Sono Bello Increases Show Rates and Gains $1.5M in Monthly Revenue With Textel

About Sono Bello
Patient experience is at the center of the Sono Bello brand. As an industry leader in cosmetic surgery, with 60+ locations across the United States, Sono Bello invests considerable resources into ensuring its prospects and patients receive the very best care, customer service, and treatment throughout the patient journey.

Industry: Cosmetic surgery specialists

Location: 60+ locations across the United States

Contact Center Size: 100+ seats

Use Case: Improve low contact rates, speed up agent response time, add text marketing for re-engagement & brand awareness

Problem

Every patient deals with the headache of appointments. Whether a prospective patient needs a consultation, or an existing patient needs to reschedule their check-up, the process of making appointments affects everyone.

In the past, the Sono Bello team relied on phone calls and emails to confirm appointments and to remind patients, make changes, or process cancellations.

Constant No-Shows

Despite sending confirmations and reminders, Sono Bello had an unacceptably high number of patient no-shows. Patients were simply not opening their emails or clicking portal or confirmation links.

With limited staff and time, each missed consultation was a lost opportunity to help someone in need of treatment. “Because our model is based on appointments, it’s critical to communicate easily,” says Tim Surowiecki, Chief Marketing Officer at Sono Bello. “Unfortunately, our patients weren’t picking up the phone or returning calls.”

Plus, phone calls lacked the privacy some patients needed. “Cosmetic surgery is a sensitive topic. Patients don’t want to say their age, weight, and body mass index out loud. They’re in meetings with coworkers. They’re out to lunch with friends. They want a more discreet way to provide this information. Text messages are perfect for that.”

Solution

• Business texting enabled across all Sono Bello locations
• Convenient, quick support over SMS, where patients can ask questions, reschedule, cancel, and follow up
• Text-based marketing campaigns to engage new prospects
• More efficient, empowering experiences for customer service agents

“We started getting inbound texts before even telling people about SMS support,” says Eric O’Brien, VP of Technology at Sono Bello. “As it turns out, our demographic is texting all the time.”

Today, customers receive appointment confirmations by text, and they can text back to confirm, reschedule, or cancel. Alongside other contact channels such as voice, Sono Bello customer service agents now text one-to-one with patients.

Before, Sono Bello staff could help only one patient at a time. Now, they support multiple customers at once by switching between text conversations. Plus, since SMS isn’t tied to Sono Bello’s open hours, patients can cancel, reschedule, or ask questions whenever they want.

Result: More Patients & More Revenue

Many Sono Bello patients begin their journey by filling out a web form to get further information or schedule a consultation. From there, the Sono Bello team uses Textel to automatically initiate personalized drip campaigns via text that patients can respond to.

Sono Bello also launched a same-day text confirmation program for current patients. “We always had email reminders a couple of days out. But we felt like a simple day-of reminder would be helpful for patients,” says O’Brien.

As a result, show rates increased by a dramatic 9%, leading to 500 more “patient shows” per month and a $1.5 million increase in monthly incremental revenue. Similarly, Textel-enabled engagement campaigns generate $250K in incremental revenue per month.

“Nothing falls through the cracks, and responsiveness is really great. We have two or three people available that can respond to patients quickly. If we leave our patients a voicemail, we might never hear back from them at all. Textel is a game-changer,” says O’Brien.