Unlocking the Power of Text Messaging for Patient Engagement | Podcast Ep. 373

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Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. Today we have an awesome episode talking about the importance of text messaging in your practice. I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Mark McGinnis over at Zingit. Lot of great clinical pearls, a lot of eye opening moments. I think you'll get a lot of value from on today's episode. Before we get started, today's episode is brought to you by patient Pilot, by the smart chiropractor. So if you're looking to improve your new patient acquisition, double your attention, improve reactivations, head over, do a demo thesmartchiropractor.com Again, that's thesmartchiropractor.com but for today, let's dive into everything text related with Mark McGinnis at Zingit.

Hey, Dr. Jeff, thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here and really excited to dive into Zingit. How we can help him and what we do.

I love it. Let's kick it off right there. I know I've seen Zyngit at a variety of different events and I know many docs listening probably have seen you and met you at some different events. But for those that are unfamiliar or maybe they've seen the booth from afar but never had the conversation, there's some details I want to dive into. But before we get there, at a high level, what's Zyngit all about?

Yeah, absolutely. And for the folks who recognize Zingit, you probably have seen me at events, a guy with a beard and some tattoos. But feel free to come on over, shake my hand and say hi. So Zingit is a growth hub for offices and really can be defined by how do we scale and automate your patient journey so that we can continue to attract, convert and retain more patients than ever before. Those are the fundamentals that Zingit is based on and that obviously spills into a variety of features from online reputation management review, generation recall campaigns, specific new patient campaigns, team text, enabling your business line, and about 20 other things that we might not even get to in the time today.

I love it. I'm familiar with how impactful text can be. I know text is something Zynga has really been built on and I'd love to go to something you just mentioned on the tail end right there because I know it's been a hot topic for pretty much everybody out there with a service based business, including every chiropractor. And that's Google Reviews, how does Zing it think about, approach Google Reviews and what docs out there from your experience and knowledge base deep in this, probably working with hundreds of chiro writers around the world, generating tens, if not hundreds, if not millions of reviews. What do docs need to know about Google Reviews and how does text play an integral role in that?

That's a really, really good question. So a lot of times, especially when we're traveling to different events, coaching groups, associations, I like to make the joke. Around 5 o', clock, I'm pulling out my phone and I'm going to be searching places to eat near me. Google reviews have really become the way that our society finds businesses, finds things that suits their needs. It's a new way to shop. And if you don't have that what we call the local SEO presence or those Google reviews supporting your online Persona and reputation, it puts a lot of barriers in front of a new patient who might actually be your ideal patient. They're trying to find you and it's hard for them. So number one, as far as understanding reviews, this is how everyone is finding businesses and finding solutions these days. So it's really more important than ever that you're in that top echelon of those online reviews. And to answer your second question, how do we leverage text as part of that conversation? Well, to give you a very specific example, an office that uses Zingit. When a patient completes an appointment, they don't have to do anything additional. They don't even have to change anything in Zyngit or change anything in their ehr. Patient leaves after an adjustment, they get a text on their phone and it says, how was your experience? They click on five stars and it immediately will log them into their Google account and take them to the point where they can post and share that Google review in about five seconds, maybe seven if there's a little lag. So the goal here, and the reason I bring that up, is there's offices that are verbally asking for online reviews. Shout out to Dr. Matt Paterna at Shoreline Chiropractic. He once told me how it took him six years to get 100 Google reviews because he was verbally asking for them. And anybody who's listening to this who has asked for a verbal review, know that your chances of actually getting that are pretty low. The patient's gotta go home, they gotta look you up online, they gotta remember, they gotta log into their Gmail. We make it really easy. It took him 6 years to get 100 Google reviews implemented Zingit and in 3 months he had another hundred. And as of today, I checked him last week, I think he was at 611 now. And that's just because when you make it really easy for your champions and your patients to leave you those online reviews, they want to, they're enthusiastic about their care and their improvements. So it's really just about removing that barrier and streamlining the process.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. That sounds like aggressive physical labor asking for, oh my gosh, things don't have.

To be this hard. I always tell people that we make things harder on ourselves when we're trying to manually do all these things. But that's where that scale and automation of a system like Zinger can really have the massive impact.

Yeah, I can see that. And for the patients, let's say that don't make it in. This is something I've always thought text was just a great tool for the transactional component of missed appointments, appointment reminders, things like that. How does Zingit approach appointment reminders, missed appointments, sort of those day in and day out components that every doc's dealing with. As they look at their schedule, it looks full in the morning. As time goes on throughout the day, people's lives impact their, you know, people's lives take hold. How does Zingit approach the day to day of the office, specifically relative to some of those transactional components that are critical day to day?

