Why Your Clinic's Receptionist Might Be Your MVP

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Welcome back to Podiatry Marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald. Joined as always by my trusted co host, Tyson Franklin. Tyson, what's up to today?

Good morning, big Jim. No. Just another another day in the beautiful tropics. It's fantastic this time of year. And and this is my Wednesday, your Tuesday night when we do these recordings, and one of the highlights of my week is catching up and us chewing the fat.

It is always a lot of fun. We both on air and off air when we're not recording, when we're recording, it's a good time for sure.

Okay. I tell you, if we just press record when we first got on and just let everybody hear the conversations that we have before we get started, we we might have more listeners.

You never know. You never know.

It's because we talk about some funny stuff. Okay. Let's dive into today's topic.

Yeah. So what are we gonna jump into today?

Today, I wanna talk about your front desk person or whether you just wanna go on front desk person or your receptionist. And I just think out of everybody you employ in your business, they are the most important person that you will hire in your podiatry business. Therefore, you need to take your time to make sure you choose the right person. It's not just the person that's gonna answer the phone, or it's not just your mom, or your wife, or your husband if if they're gonna work there. It's really important that you choose that right person because they're representing your business.

Yeah. In a way, you're the face of the practice, but they're the first person they see when they come into your clinic. Right? So if if they're not hospitable, not professional, it's gonna reflect on the entire experience.

Well, I think everybody's been to a doctor's surgery where you're where you're greeted by the, you know, the woman at the front counter who's been weaned on vinegar her whole life. And you walk in there, it's just misery guts, and you sort of go, wow. I'm feeling really welcome. It's only because you you have to be there. It might be a specialist that you you sedate.

But if it was if had a choice of four or five different places and you were you were greeted by misery guts, you would be going, this is the first and last time I'm coming here. Or in fact, you may even just turn around and walk out. So I think it's important because when a patient walks into your clinic, it's the first point of contact is usually going to be the person at the front counter. Now they may have made a lot of other judgments about your business on the way in. That's a different episode altogether.

But the first person they meet is going to be the front desk person.

Yeah. They set the tone. Right? Like, they walk into your practice. The first person that probably greets them or talks to them.

And if it's a bad interaction, it's gonna kind of spoil the whole visit.

Yeah. So the first way, it could be a face to face meeting. When they walk in, they see that person before behind the counter, they must look the part. They must look like someone who yeah. They're groomed well.

They just they fit what your business is actually all about. And and, yeah, I don't want this to sound the wrong way, but if you go into a surf shop, for example, and you're you're greeted by someone or people working there, usually, there's younger people, so you're not gonna get someone my age working in a surf shop. They just don't employ people my age because we're too old. But they all look the part. The way they're groomed, what they're dressing, their build, just their mannerisms, they all fit that type of business.

That's why I use a surf shop as an example. When you walk into a podiatry business, which is professional, you're expecting to see a certain person behind that counter. You're not expecting to see someone come running in from the back door putting out the cigarette and still smelling of tobacco when they get to the counter and they go, hi. Can I help you? And you know, it's wreak of tobacco and coffee coming off of them.

That's not what you want. It's fine if you're working at a tobacconist.

For

sure. The other part that's important, having that person at the front counter, is they're also gonna be the person answering the phone. So it's really important that they speak well. And it doesn't matter if they have an if they have an accent, if they're not from your country. It's just important that they they speak well and they're easy to understand.

So if they are they might be really good at their job, but if you listen up on the phone and you're having difficulty understanding them, then it sounds terrible, but you should probably steer away from that because it's just you always need the messages to be really clear, all the information over the phone because the only thing going by is what the person is actually saying.

Yeah. Especially on the phone, can be difficult. Right? If you if someone has like a really strong accent or you know, you have patients that are already hard of hearing or having trouble understanding what people are saying to them, you know, a lack of communication or poor communication can be a kind of a real turn off to certain patients coming into your practice. So yeah, having someone to good communicator is really, really important.

