How to Use Text Messaging Properly

Hey everyone, Dr. Vince here, and, uh, welcome to this interview with Steve Weber from Zingit. And, um, welcome Steve, how you doing today?

Doing fantastic, thanks for having me, Dr. Vince.

Yeah, no, absolutely, I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're, um, a busy man. Steve's the owner of Zingit. And, um, so Steve, why don't you just tell us, just to start, a little bit about yourself and, uh, maybe something interesting that most people don't know.

Uh, boy, that, that tough part. That's— that last one's a little bit tough. So, you know, a lot of people want to know that— I get the question, how, how did you start Zingit, right? So that's, uh, one I get a lot. And, you know, sometimes people are like, well, is this new? Well, not really. We started Zingit a little over 10 years ago, and I had experience in software, and then I had experience in, uh, working with medical offices in 2 very different businesses. And what I realized was there was really a disconnect for doctors. They were, they were behind the times in communicating. And so we wanted to build a solution that helped them communicate. And, you know, I was already moving into the texting world, and I had an epiphany when my son, who is now 13, was 3, and my wife asked me to take him to the dentist. And I said, yeah, I could take him. And so I got an appointment reminder via text. I'm like, this is cool. And I replied back and I said— they said, you know, please confirm that you'll be there. And I replied back and said, yeah, I'll be there unless we get the 3 feet of snow that they say we're gonna get, because I was in Chicago, right, in the wintertime. And so here I am leaving and I take my son. And for all the listeners out there that, that live in Where you get 3 feet of snow. If you've ever put a toddler in a snowsuit, that's like an experience, right? So, so I got him all bundled up. He's out playing in the snow. We go there. He's excited, right? Nobody's excited to go to the dentist, but he was because he's 3 and it was his first time. And I walk in there and they go, you don't have an appointment. And I said, what do you mean I don't have an appointment? I got a text reminder. And they said, well, it says you canceled the appointment. I said, I didn't cancel the appointment. And they said, well, we don't actually get the response. The response goes to an email and goes to somebody else and this and that. And I said, seriously, so I'm here with my son and you've canceled my appointment? So I went home and I said, you know, this is a problem. The problem is they're not, they're not having real-time conversations, right? It was a one-way system.

Okay.

So that was really the crux. That was the pain point. That was the problem. that we initially wanted to solve 10 years ago. And we were like on the cutting edge of doing real-time two-way conversations over text back then. Now, as you can imagine, with software and developments, and we've just snowballed into this amazing patient engagement solution that we provide today.

Awesome. Well, so it is called Zingit. Why don't you, uh, tell us a little bit about, you know, what it is, what it does, how it works, all that good stuff.

So Zingit basically solves a problem that patients don't answer the phone. And, you know, if you need some stats around that, everybody knows people don't read emails. I mean, I was speaking at a chiropractic event and I was literally getting ready to go up on stage and I looked at the girl's phone next to me. She was very nice. We were chatting, said, what do you do? And then she shows me her inbox. She had 26,000 unread emails in her inbox. Right? 26,000. No joke. I made her stand up in front of the whole group. It was great. So anyway, but then you go past email and then nowadays 54% of adults don't even listen to voicemails. So think about all the offices. So for all the doctors that are out there listening, think about your front desk. Every time they call and leave a voicemail, 1 out of 2 doesn't get heard.

Hmm.

So We set out solving that problem, and the whole key to it was building the integration with the scheduling software, the EHR, the practice management software that that doctor uses.

Right.

Because once you have that integration, now we can automate all kinds of functions. We call them campaigns. And when we do that, we allow the practice to be much more scalable, much more predictable, And less reliant on trying to hire a rock star at the front desk.

Hmm.