Yeah, that's a great question. And because Zingit has the ability to read different things from the EHR system, the appointment type, the provider, the appointment status, we can really kind of redefine what people think of when it comes to appointment reminders. Think of it this way. If you have a new patient who found your awesome online reviews and then they got in contact with the office using some of zingit's web conversion tools, when they book that first appointment, do you want that to be a generic message, hey, we'll see you at 9? Reply C to confirm, or do you want that initial patient experience to include a video introducing you to the office, a link to your intake forms, directions to the office, a really more customized and tailored experience? We can do that for all appointment types. So all of a sudden, appointment reminders in themselves, while they do reduce or they do improve those no show rates, they're easier for patients to stick to. We can really customize them to make appointments stickier, to provide a more scalable experience. And then to your question, the relationship that a patient has to a chiropractor, I'm Just going to say it. It's different than a relationship to a dentist that you come in for a cleaning every six months and having that back and forth communication with where an office can live, text back and forth to a patient. When you get an automated missed appointment reminder, it's much more personal than you would have with other types of healthcare providers. So it also really behooves offices to have that relationship to do it text based, where people are having the majority of conversations because folks aren't answering the phone anymore. If you call them, if somebody doesn't show up for an appointment and you call them, they didn't show up for the appointment, they're sure as heck not going to answer that phone call. So providing these different areas and ways to connect with your patients in a more customized way is a really powerful thing that not only improves those show rates as well, but it leads to an overall healthier patient experience. And you can look long term at patient recalls and retention and reactivations and it's really all part of that same DNA.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. Now when you speak with docs, I brought up reviews and some of those appointment reminders, that comes first to mind for me. But as you're out there meeting and chatting with docs, I'm just curious what would be like the number one, number two reasons why docs are interested in Zynga and end up making the decision to work with you and the team?

That's a really good question. I'm actually, I'll give you two reasons from two points of views. How about that? So, you know, in addition to talking with a lot of docs, I talk with a lot of staff. And one of the premier things that we see from staff members is hey, I spend a lot of time doing appointment reminders, keeping the schedule clean, running a report in my ehr, and then leaving voicemails for patients who haven't been in three months, writing birthday cards and getting postage to mail them out, asking for those online reviews, chasing after people who visited our website and filled out a contact us form that all, everything that I just named is something that we automate through Zingit and we let it run on autopilot. So now it's giving your staff back the time to actually handle those more important tasks. So streamlining the communication, saving a ton of time. But then with docs, it's not only from saving your staff time, it's the ability to build the ideal patient experience, to be empowered to say, hey, hey, this is how I want to run my business. This is the impression that I want a new patient to get. But also then on the flip side, your patients are the lifeblood of your practice. And if there's any area where it's worth investing in, it's going to be in your patients. And so this is where kind of that ROI comes into play. And when we look at things like generating more online reviews, improving show rates, recalling patients, it becomes a no brainer for practices when they see, okay, so if I, if I get one new patient from my, my boosted online reviews and the average zingit office gets 135 online reviews. So just kind of for reference. So 135 online reviews. If that gets me one new patient, guess what? Zingit's already paid for itself. It's a pretty low bar to clear if it attracts 2, 3, 5, 10 if I reactivate eight patients, which is the average that we see. There's a lot of different ways that you can really get your value back on something like Zingit and these tools. So I would say those are kind of the main areas that attract doctors and staff members to us. It's the improvement in patient experience, the amount of time it saves and the amount of pain it avoids, and then also getting that really solid ROI on investing in the lifeblood of your practice.

Yeah, you brought up the staff and that's a key component. And I'll say some things, maybe a couple listeners and watchers might start crying when I say this, but there are some docs, and I'm sure you've seen it, where they practically feel held hostage by their staff. And, you know, it seems wild, but I'm curious as you talk about that, you know, sometimes there is just a communicative disconnect between the doc and the team. So sometimes that can result in challenges when trying to implement. So from Zingit's perspective, when you start with new practice, what are docs listening? What do I need to know about how easy is it to get started? Do I anticipate team challenges? What's that onboarding and implementation look like? Because I know that implementation is key to success.

Oh, absolutely. So we really try to make things as simple as possible. When it comes to Zingit, change can be scary. And so we want to provide as little disruption as possible. And we're lucky that we have a product that introduces little to no disruption because we are able to kind of build it from the ground up for your office and then we kind of let it run automatically. Teach you how to Use the inbox, how to scale and access all these different tools. But it's a really simple process to get started. We do kind of a pre configuration and this is really the time where we say, okay, tell me about your ideal patient experience, tell me about your office. We are proudly not a one size fits all solution. I always tell people that we are the originators in this space. We are the original patient engagement experts. We've been doing this since 2010 at a high level. We're continuing to do so at a high level. And so we've seen it all. A variety of offices, chiropractic, integrated, multidisciplinary, functional medicine, naturopath. We've really seen it all and we've built a comprehensive suite of tools that we can accommodate what offices are looking to build. So we do an initial preconfiguration. Hey, let's talk high level. Let's look at the picture. Great. We'll go back and build it. After that, it's an hour training session for the staff and as much support as you need after that. Unfortunately, things like staff turnover happens and rather than having, you know, a staff member on their way out training their replacement on how to use Zingit, hey, just send it back to us. We're going to go through from the ground up. We want to make sure that you're maximizing the value of Zingit and ultimately that you're maximizing your patient journey.

