EP. 19: How to have an amazing client onboarding experience in your Private Practice [SOLO]

Show Notes

In this episode of Dietitian Turned Designer, I share my secrets to streamlining your client onboarding in your private practice. I discuss the different ways to set up your website for client inquiries, such as using discovery calls or questionnaires. I also dive into the power of Practice Better, a system that can revolutionize your client onboarding process. Join me as we explore how to save time and improve client satisfaction through some awesome onboarding techniques!

 

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What is Tech Savvy Dietitian: Websites, Local SEO & Marketing for Dietitians in Private Practice?

Websites, local SEO, and marketing strategy for dietitians in private practice. Hosted by Courtney Vickery, web designer and dietitian, helping you build a site and online presence that actually gets you clients.

In each episode, we'll tackle the practical side of private practice: websites that actually convert, tech tools that don't give you headaches, and strategies to streamline your workflow. Whether you're drowning in admin tasks or just starting your practice, we're here to help you spend less time managing your business and more time doing what you love - helping your clients.

Join us as we chat with successful dietitians and practice management experts who've figured out how to make technology work for them, not against them. We'll share real solutions for real practices, focusing on what actually works in the world of weight-inclusive care.

From fixing your scheduling nightmares to making your website work harder for you, Tech Savvy Dietitian: Websites, Local SEO & Marketing for Dietitians in Private Practice brings you practical strategies you can implement right away. Because your time is better spent helping clients, not fighting with tech.

  Hi everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of Dietician Turn Designer. I actually already recorded this episode, a 30 minute episode, only to find out there was no audio. So here is take two, and here is just a little reminder that even someone who loves tech and does tech all the time, Makes mistakes, , then it's totally okay.

So what we're talking about today is a way to simplify your client onboarding. . and doing that with different systems. We're gonna talk about practice better first. That is the one that I use and therefore I am the most familiar with. I've talked about practice better a lot on this show. , I'm a practice Better Stand.

I love it. , I have said before I wish that there was an equivalent that I could use for my design studio because I cannot find anything that does all the things that practice better does. , It does so much that I think a lot of us don't even realize it can do it. I wanted to kind of go through and show you how I have it set up and hope that it will help you set it up for your clients so that you can get feedback about how much they loved the onboarding process, which we don't really hear that often.

The first thing is to think about how you want people to reach out to work with you when it comes to your website, especially. I've done it all the different ways. You can do just a discovery call. You can do a discovery call and have them fill out a questionnaire at the same time. Or you could just have them fill out the questionnaire, sort of like an application and don't do a discovery call.

And I wanna walk through all three of those. So if you wanna do just a discovery call, this is what I did in the very beginning, and again, none of these are right or wrong. It really just depends on how you have things set up and what stage of business you're in. In the very beginning, I wanted everyone to come and work with me.

I just did discovery calls and would try to get people to sign on, and I had the time to do it right. As I begin to get more clients, I had less time for discovery calls and I wanted to have the ability to do a little bit more screening. And I did that by adding a questionnaire. And the way that the questionnaires are set up in practice better, you can set up something called conditional logic, and that means depending on how they answered the previous question, it will determine what you show them next.

For example, I'm pulling up my questionnaire now, and I ask things about what state are they in? I say, you know, due to licensure laws, I can only work with clients who live in, and I list out all the states that I can work with. Do you live in any of these states? Yes or no? That question right there, I.

Could disqualify someone from being able to work with you. You could have it set up to where if they say no, then the questionnaire, all the other questions go away, and at the end of the questionnaire, you have a text box that kind of goes through all the reasons why, , the questions would've gone away and why it's not a good fit.

Other questions that I ask? I only work with adults that are 18 and older. , my approach is based in intuitive eating and is not a weight loss program. Are you open to exploring this approach? My version's a lot longer than that, but that's essentially the question. And if they say no, absolutely not.

Then the questions after that disappear. And they get a little message that says, you know, I wish you the very best on finding the practitioner that works right for you. You can also, have a list of, people that you refer to in your area, if that would be helpful. And then I, for example, don't take insurance.

So I ask, do you understand that I only take private pay clients and I don't file insurance? Please acknowledge this. And then since I work with EM disorders, I have a question about that too. I say, have you been diagnosed with an EM disorder? And if they say yes, then a question pops up that otherwise wouldn't.

