Interview with acupuncturist and founder of Acu Hub Virtual Receptionist Services, Jenn Collins.

This week I’m talking with Jenn Collins, founder of Acu Hub Virtual Receptionist services for acupuncturists.

If you’re not familiar, a virtual receptionist means that your office calls are routed to your virtual receptionist in their home office and they have access to your cloud-based online schedule so they can set up or reschedule appointments, answer questions about your office, etc.

Jenn also runs a clinic with three acupuncturists and we talk about what’s working for marketing her practice right now, what brought her to acupuncture, and much more.

Hope you enjoy it!

In this episode, we discuss:

  • How Jenn came up with the idea for virtual receptionist services for acupuncturists
  • My experience with Acu Hub at my practice, and answering FAQs
  • When a virtual receptionist is a good fit vs. an in-person employee
  • Google ads and print ads for growing a practice
  • Why you shouldn’t use your personal phone number as your business phone number 
  • Thinking outside the box about what kind of support you need at your clinic, and why that might look different for everyone
  • And more

🎙️ Listen to Episode #55: Virtual Receptionist Services for Acupuncturists with Jenn Collins of Acu Hub

Show Notes:

Subscribe to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify

 💖 Love the podcast? Help other acupuncturists find the podcast by leaving a review here.

Transcript:

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:04)

Welcome to the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Grasek, and I’m here to help you get visible in your community, take marketing action with confidence and get more patients in your practice and more money in your pocket every week. We both know you’re a talented, passionate acupuncturist and that acupuncture has the power to change lives. So let’s dive right into this episode and talk about how you can reach more patients.

(00:34)

This week I’m talking with Jenn Collins, founder of Acu Hub virtual Receptionist Services for acupuncturists. If you’re not familiar, a virtual receptionist means that your calls are routed to your virtual receptionist in their home office and they have access to your cloud-based online schedule so they can set up or change appointments for you. In this episode, we talk about my experience with Acu Hub. Even though I’ve known Jenn a long time, I just recently started using the service. Jenn also runs a clinic with three acupuncturists and we talk about what’s working for marketing her practice right now, what brought her to acupuncture, and much more.

[MICHELLE] (01:10)

Hope you enjoy. Hello, welcome.

[JENN COLLINS] (01:13)

Hi Michelle. Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be here.

[MICHELLE] (01:17)

I’m so excited to talk with you today. You are the founder of Acu Hub Virtual Receptionist Services for acupuncturists and other wellness providers. I’m excited to talk to you not just about that, but also a little bit about your background. So I’d love to know first how you got into acupuncture.

[JENN] (01:38)

I have a story that I’ve heard other people have the same story, but when I was about 20 years old, I hurt my back really badly and I found my way to a chiropractor at that point. This was a long time ago, this was in the 90s, and she happened to also be an acupuncturist. So I let her adjust me and then after three or four visits she said I think you would really benefit from acupuncture. I was the 20-year-old like, I don’t know, I’m scared of that. I’m the southern girl from Tennessee, she’s like, I really think it would be good for you. I let her put those needles in and she left the room and the floodgates opened, tears started pouring. I was a believer right from, I was in awe. I was like, what is going on? Whatever this is, this is really interesting and fascinating to me. I was already a botanist, so I already loved herbs and natural healing and so those two paths collided and I decided to go to acupuncture school in Boulder, Colorado. I got there, I knew I was at the right place.

[MICHELLE] (02:39)

You were also like a wilderness tour guide.

[JENN] (02:43)

Outward bound instructor. So I was doing that beforehand. I really, I love botany, I love nature, I love the natural way and so that really ties into the natural healing and the Dao and the acupuncture path.

[MICHELLE] (02:57)

So you go to acupuncture school and you graduate, and I know that you have a private practice in addition to this virtual receptionist service, which is huge by the way. You have so many employees, you’re serving so many different clinics, including mine, which we can absolutely talk about, but you’re running your own business after you get out of acupuncture school. So how did you come up with this idea? Where did it come from

[JENN] (03:23)

For Acu Hub?