Well, I rang a business just recently, and and the person on the other end of the phone, I literally, I couldn't understand them. And they'll ask me a question. Said, look, I really I don't wanna be rude. I said, but can you put someone on the phone that I can actually understand? They apologized, and they got somebody else on.

And even the person that said, oh, no. They they don't normally answer the phone. They are normally working behind the scenes, exceptionally good at what they do. They just happen to answer the phone the day that I called. So that's the importance of it.

The other the other part too is with the person at the front desk. They are also the person where a lot of your online communications are gonna happen first, and a lot of people don't realize this. So So the person might look fantastic, might speak really well, but they're also the person who is going to be doing your online communications, your emails, receiving them, reading them, understanding, and also replying. Or even whether it could be some of your social media posts. So they must have good grammar.

That is really, really important.

And it's super easy these days to have good grammar. Right? You know, with AI and AI kind of chat bots that kinda help you write, it can really kinda clean up some of those online communications even if you have a staff member who's maybe not a great writer, there's definitely automated and AI ways to to improve that grammar.

Oh, yeah. Like, I use Grammarly all the time and people still probably read my stuff and go, you sure you use it? But but I look at some of my old stuff that I wrote, and I will put it in the Grammarly now. I said they just shake my head going, did did I learn English?

Fourth grade level.

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. 12 year old.

But it is it's just important. These people some people are emailing them asking questions, and they are writing back to them. And I have made the mistake where I have had receptionists in the past whose English is atrocious. And I've read some of the emails that they'd sent, and I've just said to them, you either need to get better or you need to leave because or just do not send emails. That's just just not your job.

But it also is it's just important that whether it's face to face, on the phone, online communications, they represent everything about you and your business. Therefore, if they stink, you stink. And that's it sounds terrible. And that's why everything they do, it must fit the brand of your business. So if you're a really beige, subpar, budget, discount, podiatry business, not that any of them would listen to this podcast, so we can talk about them.

But they might have the weaned in vinegar, toothless person at the front counter. It may fit it may fit their brand. But if you're trying to lift the brand of your business and trying to keep a certain standard, like a premium standard around what you're doing, spend the time to employ the right person and just make sure they look, feel, and sound the the same way that your business is trying to look, feel, and sound.

Yeah. Think you make a good point. They are representing what your practice is. You know, you are the face of the business and of the practice, but that's that first person they're gonna run into or get on the phone call with or, you know, talk to via email. So it has to it has to all communicate the right messages in in the right mood in order to make sure that they have a great patient experience.

Yeah. And like, I've had receptionists in the past that are all varying sizes. I've had large ones. I've had small ones. I've had skinny ones.

I've had athletic ones. But the the main part I was looking for, even if they were larger than life, they still just they were outgoing, so it fit the brand that we were trying to create. Now if we hadn't been a % full on sports clinic, they may not have fit the brand. So that's why it's really important. But it's also whoever you employ, regardless of what their past skills and experience are, is make sure you have a well thought out training program, and it must include a written manual, something for them to follow that they can learn from it and take their own notes.

Our, I think, reception training manual was, like, a 80 or 220 pages. And that was that was like the bible. This is the bible of how you work as a receptionist in our clinic. And in my with my coaching clients, a lot of them had copies of it. I'll give them a copy because I'll work through it with them especially if they're employing a receptionist.

Yeah. It's super important to to have that training manual because if you don't have that, you're kinda having to spend more time like a lot of back and forth. But if you have kind of a standard training program that they kind of know how to operate within the clinic, then there's kind of, you know, they can go directly to that manual. Obviously, you can provide some face to face feedback at times, but having that built out as a is a huge resource for, you know, the manager of practice and for use as the practice owner.

Yeah. And how we used to use it, we would have the manual setup then we'd say, use this manual to do everything. Every task that you're probably gonna do as a receptionist is in this manual. As you're doing it, take your own notes. If something doesn't make sense, yeah, ask a question, clarify it, write it down.

When we think you're at that point where you probably don't use the manual anymore, we're gonna take the manual back from you, and we use that to then write the next edition. So all the extra notes that they wrote in there, that was how we updated our manual. So we used their training as a basis for for future training. But another important part with anyone that's working at your front counter is they put that there's gotta be ongoing podiatry education, and there's gotta be a willingness for them to learn. They're they're keen about podiatry.

