Offering Video Chats with Clients and Patients is Now Expected.
Even before the pandemic, the move online had been gathering pace, but of course, the sudden need to work from home and embrace social distancing accelerated it considerably. With the health industry as a whole seeing a 60%+ increase in online consultations in 2021, it is clear that remote contact with clients and patients is here to stay.
For Wellness practitioners, that has meant many changes, with websites and video lessons taking over from clinics and classes. As we begin to return to a level of normality, many have found that they prefer the digital solution, and online classes and digital courses have become the fastest growing area of the Wellness industry.
But when it comes to the more direct interactions, a one-to-one consultation, for instance, it is easy to dismiss video chat as too impersonal to build that trusting relationship that is key to Wellness guidance. However, for any Wellness professional, video chat is not an option, it is something you must embrace, and there are several reasons why.
Your Clients Love It.
Even as the pandemic itself is slowing down, with vaccinations and boosters and so on offering a level of protection, many people remain unsure about in-person meetings with those they don’t know. For some, such as those who are immunocompromised, including those fighting or recovering from cancer and other chronic diseases, the need to control their environments and avoid exposure to Covid is very real. Chat solutions remain for the video a necessity.
It is not just health reasons either, having spent two years restricting movement and contact with others, a surprisingly large number of people have found they prefer this way of living. As with the wider health industry, Wellness must adapt to this new approach to life in general, where people expect to access the services, products, and support they need without having to travel.
For some of your clients, it is a matter of necessity that they avoid direct contact, and video chat is the only option; otherwise, they will not be able to use your services. Those who now prefer remote access will simply go to a competitor who provides video chat-based consultations if you do not.
Grow your Audience
Another thing the shift to remote working did was to shrink the world. Since the widespread availability of affordable internet happened around the mid-1990s to the turn of the century, the ability to contact people regardless of distance has become the norm. But the rapid adoption of working from home required to deal with the pandemic changed things even more.
Now, ‘the office’ has no real meaning. It could mean a huge building in the city or your kitchen table. Distance doesn’t have much meaning either. A team was working on a project that used to be all from the same area, meeting in a physical office and working together to achieve a goal. Now a team could be a group of people who have never met, who often live on different continents and work in different time zones.
Business online means distance is irrelevant, which can be a bonus for Wellness professionals. When restricted to in-person meetings, your clients could only be realistically drawn from a specific location within easy traveling distance from your location. We never saw that as a restriction before because that is simply how things worked.
But now, as the world has become used to Teams and Zoom to meet and discuss important topics, distance becomes irrelevant for your clients. It doesn’t matter if your client is sitting a block over, in a different state, or even a different country with video chat consultations. Your business can grow significantly, with no practical limit to the people you take on as clients.
At the beginning of internet commerce, it was often said that a website was a shop window for the world. In practice, it wasn’t practical for people in most countries to deal with a business that way. But now, your audience can grow, and your clients can be drawn from not just your locality but across the country and beyond.