[MICHELLE] (03:23)

Yeah.

[JENN] (03:23)

I was practicing acupuncture for 14 years before Acu Hub came to be. I’ve been doing this since 2000. And by the way, this is a great question and it’s got a really interesting story. A lot of people ask me this, how’d you come up with the idea? Well, about in 2015 I had a receptionist whom I loved, her name is Royce and she gave notice. She was like, “I have to move out of state. My family needs me to move because my husband’s job.” I was just like, oh gosh, another great one that’s leaving, that’s just, got to replace her. It’s pretty sad to see her go. But we kept in touch and she had been a fabulous one. My clients loved her, I loved her. Meanwhile, she leaves, my practice is growing and thriving. I decide it’s time to get an electronic health records system. I decide it’s time to bite the bullet and get rid of paper charts and move into the new age and get with the computer program.

(04:21)

So I did all this test driving. I did Acu Simple, United, Unified Practice Gen book, Opti Mantra, Mind Body, Scheduler, you can name them all. I didn’t just look at the demos. I drove, I test drove them all and I finally found Jane app, which has been my favorite all along. I’m so glad I found it. Then we built our practice, put in our patients, started using the system, got to know the system and things were rolling along pretty smoothly. I had a 20-hour a week front desk person who was helping me and the rest of the time we were just managing on our own.

(04:59)

Royce calls me one day out of the blue and says, how are you doing, blah, blah, blah. I’m looking for a job. It was just like a light bulb went off. I realized since I have a cloud-based scheduling system, Royce conceivably could answer the phones from her home office in Sacramento and support my practice virtually for the other 20 hours a week that we needed coverage for. So voila, that’s the start of this whole thing, is I realized they don’t have to be in the office to help me do the answering the phones and the scheduling. So I figured out how to build a remote call forwarding system and automate the phones and get them on a schedule and Royce would answer them for the 20 hours a week and I had another person in office doing the other 20 hours and a couple of colleagues said, “Hey, that’s a great idea. Could we use her too? Maybe she could help us for part-time.” Then it just started growing and growing and then I realized I could turn this into a business. This could help a lot of people who can’t afford a full-time receptionist. They could use this service and save a ton of money and have their phones answered and it’s a win-win. So that’s how it came to be and now we get new clinics like every, we get several clinics a month now that use our service.

[MICHELLE] (06:20)

I love that it started with someone that you knew so you could test run it in that way with your own practice. I really feel like the best ideas are born out of necessity. You’re like, what is the solution to this problem that I need another receptionist and Royce is looking for a job and I already know she’s brilliant and my people like her. I want to share a little bit about what it’s been like for my practice because I think it is actually hard for people to imagine if they haven’t been walked through the process or maybe, maybe not. It was hard for me to imagine at first. We had actually been talking for years before I was finally ready to sign up. I always love what you’re doing and I would send people to you when they would say exactly what you just articulated, that they really needed front desk help, but they didn’t think they could afford a full-time person like in-person.

(07:16)

So I would send them to you and finally I was like, I am that person. So the way that it is set up for my practice and for most people’s practices that you’re helping with, I would assume, just to give people an idea, is that the phones are covered from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. I have two receptionists who sort of split up the day, there’s Mary on the first half of the day, from 10:00 to 3:00, and then there’s Tracy in the afternoon. What’s amazing about it is they are trained to be able to talk about my practice, which was really something I was concerned about. Will the virtual receptionist know all the details of my practice and all of the nuances of the services that I offer and who can sign up for what and what my patients need?

(08:05)

We actually had a training for that and now when they answer the phones, my phone number is forwarded to them. So it doesn’t even ring in my office. Everyone, I just want to emphasize that, the phone does not ring at my office and that is amazing. So either Mary or Tracy will answer the phone, and of course they have access to my EHR, I use Unified Practice. They answer people’s questions. They just put the patients on there. If either of them has nuanced questions for me, they send me a text and they’re like, “Oh, this person called and they want to reschedule, but there’s a slight conflict. What would your preference be so that I don’t clog up your schedule.” It’s not like, I think what people imagine when they think of virtual receptionist services is this stranger who doesn’t understand their practice, who’s just making decisions on their behalf and talking about their practice in a way that they have no control over. That is just not the case. Clearly, I’m gushing. I’ve been very happy. We were talking before we signed on that my favorite thing about Acu Hub is that I don’t ever have to answer the phone because I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I just hate it.

