As I look at my practice and the service I provide to my patients, I try to look at the experience from the patient’s point of view. I also try to look at other industries as inspiration for ideas I can apply to my practice. In the tech industry there is a term for an easy smooth customer experience that is termed “frictionless”. Areas of difficulty in the customer experience are called friction points. The goal is always to smooth those out as much as possible.
In my practice, people come in with pain. In a sense, they have plenty of friction already. The more I can make their being seen, examined and treated frictionless the better it will be for them and their recovery. The truth is that many patients will stop coming in for treatment when the pain they originally experienced has improved to the point that the “pain” or friction of coming in is greater than the pain they now have. Thus, all the more reason for me to make the entire experience pain-free or frictionless.
I do this by not overloading patients with information when they come in. The reality is that most patients don’t want to learn the intricacies of chiropractic. They want to get out of pain.
Patients want an in-depth exam to get to the root of the cause. But they don’t want to be kept waiting.
While they are in pain, they don’t want to be hit with a long-term care plan no matter how well-intentioned that may be. The simply want to get out of pain before they reevaluate their options.
Patients don’t want the treatment to be scary or overly forceful. They want to get out of pain through gentle relaxing treatment.
With all these factors in mind, I will never stop modifying and improving my patient procedures to provide the utmost in cutting-edge chiropractic care and a frictionless patient experience.