How to Land Recurring Nemt Clients
When you’re examining ways to grow your non-emergency medical transportation business, your customer base should be one of your big focus areas. There are two things you likely want to do: get more customers and get those customers to take more trips with you. We’re focusing on the latter and bringing you some tips for landing recurring trips with your clients.
Business Growth and Why It Matters
If you’re a newer NEMT business, securing regular daily trips is an exciting moment. However, we’re here to tell you that you can’t become complacent. Yes, having trip requests to take care of each day is a great first step, but it’s not the best your business can be. Once you’ve reached this point, it’s time to start thinking about how you can continue to grow. If you remain stagnant, that simply isn’t good for business. Instead of worrying about getting as many new clients as you can, focus on the ones you already have and how you can persuade them to use your services even more than they already are. If this is something you’re ready to do, these are just a few things you should keep in mind.
Understand Your Passengers’ Needs
Before you start planning additional trips with your clients, you need to first understand why they use your service. If a passenger simply needed a ride to an annual doctor’s checkup, they might not be your best prospect for recurring trips. On the other hand, if a patient requests a trip for dialysis treatment, you have a huge opportunity to sign them on for recurring trips. Since patients who need dialysis typically go for treatment three times per week, it makes sense that the patient would want to set their trips in advance, ensuring they have a ride when they need one. If you have a client that falls into this category, it’s worth asking them if they’d like to book trips weeks or months in advance. If they like the service you’re providing, this situation should work out well for both parties.
Don’t Push Passengers Out of Their Comfort Zones
As much as you should take advantage of upsell opportunities that come your way, it’s important to be mindful of your passengers’ boundaries. For some passengers, a suggestion that they use your service more frequently could turn them off completely, while other passengers might be thrilled by the idea. You’re often dealing with passengers who are elderly, disabled, or generally vulnerable, so it’s important to approach these conversations with care and empathy.
Build a Relationship First
Some passengers will want to enjoy their ride quietly, while others will be happy to engage in conversations with their drivers. It’s important that your team of drivers recognizes which type of client they’re transporting and adjusts their behavior accordingly. Building a relationship with your clients within the limits of their comfort is important. It keeps them loyal to your company and gives you a better idea of how you can improve the service you’re providing to them. Listen to their concerns and ideas, and adjust your offerings accordingly.
Take Note of Your Competitors
If you’re working in an area with other NEMT providers, it’s imperative that you understand their strategy, prices, and the services they offer so you can ensure your business has a competitive advantage. If your competitors only offer trips within a certain mileage, consider offering long-distance trips to your passengers. If competitors aren’t open on weekends, holidays, or outside of usual business hours, tweak your hours to accompany passengers when other businesses won’t be able to. If you aren’t sure where to begin with business changes, the first place to start looking is at your competition.
Focus On Your On-Time Performance
You can offer all the perks and pleasant conversations in the world, but if you aren’t getting your passengers to their appointments on time, you aren’t going to have anyone running back to use your NEMT service again. On-time performance should be one of your biggest focus areas. Track your pick-up and drop-off times and see if there are any patterns in lateness. Analyze how each driver is performing, the time of day the trips are occurring, and the routes that are being taken. The best way to gather these statistics and improve your performance overall is with non-emergency medical transportation routing software.
Implement Robust Nemt Software
If you’re looking to improve your business in any way, there’s no better investment than paratransit software. Software allows you to find the best routes and most efficient schedules while making real-time dispatching decisions and submitting claims free of error. Many are making the switch from a manual planning process to an automated one and seeing incredible results. Will you be next? If NEMT software is something you’re interested in, we’re ready to help you upgrade. Get in touch with the team at iSi Technology today to learn about our family of software products. We can’t wait to explore your options together.