How many times have you wanted to know the price of something and not been able to find it on a company’s website…and how many times has that really annoyed you?
Probably a lot, no doubt.
It’s a thing that’s so common in the hearing care industry — practices choosing to omit featuring their prices — but is it actually doing more damage than good? Well, when you realize that the most searched for hearing loss-related question on Google is: “How much are hearing aids,” you can quickly begin to answer that yourself…
Dr. Melissa Segev, Au.D. from Audiology Associates shares her three biggest reasons for why her decision to break the mold and be transparent about her pricing was the best decision she ever made.
Reason #1: It Takes The Pressure Off The Staff
Before listing their prices on their website, Dr. Melissa’s practice would receive 100s of calls every month all asking the same thing: “How much?” She realized it was becoming a really stressful question for her employees to answer, as, due to the amount of variation between patients, there wasn’t a definitive answer.
By listing the prices on her website, her employees were able to direct the caller back to the website where 99% of the time they got their answer and were able to self-qualify whether they wanted to pursue the practice or not.
To this day, the effect has been nothing but positive and people are freeing up the phone line by calling the practice to actually book a test, rather than inquire about the price of one.
Reason #2: It’s Not All About The Hearing Aids
The second reason why Dr. Melissa decided to put her prices on her site was to clearly emphasize that the real value of the package wasn’t in the hearing aids but in the service the patient gets.
It’s all too common for private practices to list the hearing aids as the star of the show, when in actual fact, it’s the care and attention from the audiologist/hearing care specialist that gives the real value.
What’s more, as a business whose values are loud and proud about the service they offer, Dr. Melissa was able to clearly and visually demonstrate this by listing the in-depth level of service available in her pricing plans.
By doing this service-based approach, Audiology Associates was removing themselves from the pricing war that exists from big box retailers like Costco who can usually undercut them on price.
“If you’re shopping around for the best price, that’s not me. If you’re shopping around for the best service, my doors are open. And so by putting it on the website, it was just really providing this transparent approach to our care where patients can really see what they’re getting and decide for themselves what’s best.”
Reason #3: Transparency Empowers Patients To Make The Right Decision For Them
The third reason why Dr. Melissa wanted to include pricing on her website was to give people transparency in the hope it would help empower them with the information they needed to make the right decision for them.
Too often patients can be mis-sold treatment plans or upgraded to devices they don’t really need in the name of making more profit, and Dr. Melissa wasn’t keen on that.
Instead, she wanted to clearly show what was included in each plan and then take the time to talk it through with the individual before getting them to commit, so together they could decide which was best for them.
What’s Happened Since Including The Prices On The Website?
Dr. Melissa attributes her business’s recent hike in revenue to her transparent pricing strategy, saying that people are more inclined to work with them because they know from the off what to expect and how much it will cost.
This level of trust is priceless and a brilliant way to showcase both your integrity as a business and personability as a practitioner.
So, with that said, would you consider including your pricing on your website?
If you haven’t listened to the full podcast interview with Phil and Dr. Melissa, you can do so by clicking HERE.
