E838 | How Communication Can Make or Break Your Clinic Reputation

Why Your Customer Experience Is Killing Referrals (and How to Fix It)

If you think great outcomes alone are enough to grow your clinic, think again. In this post, Doc Danny shares the three-part communication framework that drives referrals, improves retention, and builds an unforgettable brand reputation—without spending a dime on ads.

The Two Reasons People Refer (and One Gets Overlooked)
Most clinicians believe outcomes are what matter most. And while they are important, the real driver of referrals is how patients feel about the experience. When you combine great results with seamless, professional communication, people don’t just come back—they bring their friends.

What Hospitals Get Wrong (And You Can’t Afford To)
Danny recounts his son’s recent emergency appendectomy and the frustrating communication breakdowns that followed—shifting nurses, conflicting information, and zero follow-up. Even when the outcome is good, a chaotic experience erodes trust. Your clinic can’t afford that kind of disconnect.

The 3-Phase Framework for a 5-Star Experience
To create a clinic people rave about, focus on:

1. What to Expect – Be clear and upfront before visits.

2. Meet Expectations – Deliver what you promised.

3. What’s Next – Follow up after treatment to reinforce trust.

It sounds simple, but most clinics miss at least one of these steps—and it costs them.

The Role of Internal Communication
Growth brings complexity. As you bring on front desk staff, clinicians, and support team members, communication gaps widen. The solution? Systems. Use tools like Slack to centralize updates, align your team in weekly meetings, and track every patient’s journey together. It creates consistency—and consistency builds trust.

Referrals Come Early, Not at Discharge
Most referrals happen in the first few visits, not after a full plan of care. That’s when people feel the biggest emotional relief, and when they’re most likely to share their experience. Nail your communication early, and you’ll generate more word-of-mouth than any ad ever could.

Key Takeaway
Your reputation is earned in drops and lost in buckets. Don’t make people apologize for referring you. Build a clinic experience they can’t wait to recommend.

Want help navigating these phases?
Visit physicaltherapybiz.com or book a free strategy call to talk through your goals with someone who’s helped over 1,000 practices do the same.

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Ready to elevate your practice? Book a call at the link below with one of our expert consultants today and start your journey to delivering unparalleled physical therapy.

Podcast Transcript

Danny: Hey, Danny Matta here, founder of PT Biz, and today we are gonna talk about the customer experience, and in particular, one part of the customer experience that can dramatically change whether you're getting referrals in your practice.

So I'm gonna start by relating, uh, an experience that we recently had in the medical system, uh, with my son to customer experiences that we see in the clinics that we work with. So. Quick backstory. Uh, my son had, uh, his appendix removed a couple days ago, and it was completely unexpected. We thought he just had, uh, you know, uh, irritation to some food that he ate.

He woke up in the morning and was, uh, was throwing up. Uh, but it wasn't feeling better, so we spent the next. Basically 24 hours in urgent care clinics, emergency rooms, and eventually, uh, surgical center where he ended up having to have his, um, his appendix removed before it's, uh, before it ruptured. And, uh, all good.

He's, uh, he's doing just fine. Uh, but as I was going through the process, I, uh, was thinking through just how much better the customer experience could be in basically. Any healthcare setting, uh, that we, that you go to. And I get it. It's complex. There's a lot of moving parts. Um, but one of the things that is, I think most frustrating to people, and if you can be aware of this in your own clinic, this is gonna be huge 'cause it's free.

And that thing is communication. Communication is. People understanding, really there's, there's three elements to it that I think that most people could improve, uh, and that need to be addressed as far as your customer experience is concerned. And, and let's, let's take a step back for a second and let's talk about, there's, there's two elements of whether somebody's gonna refer somebody your way in your practice.

Uh, for the most part, it's the outcomes that you get for them. And it's the experience that they have. It's how you made them feel along the way, right. Oftentimes the outcome is expected, like they expect you to be able to do your job, uh, and to, to whatever, you know, get them a result that they want. I expect that a surgeon can take a kid's appendix out and, and not screw that surgery up, but the customer experience is how you feel about the interaction that you had, and that is actually incredibly important to the likelihood of whether somebody is going to refer somebody your way.

And that's a. Big part of the flywheel of these local service businesses, like a cast or hybrid based physical therapy clinic, that in a lot of ways your reputation and what you do is a huge driver of new volume to your clinic that allows you to not be so dependent on other forms of market. Right? It is the typically the best patient's coming your way.

