It's the way forward in hearing care

We offer innovative solutions for hearing care professionals. With over 50 years of valuable industry knowledge, you'll find information about how to attract, retain and engage more patients. Learn ways you can run a more efficient and effective business.

Streamlining your work processes is good for your business, but it can also contribute to smoother, more successful fittings and a better patient experience. Here are some more ideas:

	Use assistants for routine tasks.  Consider hiring an assistant – or training a current employee – to help with time-consuming tasks that don’t require your level of expertise and take you away from selling hearing aids. For example, an assistant can handle the manual processes, logistics and work associated with sending ear molds, clean hearing aids and replace receivers instead of sending hearing aids out for repair or requiring your valuable time. Consider setting up a walk-in repair clinic. You’ll be able to schedule more appointments and your patients will appreciate the great service you provide.
	Ensure a proper fit and reduce remakes and returns. Patients are less likely to return a well-fitting hearing aid. New integrated verification tools offered by Aurical® (including IMC, or Inter Modular communication) allow you to provide a verified “match to target” fitting directly from your hearing instrument programming software. Ensure your ear mold impressions are complete to reduce remakes and returns.
	Take advantage of new advances in hearing care and automate as many processes as possible.  There are new developments in hearing care technology that can transform the way you provide hearing care. The arrival of PC-based diagnostic and fitting equipment, like those operated with OtoSuite®, integrate easily into Noah (or into your EMR/OMS), eliminating the need for manual data entry or scanning of results. What’s more, advancements in 3D digital technology are making strides in the industry. Don’t miss out on the future of hearing care – and boost efficiency and personalization in your clinic.

Everyone knows about offering a free hearing test to drive traffic to your clinic, but what else can you do to attract new patients? Here are some ideas:

	Get them talking – about you and your clinic. A personal reference from a current patient is a great way to generate positive word-of-mouth and attract new patients. One guaranteed way to impress people is to show them something completely new and different – something memorable that they can see or hear and talk about when meeting with family and friends. It could be a video of their own ear canal made with an otoscope, a demonstration of amplification using real ear/speech mapping or it could also be the newest and most advanced technology within hearing care counseling. The time it takes to do either will pay off – and increase referrals down the road.
	Be known in your community. A hearing care specialist not just a hearing aid provider. Consider offering hearing care protection at your clinic. Think about participating next time there is a health fair at the community center by giving a presentation about the importance of hearing protection. Or contact the music department at a local high school or university and offer to introduce students to the importance of hearing protection. It’s a great way to start building awareness of your clinic and your services, as well as build your referral base.
	Offer personalized service. Providing a personalized experience for your patients not only boosts patient satisfaction, it can also help differentiate your clinic from the one down the street. Look for new ways you and your staff can make your patients feel special as soon as they walk through your door. Take time to get to know your patient. Current and new hearing care technologies can help. Making your patients feel special through a more personalized experience creates trust and confidence in you and makes counseling easier later on in the sales process.

There are many ways your patients benefit from counseling; but counseling can also help you:

	Boost confidence and build trust.  Counseling can help your clients feel that you’re the right professional to help them. Using the latest and most advanced technologies demonstrates you take your patients and their challenges seriously. Listening to your patients’ specific needs and basing your diagnostics around them is an effective way to build connections. Counseling also helps patients become confident that amplification will improve their lives.
	Discuss expectations from the beginning.  An important part of counseling is discussing and aligning expectations. And, it’s important that patients understand what to expect upfront rather than at the tail end of the sales process. Conduct all the assessments required for a professional counseling process to uncover any unknowns early in the process. Discussing expectations early on means your patients will wear their hearing aids consistently and be happier with them in the end.
	Ensure patients will return to you.  You know that working with patients to fine tune their hearing aids to suit their preferences and lifestyle is part of every successful fitting. Make sure they know it too – and that they understand that returning to your clinic for adjustments is not only allowed, but strongly encouraged. But what if they don’t buy a hearing aid on the first visit? Establishing loyalty and trust through counseling and a personalized experience with the professional helps to anchor your patients to your clinic and makes it more likely that the customers will return to your shop, even if you do not make the sale on the first visit.