The Risk of Running Your Clinic From Your Mobile Phone

Mobile phones offer a wide range of opportunities when it comes to work and leisure. With the millions of apps available, you can access your clinic CRM system, check emails, respond to messaging over several platforms, talk to friends far and wide, take photos, create promotional videos, and much, much more. Without doubt, it can feel all too easy to manage many aspects of your aesthetic business from your mobile device.

But while there are many opportunities, there are also many risks to doing this.

Let’s take a look at the impact this may have on your client relationships…

If your patients become aware that you will pick up the phone whenever they call – day or night – they may start to do just that. You could find your phone ringing late in the evening for something that isn’t an emergency. By making yourself so accessible you will find your personal life becomes affected and you may in time come to hate your phone! Think about your family and friends too – if you’re always on your phone, they may become annoyed at the constant distraction.

For some patients, an immediate response is important and messages over SMS or apps like WhatsApp reassure them that you are contactable at all times. However, sending messages like this could breed an informal language tendency between you and the patient. You should always be wary of using colloquialisms such as ‘hun’ or using emojis in your messages so that you can maintain the highly professional image you have worked so hard to achieve. Further to this, patients may use this communication method to inform you of any complications or complaints with their treatment experience. This is a risk as how you handle complaints should be professional at all times and engaging with serious matters over text could show people a false impression that you don’t care enough!

Let’s consider the data protection issues around using a mobile phone. You must be careful with any data that you keep on your phone. As per GDPR guidelines, it is entirely your responsibility to ensure your practice is compliant to avoid any huge fines. This means you should encrypt your phone – this is more than just a pin passcode to unlock it! – so that it is virtually impenetrable to hackers.

Consider the implications of having your device stolen. If you run your practice from it, all your contacts, appointments, sensitive client data, pay information and more will have just potentially disappeared! Not only could this open you up to a huge breach of GDPR, but it would also affect your ability to run your practice professionally.

So is using your mobile phone to this extent worth the risk for the sake of convenience?

You have worked hard for your position as an esteemed aesthetic practitioner, so why not look as professional as possible?

If you don’t need a reception team in-clinic, consider installing a landline so that you can answer the phone in within office hours, or perhaps outsource your phone calls to an exceptional team like we have here at Aesthetic Response. We relieve our clients of the burden of answering the phone by offering extended hours and a highly professional first impression!

About us: With over 13 years' experience, Aesthetic Response is the sector's leading provider of call handling and lead management services and was the first to offer dedicated aesthetic clinic support. We’ve used this extensive customer service experience to create online training for front-of-house clinic staff.

To find out more email clientservices@aestheticresponse.co.uk or call us on 0191 720 3000