[JENN] (09:18)

You’re not alone, a lot of us hate it. And making callbacks.

[MICHELLE] (09:22)

Yes, I find the callbacks at the end of the day very difficult or the really the phone tag throughout the whole week, you’ll have to tell me if you’ve experienced with other practitioners the same thing. I started telling people that text was preferred because I found it much faster to text someone back than to play phone tag. So a lot of my patients are trained to text me, which I have now been untraining them. I’m like, please call the number and Mary and Tracy will help you.

[JENN] (09:50)

I think that just gives them that little bit too much accessibility to you in a way. Texting is, they can reach out anytime, anyplace, any time of the day. And really, we want to set those professional boundaries with our clients, just like doctor’s offices do.

[MICHELLE] (10:05)

Yeah, and I use Google Voice, which has been a little tricky, but I could turn it off so that I can’t see the text messages come through after hours. So that helped. But I do think it was a little confusing for people because they are assuming like, “Oh I texted you, can’t you see it?” And I’m like, “Nope.”

[JENN] (10:26)

Yeah, a good way to handle that would be an autoresponder in your text just saying, I’m not responding to these texts, please call the number. Tou could reroute those inquiries to your receptionist that way.

[MICHELLE] (10:38)

Yeah, that is a great idea. I am really curious what it is like managing these two separate businesses. Pretty much everyone that I have spoken to who has a practice and then a separate business talks to me about ways that they sort of divide up their focus and their brain power and how they are able to concentrate on each one and give it enough time. How do you go about that in your week?

[JENN] (11:06)

That’s a great question. For me it’s been an organic process that evolved sort of in the time of Covid in a way. So our business Acu Hub started getting really busy in 2019 and I started feeling a pull like I’m not getting everything done in my clinic and I’m not getting everything done at Acu Hub and I’m feeling like I’m not doing either one of them justice, I need to change something. Well, COVID came in and changed that for me and we weren’t seeing patients. We were closed for a while. I focused mostly on Acu Hub during that time and then I recognized that really my gift was client care. That’s what I’ve done, is I’ve given up treating the clients now I just manage my clinic, which has three other acupuncturists besides me, a physical therapist and a rolfer. I manage all of them and then I manage Acu Hub and I still do the hiring and the training of all the receptionists that we bring on, but pretty soon I’ll have to figure out another solution because I won’t be able to do all those parts and pieces anymore.

[MICHELLE] (12:04)

It sounds like it’s a lot to keep organized. What marketing do you feel like is working well for your practice, I’m so curious?

[JENN] (12:15)

For my practice, I’ve been in this town a long time so obviously, word of mouth is huge for me now. Instagram and Facebook, and of course I’ve watched lots of your episodes and taken a lot of tips from you, that’s been super helpful. Google Ads has been a really successful thing for me in my practice. Because my town is small enough, we’re searching for an acupuncturist on Google makes a lot of sense. So we’ve put a lot of energy into that. And then the local publication, it just goes out to all the addresses in town, the little mail, the little local mailer, I’ve done a lot of that advertising as well.

[MICHELLE] (12:50)

Hmm, so a print mailer. Do you feel like, does it matter whether your ad is published on the front or the back cover of the mailer or that’s not important, it’s still effective?

[JENN] (13:04)

The mailer that we use has about 20 pages, so it’s more like a newspaper and I don’t really know if it would matter. You have to pay more obviously, to get those prime spots in the mailer, so I’ve typically not been the one that has upped my budget for those special spots, but I bet it would make a difference.

