listen only mode. Welcome, everyone, to the webinar on Front Office 201, Advanced Phone Skills. We're so glad you could be here today to learn more about establishing a relationship with callers and advancing your phone skills. Your moderators for today are me, Keri Peterson, IHS Education Administrator, and me, Fran Vinson, IHS Marketing Manager. Our expert presenter today is Bob Hanson. He's a consultant, trainer, and instructor to hearing aid companies, states, and national professional associations and education institutions specializing in hearing health care. He also serves as instructor to the International Hearing Society's audio pathology program. We're very excited to have Bob as our presenter today. But before we get started, just a few housekeeping items. Please note that we are recording today's presentation so that we may offer it on-demand through the IHS website in the future. This webinar is available for one continuing education credit through the International Hearing Society. We do have many office staff members attending today. So please note that CE credit is only available. Did you send a chat to everybody? Yeah, I sent a chat to your audience because I cannot hear you in the audio. As a special bonus, everyone who completes the 60-minute webinar and submits a CE quiz with the CE quiz feed will optimize incoming phone calls, discover listening techniques to help keep you in charge of the call, uncover the three deadly sins while speaking with prospective clients, and help you get the job done. It has a need 70% of the time they will buy. So making an appointment by itself. Now there are three deadly sins that every owner, hearing professional, and receptionist commit, and if you conduct the call that works the majority of the time for both the caller and for your office. I'd like to make an appointment. Now this is a trap. How do I know if I need... What are the credentials of your... We'll share the benefits and capabilities of digital hearing technology that is specifically designed to help people hear... Now let's get into the script. You'll see the first question, are you calling for yourself or a loved one? Now what we're going to do, they've asked the question, how much are your hearing aids? Well here at ABC Hearing, hearing aids range from several hundred to a few thousand dollars. Now what will happen is that will change all the questions to wife. Now is your wife experiencing any pain or discomfort in her ears? Well yes, she has ringing in her ears. You click on yes, a box opens, and you type in ringing or tinnitus. Does your wife presently wear hearing instruments? Well not anymore. Let's just say that's the answer. Now the hearing professional who's going to get a copy of this script wants to know what caused the wife to stop wearing hearing aids. So what caused her to stop wearing them? Well they were too big, and they whistled. This way the hearing professional knows that he or she needs to make sure that cosmetically the patient is pleased with the instruments, and obviously that they're well adjusted. Now what sort of communication difficulties is your wife having? Well she struggles in background noise, and I have to repeat all the time. You will notice we've got a concerned husband. We've probably got an annoyed husband here, and it's imperative that we ask him to come to this appointment. Now question five, to give you the professional answers. See what we're doing here, we're in a transition point. We found out about the patient. We know that he's calling for his wife. We know that she has ringing in her ears. We know that she used to wear hearing aids, but she doesn't anymore because they were too big and they whistled. And we know where she struggles to hear. It is now time, notice we have not asked for a name, we have not asked for an appointment, and we have kept control of the conversation by asking these key questions. It is now time to transition to making an appointment. To give you the professional answers that you and your wife are looking for, we will need to evaluate her hearing. Again, my name is Vaughn. May I have your name? Not your wife's name, not the patient's name in this case. We want the name of the person we are talking to. Yes, my name is Jo Smith. And Jo, what is your wife's name? Her name is Mary Smith. Now, by the way, before we hit next here, Carrie, I want you to know that with this script, each box must be filled out or we cannot move forward. Now, we click on next. This question, which is extremely important, has been put in red, because, here again, without a significant time to repeating, so he says, I will accompany her, the caller's name. Now, we want to select the relationship and he is the husband. Now, rather than saying, when would you like to come in? What time works for you? You'll notice that when you call your doctor's office, they don't ask you a question like that, or your dentist. You have to fit into their schedule. They are professionals. Well, so are we. What time is better for you, Mary, or for Mary and you, Jo, morning or afternoon? Now, you say, I answer the phone for