Love it. Now, somebody deep product knowledge such as yourself, I'm sure that you encounter this. I do with my products and services. I'm like, this part is so awesome and nobody pays attention to it. For the docs listening out there, what's your favorite part of Zingit that you find to be dramatically underutilized? And this might be even for some of your, some of the current clients of Zingit listening right now. What, what, what docs need to know? What's something that you look at and you just say this is so awesome and I'm so glad it's a piece of what we do. And yet I find it to be underutilized.

All right, so what I would say is what's most underutilized is setting expectations for that new patient that I mentioned earlier about really beginning the patient journey. We think so often of the patient journey as once they've accepted that treatment plan. But the truth is the patient journey starts far, far before them. Their journey begins when their pain starts and having all those front loaded tools as far as attract and conversion, we have multiple Options for online scheduling, multiple options for web chat for offices to quickly get in touch. We're using your text enabled landline number so that if somebody takes a chance and they send a random text, your business number, guess what? We're going to catch that. So before a patient has ever set foot in the door, having things like the automated video content that can go out, a link to their intake form so that they're completed before a patient ever sets foot in your office. Love that it makes those appointments even stickier. We see a dramatic rise in show rates for new patients. And for example, if you want to have somebody come in for a report of findings before they're accepting treatment, why not prime them with a video testimonial of another patient who's already had success under your care? The reason I focus on that, that early area of the patient journey is something that's underutilized is because it's not something that's often thought about. We think of the tangible, the show rates, the percentages, what's on the calend. But you have to continue to fill that top of your funnel and having these more robust tools that are going to solidify those appointments but also attract and streamline that patient attraction process, it's just, it's so crucial and that's where you're really going to see that roi. So I'll kind of give you a non answer and put a big draw, a big circle around that area of our platform and say that online scheduling, that new patient attraction conversion, that there's a lot that can be done there that is unfortunately not always top of mind.

I love that answer. And online scheduling, such a key component as people are valuing convenience so much more because it's enabled in so many businesses that so many practices out there. I talk with docs every day and I'm always suggesting that they have the opportunity for that. It is only going to help your business grow and scale. I love that we chatted about Google reviews, critical component of local SEO as you mentioned. Also building that social proof, getting people feel comfortable. Hey, somebody else like me got a result. Now I want to head over there. Could not agree more Mark. We've gone through so much and I know we only touch the surface of what Zynga offers. For the docs out there listening and watching that would love to learn more, connect with you, maybe hop on a demo. What's the best and easiest place for them to connect?

Absolutely. The best thing to do is to simply request a demo and we can have a conversation and learn a little bit more about our office. You do that on zingit.com, z I n g I t.com you click schedule a demo and you'll see my real time availability. So we can learn a little bit more about your office. And that's really the purpose of the demo. Every office is going to be different and it's really to judge, okay, where are areas that you're seeing pain in your office? What kind of systems are you currently using? Can we apply these solutions to streamline that patient experience to attract, convert and retain more patients? And I'll say, yeah, nine and a half times out of ten we can and we do. So scheduling a demo online is the best way to learn a little bit more and really decide, hey, is zing it a good fit for my practice?

I'm gonna encourage everybody listening and watching. Click the link. We're gonna drop that link down in the show notes. Click the link, hop over. If you do not have a tax solution in your practice today, Zynga is a great one to utilize, great one to explore and proven track record. As Mark said, they really focus on a holistic approach to being able to help your practice through the technology. Help your patients have a better patient experience. I don't think there's anything better. So if you're listening or watching and do not use text, click down below, hop on a demo. Or if you're using text, there probably is optimizations. I got a feeling that Mark's gonna be able to find out with your current solution. So head on over, schedule a demo, see how Zynga can help build grow your practice this year and beyond. Mark, thanks. Taking time out of your day to chat and let people know about such an important component that's often overlooked in too many practices.

Absolutely. Dr. Jeff, thank you for having me. Am I allowed to take maybe 30 more seconds for a tease of what to come?

You can, yeah.

All right, let's do that. Because as you were saying, hey, if you are using text, and a lot of times I'm talking with offices, they have an EHR system. Hey, we have built in text reminders. Just want to kind of be brutally honest here. A lot of times not really the same thing. And to kind of tease that out when we're looking at text in an office again, there's those generic reminders which are, you know, they're all right, generic one way reminders with what we have to come in the future I mentioned, we're the originators. We continue to do this at a high level. We're going to have even more this year. That's why I focus so hard on the patient journey. So more options for online scheduling, calendar management, treatment plan management, even online payments. I hope I'm allowed to say that on air. My boss doesn't kill me. But all of these different avenues where the patient journey can be improved and streamlined, that's really where Zyngit is. Moving forward in the future, we're going to empower your patients and your office more than ever before this year and truly put it all at your fingertips. So stay tuned. We have some massive things coming this year.

You heard it here first, Mark. Dropping the spoilers. Gonna deal with the ramifications later on. I love it. Mark, thanks for taking time and chatting with us today.

My pleasure. Dr. Jeff, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. If you want to grow your practice, come back for next week's episode. If you want to grow faster, visit theevidencebasedchiropractor.com and join our MD Marketing membership today.