And it says, if you are in e sort of recovery, Please acknowledge that you understand. I require patients to have a therapist and physician on our team as we work together, and they can say, I understand, or they can say, I do not agree. If they say, I do not agree, the rest of the questions disappear, and the little message comes up that says, if you're currently in recovery and you're not willing to work with a therapist and a physician, then we're not the right fit for you.

We wish you the very best, et cetera, et cetera. So those kind of questions can really save you a lot of time and a lot of emails back and forth and calls, et cetera. Having those questions kind of do the screening for you and then deciding, do you wanna do a discovery call or not, because you can do this with or without it.

Like I said in the very beginning, I did discovery calls, then I did discovery calls with the question questionnaire, and then I just took away the discovery call and only did the questionnaire when I had it set up that way. I had templates that I created in Gmail so that I wasn't having to retype the same one every time, and I would automatically send them whichever one was the most appropriate.

So if they were a good fit, then I would have a template that I sent them that says, Hey. Here is the link to schedule your first session, et cetera, et cetera. Now onto the onboarding part. The way I have it set up, practice better, we've already done the inquiries section. Next we have our services set up so that there is a service for an initial nutrition consultation that they can schedule pay for, et cetera.

and then you go to my programs and create a program. Now, caveat here is that you have to be on a certain practice, better plan to be able to do programs and courses. I will say you, I, you don't have to do the evergreen one. Is that easier? You don't have to think about it. Yes, but. You know, there are ways to get around that.

You can use a fixed date program. What I was doing was having the fixed date program, but have it go out as long as it will let you, and then just setting a reminder on your calendar to extend it every time it gets close to that. And that's how you can use the fixed date program. I create a program and it says, welcome to Victory Wellness Onboarding.

And I'm gonna go through all the things that I include in that as well. But just to get you started, you have your service and then you have your program and the way that you have those two things automatically, . Go to your client is you create a package with just that one session. Unless of course you do packages, then you can just add them all there.

But I didn't do packages. I was doing session by session. So I created a package that was just for initial consultation and it included just that one session and this one program, which is the onboarding program. And you go into that package and, set up all the settings, add the onboarding, add the initial consultation.

I also recommend, disclaimer, this is not legal advice, but I recommend going ahead and putting your terms and conditions and risk and release of liability as the two forms they fill out to even schedule this. That way it is, Not something where they've paid for a session, but they haven't signed the terms and conditions, and then they want a refund and they haven't signed the terms and conditions yet.

You just kind of don't wanna be in that situation, so just go ahead and have it all at one time. They have to, , sign both of those things and it gets them the package. Now they can book the session and they can use the onboarding to understand the whole process now for the onboarding. . Again, think of it like a course and in practice, whatever they call 'em, programs, but it's like a course.

And what we're going to include on that is that first email that they get sent after they have been added to this package is going to say, welcome. You're going to include information or even a video explaining what comes next. And what comes next is they go to this program and they start it out. Like a course, and they do the welcome module first.

In that welcome module, you have your welcome video of you. Don't overthink this. Just pretend you're talking to a client at your desk and just the way you would, don't try to make it scripted or anything like that. Just talk to them the way you would talk to a client if you were onboarding them and explaining the process to them and welcoming them.

Then I have images that I made in Canva. That are part of a welcome packet. They are not specific to any person. It is the general process that everyone goes through. So it has like a cover picture. It says welcome packet. Then it has, let's get started, and it has all the links to, for example, their client portal, my website, and my social media.

And then I have a little intro to myself. This is very, very short, just one or two sentences saying, you know. Hi, I'm Courtney. I'm the founder and owner. Et cetera. Then I just have a little quote saying, I'm so excited to work with you and honored that you've chosen me, and then I give them the next three to four steps that happen now.

So number one, schedule your initial intake session, because remember, they've . At this point got the package. They may not have scheduled the session, depending on how you have the setting set up. And just tell them, you know, it lasts 60 minutes. You're gonna review the dieting history and their relationship with food body, et cetera, et cetera, however you work.

And then I. They need to complete the practice better. Client onboarding, and this is the part that they go to programs and I, for example, have a section on just forms and ask them to complete 'em 24 hours prior to their session. And then I ask them to review the tutorials and tips in here and download the better app.

