Listening to customer needs, and potential customer needs is the single most important thing you can do in your business…no matter what your business type is.

I’ve found that over my career, in every venture I’ve participated in, that this always rings true. I didn’t always just “know” this intuitively though. I remember back when I started my rock climbing guide service, that I designed all of these amazing trips based upon what I, as a climber, thought would be amazing. Sure, some people signed up for it…but what I realized is that I was missing the point. People who were really interested in the trips I was putting together would be experienced climbers…and they wouldn’t hire a guide to do it! It was then I realized that I need to figure out what exactly people wanted. I realized then that the biggest market for me was people who climbed at climbing gyms, who wanted to go outside but had no idea where to start. When I started listening, then my business grew rapidly.

MANY years later, the same thing rings true. If you don’t know this, Cima started out as an agency providing SEO, Social Media, and Ads services. While we grew a client base, it was only through listening to what clinics really needed that caused us to turn the company in to a SaaS company and provide automation and tools that would help the clinics save time and money while growing their business.

Listening to customers is the only way to truly know what will grow your business.

So how does that apply in the clinic setting? In my experience, having worked in the healthcare space for almost 2 decades, and working with clinics all over the world, the clinics who are most successful and grow rapidly at scale, are the ones who listen to what their patients want and then develop services around those patients’ needs, as opposed to building what they think would be amazing and then trying to find people who would be interested.

What can happen when you don’t listen to customers? You can easily lose trust…but most importantly your acquisition of new patients and your retention of existing patients will tank.

What does customer listening actually look like though? How do you do it? Surely, you can’t talk to each patient on the phone, especially with 1,000s of patients and potential leads. What I have found to be the best way to do this is to establish a cadence of seeking feedback regularly, and applying it.

For existing patients, you could try:

1. Establishing regular check ins via email or text, testing out what people think about new services you are thinking about providing, and then asking them what they would like to see differently

2. Provide incentive for reviews, so that you can guage what patients are thinking

3. Build an “upsell” process in to your clinic, offering new services upon checkout to see if patients are interested in additional and more advanced treatments. You’ll know what patients want if they are interested in those services.

4. Go to where your patients are and talk to them. Are there events or associations that your patients belong to? Are there ways to get involved in the community so you can get to know your patient base?

For non-patients/leads, you could try:

1. Establish a powerful social media presence. This could be a post in and of itself, but one of the best ways to see if you are in line with what your patients want is to post tons of content, and see what type of content and what topics engage the most people. You’ll know what people want

2. Host monthly webinars, advertise it, and talk with people after the webinars via a chat room or engaging them with Q&A sessions. You can talk directly with new and potential leads

The possibilities are endless for what you can do…however what is most important is that you stop offering services just because you think they are powerful, and start building services based upon what your leads and customers actually want!