It's the easiest sale. They're the most bought in. They're the, they're. They're the, the just best fit of people that you wanna work with, and you want more of those people, right? So you wanna have both. You wanna have the outcome and you want to have the experience. So when we look at communication, it's a huge part of your customer experience.

In fact, it's probably the biggest part. And when I think through this, like for me it's, there's, there's multiple pieces, but the first one is. What to expect. And as I think through my, uh, recent healthcare experience, I actually had, uh, a great, you know, information, great communication on what to expect.

What is this? What, what is it, you know, what does the appendix do? What are the outcomes if we, you know, don't go the surgical route versus the surgical route. Like what are the implications, recurrence rates, uh, all kinds of stuff. Fantastic. The doctors were great. They explained everything in detail. We also.

Are, you know, involved in he healthcare and medical community as well, and reached out to other people that we know that validated what they said as well, that are, uh, that are physicians and work in major hospitals as well. And, and so that was great. They did a great job of that, of what to expect, right?

And usually that is, uh, you know, where most people do pretty well as in their clinics as well is, is, Hey, here's what you can expect. And then people feel like it makes sense to them. That's the easiest part in my opinion. From there, you have to meet expectations. Okay? So when, when I say meet expectations, it's if you tell me that these things are gonna happen, uh, then I expect that that's the case.

And if it's not the case, then please communicate to me why it has changed or what is different about it. And this is where, uh, in, in our experience, we, we, we feel like, you know, the ball kind of dropped as far as what happened with the hospital. So, you know, for us, when, when, when we, um. We got to the hospital, to the actual surgical clinic.

So we went from a urgent care clinic, not thinking this was much of anything to a, uh, emergency room. There was a pediatric specific emergency room to then being transferred to a surgical center, uh, because they didn't have the surgical team there to, to do that. All of that, there's a lot of, obviously a communication breakdown that can occur.

And, uh, at the, the very, the last place that we were at. You know, the expectation was, okay, cool, we're gonna, we're gonna do this, you know, antibiotics and then surgery, and then, you know, you're, you're gonna be outta here, uh, tonight and you can, you can go home. It, well, assuming everything looks fine, we're gonna discharge and, and go home.

Well, you know, all in all, we're 24 hours into this whole ordeal before, uh, you know, we're able to, to come home and, uh. The, the, the challenge for us was the breakdown in what was said was gonna be done and then the handoffs. And this was really hard in hospitals, and I have respect for this because my entire family works in hospitals.

And when you have shift changes, you have communication breakdown that can occur. So the shift change between one nurse nurse to another, or one doctor to another, and, and then you're having to like re-explain things or they're not necessarily sure what you're talking about. 'cause somebody might have said one thing and then now you're hearing something else and they might.

Agree or disagree with that? Um, this is where a communication breakdown happens a lot. And this is actually really important for you in your own clinic as you go to scale past yourself because when it's just you, there's no reason to have communication breakdown unless you just forget something that you said or you're not documenting things correctly.

Like you, you have to. Realize, like there's not a whole lot of communication breaking that can happen 'cause you're not telling somebody something else or they're not talking to another person. But when you go and bring on other people within your organization, this could be your front desk, this could be people that are other staff members, you know, staff, clinicians within, uh, within your space.

Um, that also they might say something different to you or they may not be on the same page with everything that you're saying as far as your whatever plan of care is concerned. Or maybe somebody is, uh, out sick or on vacation or whatever and another. Staff member has to be able to see them. Uh, this is where we see communication breakdown and it gets very frustrating to the, the, the provider, uh, or, or to the, to the patient.

Um, something can be said with, uh, you know, businesses like ours, like we work with clinicians and help them start and grow their clinics. Right. So we we're the business education MBA style sort of program for these, these clinicians that went to school to become. Clinicians and don't really know much about running businesses.

And for us, you know, there's a process where we start to work with people. There's an onboarding process. We have a whole team's doing that, and the communication side of it is shared internally with different people. We have an onboarding, you know, coach that, that's taking them through the beginning portion of what we're doing, and then they get assigned a, a, uh, a coach who's gonna be their coach for the, the rest of the time that, that we're working with them.

We have subject matter experts within, and all these people can have slightly different perspectives and, and information potentially, or views on things. And if it's not centralized as best as possible, what happens is you have communication breakdown that feels like, you know, there's not consistency within your organization.

