores, honestly. Yeah.

Yeah. So if they tell me their their favorite coffee shop, go, hey, Jim. What what's your favorite restaurant in Cairns? Thinking of going out for dinner on a Saturday night? And you go, oh, I love this.

Now, if all of a sudden you start surveying all your gyms and you realize, wow, 25% of my gyms go to the same coffee shop. 25% of my gyms go to the same restaurant, then you start getting a picture of where where your gyms hang out. So I'm not gonna I might just call my new ideal patient, Jims.

I don't know. I'm a bit of a pain in the ass sometimes, Tyson. I'm I'm sure. I'm not the ideal these days.

But what it does, it starts giving you information that if you wanted to do a competition, if you wanted to sponsor cups of coffee, which is something I talk about in my marketing workshops, then you know, okay. If I'm gonna sponsor cups of coffee, then I should sponsor them at that coffee shop because I know 25% of my ideal patients go to that coffee shop. And if they're there, then the others all the other people are there potentially could be patients as well. So that's that's the value of asking good questions like that, and they are really simple face to face questions you can do while the receptionist could ask a question, the podiatrist could ask a question. And what is is we ask these questions anyway.

What you do is just start taking note of it.

Well, I think you're totally right. I think you're kind of building your kind of, you know, patient persona or your kind of customer persona by asking those types of demographic questions in a very, you know, honest and authentic way. I used to ask because, you know, where you bought your shoes before everyone was buying them online. Yeah. Because it would give me an opportunity to, you know, get in touch with that that running shoe store, maybe have a small clinic, maybe it's a marathon injuries thing.

It it's like you said, it's just trying to find that place where more of your ideal patients are already at so you don't have to, like you know, you can be a little bit more focused about, you know, where you're spending your advertising dollar, where you're spending your time, or where you're kind of developing additional relationships in the community.

Yeah. And so to move on to, say, online surveys, for example, I'll be perfectly honest, never done one. I've never done an online survey mainly because I know feedback from people that do online surveys. They said if they get ten, fifteen, maybe 20% of them back, that's a good result. So you're more in the online world, Jim.

So if you were doing an online survey, how many do you normally get back that aren't your aren't your ideal yeah. Like, you're not sure whether you're ideal patient yet.

So I think that's a that's a great a kind of a piece of advice there. But I think it's with online, there almost has to be some incentive, like a financial or gift card incentive. I think that that makes it a little bit, you know, $10 or $20 if you know, or a raffle type of a system order to incentivize people to want to do the survey. Because you're right. If it's just a straight up survey or a straight up ask with really no incentive for them besides just, like, their goodwill or, you know, they like you as a doctor, you're, like you said, you're probably gonna get a very low return rate there.

So there has to be I don't think it always has to be a gift card, but that's kind of the the most common one that I've seen kind of in marketing channels or other things. And that can be valuable. Like, if you spend, know, if it's $20 and you get a hundred or a 50 surveys back, you know, it's it's worth that money, to, like, be able to to make solid decisions because, you know, if you're doing Google Ads, you're doing other types of paid paid placements to kind of bring awareness to your clinic, and you're doing month over month, you'd rather start with good data instead of just kinda, like, feeling around in the dark to see what works. So I think, like you said, though, there you know, it can be a little hit or miss depending on what the incentives are for those online surveys.

Yeah. And the thing with it is because you're only gonna get so few back, and I've had a lot of online survey sent to me. Sometimes I complete them, and sometimes they end up in my inbox and go, oh, I just could not be bothered. I'm too busy. I just I just delete it.

Don't even don't even look at it. So it'd probably only be about 10% of service I would even fill in myself. And even then, I've got a I don't like that company to start with.

I will sometimes, like, even online service I get, to be honest, like, you know, I'll I'll go to that first page and I'll maybe if as long as there's, like, maybe two or three questions on the first page, and then I click next, as long as there's not, like, more than about 33% or more than, like Yeah. 50 per you know, it's like, you you still have 90% of the way go there or you're 10% of the way done after that first page. Probably a low likelihood that I'm going to page two on that one.