Because it's great if you can find that unicorn, but most doctors struggle with that. And so we wanna help take the pain away there and take it and make it more automated for doctors. So that's kind of the backbone. People say, you know, what's the value of Zyngit? It's the integration with your software that allows us to do all these things. What do we do? Well, of course we do simple things like appointment reminders, and we do that better than any of the built-in systems that come with your EHR because they're not customizable. You can't send different messages for different appointment types. You can't send different schedules of reminders. So we can handle all that. But really today what we're seeing is helping to attract new patients through building up your Google reviews. That is a tremendous value because most doctors don't realize that the game has changed. We talk about local SEO and they're like, oh, my website. I'm like, no, actually we're talking more about your Google My Business. And the reason why this is important is 80% of patients are looking at online reviews to evaluate a provider.

Mm-hmm. Okay.

So that means they're searching on Google. Google says that 70% of searches it considers to have local intent. What that means is somebody searching for chiropractor near me, dentist near me, whatever that case may be. That's important because Google then displays a local map that automatically puts you on that local map right next to your competition. We want to make sure you have more reviews than anyone else around you. So that's the goal, right?

Mm-hmm.

So we help you do that. We help you have text conversations from your website when they do go to your website. We'll help you with reactivations or recalls. That's, uh, something that drives a tremendous amount of value. Um, and going on, there's little things like video birthday cards. We love delivering pictures and video, new patient intake information. can all be automated and sent. Online scheduling is available for a number of EHRs. So there's just a, a long tail of all these services that can really help your practice. And one of the ones that's been super valuable over the pandemic, over the last decade it feels like, but I know it's been less than a decade, um, not much, is, uh, what we call our broadcaster. And that allows you to build a group quickly and efficiently, send out a message if you have changes in office hours, changes in procedures, um, even if you have to cancel for an emergency. If it's a smaller practice, you can find everyone on your schedule tomorrow and quickly send them a message. So those are some of the features. There's lots, lots more. And the best thing about Zyngit is it, it's very customizable. So we'll tailor it to how your practice runs.

Okay, that's awesome. I had a quick question. Um, so how do you help build the reviews? Are you, um, you know, sending like customized texts to like, you know, after patients have, you know, their new patient visit or after some type of, you know, maybe a midterm exam or something of that nature? How does— how, how are you helping, um, build reviews? Because I know all doctors know the value of that?

Yeah, so it starts with sending the review at the right time. Okay, so you can tailor who gets a review based off of what type of appointment they're in for. For instance, I might not want to send a review after the very first visit.

Sure.

Now the next step is I don't want a system that sends out a review after every visit because that's going to bug patients.

Yeah.

So we control how many review requests could be sent to any patient in a period of time, no matter how many times they come into the office. So those are a couple first steps. Next, text is going to work way better than email. I mean, just open rates, it's the difference between 16 to 22%. If you look at Pew, Pew Research on email open rates from doctors to patients, Um, versus 99% on text.

Okay.

So we want to send it through text, we want to automate it, we want to send it at the right time to the right patient. Next, we've got to make sure that what we in the software business call the user experience is super easy. So sometimes people will call this frictionless, right? So there's less friction. So with our system, you go into an interface where you can tap with your finger Give stars, post the review in literally 2 clicks. That is 3. It's pick the stars, next, post. Right now, other systems, maybe there's a back and forth via text. Like I send you a text, you reply with a 5, I send you another text with a link. What happens is each one of those back and forths, you lose people. There's a drop-off, right?

Mm-hmm.

So, we wanna keep that really consistent. And then to even take it one step further, we know how they interacted with our review funnel. So, if they didn't complete it, we know it, and we have an automatic follow-up the next day to encourage them to complete it if they didn't complete it.

Got it.

So, those are the keys. Our average new office is getting 23 reviews in the first month. We just released on our website a newest case study. I think the office got 430 reviews in 10 months.

Wow, that's incredible.

Yeah, I was pretty shocked myself. So, but, you know, it's all about those key steps. So, when you look at a system, there's tons of reputation management systems. Website providers say they handle reputation management. But you have to manually send it out, you have to upload a file. When it's automated, what I like to say is we're going to get you a ton more reviews without you or the staff doing anything.

Absolutely, that sounds awesome. So when you say, because the, the value of a rockstar, you know, front desk CA is, is, you know, um, huge, but if, you know, it is difficult to get them, so how does Zingit You know, I guess not take the place of them, but how does it elevate that role where they don't have to necessarily be a rock star?