[MICHELLE] (13:23)

I mean as long as it’s working. I always find that people struggle a lot with print marketing and like the only tip that I can give them, because it’s been such a long time since I did print marketing, is that if you can afford a section on the front or the back cover that improves your visibility drastically. It makes it a higher ROI. But I also think that you’re right, it depends on how large your town is and if people are still reading the, we call it the Penny Saver, I think it’s probably the same type of thing, the little newspaper. If people are still actively reading it from cover to cover, then it’s just like anything else. You just have to decide is this going to work for my business?

[JENN] (14:09)

Yeah, ours is called the Locals Guide and it lists what plays are happening, what music’s happening. It’s got a what’s going on about town and then it has a lot of advertisement spots. I had a really fun marketing exercise that I did once with a friend of mine in marketing school. She had me close my eyes and she would open the page of the newspaper and she’d say, point to the first thing you see that jumps out at you. Then we’d do it on the next page, close your eyes, point to the first thing that jumps out at you. It helped me recognize what ads pop out for me and helped me decide what ads I should make for myself. So it gave me some guidance and some creative input on how to design an ad.

[MICHELLE] (14:45)

I love that. Do you have any tips for creating effective Google Ads? I’ve had a couple people in the past, maybe six months say that they feel like Google Ads have become more difficult and I know that my ads get flagged for things all the time, which makes me want to cry. It’s like a constant, I’m always putting out fires, but if you have something that seems to work particularly well, like vocabulary you use or anything like that, people always love to hear tips for their Google Ads.

[JENN] (15:15)

I can’t think of a specific tip, but I know that I have the keywords as heavily as I can put them in the front, the name of the ad and then the few words that come right below it. I just try to put acupuncture, fertility, facial, I put the types of acupuncture that people are looking for in the very front of the ad.

[MICHELLE] (15:33)

Okay, so they’re in like the heading and maybe the subheading those first couple of words?

[JENN] (15:38)

Mmh, make sure acupuncture’s in there. Some people don’t realize how important that is to have that in the name of your ad or the name of your business. It’s important.

[MICHELLE] (15:47)

I always encourage people to think about if you were a potential patient, what would you be putting into Google that you think is going to help you solve this problem, and try to think of it totally from their perspective.

[JENN] (16:00)

Fertility, “acupuncture near me,” really basic that’s what people are searching for.

[MICHELLE] (16:06)

Yes. I like the sweet and simple. I think you said you took a marketing class. Was that for Acu Hub, was that for building your practice?

[JENN] (16:16)

It was really just working with a friend who was in a marketing program and she just sat down with me and pointed out some little highlights like why is McDonald’s so successful? Well, they use yellow and red. Those are really big colors in marketing and they grab your eye faster. So we just talked about little things like that that make ads stand out.

[MICHELLE] (16:35)

I think part of marketing that would make it much more interesting for most people is if we remembered that a lot of marketing is about psychology. So I think a lot of us as acupuncturists are really fascinated by psychology and what makes our patients tick and how can we help people make better decisions for their life and a lot of that is of course psychology and that transitions really well into marketing. It’s about what makes people choose one thing over the other, not just the language, because we’re always talking about marketing copy but also visually what makes people, like you’re saying sit up and take notice and make a choice.

[JENN] (17:17)

I think faces also in your ads are really good because we connect with faces. You could even apply Chinese facial diagnosis and maybe even think about why are we attracted to certain faces and not others and why would we pick this acupuncturist just on a face versus another? It would be a fascinating study.

[MICHELLE] (17:37)

I always try to remember this because in the beginning before I had my marketing mentor, I had first opened my practice. I used to create ads using images of people who were in pain. It was what they were experiencing now, but then eventually I learned that it’s so much more effective to use images of people who’ve already achieved their outcome. It’s the happy, carefree person riding a bike in a field of flowers or golfing with ease or whatever it is that they’re looking for, smiling, looking down at a baby for a fertility ad. So want to show them, show a person’s face and show them so happy and relieved that they have made it to the other side of whatever their struggle is that you’re helping them with. I think it’s also so much more uplifting for a person to be able to identify with the happy outcome that they want instead of having to identify with the miserable person in pain and be like, yep, that’s me. Bring them to the end instead the end of their goal.