That is the key. The key is consistency. It is that everybody is kind of speaking the same language and that can get really, really, really tough and very hard, and it requires effort on your part to make sure. And everybody's on the same page, like our client success team within PT Biz. I mean, the amount of time that we spend just looking at people and where they're at different stages and, and the right touchpoint of what they're gonna, uh, need to learn and who they need to get in contact with, and answering questions to make sure that we're on the same page.

Everything. It's extensive. We have a whole team that just does that. Right, and that's because. At scale when you have multiple people that are all kind of working towards the same goal, there has to be constant communication and, uh, similarities in what you're saying. Otherwise, it feels like there's just a lack of communication that feels unprofessional and that's not necessarily what you want when you're about to have your kid go into a surgery.

Right. Even, even a, a very routine surgery like this, even still, you wanna make sure that like. You feel like everybody's on the same page with what they're telling you. And if they're not, then that that leads you to feel like there's a breakdown there somewhere and it's not as professional. So for you, you've gotta think about the communication breakdown side of things.

Like what to expect. Okay, cool. Here's what you can expect. You have back pain. We expect that we see this a lot. You know, this is usually the trajectory we can see, but. When you get in the office, we're gonna do a thorough examination and make sure that, you know, we have everything dialed in for what you need to do going forward.

And our, you know, whoever sees you are our, uh, our doc will do that and make sure that you're very, like, clear on what to, what to do next. So cool. We've teed them up, expectation as far as what they can expect from there. Now we have to meet the expectation, right? So that means your doc has to do a thorough exam.

That means they have to tell them, you know, oh, here's what, what we expect, prognosis, diagnosis, what's going on, uh, activities that they can and can't do. You know, like everything that they would do in a thorough examination, they have to meet that expectation and they have to hold the same communication that they had from the initial touch points, which.

May or may not be you, maybe it's somebody that's on your team that's administrative or another staff member, and then now they have to be met and they have to be consistent across the board, and there has to be a communication handoff from one person to another. Right? So if you're not having that, then you're gonna have a breakdown and then you're, you're gonna hear slightly different things.

But that one person. Is now hearing multiple things from different people, and that starts to look unprofessional. Hey, sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have a huge favor to ask of you. If you are a longtime listener or a new listener and you're finding value in this podcast, please head over to iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast and please leave a rating and review.

This is actually very helpful for us to get this podcast in front of more clinicians and really help them develop time and financial freedom. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Now, back to the podcast.

The last thing once you've met expectations is that you have to. Let them know, not not just what's next, but follow up with them. So part of meeting expectations is also letting 'em know, okay, who, here's what you can expect, right? Uh, you just had the surgery. We need 'em to do this over the next couple days.

Avoid these activities, stay out of water for a couple weeks. We don't wanna get infection, like whatever, like these things that. What we can expect. Alright, great. But then it's follow up. It's, it's following up to make sure that they're clear on everything and they know what's going on. And as simple as that might seem, it makes a big difference.

And it could be as simple as you just reaching out to your patient, uh, the day after you see them, to make sure that they're good to check on them. If, let's say you did some dry kneeling to them and you let 'em know, Hey, I expect you're gonna be sore from this. Um, for the next 24 to four, eight hours, it's totally normal.

So if you feel sore, nothing's wrong. That's a byproduct of this, uh, of, of what we're doing. But if you reach out to them, you send 'em an email, a text message, Hey, so and so, just checking in on you. Wanna see how you're feeling? Totally expect that you're quad's feeling pretty sore. You know, stairs probably aren't your best friend right now.

Whatever you wanna say, that lightens the, the mood. And then. You know, uh, let us know if you have any, any questions or concerns about anything. We look forward to seeing you on this day and let 'em know when the next, the next visit is, which they should already know, but you're just reiterating that fact.

And in our scenario, uh, we, no one has reached out to us at all. Like we feel totally comfortable with this because we are obviously in the medical field, this isn't, uh, that abnormal for us to manage postoperative stuff. But if this was somebody who was, um. You know, just they're, they're an accountant or you know, whatever.

They're a teacher and this is their kid. They're probably getting very nervous. They're probably starting to wonder like, is this normal? Does this look right? Does this, does this score look right? Like, I don't really know. Does like, what is this? What are signs of infection? You know, these things like they're probably searching for these things and it's stressing them out.

