Retaining long-term home care clients might appear tricky, but it’s actually fairly simple. By providing value to your clients in various ways and positioning your business with lifelong resources that clients can refer to for all of their home care needs, you can bulletproof your long-term retention strategy.
Customer retention strategies aren’t a new idea in the business world. However, retaining clients in the home health care industry sometimes requires extra attention, tact, and finesse.
While most early home care business owners concentrate on acquiring new home care clients, fewer tend to focus on keeping their clients and creating a loyal client base.
The secret to a thriving home care agency is turning new customers into loyal devoted clients that trust your business.
- Start Revolutions from the Inside
Main idea: If you want loyal clients, you must provide them with an unparalleled care experience. To provide this experience, spend time creating a positive, healthy, and loyal work culture that inevitably transfers positive experiences from employees to clients.
A healthy and happy work environment is essential for healthcare workers who spend their working hours caring for others. The product you are providing at a home care agency is not only the quality of actual care and assistance your caregivers provide to clients, but also the experience they give your clients.
Studies show that happy employees are more transformational employees. Perhaps unsurprisingly, employee satisfaction and work performance are inherently intertwined – especially in the business of caregiving.
Provide unparalleled value to your clients by first applying retention strategies to your employees, and not just your clients.
Employees’ feelings matter. Employee retention matters. Indeed, happy employees means better, more long-lasting business. Here are some tangible tips to keep in mind when handling any employee-related matters:
- Inspire connection to your greater company purpose. It is natural to want to be a part of something greater than yourself. If your employees can both understand your company’s higher purpose and their place in it (and therefore their value), they will connect with this purpose and exhibit more motivation.
- Praise, don’t criticize. Instead of punishing an employee, focus on rewarding their improvements and correcting unsatisfactory ones with “we” language and a solution-oriented mentality.
- Reward your employees for “going the extra mile” for your clients. For example, send your employee a “thank you” email if you receive exceptional praise from a client, etc.
- Encourage growth. For example, if someone in your company expresses a desire to grow in their career, make it clear that you will do what you can to aid them in their aspirations.
- Let them take a break. Burnout is common in caretaking roles. Make sure to give your employees time to recharge and reconnect with themselves and their personal lives so that they can return to work refreshed, rejuvenated, and ready to care for your client base.
2. Be Consistent in Your Customer Service (and all Interactions)
Main idea: By remaining consistent in your company voice through great customer service interactions, your client’s will come to trust your business.
A customer’s experience begins the moment they pick up the phone to call your business. Although it may often be overlooked in home care agencies, providing an incredible customer service experience in the earliest moments of connecting with clients is vital if you want to earn and retain their business.
To retain long-term clients, your client engagements must remain consistent. Therefore, investing in high-quality client support specialists and making sure to sound happy, cheerful, and ready to help on the phone will draw your clients in and keep them coming back for more care.
Tangible ways to employ this tip:
- Be available. The best way to be consistent is to be available to your clients. In other words, give your clients an easy route to contact their caregiver or a company client service agent if the need should arise.
- Encourage feedback. Encourage your clients to give you regular feedback, either in the form of a testimonial, through an online survey, or simply through a face-to-face conversation. By doing so, you’ll get a firmer grasp on your clients’ experience and understand how to better optimize it.
- Communication calendar. Keep in touch with your clients by making a plan to reach out to them regularly. By doing this, you can check in to see how they’re doing (and whether they’re happy with the services your nurses or caregivers are providing). Client loyalty begins after your clients understand that you are even more loyal to creating a positive experience for them.
- Use client service tools. Various automation services and client service tools (such as email technologies, text technologies, and more) will help you connect with your clientele on a regular basis without spending too much time or energy. Remain a regular part of your clients’ lives and don’t miss a single detail regarding their care by utilizing client service tools like online chat softwares, Knowledge Base, and more.
3. Position Your Company as a Resource
Main idea: The best way to convince your clients that you are of everlasting and ever-evolving value is, of course, to keep providing novel and selfless value. By providing constant value, your company will become invaluable.
In home health care, going the extra mile pays off.
There are various ways that you can employ this strategy in your company, from simply taking an extra moment to speak with your client about something they are concerned about, to sending out a company newsletter that informs your clients of valuable information, trends, and happenings in the world of home health care.
Tangible ways to apply this idea:
- Company newsletter. During onboarding, ask whether or not your client is comfortable with your company sending out casual newsletters that inform them on their rights in home health care, regulations, industry trends, industry-relevant tips, and more.
- Provide free online written resources to clients. Most successful businesses nowadays have an online presence, whether through a website or social media platform. To provide ongoing value to your clients, report on industry news, create how-to guides, and create indispensable content for your readers. They’ll not only see you as an authoritative business if you do so – but they’ll also trust your input more.
- Instructional informational videos. Along with written content, be sure to think about making informational videos for your clients to help them better understand caregiving and care services.
Other Tips:
- Reward your long-term clients for their loyalty: For clients who have invested in your care for a certain time period or a certain number of times, give them some sort of token of your appreciation. This could be a day of discounted care or even a simple “thank you” letter.
- Never stop learning, changing, and growing. No matter what, don’t stop improving your business systems, client service, and more!
Remember: retaining long term care clients is not difficult, but it does require intention and effort. By investing your time and resources into supporting your employees, providing consistent client service, and rewarding your clients for their loyalty, your agency will increase your long-term client retention.