Well, I think there's, there's a couple areas at the front desk from kind of a productivity standpoint. One is the ability to quickly send a text message for any reason right from our web-based interface. So instead of making a phone call, which takes about 2 minutes to call and leave a voicemail, You can send a text in less than 5 seconds. So right there, there's a productivity pickup. If somebody needs to call in, call 30 patients that are on the schedule tomorrow and reschedule them, they can use our broadcast tool to quickly do that in seconds.

Yeah.

Now, when for the doctor looking at the front desk, there's a couple of nice features. With a lot of systems that we integrate with, We can actually automate missed appointment text messages an hour after the appointment is a no-show. In addition to that, one of the biggest things that I talk to doctors about as far as ROI, return on investment, in our system is recalls or reactivations.

Yep.

So this is because when I talk to doctors, I say, do you do this? And they go, yeah, this front desk is supposed to do it. And I said, but do they really do it? And he goes, well, not all the time. So doctors don't want to have to go, hey, have you made those phone calls? Have you done, you know, the— I hear people call it the MIA file. Have you called all the MIA patients? So with our system, we're going to make that systematic every week, and we can customize what you want your recall time frame to be. And then we'll automatically engage those patients each week at a set day and time in the conversation. Your staff just needs to be there to book appointments and have those conversations. So doctors will find in that first month they're reactivating 4 or 5, 10, 12 patients. And if you're a business owner, you can look at that and you can do the math. Yeah, you can calculate the ROI pretty quickly.

That's awesome. So what are the pitfalls? There's obviously other texting services out there. There's texting services integrated with some EMRs. What are some of the pitfalls of those services out there that you've seen, and how does Zynga kind of, you know, fill those gaps?

Well, one of the things that has happened over the last probably 2 years is the cell phone carriers have shifted away from wanting businesses to use what are called short codes. And they're encouraging them to use long codes or regular 10-digit telephone numbers to send their text messages.

Okay.

That used to come with a myriad of delivery problems. The carriers have committed to fix that, and it's really only been in the last 6 to 12 months that you've been able to successfully use a long code, a 10-digit number. So not only do you want to use a long code, You want to use your business telephone number. So at Zingit, we can port over your business telephone number to Zingit. Anybody that texts that number, you're going to get it through Zingit. You're texting them and calling them on the same number. That's important because in a cell phone, you don't get caller ID. You just get a phone number. The only way you get caller ID is for you to create it by saving them as a contact. Then it doesn't display the number anymore. It It'll display the name. So if they've already saved you as a contact for calling your office, then when you text them, it's going to come up with your name. So Office is really like that. You don't get that with a lot of systems. In addition to that, the 2-way conversations— still with most built-in EMR systems, they don't have that. They're a challenge. When people reply, it comes back to an email, then you have to check the email and It's kind of a convoluted process. So those are a couple simple things.

Yeah.

But again, with EMRs, we're really just talking about appointment reminders. So they don't go beyond and do all those other things that we're talking about.

Very cool. And I would— I can absolutely see the value just in having, you know, the doctor's name or the office name pop up on the text versus, you know, Whatever the number is or the short number. So, um, what, uh, so if a doctor, you know, started with a service like this, what, um, you know, what can they expect in terms of, you know, visits, uh, revenue, um, reactivations? Have you kind of done any case studies or, um, you know, have an idea what doctors start to, you know, know, when they— first 90 days, what they start to see in terms of results?

Yeah, I think, you know, to answer that question fairly, you got to know if— what kind of systems the doctor is using today. I mean, if the staff's calling for appointment reminders, they're going to get a tremendous uplift in productivity, right? If they're sending email reminders, they're probably going to get an improvement in no-show rate. So you can calculate the improvement in no-show rate I find that to be difficult for most doctors to get their head around because a lot of them don't track that meticulously on a weekly basis.

Right, right.

