So, some of you remember back to, I wanna say it was either June or July of 2019, when I did a free public webinar, and I had hundreds of home care business owners around the world on this webinar, and I was discussing the biggest challenge home care companies face. And the biggest challenge that they face, is not the caregiver crisis, it’s not getting enough clients for services, the biggest challenge that the home care companies face is how they answer the phone.
I went through this whole 20-minute explanation of the graphic below.
The results are from when we do secret shopper calls as part of the services that we offer at Hurricane Marketing Enterprises, for all of our mastermind and our coaching clients, or people who’d call us to do secret shopper calls for them. And the findings that we had were astounding to us! It blew us away to see that out of all the people we called, there was 20% that were completely wrong. That means one in five companies we called had things happen like, no one answered the phone, it was the wrong phone number posted on their website, people answered the phone and said, “Hey, we’re having lunch, can you call back in an hour?” An answering service called and they didn’t know what to say or do.
Those were the things that happened, which is just completely wrong. How can you have on your website the wrong phone number for your office? That’s abysmal, right? Or how can somebody in your office answer the phone and I’m a prospective client or I’m a prospective caregiver, ’cause inquiry management is not just for clients, it’s also for caregivers that are calling for work. You can’t get enough caregivers, right? That’s the hardest part of the business is getting caregivers and matching clients, and then keeping them coming in together.
So, you gotta make sure you’re answering the caregiver calls too. So, someone’s calling in and you pick up the phone and say, “Can you call back in an hour?” That is unforgivable. You should fire that person, right? That’s horrible, how dare you, this is a prospective client. We also called, pretending we were a caregiver in one of these wrong scenarios, and we called the wrong line, they have a caregiver line and they have a main office line, and we called the main office line and they yelled at us and said, “Don’t you know to read a email, “or read a website or whatever? “This is the number you’re supposed to call,” and then slam, hung up the phone.
If I was a caregiver calling in and I called the wrong number, okay I understand, I called the wrong number. But, there’s no chance I’m gonna call you back. I wouldn’t wanna work for a company like that, and that was 20% of the people that we called. The next 60% represented people who left out really vital parts, like, how did you get this phone number? That’s a vital part of an inquiry. If I’m a caregiver calling in for work, you have to know what caused me or what resource I found, that prompted me to contact you for employment.
If I’m a client or a family member of a patient, you have to know where I got your phone number from, if you’re marketing, especially. Or you have a marketer who’s out there representing your company trying to get referrals to come in, and you don’t find out where that referral came from? You’re wasting an opportunity to go and follow up and let a referral source know, “That your referral came in, thank you.” You have to find that information out. We had people leave out things like, what is the name of the caller, or what is the phone number of the caller? How could you not get that step? Those are vital parts. And 60%, the vast majority of people we called, left those parts out. And then the last 20% got it right.
They did everything that they were supposed to. And it’s no wonder that this group represented people doing two, three plus million dollars a year in revenue. So, it’s like the people doing less than $2 million were one of these, mostly here, and people doing over $2.5+ million, we’ll say, fell into this group over here. And it makes sense, because they got better operations, they understand the importance of an inquiry, whether it’s a caregiver or a client and they treat them appropriately.
And so, what my advice to you on this would be is, I don’t wanna take up too much time, and in the next one I’ll go further, like who should be answering the phone in your office and such. But, as I’m explaining this to you, do you even know where you fall? When was the last time you did a secret shopper call to your office? This is something that I recommend to all of our clients.
Like I said, we do this for our clients, so if you aren’t a client and you want us to do this for you, you can call us so we can tell you how, we can do this for you. Or if you become a coaching client, we will do this for you without you even knowing it, it’s just part of our program, because we wanna make sure that you’re doing this right.
Because I guarantee, I guarantee, right now today, you’re burning leads for caregivers and you’re burning leads for inquiries, and you don’t even realize it. You should be able to meet with 45% of the people contacting you for inquiries, whether it’s a caregiver or a prospect. 45% of the people you speak to, you should meet with face-to-face, one-on-one.
If this isn’t happening, pick up the phone, give us a call, and let us help you BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION.
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