And I think chiropractors do it better than anybody. You go to their front counter or you talk to anyone who works at the front desk in a chiropractic office, and they drink the Kool Aid like nobody else. They they're like, I don't know, like a little cult. Have you ever met them?

I've not been to a chiropractor before, so no, I don't really know what the experience is like there.

Okay. So but I've had patients who who work at chiropractic clinics, and they just live, eat, and breathe chiropractic. That's how you want your receptionist as well. When they're working for you, the person at the front counter has got to be keen to learn about podiatry, and they've gotta be keen to keep learning about it. And when they're talking about podiatry, they they talk about it in a positive way.

The same way a receptionist front counter person front counter person at a chiropractic clinic talks about chiropractic. You just want them to or be singing from the same hymn sheet.

No. I think that makes a lot of sense, and some of the conferences I've been to over the last year, there's different kind of podiatry and associates or assistance tracks, which I think is really, really helpful to help. Like you said, have them be engaged, have them come out to, you know, a day or two of a meeting so they can feel like they're learning about what's happening in the profession. And obviously, there's probably some other successful clinics and other assistants and front desk folks that are at these meetings that they can kind of, you know, learn some best practices from and maybe share information to really help kind of uplift the entire profession as a whole.

Yeah. And I think that's why sometimes, like, when I look at all the receptions we ever had in our podiatry business, my wife was the best by far. Just killed it. And the reason she was the best, only because we we ate and breathed podiatry. She was by my side all the time.

She, yeah, was in the clinic doing her thing, but was always asking questions, figuring out what I was doing. She really understood what I did as a podiatrist. Now she now works at an OT clinic. And same thing now. She is so invested in what they do.

She comes home all the all the time and says in between patients, she'll go in there and she'll be watching what they're doing and she's constantly learning. That's the sign of a good front desk person is they they learn the basics, but they just keep wanting to know more. They're always ask asking questions.

Yeah. The the curiosity, the intellectual curiosity, and the willingness to continue learning on the job is is vital.

So other simple things, they need to be able to greet patients with a big smile. Give them a smile. If they got a terrible smile, maybe they shouldn't be on the front desk. Have them working at the bank or something. But you wanna be greeted by by a big smile.

And other things is they they need to know how to handle common podiatry and non podiatry questions. That's important. And because they shouldn't be coming to you constantly, they may be asked a question, they know the answer. Ask another question, they may not know the answer. They come to you.

They get the response, they pass that information on, they learn from that, and then they come and ask you the same question again and again. And that's how you know when somebody is improving as a front desk person. The questions they ask you get less and less because they're learning as they go. And they and they wanna be on that that pathway. But if they are coming to you, asking the same dumb question four times after being being there for a month, then you really gotta question their intelligence.

Yeah. Are they the right person? Are they are they really taking the information and do they care?

No. They have to take initiative, right? It's you know, you're you're willing to help them along the course, but it's at some point they have to be able to think on their feet and kind of when it's you know, when the patient is asking a question they have to be able to come up with some answers at some point.

Yeah. And other simple things they should be doing. And like I said, this is a podiatry marketing podcast. I I do think your front desk person is a whole party of marketing because it's part of your brand. So it's being able to handle complaints, being able to handle price shoppers.

These are things that they need to learn, and you should have systems in place to teach them. And the purpose of having a front desk person, the reason that you've got them there, is to make your life easier, not to make your life more difficult. And I know some people have employed people in the past, and they wonder why they did it because they seem to be doing even more work, and that's not the purpose. So if a podiatrist is running late, if a patient is running late, they need to know how to manage and handle that. It should should all be part of their job.

And it's also important that the person you employ, they need to understand they represent you in the clinic and also outside the clinic. So how they behave when they're outside the clinic is also really, really important. And that's something they need to be aware of that, yes, they work for you from nine to five or 08:30 to 05:30, but they also still represent your clinic outside of the business.