three locations, and you click on your select locations, Albany, Corvallis, and Lebanon. Would tomorrow, the 26th, at 10 a.m. work for you? Calendar comes up, you click on the 26th. Let's make it 10.30, not 10 o'clock. That would be too easy. So, go over here to the select button. Go over to the select button. I'll carry you back to the select button, and you have to click other. Click other. There. Now, go over here and type 10.30. Yeah, you could type 10.31. You could do whatever you want. So, if it's an even hour, you just click on the hour. If it's an odd time, you have the ability to change it. Now, click on enter. So often, I hear receptionists say, now, what is your phone number? What is your address? It seems a little harsh to me. In case our office needs to contact you prior to the appointment, we will call you. May I have your phone number? Yes, it's 541-259-1550. And may I have your address? Yes, it is 825 Main Street, Albany, Oregon. And the zip there is 97321. Now, here is a unique part of this script. What we're going to do, if the patient or the caller has an e-mail address, is we're going to send them turn-by-turn directions from their home to the office which they've chosen. In this case, it's the Albany, Oregon office. We would like to send you turn-by-turn directions from your home to our office. May I have your e-mail address? This is the only box in the script that you can leave blank if they don't have an e-mail address. And in this case, he says, you know, I'm 70 years old, I don't have e-mail. But if he did, this script would automatically e-mail him turn-by-turn directions from 825 Main Street to the address of the Albany Hearing Aid Office. Now, we want to trace our advertiser. How did you hear about ABC Hearing? Advertised in several newspapers. The owner wants to know which paper it was. It was the Democrat Herald. Okay. Now, we are located at 940 West 5th Street. We're across from the City Hall. Do you need directions? No, I know where that is. Well, we're looking forward to meeting you, Joe, and Mary on Friday the 26th of October at 1030. Now, if for any reason, see, this is really important that that third party knows that we're looking forward to them coming in and assisting us. If for any reason you, Joe, will be unable to accompany Mary to the appointment, please call our office and we would be more than happy to reschedule the appointment. Well, he says to you, our son is returning from Iraq and we don't know exactly when, so if there's a conflict, we'll give you a call. Now, this information, which we're typing in the comment box, will give the hearing professional even more things to talk about. So, thank you so much for calling ABC Hearing, and we're looking forward to meeting you and Mary tomorrow at 1030. Now, we click Save and Print. Now, what happens here is a summary sheet will come up with all the information that we have garnered. It will send this summary sheet to the owner of the company, so he or she knows what's going on. It will send this summary sheet to the hearing professional in Albany, Oregon. And what I would do is keep it minimized. I don't expect you to do that, Kerry. Then I would shrink it down, minimize it, and go back to the script. Now, I want to show you what happens when the patient doesn't want to make an appointment at this time. Yeah, I saw your ad in the newspaper. Are you experiencing any pain or discomfort in your ears? No, I'm really not. Do you presently wear hearing instruments? Yes, I do. How long have you been wearing these things? Oh, I haven't had them all that long, about eight years. Well, what sort of communication difficulties are you having? I find it hard to pick out voices in a crowd, and if there's background noise, I'm not exactly comfortable having a conversation. Now, this sounds like somebody who's looking to upgrade their eight-year-old hearing aids, and so we ask the next question, which is to give you the professional answers that you're looking for, we will need to evaluate your hearing. Again, my name is Vaughn. May I have your name? It's very logical. Well, at this point, the caller says, well, I'm really not interested in making an appointment. I just wanted to get information. Very common response. So you go to the lower left-hand corner, and you click on the word skip. The word skip, there we go. Would you like us to... What is your name? My name is Joe. Last name, Smith. And, Mr. Smith, what is your mailing address? It's 1840 Main Street, Albany, A-L-B-A-N-Y. Okay, skip. I'm sorry for this, folks. Joe. Smith. I don't have email. My mailing address is 1840 Main Street, Albany, Oregon. And the zip code here is 97321. Now, once again, we still want to know how they heard about it. So how did you hear about ABC Hearing? Well, I got a mailer. And what did the mailer say? Buy one, get one half off. Okay. You know, at ABC Hearing, we like to follow up our mailings to see if you have any questions. May I have your phone number? Certainly. 