And it also is something that's affected by seasonality for a lot of parts of the country. It's affected over a period of time, so you have to look at it in a rolling 90 days. So usually what I talk to folks about is you're going to see a ton of reviews in the first month. But if you want to calculate ROI, for me the easiest place is reactivation of patients.

Yeah.

So, you know, if say for instance you reactivate a patient, you see them 4 times, that may be worth $200 to $300. And in the first month you reactivate 10 patients, you've got $2,000 to $3,000. You know, you've almost covered the whole cost of our service for the year. In the first month. So I would encourage people, if they're curious, to go to zingit.com, and you can go to resources, and there's a ton of case studies there. And there's different types of practices that are in different places. You know, I mentioned the one that got 400 and some odd reviews in the first 10 months. There's another one where a doctor told us he actually needed one less CA after using our service for 6 months.

Oh, wow.

So, you know, that's a big, big cost savings there. So there's a number of different places that you can kind of find that ROI. We even have an ROI calculator that looks at productivity, missed appointment percentage, and reactivation of patients. So you can go play with that as well.

That's awesome. How did you come up with the name Zynga?

That's a good question. I was sitting with a former boss of mine who became a very good friend. And we were at Buffalo Wild Wings in Vernon Hills, Illinois. And we were having a beer. And I said—

As you should at Buffalo Wild Wings.

Yeah. I said, hey, we need to come up with a name. We literally took out a piece of paper and we just started throwing names around. And funny enough, I did have a conversation with him. I hadn't seen him in probably or talked to him in 5 or 6 years. I talked to him a couple of months ago and I was like, hey, what do you think? 10 years later, Zingit's still zinging.

I love it.

What is really funny is we would hear from users of the system when we go out to different events and they come up and they're like, we love our Zings. We want to send out our Zings. We send out our Zings every day. And I was like, wow, that's cool.

Yeah, that is cool. Um, yeah, I would definitely encourage doctors to go check out those case studies because you're right, every practice is different, different parts of the country, all that good stuff. So, um, you know, it's always nice to see what other doctors are doing. Um, so how does a doctor get started? Like, what does that onboarding process look like when they just first start with your service?

So the nice thing is that we've learned over the years that in order to get you going quickly, you need somebody to guide you through it.

Okay.

So you work with an implementation specialist. They'll have an initial setup meeting with you where they'll learn about your practice. They'll ask you configuration questions, and then we're gonna go set all that up for you. Sometimes the next step also includes installing If you use a server-based system like ChiroTouch, installing something on your computer. If you use maybe a web-based system, one of the ones we've seen a lot of people talking about is ChiroSpring. And that's an API-based system, not trying to get technical, but it's a web-based to a web-based system. So that's, we set that up and then we have a 1-hour training where we get on live with your team. We'll answer any questions, we'll record that, we'll make sure everybody has the resources. And at that point, we like to make that kind of the clean switchover. So if you're using a built-in system with your EHR, we'll turn that off and patients will just— there won't be any duplicate services. So usually, I generally tell people it can be done. Like, we could do somebody that wants to get started quickly with a popular system. Like ChiroTouch, we can have them up and going in 2 days. The average is probably about a week.

That's pretty fast. Um, I know with my clients, you know, I always preach about what we use— education-first advertising. So we're, we're trying to lead with value even in our ads themselves and educating patients through patient reports and webinars, pre-consult videos, all this type of stuff. Is, is there a way where You know, when patients create a new patient appointment, um, that they, through the text, maybe it's part of the reminder, but they could also have a link to an introductory video or paperwork, like that type of stuff?

Yeah, that's, that is a very creative use of the platform. Within our system, we have a simple mobile web page builder. What that allows you to do is upload pictures, You can add rows of text, you can add colored backgrounds, you can add thumbnails to videos is what we generally recommend. And so think of it almost like a landing page for your phone. Everybody knows what a landing page is, right? So I go there and I see the thumbnail, I see the headline, and I can just click and watch the video. And so we like to do that with new patients.

Yeah.

We can send, for instance, an intro from the doctor letting them know what to expect. Below that, include a Google Maps button to get directions for a day 1.

Mm-hmm.

