Optimize Healthcare Marketing: How to Enhance Patient Experience and Drive Appointments with Lyndey Brock of Invoca

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast, the only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Alex Membrillo: All right, what’s going on, everybody? Welcome back to Ignite. Y’all know I like to have fun, and there’s no more fun than getting to learn. Guess what? Today, we get to learn about Invoca, we get to learn about Lyndey Brock, we get to learn about all kinds of stuff and how to stay HIPAA compliant while also doing better advertising by getting better data signals. Back to you. Lindy, welcome to Ignite. I am so shocked every day when we come across a new lead of a significant size provider group, and they still don’t have call tracking in place. It’s like, how did you get here? Anyways, can’t wait to talk about it. How are you doing in Chicago?

Lyndey Brock: Yes, I’m doing well. I’m doing well. It’s very cold today. It’s very cold. Here working from home, ready to get into it, excited to talk to you about our use case with Invoca, our use case with Cardinal and how we can help each other.

Alex: Good. I love it. Lindy, saying it’s cold does not date this podcast because you could say that in June probably in Chicago. We’re good.

Lyndey: Probably. Yes. Exactly.

Alex: Giordano’s or Lou Malnati’s?

Lyndey: We’re at Giordano’s household.

Alex: All right. I like it, too.

Lyndey: Locals also love Pequod’s. Pequod’s is like a big locals only.

Alex: I heard that last time. I’ll have to try Pequod’s next time I’m in town. You know where I went last time? That burger place.

Lyndey: Small Cheval?

Alex: Yes. Yes. Holy smokes. I sat at the bar, Burger and fries, the best– Usually the burger places ends up being just like every other burger you’ve had. It was legit.

Lyndey: Yes. It’s really good. There’s one on my corner. I live in the Winter Park neighborhood. There’s one right here.

Alex: Yes, it’s a once-a-year thing. Definitely, because I’d be 365 pounds, but man, that and some fries and a beer and I was, I’m going to sleep for three hours. All right. Let me tell us about Invoca. What’s Invoca for the only one person that doesn’t know already know?

Lyndey: Traditionally, Invoca is a call analytics platform, right? Tying together all of the online activity that healthcare marketers drive in market and all your paid search, all of your Yelp listings, your find a doctor pages, all of that, tying all that rich online activity to the phone call that drives the ultimate appointment for net new patients and existing patients. We’re really becoming a center of revenue excellence for so many of these different healthcare providers, whether they’re a healthcare network, a large university hospital system, or whether they are a retail healthcare, like vision, dental, eyewear, physical therapy.

Alex: Retail healthcare. That’s right. You guys can help [unintelligible 00:02:48] I like the revenue center of excellence, and you guys help– It’s not just with marketing, but there are a lot of operational efficiencies gained. That’s what a lot of people don’t realize when we’re talking to clients, you’re not just going to learn which leads actually are converting, and we get to send that back to the app platforms, but you learn a lot about your intake system. Isn’t that right?

Lyndey: Yes, exactly. We started really as a marketing optimization platform, which efforts, which sources are driving not only a lot of calls but the right kinds of calls. Since then we’ve expanded into operational efficiencies around things like sending pre-call data to the contact center or the location at the time of the call. We know that upwards of 70% of all prospective patients research a brand online before they pick up the phone and call.

What we’ve done is taken a lot of that research that they’re doing, what was their click journey through, what was the source that drove them to your digital property, and we’re able to serve it in real time to the agent, so then we’re able to reduce those handle times, create a more efficient patient experience and then get them to the right place at the right time through a dynamic call routing feature that we have.

Alex: That’s pretty cool. A lot to unpack there. Basically, call center person can see what service line page they were on and say, “Hey, you were calling in about our cardiology unit. Are you looking to schedule an intake cardio?” Is that what is popping up, and that’s what it helps me understand?

Lyndey: Yes, exactly, or I might have logged into the portal, and I might be on the billing page. I don’t want to start at what we call– I don’t want to call the big contact center at the sky and have to Plinko my way down to billing. I want someone to recognize that digitally, technically and then send me to the right place. I have a toddler, so I [crosstalk]

Alex: I never heard the Plinko reference, and I love that. Now, I can’t stay on those call trees, and it’s just like, “Oh my God, I’m taking forever,” and I’ll hopefully end up in the right place. What’s the pediatrician use case you mentioned?