Yeah. That's huge. You know, they need to be you're an important member of the community and your reputation. You kind of pass along trust to the person that work the people work in your clinic, right? So if they're you know doing things in the community that kind of kind of cause distrust or aren't kind of in line with your kind of values and the values of the clinic, you could run into issues with a potential receptionist or an assistant.

Yeah. So and that's why it's important to choose the right person and learn a little bit more about them. And I think it's it's fine to go into their social media pages and do a little bit of stalking Because if if they were activists in some way, and it goes right against your own beliefs or right against what your clinic represents, okay, it it they're doing that in their own time, but it still represents your clinic. So it's it's important to understand that. And This is a big warning I'm gonna give at the end here.

Never make your receptionist your practice manager unless they are qualified for that position. Some people just think, oh, because they've been there the longest, they automatically become practice manager. You may have had a practice manager and they've left, and the person at the front desk just thinks they're automatically gonna get that position because they've been there. That's not how it works. They are two completely different roles.

A practice manager manages the practice and manages people. The front desk person is looking after the front desk. They're they're not one and the same. So to me, it was always if someone wanted to be a practice manager, which I never had one actually, I did for a very short period of time. It was a receptionist who became the practice manager that lasted about three months.

Because all of a sudden, as soon as the practice manager hat went on, it was like, oh, no. I don't need to do anything around here anymore. So it didn't work out. But they must to be to become the practice manager, they must undertake management training or have previous qualifications in that area. Like I said, it's not just time of working at the front counter.

And if they don't have the qualifications, you just make them your senior receptionist. Don't make them the practice manager. And, also, I think if you if you're the business owner and you're in the business, and you may have cut your days back a little bit because you're now managing and looking after the practice, You're the practice manager. You don't need another one. So that that was always just my thing.

What do you reckon, Jim?

Yeah. I mean, I've I've one of the kind of situations I've heard that people run into is that when they buy or they take over practices that they kind of inherit the staff. So I'm kinda curious to hear from you. When you kind of inherit staff, how do you assess or determine who to keep around and whether someone is, you know, with the brand with your brand or not?

Oh, that is a really, really good question. I think there's two parts to that. One, you buy somebody's practice and the owner is now gone. They need to learn that you're now the new business owner, and they do it your way. It doesn't matter what happened in the past.

They need to do it your way. And I reckon if you get any backlash from someone, you get rid of them. You just you're easy to get rid of them because especially practice managers, they think that they know better than you and you have a certain mindset of what you wanna do. Now if you don't know how the practice runs, you wanna keep them there to understand how it works. But once you understand it and you're then starting to make changes, if they don't wanna make the change, then you've gotta let them go and then find somebody else.

The other part to it will be sometimes where you'll buy into a practice and you're a partner, and the practice managers in the front desk listen to the partner, the previous owner, and won't listen to you. And that is exactly the same thing that you need to make them very aware that if you're equal partners with the other person, you can equally fire them just as easy. And the sooner they understand that, then and then you need to talk to your business partner about it as well to make sure that have that meeting with them. Pull them all in. Tell them what the visions that you have for the clinic.

If they don't feel that they can be part of that vision, the door is open. They can leave. But I'd never I'd never really bought a practice that came with staff. I know people that have bought practice, and they'll just let they let everybody go, and everybody has to reapply for their job. It's not a given.

They buy the practice unstaffed, but they tell everyone to apply. And based on the interview, they'll say whether they're gonna keep them or not. To be tough. Yeah. Definitely.

Okay. I hope it well, I hope if you listen to this, you got something from it. If you have any questions, reach out to Jim. And what are our email addresses on here, Jim?

If they go to podiatry.marketing, there's a a form that people can fill out and the questions will come directly to us and who can either answer them. You know, I can forward them over to Tyson for him to answer or can answer maybe online if we get enough questions. Maybe have a q and a episode at some point on the podiatry marketing podcast.

That could work. Or they go to your website podiatry growth.

They can.

Or they go to my website tysonfranklin.com. Yep. If they have any questions. Okay, Jim. Wrap it up for this week, and I look forward to talking to next week.

Sounds good, Tyson. Okay. See you. Bye now.

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