Yeah. And I I reckon too with the questions that you ask, keep it short, keep it brief, Ask, yeah, two, three no more than probably five questions, and that's it. Something that it's really easy to answer, but also don't load the questions to a point where you're almost pushing them into a particular answer. Because I've seen some surveys where it's almost like, oh, how awesome are we? And you're like, well, you're not awesome.

Well, actually, if they weren't, I wouldn't bother. The survey came through, and I just delete it. That that's how awesome you were. But they're sort of just pushing you to say, give us a 10. You know, well, it's not I I just find if you're gonna ask questions, ask questions where it's very open where you're gonna get a really a lot of honest feedback.

If if you lead a patient down that path or you're kind of almost forcing kind of something positive from them, you're not getting that real honest answer. And when you're not getting that real honest answer, it allows you to kind of live in a, like, a reality distortion field where you don't actually know what your patients think about you, which which almost completely it's a waste of your time. It's a waste of their time if a survey is based off that. Because you really in order to make a change or to, like, improve the patient experience, improve the care you're providing, you just have to kinda, like, throw it out there, be open to both positive and negative. Oh, definitely.

And just kinda, like, and just kinda live with it. And

No. Well, the part that's interesting, when I was talking about the face to face questions or and and you're doing a survey, but it's more over the long term, They're more marketing type questions. You're not really gonna ask personal questions about the business or a podiatrist that's in your team. You imagine the patient coming oh, this happens. Patient will come out with the with the podiatrist or another service provider, And the receptionist says, how was your visit today?

Now they're not gonna say, oh, it sucked. I I reckon they rushed me through too fast. I couldn't understand them. They had a really strong accent or they mumbled. Actually, I thought they had a little bit of b o.

I got a bit of a waff going through, and I know it for me. So they're not going to be on that and to me, that's a loaded question. Oh, how was your treatment today? What do we always say? Good.

Even I could be at a restaurant with my wife, and she may not be enjoying her meal. And the waiter will come and say, oh, how was your meal? And she'll go, oh, it's good. And I go, no. It wasn't.

You told me it was really, really average. And the look on the waiter's face is like, oh my god. You're in trouble when you get home. So those sort of and that's what I mean, but you can ask a face to face question, but they're more marketing related. I think when it when it's getting more into the depth of your business or your team, I think that's what that's where the other either online or hard copy survey.

So now I wanna talk about hard copy surveys.

Well, I think you bring up before I jump there,

I think

you bring up a good point. It's kind of like, you know, people are, you know, on the surface, they're they're nice and especially when you put them on the spot.

Yeah.

Always. Like, they're they're not they're not gonna, like, trash somebody right in front of another person if unless they're just, you know, extremely disappointed or something. So I think it is, you know, once they get home, they kind of have that psychological safety to actually you know, they have that space. They're no longer kinda in on you know, in the spotlight in your clinic on your turf. Yep.

They're back home. They're safe, and they feel like they can actually express themselves. I think that also ties into what I will talk about in the future about online reviews. Like, you don't wanna be putting someone on the spot without, you know, with a tablet or with something saying, give us a review right now. Like, it's a similar thing, but we'll we'll get over to your hard your hard copy surveys and how you approach those things and leave that topic for another day.

Okay. Hard copy surveys. Now I know there's a lot of people go, oh, nobody reads mail anymore. You know what? Nobody gets mail anymore.

So they will, every now and then, go and check their mailbox out of habit. Now this might be depend on the demographics of your particular clientele. So if you get a lot of younger patients that are, you know, couch surfing and moving a lot, this probably won't work. But if you've got a slightly older, more mature, clientele who are a little bit more stable, then hard copy surveys work really, really well. And the trick behind doing it is you send the survey, and it will I'll I'll tell you some of the questions that I used or what you're after.

You send the survey with a cover letter. Now enclosed in that envelope is another envelope that is replied paid envelope. Now you can set this up at local postal offices, And so therefore, you only pay for the surveys that come back. You're not putting a stamp on a on an envelope. So set up a reply paid service.

On the cover letter, it says, hi, Jim. Just letting you know that every now and then, we'd like to do surveys, and you can talk a little bit. Enclosed, you'll find a $2 scratchy, which is like a a an instant win lotto card to thank you for completing this survey enclosed. As you'll find, there's also an envelope enclosed for you to post a survey back when it's convenient. We used to get over 90% of our surveys back every single time because we've already thanked them.