Lyndey: Yes. I have a toddler, so we have appointments, we have shots, we have bills that come in, all of that. Sometimes I want to call just the location itself, say I’m running 15 minutes behind. Sometimes I want to call and just pay my bill. Sometimes I want to call and speak to a provider. I feel I live this use case myself because so many times, I just call the first number, where we’re able to do is look at exactly where they are on the site, what their use case is, what drove them in and then get them to the right place at the right time, which has huge operational efficiencies for the brand itself. Especially when you take that at scale, thousands of calls every day into these large hospital networks.

Alex: I love that. It’s better for the patient experience, too, because someone is already armed with what you’re doing there and what you’re looking to find out. It’s not just like, “Oh my God, I’ve already talked to three people. I just need them to know I’m coming. I’m on the way.”

Lyndey: Exactly. You know this. You’re a healthcare nerd. We’re always trying to find empathy at scale. Someone’s calling in because they have a need, even if it’s as small as paying a bill, finding parking, trying to make sure they’re going to the right location. If it’s as large as I’ve had a scary test result, and I need to book a follow-up. When you take that across all of these different calls, we want to make sure that the brand has empathy at their forefront but then also is really operating as an efficient business as well.

With Invoca’s technology, we’re able to do that on the marketing side. Drive down CPA, get into the voice of the caller, get into the intent of the call and the call outcome. Then on the contact side as well, through reporting, through dynamic routing, through all of that pre-call data that we’re able to send, really improve those efficiencies as best we can.

Alex: I love that. I love that. Empathy at scale. Empathy at scale. We’re going to use that. Marketing team, that’s the headline for this one. Empathy at scale. Yes. I love it. Anything that improves patient experience and helps the internal team be more efficient. Any CO is going to look at that and say, “Okay, we’re going to be faster. We’re going to be able to get to more calls.” Probably need slightly less call center reps potentially because we’re going to be a lot more efficient.

That’s great. All right. Let’s talk about the marketing side. How do you guys know whether a call was net new lead or returning? That’s a big issue that we’ve seen with clients in technology. It’s like, “Yes, but Cindy was just calling back in.” Is that how you guys utilize AI? Is something listening and saying, “Hey, they asked for a net new patient point. Is that your AI usage or something else around the intake? Tell me more.

Lyndey: Yes. There’s a couple of ways. We do have state-of-the-art AI that listens to the call that helps us understand keywords and phrases all paired together. Things like, “I’m a new patient, I’m looking to book an appointment. I’ve never used this service or this brand before. I have this need.” Conversely, it can also look for things like I’m calling to move my appointment, cancel, reschedule, or I’m having a service issue.

The AI then can capture all of that into what we call our unique signal data and tie that with the caller ID and send that into an EHR or an EMR or a CRM, depending on the type of brand that you might be. Additionally, we’re able to pull in things like patient record ID from your system and tie that to the call and say, “Hey, we’ve got a patient record, a patient ID. We’re able to tie this to their existing patient record and classify them as an existing patient.” There’s a couple of different ways we can do that. We can do that through a signal file upload or through an API, but mostly what a lot of our customers use us for is that really rich conversational data.

Alex: Okay. Very interesting. You have integrations with the EHRs. Is that how you’re getting it passed back? Is that what you mentioned with the API? You guys are able to see who’s–

Lyndey: We do have the ability to do that. We have a rich integration studio. We also have an entire integration suite product team that can build out custom integrations to fit customers’ needs. Primarily, alongside that, we are really encouraging customers to turn on our Signal AI capabilities and record, listen to the call, use the AI to understand what’s happening from that call.

Even if we do have that direct one-to-one connection, “Hey, this is Lyndey Brock. She’s calling on behalf of her daughter. Here’s her daughter’s patient ID record tied into her phone number,” tied into whatever it is. Can also tie in with that what the outcome of that call was and what that patient experience was through the phone channel.

Alex: That’s awesome. Yes. You mentioned something in there. You really want your clients to turn on the conversational AI piece that is listening and analyzing. You find a lot of clients are hesitant to do that with the new HIPAA, and it’s so vague, the regulations. Are they nervous to do that until there’s more guidance, or [crosstalk] I’m reading?

Lyndey: No, it’s both. It’s something you’re reading. The HHS memo in late 2022 created a lot of fear across the entire industry. Healthcare marketers are incredibly savvy. They are very attuned to technology. They want as much data as possible, but they also understand that they work in a precarious industry where you’re working with patient data. The HHS memo basically said we don’t consider some of these large technology brands to be HIPAA compliant.