541-259-1550. Well, Mr. Smith, thank you so much. We'll have this information in the mail to you today. When we click on Save and Print, it brings up all of this information in the summary sheet. What I would suggest, rather than having the reception, what we have, and I am certain that this will create a lot of questions on your part. Let me already answer one of them that I know will come up. A person called with a question. I don't know what it was. Does insurance help cover the cost of hearing aids? We're willing to investigate the benefits that you're insuring. So the word communication in lieu of hearing is very important. It's also important, I think, to say, you know, it's important that somebody with a familiar voice accompany you to the appointment because we like to use their voice during the evaluation. The way you say things, I believe, is very important. We want to keep the caller and or patient safe because this is a scary proposition for the caller, I promise you. Makes sense. We have a question from Amber, and she wants to know, using the script, what is the average call time? Four and a half minutes, sometimes five. If it goes much beyond that, it's your fault. Good, thank you. We have another question from Tricia. How do you answer a caller who wants to talk with a specialist? They do not want to talk to the receptionist. They want to speak directly to the hearing instrument dispenser. I would give the phone to the hearing instrument specialist or the audiologist. How can you win and say no? I would do it. And if the hearing professional is in an evaluation at that time, I would simply say, I will have him call you, I will have her call you when he finishes the hearing test he is involved in right now. May I have your name and phone number? And that is what I would do. What else would work? How do you convince a caller that has maybe been to another hearing aid office, they have purchased hearing aids, they have had a very bad experience, and they are very hesitant to come in and try another place? Well the first thing is, why are they calling you? They are calling you because they want help. So I would not use the word convince. You are not going to convince anybody of anything, but you can ask so they can convince themselves. I have had a bad, a little hesitant to come in, but you know the question that just comes to my mind is, what sort of communication difficulties, which is the fourth question on the script. I have had these aids for six months. Well it sounds to me like you are looking for some answers, and to get those answers, you are going to have to come in so we can find out what is going on. My name is Vaughn, may I have yours? It's pretty simple, I mean they do realize, they called you for a reason, and as I said much earlier, they are frightened. So put them at ease, not with conversation, but with questions. A patient from a rural community, and she has been unsure of how to end conversations with her because she is going into personal information and things like that, kind of taking up a lot of time. Do you have any tips or suggestions for how you could end the call politely? I am not sure I fully understand the question, but I am sensing that the rural area, it has gotten real folksy, and there is a lot of conversation, and I think I would just simply say, Mrs. Jones, my other line is ringing, or Mrs. Jones, I need to take care of some other tasks that I have. I want to thank you so much for calling. Thanks Vaughn. That makes sense. We have received a lot of calls about your software, a lot of questions about your software and things like that. Anyone who has asked a question about Vaughn's software, we are going to give his information at the end, so you can contact him directly about that, but somebody asked specifically if it converted into a cycle program. I think the question is, does it download in the cycle? That's interesting. I was visiting with Rich Sampson of CycleNet, he is the CEO, and maybe someday that can happen. We are going to put up Vaughn's contact information. We had over 400 people on the webinar today, and that's great. If you have questions for Vaughn at the end, we will put it up. We want to thank Vaughn for an excellent presentation, and thank everyone for joining us on the webinar, Front Office 201 Advanced Phone Skills. If you'd like to get in contact with Vaughn, you may email him at vaughnhansen.comcast.net or contact him by phone at 541-259-1550. For more information on the webinar banner, or find more information on the webinar tab under professionals that you heard brochure, by completing a CE quiz and submitting it with payment to IHS. IHS members receive a substantial discount on CE credits, so if you're not already an IHS member, you'll find more information at IHSinfo.org. Please keep an eye out for the feedback survey you'll receive tomorrow via email. We ask that you take a moment to answer a few brief questions about the quality of today's presentation. Thank you again for being with us today, and we'll see you at the next IHS webinar.

webinar

Advanced Phone Skills

establishing relationships

improving phone skills

script

handling phone calls

making appointments

receptionist

caller's needs

Vaughn's software