When Your Patients Become Customers
Any entrepreneur who starts a business which serves the public will grapple with the issues that arise with serving the public - the public! For people like you who have largely spent their career, until now, in a ‘system’ (mostly in the NHS) it’s a big shift in mentality, Your patients are still your patients but they are now also paying customers, with different expectations. Oh, and you have to run a business as well.
It ‘Ain’t Easy!
Treating people is only one element of running a successful aesthetics practice. That’s the bit you can do easily, that’s your comfort zone and the part you enjoy. But when you start running your own aesthetics clinic, there are a myriad of other things that will need your attention:
Advertising
Branding
Social Media
Accountancy
Reporting
Patient management
Insurance
Prescribing
Training
Procurement
Premises
Communications
Training
Hiring/Firing
It’s easy to romanticise that setting up your own clinic will be a doddle and anything would be better than those horrible shifts you’re used to, but it’s no walk in the park - you’re on shift constantly. It’s not just one job, it’s lots of different jobs as well as your main job. And you don’t get served patients on a dish, you have to find them, retain them and deal with the drama that comes with them!
Mentality Step-Change
By virtue of the fact that you’re a medically qualified professional first and an aesthetics practitioner second, you’re inherently an altruistic person who is conditioned to help people, and you’re naturally someone who wants to help people. You have chosen a path which is driven by your personal attributes of being caring, compassionate, empathetic and an advocate for other people. You still need all of those qualities to become a successful aesthetics practitioner, but you will now also have to employ business and customer service skills that might not come so naturally - and become your own advocate. You need resilience, confidence and self-assurance. You need to be organised, proactive, committed, sometimes ruthless, and at times blunt. You’ll face new challenges that come from running your own business, sometimes they aren’t fun. You might encounter challenges from competitors, difficult patients and even trolling and criticism from people who you don’t even know. It’s a hustle and hard graft and it can take a long time to establish your business and many years to become profitable. Many don’t succeed and go back to employment - but many do succeed and absolutely love it!
Your Environment
You’ve probably also spent a long time in a system where there is a process for everything, there’s a hierarchy, management, mandates, guides, policies and procedures. There’s a clear escalation system for problems. When you start running your aesthetics clinic, you have nobody. Just you. It can feel lonely, you can feel isolated and you’ll feel concerned that you’re failing. Practitioners do find it daunting, particularly when they have liked the stability of being paid by someone else every month and knowing at the end of the day the system isn’t their responsibility! Don’t worry if you feel like this, it’s normal and very few people feel immediate satisfaction and success, there are lots of wobbles.
Top Tip: Find allies. Don’t be threatened by other practitioners near you, reach out to them. Suggest a coffee/chat - learn from each other and use each other for support. Glowday speaks to hundreds of practitioners every day and we know the majority will always offer their help and support to other practitioners and enjoy being in a community of people who are doing the same as them. GlowdayPRO also connects you with other practitioners and has a private Facebook group for medical aesthetic pros where you can seek advice and ask for support. We have a huge network of over 1000 medically-qualified aesthetic pros who we are able to connect you with and we have already helped a number of practitioners who need help from other practitioners for complications and general issues that arise when you’re running a business on your own.
Value What You Do
As you’re not from a commercial background, it’s possible you're going to feel uncomfortable, maybe even shy and embarrassed about asking patients to pay. We know practitioners will often be apologetic when it comes to the payment part of a treatment! It’s not uncommon for practitioners to finish an incredible treatment and when it comes to the payment say: “Right, yes, that’s £250 - is that alright sorry? I know that’s a bit steep - tell you what I’ll give you some money off.”
Don’t do this.
We talked about pricing in this article and why what you charge doesn’t matter. Don’t undermine your experience, skills, time and expertise. Patients know what it costs, you’ve told them in advance. You charge what you charge and there’s a reason for it!
Set Your Boundaries
We know that practitioners are kind and forgiving by nature - medical pros find it much harder to take a tough stance on payment terms and attendance than, say, a hotelier or caterer would. It’s our experience that practitioners do not like any form of confrontation or complaints, so tend to avoid difficult conversations around discounts or late-cancellations/no-shows or unrealistic expectations. You’re afraid it will impact your reputation or that you’ll lose patients, so a lot of what is, quite frankly, unacceptable behaviour by patients is ignored.
