How to use a customer service and marketing chatbot for healthcare institutions

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We hear a lot about chatbots or intelligent virtual assistants for businesses. However, few people know how to use them to benefit their clinics or other healthcare facilities.

As incredible as it may seem, many health usa mobile number database professionals still believe that self-care via chatbots is far from reality.

But they are wrong!

Chatbots have arrived in the present and can be obtained at affordable prices for any office or clinic, generating countless advantages.

Are you ready to enter this path of no return? Then, keep reading!

But what is a chatbot?
A chatbot is nothing more than software capable of conducting a conversation via audio or text with a person . Currently, they work on sites, mainly, on popular messaging platforms, such as Facebook Messenger, and there is great expectation that it will soon work on WhatsApp as well.

Why use a chatbot in my clinic?
Did you know that nearly 59.30% of patients try to contact your clinic outside of business hours to schedule an appointment?

Research indicates that 65% of consumers prefer to be assisted by a chatbot that resolves their queries, rather than having to wait in a queue on the phone.

Furthermore, the same research states that 23% of potential customers simply give up on making a purchase if the communication channel is busy.

More reasons to use a customer service and marketing chatbot in your clinic:

Be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week;
Serve multiple customers at the same time, without waiting in line, without busy phones and without your telemarketing team or assistants being overloaded during peak hours;
Reduce costs with care by up to 80%;
Offer standardized attention, always with quality, without mood swings and with artificial intelligence capable of understanding what the client writes freely;
Automate routine procedures such as scheduling appointments, clarifying queries and sending consultation reminders;
They can help in attracting new patients when combined with social networks.
And before you ask, I'll answer: yes, it is possible to do ethical marketing in clinics!

The Federal Councils of Dentistry and Medicine, as well as other health professions, limit and consider some practices illegal, so always study and keep up to date with the code of ethics for your category.

Among the main errors that we can highlight and that are NOT allowed by the codes of most health categories, are:

Disclosure of "before and after" photos of treatments;
Disclosure of appointment prices in advertising vehicles;
Dissemination of scientifically unproven treatment techniques;
Disclosure of equipment ownership as a way to show that you have superior technology;
Distribution of discount or loyalty cards;
Guarantee results in treatments.
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How to start a chatbot strategy for my clinic?
1. Choose a chatbot platform
There are generic platforms that do not require programmers, but they do require you to spend time planning the entire flow and all the possibilities you want to automate in order to transfer everything to the program.

There is also a specific solution for clinics and offices focused on converting strangers into patients, and it can be quickly configured like the Cloudia platform.

2. Spread the word about the new self-service channel to those who already know you
When hiring a chatbot service for your clinic, you need to know how to promote this channel for acquiring new patients or it will be useless.

First of all, send an email to your entire patient list, announcing the new channel and sharing the Messenger link for your page, which will be in the format: "https://m.me/your-page-name".

If you want even more efficient communication, send a WhatsApp message in addition to the email.

The main platform for using chatbots today is Facebook Messenger. For this reason, it is essential that you know how to use your clinic or office's Facebook page well in order to achieve good results in the short term.

Besides Facebook, another alternative is to use it live on your website, which is a great option and we will talk a little about this channel later in this article.

3. Use social media as an ally for your automatic attention via chatbot
Use social media without moderation to boost your clinic's brand and, above all, to build relationships and stay top of mind for potential clients.

To get good results, share original content that really adds value to people.

Post tips for a better quality of life or other topics related to your specialty, in text or video and frequently, always respecting the rules of your council.

People will follow you and share your advice, and when they have a problem, they will remember you.

Here are some specific tips for each of the most relevant social media platforms.

Facebook
First of all, have your professional Facebook page or Fanpage to promote your work, not just your personal profile.

The Fanpage offers the possibility of promoting posts, which in itself is already a great advantage, since organic (or free) posts have stopped having a good reach for some time now.

Furthermore, it is only possible to use automated customer service tools such as chatbots on fan pages.

Ebook Marketing on Facebook
Download the free guide on practices and tips for communicating on the social network

Advertise your services on Facebook
Currently, it is known that a common post manages to organically reach only 2% of followers.

With the huge number of profiles and pages on Facebook, unfortunately (or fortunately), the social network had to start reducing the delivery rate of its posts.