[JENN] (18:38)

Yes, we don’t want them stuck in that feeling of being trapped in that situation at their end. We want them to see the way to get out of it, and you’re the way, you’re the answer for them.

[MICHELLE] (18:49)

Yeah, exactly. So we already talked about how much, I really love the service and I do think that it is sort of thinking outside the box for most people to consider bringing on a virtual receptionist. Do you have other ideas to help people for their practice management?

[JENN] (19:11)

I think all of us have a different administrative formula in our business. It’s do we even have a front desk for someone to sit in? What do we need our administrative assistant to be doing for us? Do we just need our calls answered? Do we take insurance? What’s our billing formula like? I think to take all those things in mind and to sit down maybe with a piece of paper and pen and figure out, okay, what are the things I like doing and then I’m good at, what are the things I don’t like doing or that I need to be better at and find the assistant or the helper person that will solve those problems. Like you don’t like answering the phone, I’m a great solution for you. I have other clinics that we serve where they actually have an office manager that’s there at the desk 40 hours a week, but they still want us to answer their phones because that office manager can get so much more done if she’s not being continually interrupted by phone calls and having to do callbacks. She can put those calls on hold and then some clinics we transfer new patient inquiries to their front desk. We don’t even schedule for new patients, we just schedule for follow ups. So that helps them be in control of their new patient onboarding. We do the follow-ups. So there’s a lot of different ways this can work and I think it is just sort of like figuring out your own roadmap and how you want your administrative needs to be met. We all have so many of them and we all have a different formula, so yeah, thinking outside the box on what your specific formula could be and what could look like

[MICHELLE] (20:39)

As we’re discussing this, I want to mention something that I think the listeners might be wondering. I’ve discussed this with my patients is sometimes we’re worried that they are going to notice that we don’t have like a physical receptionist, but we have someone on staff who is speaking to them on the phone. So like, where is this person or how is this possible? I know that I’ve spoken to a couple people who were worried, they’re like, well is that weird if I don’t have a receptionist sitting in my office? I’m like clearly this person doesn’t work for me. Am I supposed to pretend that that this person is in my office? I remember Mary, one of my receptionists and I had this discussion, she’s like, well if you would like, I could sort of make it sound like I’m in your office but like it’s a little weird and I was like, no, we don’t have to do that.

(21:33)

My reception area is very small. So the moment a patient walks in they know instantly that I am the only person here. There is no other receptionist. They realize that Mary is not in the building with me and that has been totally fine for my patients. I think people get a little worried that it feels disjointed or not as smooth process or it’s a weird experience. It really isn’t. It makes sense to your patients right away. I just want to point that out because I think it is a question that comes up whenever I refer people to you and I’m sure that you get it all the time, is this seamless, do people notice or care that there’s no one in the office? They really don’t care.

[JENN] (22:21)

They don’t. I think for us it’s one of the best compliments we can get at Acu Hub is when the clients come in and go, where’s Mary? I thought she was going to be here. Because that means Mary’s doing her job as if she is there. She’s answering your phones like she’s sitting at your front desk, she’s working as if she’s side by side with you and that is really the best complement our service can get. That sets us apart from an answering service. We’re we’re not that, we are part of your team.

[MICHELLE] (22:50)

That really does happen. And I know that Mary has, and Tracy as well, they both have information about like parking at my office for example. So it’s like any question that a new patient could ask, they can answer, even about the physical location. So I think that lends to new patients sometimes thinking like, oh this person is in your office, but when they arrive and there’s no one, if they ask, it’s not a big deal. They’re usually pretty fascinated. They’re like, wow, Mary lives where, oh, I bet it’s warm and sunny there today. It’s 12 degrees in upstate New York and snowing, but I bet it’s beautiful where she is. And then next time they speak to her they’re like, “Hey, wow, you’re not in that office space? How cool?”