We've given them a card, and we put a little PS. By the way, if you win $25,000 and you feel guilty, feel free to give half of that to us. Or we we just write some smart little comment handwritten on the bottom of it. And the amount of surveys we would get back that have little comments on the bottom, I won $20 and I'm keeping it all, was just it was funny. So we would ask simple questions like, yeah, did you find the staff friendly and helpful when making your appointment?

Yes, no, or details? This this is really what we're up. But the important part of when we were doing these surveys, we would do them at different times. Majority of time we did a lot of these surveys were when we had a new podiatrist start with us. And the reason we did it then is because we want to know, is that podiatrist communicating with the patient well?

We would put some fluffy questions in, like, did you find our staff friendly? Of course, they're always friendly. Yeah. We yeah. Unless it was a bad day.

But the biggest question would be around, yeah, during your consultation, did the podiatrist explain your condition in a manner that was easy to understand? That was the big one. And it was surprising how many patients were just ticked. Yes. Yes.

Yes. And some of the other questions, but when it got to that part, would actually write details. And if they did take Absolutely.

We're a pro yeah.

Was that?

Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. I was just saying it's a pretty probing question. So, like, you kinda, like, soft, soft, soft, and then, like, if there there is a problem, it's gonna surface it.

That's and that's what we're after. New podiatrist starts, bang. We would make sure these surveys went out to all the patients. Now you can't like, you can ask a patient when they come out of the room. You've got a new podiatrist out with a new graduate, not a lot of experience yet.

Patient walks out, oh, how was your treatment today? And the patient's gonna oh, that was good. And you might go, oh, okay. But then they walk out, and next thing, they're ringing up two days. Oh, I just wanna put a complaint.

I don't wanna complain about and the thing is for every patient that probably rings up and complains, there's probably ten, fifteen, 20 that thought the same thing that didn't complain. So sending out these surveys gives them an a chance to vent because people are really tough when they've a pen in their hand, you know, or behind a keyboard. And then we'd always say at the end of it, you know, we thank them for completing the survey, remind them again that the reply paid envelope was enclosed. But we'd put our email address details that if they wanted to, they could get back in touch with us. Now we would put on here we have little codes.

We sorta we knew when we were sending these surveys out, we had a rough idea what day these patients had come in, we knew which podiatrist they saw. And but that was why that was why we did it, but you could do it do it at any time on really asking varied questions. I do have a copy of one of the servers, which I'm gonna put in the show notes, which was an actual survey that I used in my own practice that I'll put in the show notes and people can download it and play around with it and they can yeah. If they wanna go, that's just crap, then I have to use it. It doesn't bother me.

I'm just telling you what we did and what actually worked.

Well, they they can take your turd and they can polish it a little bit and

Polish my turd. Yeah.

Tune of gemstone.

But I reckon that you put sprinkles on

the turd. Good.

You put sprinkles on the turd, it's still a turd.

I'm sure it's better than that. I'm just just pulling your leg a little bit, but no. That's really helpful stuff. I think, yeah, you have to give those patients an opportunity to provide that honest feedback. And like you said, whether it's behind anonymous keyboard warriors or someone with a pen in their hand at home, that gives an an opportunity to get that honest feedback.

So I think that's a great thing that's, like you said, maybe the younger, more digital first generation may not care about that stuff, but definitely people my age and older and still enjoy getting mail. Even even my my kids enjoy getting mail. So, I mean, I think that's, if you get a scratchy or some kind of incentive in there that kind of endears you to the to the clinic, whether they had a good or a bad experience Yeah. Everyone likes a little bit of the potential of free money. So maybe that encourages them to to fill that out and provide a little bit more information.

Because 90%, that's a that's a pretty great return rate.

Yeah. Well, I I went and got a massage, say, six or eight weeks ago. There's a chiropractor that I know had a sports masseuse there. I went and saw him. God, really nice guy.

Was really happy with the massage. Really happy with the advice that he gave me as well and some exercise. It was good. But I'm saying to him, do you want me to book back in? Now you just go and see how that goes and get back in touch with us.