Versus having somebody follow up with them and be able to actually touch base with them on expectations, what they should be seeing, what's normal, what's not, and what they should do if something is abnormal. Right? So you have gotta think about these things as if you are in the, the, you know, position of the, of the patient.

And what's interesting for, for me is as, as I am now, like on the other side of that, it's very obvious to me that there are certain breakdowns in the customer experience and frankly just communication in general. That are, uh, difficult to manage at scale, no doubt, but if managed well. There is a massive difference between my, uh, like interest in wanting to like, shout them out as a place You gotta go here.

I had such a great experience, this, this, this, and this. Versus all, yes, I care that like the operation's done correctly. That's great. No adverse outcomes after the fact. That's the most important thing. And, and they're checking the box on that as far as what everything looks like. And you, if you help somebody get their shoulder pain resolved and back to swimming, you're checking the box on that.

But if you don't have good communication and the customer experience isn't there, the likelihood of them actually like telling their friends and family about your clinic and you, and, and, and what you're doing with people goes down a lot because you gotta keep in mind like they get 50% of the credit for a good referral and a hundred percent of the blame for a bad one.

So if they have to make excuses for your business, you know, if they say, Hey, you gotta go see x, Y, and Z PT company. Uh. They, they got my back, you know, better. And I was able to do, I was able to play golf again, whatever it's they were interested in. But just so you know, like they're, they kind of drop the ball on communication.

They're kind of hard to get in touch with. They kinda don't get back to you that fast. Like they kind of forget to like send stuff sometimes, but it's okay because they're like really good at their job. Like if someone has to apologize for you. They, they're not gonna do that. I mean, unless it's like they really like you and, but they're unlikely to do that because when someone refers somebody, it's not just about the outcome.

It's also about like the, the, the place that you're going, like the whole experience and. Yeah, there's a status associated with somebody who's a trusted referrer of people, and you cannot buy that, and you lose it quickly. You know, if you're like, oh, if you're the person that's telling everybody about this place, they have to go.

And all, every time that that happens, someone is underwhelmed by your, your recommendation. They're not going to trust your recommendation anymore. And people don't wanna lose their status. Like status is a hard thing to gain. You can't buy it. You know, you have to earn it and you can lose it. So they will safeguard.

Their status as a reputable person. Uh, and, and if you put them on the line with that in terms of like, you know, they have to apologize for things, they're probably not gonna do it. So don't be a business that people have to make excuses for why they need to work with you. Be a business that takes away the excuses and creates an environment that people can't help but recommend folks to work with you because you solve a problem and you do so in a way.

That is so professional and consistent that it is, it is like an anomaly compared to anywhere else, and you're gonna make them look great and you're gonna help their friend get a great outcome. That is what you have to think about from a communication standpoint. So what can you do to improve communication?

Number one, this should be a part of your weekly meeting. So if you're not a, we meeting on a weekly basis to talk about your clients, the patients that you're actively working with, where people are at, new people, people along their, their treatment cycle, people that are maybe moving into continuity programs, maybe they're starting to do training with you, maybe they're starting to do recurring visits, whatever it is.

But to get on the same page about where people are at, especially in the early stages, the early stages of somebody you know that is, that is starting their initial evaluation with you. Their first couple visits. This is where we can really make or break this client experience, right? Because that's where there's the most unknown.

They're not that familiar with you. They're, they're not sure how to engage with you. They don't know the whole process. So you need to be meeting on a weekly basis and you can make this part of your actual like. You know, your, your office, uh, weekly meeting. So let's say you're doing a, you know, every Monday you meet for two hours and you talk through your KPIs and your core values, and you get your team on the same page.

This is a big part of it, and it's, well, let's talk about Sarah. Sarah had her first visit on Thursday. Where's she at? Okay, cool. Hey, uh, front desk, like, has, has she been reached out to? Does she have super bells? Okay, cool. We've, we've got everything as far as communication goes. Let's talk about Brian, where's Brian at with this?

Uh, so and so is, you know, whatever, requesting a refund or where are we at with this as far as communication? Okay. Has the provider reached out to them? You wanna make sure everybody's on the same page with things that you're doing proactively, and in some cases even reactively. To make sure that everybody's communicating in the most effective way.

I'll say one big area for this that we also see breakdown at scale is internal communication channels. So how are you sharing this information? Where is that going? And this is where I think big hospitals really have a challenge, right? Because you know, when I, when I'm walking around this, this emergency department and the surgical center like.

