How to make sure your patients leave happy: A Q&A with The Aesthetic Consultant, Vanessa Bird

Every clinic wants happy patients. But, as The Aesthetic Consultant Vanessa Bird explains, making sure your patients leave happy isn’t just about achieving the best clinical outcomes. Of course, treatment results are key, but a truly happy patient will have been given “an experience” and excellent customer service. They will leave feeling valued, and, best of all, they might refer friends, colleagues, or family to you.

So, ahead of her talk on the subject at The Aesthetics Business Conference, on Tuesday 8 October, we asked her to give us some insights into what creates truly happy patients.  

Hamilton Fraser: You are going to be exploring the topic of how to make sure your patients leave happy. What are some of the key things that you will be exploring in your talk around this topic?

Vanessa Bird: When most people think about happy patients, they think about the clinical end results. Of course, you want to give patients the best clinical results, and that's a given. That’s the absolute minimum that you should be aiming for. But it's not going to make them leave happy because it’s an expectation.

I want to focus more on surpassing those expectations. You want them to have such a great experience that, even if they were to go somewhere else for whatever reason, it would never live up to what you do. And that's all based on how we make somebody feel. It's a sensorial thing. It's about being recognised as an individual, having everything personalised in your patient journey, being welcomed by name, the clinic remembering how you take your coffee or tea, thoughtful gestures such as sending out birthday cards and reminders, and the practitioner remembering what you spoke about last time. That's a given with the patient journey.

But I think what will really make them leave happy is if you make life easier for them. Patients have very busy lives, so any way you can make things effortless for them makes a big difference. For example, if you recommend skincare but then they have to go out and buy it, or they have to do their own research on what skincare to use,  it becomes another thing on their to-do list.   However, if you do it for them by providing the right skincare they can take home or even have it delivered to them,  it now becomes effortless and one less thing they have to do. They think,  "Oh, I didn't expect you to do that. I thought I would have to go away and do that.”  Now they are impressed.  So, really, we're going to be looking at how we can make life easier for the patient, assess what their expectations are, surpass them with the whole patient journey, and really build that relationship moving forward.

It may feel like it's an extra bit of ‘fluff' that you don't really need to do because you're clinical, but you need to include it if you want your business, especially at the moment, to really grow and survive.

Hamilton Fraser: People often think about patients leaving happy as the end of the journey, but it starts right at the beginning of their interactions with the clinic, doesn’t it?

Vanessa: That's the foundation for making them leave happy. Even if they go, "Oh, I'm so happy," and leave, that's really transient. That happiness will last for the rest of the day until they start swelling up/going red/flaking.  They'll be happy to a certain extent, but not to the point where they can't wait to come back again.

It's literally a case of, "I have now decided that I am going here for a treatment”, so all the practitioner needs to do is recommend the relevant treatment.

Hamilton Fraser: That's the whole point, isn't it? If patients leave happy, they will come back again, and they might refer you to other people.

Vanessa Bird: Absolutely, because that's down to your social proof, then. If we're looking at maybe going to a new practitioner, we can do all our own research, and we can check out their websites and their Instagram and their Google reviews, but the moment somebody who we know and respect who's very similar to us, somebody in our circle, talks in great terms about a practitioner, that's almost fast-tracking it. Rightly or wrongly, we do less research, don't we? And we're like, "Okay, now they've already jumped through these hoops. I'm now almost sold." It's literally a case of, "I am going here for a treatment; they just need to match me with it."

Hamilton Fraser: You are very much about giving people practical tips that people can action in their clinics. Will you be doing that in this talk?

Vanessa: I want people to be able to go away, even if it's just with one or two things. They don't have to implement everything because not everything will resonate with them. When you're a busy practitioner, especially if you're standalone on yourself, just doing everything, you're like, "Great, now I've got to remember what coffee they have, now I've got to do this, now I've got to do that." No, just do the thing that is easiest for you to implement now because even one of the tips that I'll be sharing will be enough to start moving you in the right direction and making a difference. And you'll know that you're on the right track because your patients are going to start feeding back to you on that. And that's going to make you want to do more.

Hamilton Fraser: For people who might be reading the article who aren’t familiar with you or don’t know what you do, could you tell us a bit about what you do specifically to work with clinics?

Vanessa: I came from a sales background. All my life, I’ve been in sales. And no, I never wanted to go into sales; nobody ever does. But that’s where I built my career. Then, I went into aesthetic device sales and then moved into consultancy.

My specific consultancy (because we're all very different) is based on my experience, and that's selling ethically in a way that's enjoyable. I can provide in-clinic sales training for you and your team, teaching you how to talk about treatments and packaging things up in such a way that patients enjoy spending time and money with you.  It's a pleasurable experience for you and the patient because I’m a strong believer that when you're spending money on something that makes you look and feel amazing, it is the best feeling ever.  I want to help clinics overcome that barrier of not wanting to sell because a lot of practitioners, especially medical practitioners, have this barrier. So that's a big focus, and it’s really popular.

Sometimes, it's a case of, "Well, we want to buy a new device or a new skincare brand," and they hire me to give them unbiased advice and negotiate for them. Sometimes, they haven't got the funds or desire to buy something new for the clinic, so that's when I'll work with them and say, "What have you got? Let's look at your treatment menu." I'll analyse your demographic, what you have, and your expertise and put together something really unique in terms of packages that are fresh and exciting, deliver the results and breathe new life into your business.  

So, although they're very different services, they all increase sales in some way.   I can also look at your business and identify where the hidden opportunities lie for you as a practitioner. Unless you're trying to target the telepathic community, no one's going to know what you do if you don't know how to package it and talk about it, and that is exactly what selling is. So, that's how I work with individual practitioners and clinics in the UK and abroad. It all boils down to the same thing.

Hamilton Fraser: You speak at many different business conferences. What’s the advantage for delegates to attend these types of events and learn from experts in their field?

Vanessa:  It's not enough to be up-to-date with your clinical information. It's not enough to go and sit in on the lectures, especially at the bigger conferences when there's so much going on. Obviously, your first love is injectables or skin or lasers, and of course, that’s the point of your going to these conferences. But then, in the bigger conferences, what I believe happens is the business stream, the practice management, gets overlooked or doesn't get much airtime. If you look at a typical big conference that we all go to that lasts one to two days, just a few hours’ worth of business content is included. It’s not enough. That’s what makes the difference between doing okay and literally thriving, growing your business, and not having sleepless nights. We don't expect practitioners to be a whiz at business because if you were, you probably wouldn't have gone into medicine. You would've gone into business.

So when you have these individual smaller conferences like the Hamilton Fraser one where it's just focusing on this business content, that's so incredibly valuable. And by going to these types of conferences, you are not distracted. You're not having your head turned by the clinical agenda. You can absolutely focus and, for the whole day, build off different speakers, learn from different people, and stay in that business-focused mindset. It's focused and incredibly motivating. And I think it's an important thing that we need to invest in moving forward.

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