And I'm like, I'm just shaking my head. And anyway, so we're at a dinner leading up to Christmas. And while we're having dinner, the chiropractor that owned the business was there. Said, hey. How are doing?

I haven't seen you for ages. I said, actually, I was in your business, and I told him who I saw. He goes, yeah. We had to let him go. I went, oh, why why is that?

Oh, it just didn't matter. We just kept getting complaints. And I said, let me guess. People wanting to book back in, and he's telling them just to oh, no. Just see how it goes.

He goes, yeah. We kept telling him, book him back in, but he just wouldn't do it. So if they'd sent me a survey and said, how did you find the treatment? I would've gone great. If there's anything else you'd like to say, yeah.

I would've loved to have just been booked back in because if I don't, I'm not going to do it. But and when you when we're talking about, you know, hard copy and online, I'm I would I check our mailbox. We've got a PO box that I check, you know, once every once a week, maybe once every two weeks, depends on what I'm doing. We'll check the mail outside, you know, every couple of days to go and check it. So I enjoy getting mail, and I am I'm sure I am somebody's target market somewhere.

Well, mean, like you mentioned there, I think when you're doing marketing or doing any kind of advertising, I think the thing that sometimes stops people is that you feel like they don't wanna hear that. Right? Or they'd I I'm bothering someone.

Like, it's

kind of one of the most common excuses I see. But when you're providing something valuable, right, like, like a survey, for example, you're given an opportunity for them to provide feedback, improve improve not only their experience, but other future patients' experiences. Like, this is another form of, like, you know, providing value to them, but you're also raising awareness for your own services. And like you said, like, if he had just, you know, if he had there have been a survey or something that said, like, hey. Like, I want to see this person more.

He probably would have like, the massage therapist probably would have liked to hear that Yeah. To get that feedback. So it's this kind of virtuous circle where, yeah, maybe it feels like, oh, I don't wanna bother them. But really, like, the patients want to have a voice. And if they don't feel like they can do it inside of your clinic by providing this, you know, this opportunity for them to voice that feedback in a in a way that is not only beneficial for them, but it's a win win for you and for your clinic as well.

It's it's a bit of a no brainer in my mind because it works on so many different levels, you know, improving patient experience, providing awareness about the care that you provide, and giving them a chance to to speak their voice.

So Yeah. The good part with it, sometimes patients wouldn't post them straight back. They would the next time they came in for the visit, they would bring the survey back with them or and we would keep note. We'd put a little note. We knew who we sent the surveys to.

And if we hadn't got one back from them, because we had a little code thing, so we had a we knew who who we were sending them to. If they hadn't sent it back, if you'd come back in and go, hey, Jim. How are doing? By the way, did you receive a survey that I sent? Anyway, I said, you know what?

I filled it in. It's sitting like that. If you get another one here, I'll just fill it in now. Majority of the time, the patients got the survey and they completed it. They just hadn't got around to posting it back, and that was probably only 10%.

Ninety % always came back. I was gonna talk about surveys to professional referrers, but looking at the time, knowing with the time that we put on these episodes, I'm gonna keep that one for another day.

I think that's a good idea. I think we wanna try to keep these in, like, you know, short, you know, concentrated bits so people get some valuable stuff out of them. And, you know, if we have things a little bit longer, we can always expand in a future episode about refer referrals surveys and questionnaires. I'm really I that'll be a good one to to book in this one down the road. So so, Tyson, thanks a lot for all that great information about surveys.

Anything else you wanna leave us with?

Nope. Just if you're not sure if you think surveys are gonna work for you, just start asking simple questions first. Get your receptionist to ask simple questions, or you as the business owner, ask simple questions with your patients. You can ask the other podiatrists to it, Terry, no, they won't do it. If you're the business owner, you need to do it.

And try doing some hard copy surveys, set them up the right way. Believe me, the response you get will be fantastic. You'll you'll get a better response than you think. If you sort of go, no, I just wanna do it online, then do it online. Just at least do something and start getting some feedback.

So that's it for me.

Alright. Well, we'll cut it there. Until next time, Tyson.

Okay. Talk to later, Jim. Bye. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDaniel. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.