The next page talks about communication. This way it's very clear exactly how you expect them to communicate with you. For example, if you don't want them calling you and asking you questions, maybe you don't want them emailing you and asking you questions. You want them to only use the practice better chat, which is what I prefer.

So I say that on here so that it's clear and everybody knows. . I tell them, when they can expect a response, how scheduling works and that I prefer for them to chat with me and practice better. Then at the end of that welcome packet is their checklist and all the things summarized that they need to do.

They need to access their portal, schedule their first session if they haven't already. You complete all the forms and waivers 24 hours before the session and download the app. And then I just give them some links to some tools and resources. So the next module. after that one, since I don't take insurance, I, at the time was partnering with Reimbursed.

Now there's several other options you could look at, but I, , Had a section on here that explained how to use reimburses so they could potentially get reimbursed, , for their out-of-pocket expenses through their insurance. And I just went through the information that they needed, and this is information that I got from reimburses website just to make it clear and straightforward and understandable so that you're not saying

Hey, maybe you could try this thing called reimburse, and then they're like, what the heck is reimburse? And they don't know what to do. You just go ahead and have it in this onboarding program so that they have all the information they need, and they aren't asking you a lot of questions when you can just have the information ready for them already.

Then I create images just to make it look nicer on that next module for the paperwork, and I just list out, you know, here's all the paperwork you need to have completed, and it's attached to this module. And then I use the practice better tutorials from YouTube. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Don't put so much pressure on yourself to make everything absolutely perfect.

You can use the practice better. Tutorials. I give you permission, . , so I just have like, welcome to the client's, , portal and there's a tour of the portal with their video embedded there. Then I just kind of chose the ones I thought were relevant to my clients. So how to join a video session. How to view the shared session notes.

'cause at the end of every session I share a section of the notes that has their goals in it. And so this video showed them how to access that. , and then if I assign them task, there's a video explaining how that works and then explaining how to use the chat function. So again, this way they are wowed because

They aren't confused. It's very clear. They know exactly what's happening, exactly how to use this. Now, will every single client do this process the way they're supposed to? Probably not. That's okay because the majority of them will, and they will thank you for it because it'll make their life so much easier.

Now if you don't have practice better and you're like, well, I wanna do something like this, but I don't have practice better, there are other ways to do this. So if you, for example, have a Google workspace and you've signed a B A A and it's HIPAA compliant, you could use Google Forms as your inquiry form.

And then for the onboarding piece, there's a couple of things you could do. Once they book, however you have them book,

You could have them be sent an email with your welcome video and then under that a link. And now this link could be done in, I'm thinking of three different ways. One, you could recreate this kind of presentation that I've just went through with you, instead of having it as a program or a course, it could be in Google Slides presentation.

Or you could use Canva. 'cause Canva has public links and it could play the videos, it could have links in it, and you could just have it be sent directly to that while also letting them know that their specific forms are coming to them in whatever E M R that you use. So it's still an onboarding process.

It's still clear and tells 'em exactly what to do, even if it's not all within your E M R, because it may not have that functionality. You still have a really nice process because you've got the welcome email that explains everything with a video, and then a link to slides that go through everything they need to know and the link to all the forms they need to fill out.

The other thing is, . You could put it on your site as a page. That's obviously not . You know, public or something that you have just in your menu. It's a page that just exists and it can have all of that same stuff embedded on your page. Again, it's not specific to the client, it is just your welcome packet images, or P D F, you could say, download your welcome packet here, and it just has all the instructions in it.

Then embed all those tutorials with, , headers explaining the different sections of the tutorial. So one section is here's how to use the chat function. One section is here's how to join a video call, et cetera. Again, just make it as easy as possible so that they know exactly what to expect, and also make it as easy as possible for you.

because while this may take some time upfront, it's gonna save you a ton of time in the long run because they aren't coming to you and asking you a lot of questions or feeling like frustrated because they don't know what to do next. They know exactly what to expect. They know exactly what they need to do and how to communicate with you, and you have saved so much time in the end.

So let me know if you have any questions. I know this wasn't visual, so if you want me to do a tutorial on how to do any of these things, just let me know. You can send me an email or you can send me a message on Instagram. I love chatting with you, so I hope you have a great week and I'll see you next time.