There are so many nurses and doctors and techs and admins, like they're all over the place, right? And it's a big organization. It's very hard to communicate effectively at scale and to share that. Now we have these internal technology platforms where, you know, you can, you can communicate with your team, but being able to do that, uh, in a way where you're actually like keeping your team on the same page is really important.

One thing that. Is an application that we use within ptbi. Many clinics use this just for internal communication, not for like patient data and stuff like that, but, but just to, to make sure that people are on the same page with what's going on within the company is Slack. And I think Slack is fantastic.

It keeps people outta their inbox. It keeps people off. Text message when I see companies that are like, if a clinic is running off of like a group text, uh, or just email and they're not using something like a Slack, which there's plenty of other options, but that's just what we use, uh, internally to keep their communication similar and in one place.

And, uh, you can compartmentalize conversations, you can have channels just for specific things, whatever that is. You wanna break it up into, uh, just getting your staff to actually use this one communication channel specifically for internal communication. Is a game changer. It's huge. Uh, I resisted the shit out of it, by the way.

I didn't want to use another application within our company, and as soon as we got everybody on the same page with that, it made such a big difference because you're not losing stuff in an inbox. You know, if you're paying somebody an inbox and they have all these patient emails and they have all these other things that are coming their way, it's easy to lose messages or to sort of get distracted by things.

Uh, this is one place where you can clean up communication. It can make a really, really big difference, especially if you're trying to clean up an onboarding process and make sure people's initial. Client experience was with you. The first, you know, couple weeks they work with you are just like outstanding.

'cause that's when they're most likely to actually refer somebody your way. Oftentimes people think it's like the end when they've finished their, their plan of care or whatever. It's not, it's it. Early on, they've had a great experience. They're starting to feel much better. They're hitting these like pain relief milestones.

They're getting back to certain things that they've been avoiding and they feel much better. And then, you know, if, if you match that up with like, they've had this amazing experience and they love how you've treated them, I mean, they're gonna tell everybody about you. And that is. That is where you've gotta really focus in particular on making sure everybody has, uh, the outcomes that they want and the experience that they deserve, frankly, within your clinic and the people that do this, right?

I'll tell you this straight up. Like we work with hundreds of clinics. The, the clinics that do a great job of this, and they focus on this a lot, they have to spend far less on marketing. They have a far easier time filling new patient schedules because they're getting all these inbound referrals over and over and over again.

You know, and they just frankly have the best brand because they're paying attention to this and they have great brand reputation in their community, and that's a very hard thing to develop. It's, it's one of those things that it's like also very easy to lose. I have a friend who works a lot in the special operations community, especially with the Navy.

And, you know, one of the things he says is, uh, you know, trust is, is, uh, earned in, in, uh, in drops and lost in buckets, right? Your re think of your reputation the same way your reputation is earned in drops. You have to earn it slowly. But it's lost really fast. You make one mistake, you do one thing incorrectly with, with somebody.

You, you skip over something because you don't think it matters that much, and you can lose all that reputation, uh, positive reputation gain that you've had very quickly, uh, in comparison to gaining it as much slower. So. Take that you know and be very aware of it. Your reputation, you only get one. It goes everywhere with you.

So you've got to safeguard your reputation about being somebody that does what they say they're gonna do, that treats people the right way and gets the outcomes that they deserve. So if you do these things, your clinic will have a mass. Increase in terms of referrals and you'll have a much easier time, uh, getting the new patients you need every single month to continue to grow your practice.

So, in summary, customer experience, there's three big things you gotta focus on. So number one, you've got to make sure that you are focused on what to expect. So once you do what to expect, right, then you have to do that, that you actually have to meet the expectations. So what to expect? Number one, meet the expecta expectations.

Number two. And then what is next? And make sure you're communicating that with them and following up with them to make sure that they're aware of what to expect. 'cause they don't know, they don't know, uh, the information. You know, we take it for granted. And if you do these three things, you're gonna see a massive improvement in your customer experience and a corresponding increase in referrals because of it.

Thanks for listening. As always, thanks for watching on the YouTube channel. If you're over there, drop a comment. We'd love to hear what you have to say. It's one of the reasons why we wanted to move some of our content over there so that we could actually engage back and forth and not necessarily, uh, just have, you know, you listen to me and never be able to say anything back.

So if you're interested, head over there, leave a comment. We'd love to hear from you. And as always, thanks so much for listening and watching, and we'll see you next week.