Don’t do this.
This is where you have to behave like a commercial business and not a healthcare provider. If you do not set boundaries you will be continually taken advantage of. It won’t negatively impact your reputation, it will only enhance it and fuel your credibility and status.
GlowdayPRO enables you to set late-cancellation and no-show fees; it’s made very clear to a patient they will be charged a percentage of the treatment cost if they don’t show up. It’s automatically collected for you, by us, which demonstrates to the patient your time and service is valuable.
While GlowdayPRO of course gives you the option to provide discounts and there are times when this is appropriate, don’t make it a habit or an expectation from your patients. Your business is the same as any other business selling a product or service and discounts aren’t a standard feature. We don’t walk into Tesco and ask them for a discount on our shopping, we don’t haggle with an optometrist over the price of a pair of glasses, we don’t expect a discount every time we get our hair cut or nails done. Say no. Say it firmly. You won’t be asked again because you’ve made your boundaries clear.
Unhappy Customers
On the whole your patients are going to be delighted and feel incredible after their treatment. You will have clearly communicated what the treatment is, how it works, and the kind of results you expect to see are. Consent will be thorough and informed.
However, there will always be some people who are disappointed and some of those will complain and it can often feel confrontational and uncomfortable.
“I had Profhilo 4 weeks ago and I don’t see any difference - not what I would expect for £400!”
For many medical practitioners this is a stressful scenario. After all, in healthcare you didn’t tend to get patients complaining - certainly not directly to you. It’s not uncommon to feel worried, maybe a bit panicky and to question your own ability and skills.
Don’t do this.
In the commercial world there will always be unhappy customers. There will always be someone whose expectations aren’t realistic and they haven’t listened to what they’re being told, no matter how explicit you were about results and what they can and can’t expect.
Don’t let these complaints wear you down or consume too much of your mind (unless of course you really have messed up!). Of course you have options such as pointing out the difference in the photos you have taken, explaining why they aren’t seeing what they expected and perhaps, yes, in some cases agreeing with them and suggesting other ways in which their concern could be tackled.
However, be mindful of the professional complainers, the people who will never be satisfied and do not be shy of politely suggesting you’re not the right practitioner for them and they should look elsewhere for their treatments.
Customers Want More Than Patients
In a healthcare setting you don’t tend to want patients to come back. Your job is to fix them and send them home and hopefully never see them again. But now you’re running a business you need your patients to come back time and time again. Loyalty is the key to success. How you treat them and the relationships you form with them will be crucial . As a nurse, GP, dentist or pharmacist it’s unlikely you’d be exchanging mobile numbers with your patients so they could message you with any questions. It’s highly unlikely that your patients would message you because they weren’t happy with the outcome of the treatment you gave them, or text you on a Friday night to see if you can fit them in next week. We talk about how important it is to develop a relationship with your patients here - however there are boundaries you can adopt. By using an online booking system such as GlowdayPRO where patients are able to manage their own appointments, book in with you without any messaging and compete admin in their own account area, you can dramatically decrease the amount of personal admin that comes with running an aesthetics clinic. Patients will respect your requests to use ‘the system’ to manage any logistics and appointment requests - believe it or not they quite like clear instructions, rules and being told what to do! Plus you get the added advantage of appointment reminders being sent out for you, so you see fewer late cancellations and no-shows.
Reviews are your reward and make everything worth it!
It’s All Worth It!
The transition from just having patients to having patients who are also customers AND running your own business is a big step. However, at its core, running an aesthetics business is as rewarding, if not more rewarding, than what you’re used to. You’re at the forefront of a positive and empowering industry which changes people’s lives. You’re using all those wonderful attributes that led you into medicine to make a real impact and force both a tangible and intangible difference. It’s not just about the aesthetic, you’re healing people. You’re selling a new feeling - whether that’s confidence, sexyness, self-esteem, relief, happiness or positivity. And helpfully, GlowdayPRO bottles that all up for you! Those reviews we collect for you soon start adding up and you see it’s worth it and that this business is what you were always meant to do. You’ve got this!