If you want to achieve significant results, invest in sponsored ads in Facebook Ads Manager and attract more patients to interact with your clinic.

In addition to studying the code of ethics, you will need to know how to create Facebook Ads, in case you do not hire a digital marketing professional to do so.

You will also need to learn what is most important to set up in your Facebook Marketing campaigns to get better results.

In addition to ads, use a chatbot to automate the care of your potential patients to optimize your results.

Some chatbots can automatically respond to all people who leave comments on your Facebook posts, directing these people to interact with your chatbot, which can be programmed to clarify doubts and guide patients to make an appointment.

Try commenting on this example post we made for a fictional page so you can understand how it works:

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php? ... 3926048768

If you are a healthcare professional or a marketing professional working on recruitment campaigns to attract more patients to healthcare facilities, this feature will make things much easier for you.

Instagram
Instagram still maintains a good organic reach, achieving many likes, but few interactions.

Making a good presentation on your profile is essential. Make explicit the services that your clinic offers, website, address and contact information.

The challenge is to communicate everything in just 150 characters.

If your main goal with Instagram is to get more patients, leave your chatbot link instead of your site link.

Use high-resolution images and videos that depict treatments, curiosities and advice about any disease you treat in your clinic.

If you have more than 10 thousand followers, you can add a link in your stories that directs to the chatbot, which will do all the service and automatic scheduling.

You can also run Instagram campaign ads using Facebook Ads Manager by leaving the "Send Message" button visible on your ads.

When they click on the button, users will be directed to interact with your chatbot via Messenger.

WhatsApp
Unfortunately, this is a channel that is impossible to use on a large scale, but the launch of WhatsApp Business has given signs that WhatsApp is evolving to become a tool between companies and people, and will probably soon become a more practical tool for those who have a large number of daily contacts.

It is worth remembering that this tool can only be used for auxiliary tasks such as scheduling, sending appointment reminders and answering questions. It should never be used to carry out the consultation itself.

To boost your chatbot, we recommend that you configure your clinic's initial WhatsApp Business auto-message to share the link to your Facebook Messenger chatbot.

4. Use the self-service chatbot on your site
If you're only using a form on your site to attract new patients to your clinic, you're likely losing revenue.

There are cases of a 45% increase in the conversion rate, simply by using an online chat correctly.

Some tools offer the option of adding your chatbot to your site via online chat quite easily, without the need to know programming.

Advertise your services on Google Adwords
Just as you can invest in Facebook Ads to have a greater reach on Facebook, you can also do so in Google Ads to have more visibility and reach patients who search for your services through Google.

It is possible to pay a fee to have your site ranked on the first page of search results for certain keywords that you choose.

The big secret here is to advertise on Google Ads by choosing the local keywords that your potential patients search for on Google when they want to find a service in your category and specialty.

For example: if you are an endocrinologist and you serve in the city of São Paulo in the Vila Mariana neighborhood, you should advertise to people who are searching on Google for keywords such as: Endocrinologist sp, endocrinologist in São Paulo, endocrinologist in Vila Mariana, endocrinologist São Paulo Vila Mariana, specialist in procedure x in São Paulo, etc.

You can also filter your audience by location and demographic information such as: city, male or female gender, age, with or without children, etc.

cta-download-ebook-google-adwords

Produce content
Another way to attract more visitors to your site is by producing content on your blog .

Thus, if the content is truly informative and generates value, it tends to achieve good positions in Google's organic searches and can bring good results in the medium and long term.

5. Track the metrics that matter
The goal of all this is to get more patients into your clinic, so that will be your main metric.

Number of followers on your page or visits to your site may just be "vanity metrics" and do not necessarily mean that your strategy is working, since they may not increase your clinic's income.

The ideal metric to measure the effectiveness of the strategy is the monthly record of the number of patients who scheduled an appointment through Facebook or the website. Compare the results before and after you started using the chatbot to notice the difference.

Choose platforms that make it easy to monitor your chatbot metrics.

Final considerations
We would like to reinforce the importance of following your category's code of ethics before taking any digital marketing action for your clinic that encourages the use of your chatbot.

Did you like the content? Then, learn how to create a persona for your clinic and achieve more results in your Digital Marketing strategy.