[JENN] (23:32)

I know. It’s really sweet. Then they get to know your receptionist and then little side conversations can happen and then they can actually have a relationship just the same as they would have in-person at your office.

[MICHELLE] (23:43)

Which is such a beautiful thing.

[JENN] (23:45)

It is. And customer service is a dying art. It feels like these days you’re either on hold for 15 minutes or you get a really grumpy person who doesn’t know your problem. At Acu Hub we’re really trying to show that customer service can be beautiful and we can be part of your team. We don’t have to be in your office to be doing great work for you and to be sort of part of your clinic.

[MICHELLE] (24:04)

That’s a really nice way to think about it. A long time ago you mentioned to me why it is not recommended to have your personal cell phone as your business phone. I agree with this. I did this for a little while but I’ll let you discuss it and then I’ll chime in.

[JENN] (24:23)

We have a lot of people that come to us and I say, what phone service are you using? They tell me their cell phone and oh my goodness, the stories I’ve heard, people hate it. They get trapped, the clients are calling them and texting them, they’re bombarding, they’re voicemail is full of client inquiries and once you’ve started it’s really hard to unravel that because it’s your personal phone. So your friends and your family, you’re either going to have to change your business phone, nobody wants to do that, that’s a disaster, or your personal phone number. So it just becomes really hard. There are some great apps out there and some other good phone services that can give you a number for very little money. Grasshopper, RingCentral 8X8. So even if you don’t use a service like Acu Hub, you should try to not use your cell phone for business and just have a separate number. And you can still run it all from your cell phone, but there’ll be two different numbers. Does that make sense?

[MICHELLE] (25:19)

Yeah, absolutely. I used my personal cell phone as my business cell phone for I believe the first four years of my practice and I would get so many sales calls because it was registered as a business locally and I still get sales calls from the location, roughly the area where I used to practice. I’m about an hour away now. That number unfortunately, somehow still exists on, it’s not on Yelp or those big sites because those are easy to find and fix, but the smaller websites that are sort of aggregating data about healthcare providers that you don’t even know are out there. My number is my personal cell number, is still out there on some of those websites and I will still occasionally get calls or a ton of spam that I am certain comes from that. That is if I could change anything about my practice at that time, it would have been to get a separate number because we already know how much I hate answering the phone. I get so much spam that my personal policy is if I don’t recognize an incoming call on my personal cell, I do not answer it.

[JENN] (26:36)

And just always remember your practice will grow and more and more people will have that number, so it’s a spiral that’s really hard to get out of after you’ve gotten busy as a practitioner.

[MICHELLE] (26:47)

Exactly. It’s not like it ever improves or reduces. So yeah, agreed. It was a good lesson

[JENN] (26:57)

All of you guys out there still in acupuncture school just learn that one, this one gem from this talk, do not use your cell phone for business.

[MICHELLE] (27:04)

There’s still time, still time for you. I have one more question for you, what is your definition of success?

[JENN] (27:14)

That is such a lovely question and I’m so glad you ask everyone that because it’s always fun to hear other people answer it on your podcast. But for me, success has to do with finding joy in the everyday moments of my life and satisfaction in my work. Serving other people really gives me a lot of feeling of success. When I can help them with a problem or help them solve something, I get a sense of accomplishment and joy from that. If I can bring that feeling into my work and have my work provide that, then I really truly feel like that’s success. Especially if my work can provide me with emotional, financial, and energetic support, it’s a reciprocal situation and to me that feels what success truly is.

[MICHELLE] (28:00)

Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Where can everybody find you online? Where can we follow you?

[JENN] (28:08)

Maybe some of you have seen us in Acupuncture Today. If you get that magazine, we always advertise there and the website is acu-hub.com. That’s a great place to start.

[MICHELLE] (28:19)

Perfect. Well, thank you again.

[JENN] (28:22)

Well, thank you for having me Michelle, and thank you for using our service and feeling good about it. We really love helping your clinic. It’s been a joy.

[MICHELLE] (28:29)

Absolutely. Thank you.