Most people close Caring.com at about a 10% ratio. Just know that if you’re thinking about investing in it. Most of the people who call from Caring.com, they are typically looking about three to six months out for care. They aren’t going to be your clients that have those urgent needs.
The ones that are discharging from a hospital or ones that are discharging from a rehab, those are the people who are going to go home needing immediate care. That’s really super important to know about these calls. They’re typically not ready for care right then and there. One of the best things that you can do with Caring.com calls is being able to close them immediately, being able to respond to them immediately.
Your close ratio is going to go up with these type of leads. If you are literally, as the person is hitting send or submit, you are right there answering that email, calling that person while they’re still there in the place that they were sending the inquiry from. Making sure that you’re catching these leads as quickly as possible, within the first 10 minutes probably, that’s gonna be better for converting over to a new inquiry or a new lead. You need to remember that these people from Caring.com are probably reaching out to other agencies too. You have to be on your game when you talk to these people.
Your inquiry management skills and strategies need to be superb because they’re likely calling other agencies, gathering information, and really figuring out who did they connect with and bond with the most. Make sure that you are on your game when you’re responding to Caring.com. Caring.com, give them as many zip codes in the territory or the areas that you cover because that will help you gain more of the leads. Making sure that you’re doing that. Some wiggle room to perhaps negotiate rates with them. Look into that a little bit more, if it’s something that you are able to do.
You can return leads that are not valid. If somebody is calling looking for assisted living services or perhaps they’re calling for Medicaid services, which you do not offer, or home health services, the Medicare-reimbursed home health, you shouldn’t have to pay for those leads because they are not appropriately leaded out and directed for the services that you do. If you have a large enough company, you will get more success out of converting these leads if you have somebody that’s dedicated to making sure that you’re doing that really quick turnaround time and response time for these leads. Keep that in mind and consider that. Well, how do you approach families when you are doing these calls? And my best recommendation would be, you have to do your best to create urgency in these situations. You have to probe them and ask questions specifically to find that hot button or that reason that made them pick up the phone and call. If you think about it, you are reminded, let’s say you’re calling the phone company or something for a question about your bill. You don’t just say, oh, I’m gonna call the phone company for a question about my bill.
You probably got the bill in the mail and it reminded you, oh shoot, I need to call the phone company. You pick up and you call. If you are, let’s say, in my case, oh my gosh, there are so many emails that started coming from school this year because of COVID and virtual learning. And I get so much junk email, I get so much work email that I just can’t even keep up. But every once in a while, I’ll catch it through all of those other junk emails and I’ll say, oh shoot, I have to go sign up my son for baseball or I have to go pay for his baseball uniform. It’s because I saw that email. Something happened that triggered me to go cross that off my to-do list. I’ve been meaning to do it for a while, but that triggered me, that email.
The same thing typically happens when people are looking for care. They’ve probably been meaning to do it for a while. They are thinking, ah, gosh, mom’s been declining, it’s been a while since we’ve seen her, she’s really not doing well, I watched her go down the stairs to do the laundry, it made me kind of nervous. We probably really should look into something. They’re probably not going to stand right there in mom’s living room and pick up the phone and call you or submit an inquiry through Caring.com.
What probably happened is they were there and they saw something or mom called and she fell or they were in the house and something happened. Maybe mom stops taking her medication and they noticed that she’s not the same person that she was because she’s not taking her medication. Or maybe there was a bladder infection or something that changed the way mom was feeling, mom was behaving. There’s something that physically happened that made them pick up the phone and call.
If you can find out what that is, that’s going to be an in to help create urgency. You can say things like, we really need to take a look at getting some help for mom right now because we know, we have experience working with people who have had similar situations, and sometimes they don’t get care right away and they end up in the hospital or something happens and they bypass being able to be cared for at home altogether.
Definitely this is something that we need to do to at least start out, start now, so we can have things set and talk about how more time allows you to get that team of caregivers that’s going to be the best fit for your mom. That’s my best recommendation. Make sure you have a lot of urgency created in that when you’re taking Caring.com calls.