If you do a 2-step process, you know, sometimes I talk to doctors that do it all in an initial visit. Some people do it in a day 1, day 2 kind of approach. If you're using a report of findings or doctor's report as a day 2, then maybe a patient success testimonial video is good to send with that appointment reminder. And then below that, we have a widget we put on that mobile webpage that is scrolling your most current reviews.

Oh.

So patient testimonials, social proof, right on top of each other. We believe that helps really boost conversion. Now, if you get into offices that are multi-specialty offices, integrated offices providing other services, you can tailor that messaging by type of appointment. So if you have a different type of appointment for that service, we can then customize the messaging for the reminder.

Yeah, I mean, that's— I think that's great because it's like, you know, if we can start educating the patient and then just getting that engagement, right? If they're clicking around, more engaged, I feel like the more likely they are to first show up for the appointment and be, you know, sign up with the doctor if they're a good, in fact, good candidate for care. So that's pretty cool. Anything else you think that would be valuable for doctors to know? I mean, I feel like we covered a pretty good, you know, whatever overview of the program, and it seems like kind of a no-brainer to me, but I may have missed something in terms of what you're—

You didn't miss it, but I'll give you a little peek behind the curtain. In the next 60 to 90 days, we are rolling out an incredible Incredibly robust intake forms management system and online scheduling platform.

Oh, cool.

Even included with this is going to be a scheduling system. And so what this really was born out of was, number one, online scheduling is super popular. Number two, intake forms are something that everybody needs to use, but nobody has them really adapted for mobile. Their PDFs or things like that. And then, you know, we talk to people that are so excited about online scheduling, and I talk to people that have EHRs, but then they use a simple online scheduling service so their patients can book online.

Yeah.

So now we can take that— you don't need that service anymore, we'll give you that. You get intake forms management with it, and it's integrated with Zenit all in one package. And Dr. Vince, I mean, I could talk for another 30 minutes on how complicated online scheduling is when you have 100 EHR integrations like we have. It becomes very complicated.

I bet.

So what we did is we went out and said, do we want to build this, or do we want to kind of partner with somebody who's really, really good in this space?

Right, right.

So we have sister company that's now being married up with Zyngit. Um, that didn't come out right. Sister and marriage should be used in the same sentence. But anyway, um, it's, you know, it's a podcast, so we should have fun, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So anyway, but that's rolling out and we're super excited about it because it's not, it's not something new. It's a proven system that thousands and thousands of doctors are using. in multiple specialties. And so we're, we're so excited that that's coming out. I think it's going to be a game changer for Zenit because at the price point that we're at, you put all that in there and it becomes a no-brainer. And what this does that's unique is it really brings us down to— we talk to a lot of doctors that are doing it themselves. You know, they've got a really streamlined, simple practice and they don't want to necessarily increase their overhead dramatically, but they do want to have tools like ours. And maybe they're using something like Google Calendar or one of the, you know, basic internet scheduling systems, right? And so now we can bring them in and give them all the tools of Zyngit in a one-stop shop.

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, you just have to have online scheduling these days. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's fairly mainstream now. It'll be Mandatory in 2, 3 years for sure.

So if, if you look at a lot of the systems out there, and I talk to doctors that, you know, they're like, well, my EHR has it, but it's clunky and it doesn't really work for what I need, right? So we knew it was going to be difficult to build. So we found a company that's been doing it for 6 or 7 years with thousands upon thousands of companies, and they figured it out. And, you know, when I show people, I give them an example, right? So when you're doing your online scheduling in our system, there's an option where you can choose— it's literally called Fake It Till You Make It. And when you start out, you don't want to necessarily put your schedule out there and show that you have the whole day free.

Good point.

So, it periodically books appointments automatically.

I like it. I like it.

So, that's the kind of stuff that takes years to, you know, get feedback from your clients and put them into your software. So, we're happy that we're going to come out of the gate with that best-of-breed solution.

I love it. I love it. Yeah. So, speaking of the investment, what is the investment to become a client customer of Zynga?

