Treat customers well, with personalized attention at every touchpoint.  

Have a professional, user-friendly website for them to learn more about your hearing clinics, provide a friendly experience when scheduling customers’ appointments by phone or offer an easy-to-navigate online scheduling experience. 

Then, have welcoming staff greet customers warmly when they enter your hearing clinics and have professional, compassionate audiologists take exceptional care of them during their appointments.  

Offer personalized solutions to meet each customer’s unique needs and budget parameters.

Ensure meaningful conversations with customers.  

Your staff should do more than just diagnose conditions and offer hearing aid options. They should explain things in terms that patients can understand, using both verbal and nonverbal cues to make patients feel comfortable and valued.  

Make eye contact, shake their hand, explain what’s happening, and answer their questions. Be reassuring and respectful.  

Be patient, and don’t rush through appointments.  

Make each customer feel like they’re the most important person in the world.

While HCPs need to explain key information to their customers, they also need to listen to each customer’s needs, concerns, questions, and complaints.    

Interestingly, 83% of customers feel more loyal to organizations that respond to and resolve their complaints.  

Take time to really listen to your customers so you can provide the right solutions, resolve issues, and offer exemplary customer care.  Remember: empathy and compassion are critical in the healthcare industry.  

Even if they have complaints that you can’t resolve (e.g., they disliked a previous audiologist), appease them by listening to their concerns and letting them know you hear them – and you’ll provide a much better experience. 

Automate your processes to maximize efficiency. While you never want to take away human interaction completely, it’s wise to use innovative software to streamline operations, improve business outcomes, and boost customer care.  

Digital tools can help improve everything from scheduling to billing and reimbursement processes. These tools can also make appointments more productive, as the HCP can quickly access and update customers’ information. 

Using a disjointed tech stack creates more work (and headaches) for a hearing clinic’s staff.  

Instead, rely on an integrated system like Auditdata's audiological software, which allows audiologists and their teams to follow consistent workflows, easily access customer information, receive helpful reminder nudges so they consistently follow best practice healthcare and have centrally located information that all staff members can access.  

Auditdata’s best-in-class, integrated solutions provide exceptional functions, accuracy, and security, helping your hearing clinic’s staff provide the most superior service and care. 

Your hearing clinic must maximize each audiologist’s time while minimizing each customer’s wait time.  

If a customer must wait for 30 minutes (or longer) past their appointment time, they’ll likely be frustrated and angry before they even see their audiologist. Seemingly “small” details like keeping your schedule on track are monumentally important to your customers. If they have to wait for a long time to be seen, they will likely not return to your hearing clinics, opting to see a different (more efficient) audiology provider in the future.  

Manage offers an appointment scheduler with the most advanced resource scheduling capabilities in the marketplace, allowing hearing clinics to resolve three huge challenges in the audiology industry – staffing, optimization and waiting times. 

An effective way to make customers feel heard and valued is to ask them for feedback – and then use their input to improve hearing clinic operations.  

Ask open-ended questions (rather than questions with a “yes” or “no” response), such as how they think your hearing clinic’s staff are doing, what you do well, and what could be improved.  

Be sure your team actively monitors, reads, and responds to customer reviews.  

Assess customers’ responses and look for common themes – such as complaints about long wait times or rude staff – so you can take steps to improve.  

Customers often talk (or post) about their experiences – whether good or bad – and can influence others to visit (or avoid) your hearing clinic based on their own experiences.  

Use reporting to make your business transparent by providing metrics from key areas of your business, empowering hearing clinic owners to make fact-based business decisions.  

Leverage this valuable tool to capture and assess relevant data that can help you better understand customer behavior.  

For instance, do you have a high “no-show” rate? Perhaps you need to improve your reminder protocols, using automated processes to send emails and texts in the days leading up to an appointment.  

If a high percentage of customers don’t return to your hearing clinic after their first visit, examine why that may be.  

Analyzing data is key to understanding whether customers are happy – and taking proactive steps to fix any problems. 

There are four standard reports available in Auditdata Discover, designed to provide an overview of key areas of your business:

• New client conversion report
• Marketing report
• Sales trend report
• Service provider hourly report

While audiology providers can “look good on paper” with extensive experience, be sure they have the “soft skills” – like compassion and kindness – that your hearing clinic needs to succeed. Yes, your staff should have the right skills for the job, but they should also have a friendly, compassionate personality.  

Each staff member should make customers feel comfortable, valued, and important. And your team members should be polite, patient, empathetic, and positive. They should work hard to develop strong relationships, which will boost customer satisfaction, happiness, and loyalty.