With Zingit, there's typically— it's $299 a month. It's based off of an annual agreement. You still pay for it monthly. If you want to use our system on a month-to-month basis to try it out, you can do that. It's a little bit more expensive. And then there is a one-time implementation fee to get off and going to have that done-for-you setup process. But here's what I'll do. I know that for your guys that are listening, if they reach out and mention that they were referred by us talking today or they heard of it from you, um, we'll, we'll make sure they get a special promotion. I'm not going to tell them what it is because I can't put it out there because it's not going to go to everybody. Yeah, but if they mentioned, uh, I think Dr. Vince is cool, specifically if they say that.

That would be a great, great catchphrase.

Yeah.

Um, okay, very cool. So how, how can doctors, uh, what should be their next step? Who should they reach out to?

Uh, easiest thing to do is to go to our website and just book an appointment. Okay, the availability of time, so you can put in your info. We're going to ask you a couple questions. We're going to ask you what software you use for EHR practice management. We're going to ask you how many appointments, uh, you do on a weekly basis. That helps us to tailor the demo and the conversation. So if they go to zingit.com, you can press the Book a Demo button and schedule a time. And who knows, you might even get me. I love still talking to doctors. It's one of my favorite things to do.

Very cool. Well, this is awesome. I would highly recommend anybody to reach out to Steve through the website and just learn— at least learn more about this because, again, This type of service, the messaging, the connection with the patients, the scheduling is— it just kind of needs to be part of the practice moving forward if it's not already there. And if it's clunky, it needs to be streamlined. So, Steve, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And any last words?

Nope. I got away without saying something that nobody knows about me. That's right.

You snuck out of that one. Okay, fair enough. All right. Well, hey, take care. Thank you so much again. Again, reach out, find out more about this, and let me know if you have any questions. And you guys all have a great day. We'll talk to you soon. Okay, and we, we're out. Hey, can you hold on one quick second?

Yep.

Okay, all right, cool.

Well, I think that went well, and like I said, I'll get this probably emailed the list next week and Don will get you a landing page link so you can put it in as a button and then that'll automatically mark them as coming from you. And then you can use that as needed.

Awesome. Okay. Well, hey, thank you for your time. It really does sound like a great service. And I, you know, Most doctors, as you know, are still most of the time behind the times, and it sounds like you got a really good end-to-end service. I love the integration of the online scheduling. I don't— I have so many clients that still don't have online scheduling, or they're using Calendly, um, it doesn't integrate with their EMR. And, um, it's—

Yeah, I got a few. I've talked to people that are doing double entry. They're using Acuity is a popular one. It's owned by Square.

Okay.

That's a really popular one. And so I took somebody today and I literally said, you're using Acuity. And I had them go to the company that we now own, and it's not white-labeled and integrated with our platform yet. I said, go use their service, use our service. Theirs costs $60 a month. I'll give you ours at, uh, $230, so it equals, you know, $299.

Yeah.

And she was overjoyed because there's so many folks that I'm talking to that are doing 100% cash and they just don't care about, you know, having an EMR really. They just want scheduling and something to put notes in.

Right.

Yep. So it's, it's a growing trend and it also really works well for a lot of the other lower volume specialties, you know, med spas and massage places, things like that.

So yeah, yeah, no doubt.

Anyway, well, thanks for the time. I hope we, uh, I hope we get some traction on it. And, uh, you know, I appreciate it. It was fun. Yeah, let me know if you ever roll this way. I'd love to play golf.

I gotta get out to Florida. What, what part of Florida are you in?

I'm in St. Petersburg, so right by Tampa.

Okay, that's right. Yeah, um, it's been on my list to get out there and, and, uh, explore it a little bit. I've only been a couple times, so, um, if I ever do, I'll certainly, uh, give you a heads up.

Yeah, Sarasota is, uh, there's so many nice golf courses there, it's crazy.

I bet. I love that.

All right, well, listen, I know you're busy. Thanks again.

Likewise. Thank you so much for your time, Steve, and, uh, I'll, I'll Um, give you any updates that I hear or any questions, and we'll go from there.

All right, have a great day.

You too. Bye-bye.