Fortunately, Invoca is fully HIPAA compliant, and not only in the way that we store and record your data, the recordings and all of that, store, capture and remain compliant but also with the fact that we will sign a BAA. You can review our BAA, our proprietary BAA. We will also review a brand’s BAA and likely sign it. I’ve led the healthcare vertical for nearly four years now, and I don’t know that we’ve ever not been able to come to an agreement on one.

Once we’re able to reach an agreement on a BAA, and once we’re able to review all of the HIPAA compliance that we maintain, customers are really eager then to turn on our signal recordings and transcription capabilities.

Alex: Yes, that’s awesome. They just have to get the warm and fuzzies. I love that because a lot of tech platforms say they’re HIPAA compliant, but they won’t sign a BAA, and they certainly won’t sign someone else’s, just theirs, and it’s like, you’re not really HIPAA compliant. It takes a lot of effort, guys. It’s going to be the new and vogue thing for tech platforms and agencies to say we’re HIPAA compliant, actually find out what their processes are.

We have to go through tabletop exercise. We have compliance stuff on every computer and phone out there. There’s a ton of stuff. Then ask your account person, your lendee, your salesperson, everybody, what do you do differently knowing that we’re going to have PHI on this platform and see what those answers are. Okay, just a warning, because a lot of agencies are saying they’re compliant, and I’m just not buying it.

Lyndey: Yes. Ask if they’ll sign a BAA. Ask if they have a BAA that your legal team can review. Also, something I press a lot of our customers to do is get really comfortable with your legal and compliance team. I think people think that they are just by the nature of their role as a marketer, but also where is the line? Where are they willing to showcase flexibility? What is the use case of the phone call? Are you sharing diagnostic information over the phone?

In that case, then there may be a higher burden of risk that you’re taking on. If it is for scheduling appointments, if it is for just general patient interaction with the front office, then work with your legal and compliance team and really see what is it that they’re saying, what is it that they’re willing to risk?

Alex: I think that’s a really strong point because we went so far to the opposite end. After all the guidelines came out, we heard about this health system getting sued and this class action to this big behavioral group. Everybody went to the opposite spectrum and shut everything down and said, “We’re not willing to take risks.” The compliance and legal teams have taken it too far, and we don’t have enough signals to optimize advertising.

It’s like, “Guys, there’s a balance here.” I think we’re starting to see clients are more open to now coming back to the middle. We’ve got some radicals shutting everything down. Lyndey’s right. Go make buddies with legal and compliance. Sit down and say, “Guys, these are guidelines. We don’t think these things will get sued,” but let’s not shut off every signal, guys, or advertising is going to be bad. The worst part is, Lyndey, patients won’t get access to the care they need because we can’t advertise. We feel like we have the best providers in the city. We won’t be present when they go looking for care. If we can live with that, anyways, I think advertising matters in health care.

Lyndey: Yes, I completely agree. I think, too, something else that I’ll push my team on is let’s work with the customer on a business case. What is it? What are we able to provide the patient? Again, at scale, if we have these additional data points, if we’re able to record these calls, if we’re able to get that voice of the patient over and over through every single interaction, what are we able to do with that in order to drive the business forward? Not just from a monetary or commercial standpoint but from a brand equity and a patient care standpoint as well.

Alex: The more we learn from the patient, the better care, the better intake, the better experience she’ll have and tthe more she’ll come ahead of time for care instead of waiting till the baby is too sick. All right. Lyndey, let’s talk about marketing attribution a little bit, because the biggest play for us as marketers when we got to lead it, “Hey, you have call tracking? No. Are you willing to invest in it? No. Adios.”

Because we’re just not going to get any signals back to the ad platforms now that we have smart bidding and all that fun stuff. Tell us what are the types of things that you find marketers are tracking, basic and then what is your more advanced clients? What KPIs are they using and signals and all that kind of fun stuff?

Lyndey: Yes. Our baseline use case that we recommend to customers is start with your Google paid advertising, start with your paid search advertising, wherever that might be. That’s where you’re spending probably a bulk of your budget, your time and your energy. You probably have a handful of FTEs dedicated solely to improving your search optimization. Healthcare has never been more competitive. I grew up in a small town in Nebraska, and we had two dentists. Now, in this small town of 4000 people, there are six dentists. How is that possible?

Alex: That’s not true for Nebraska.

Lyndey: Yes, I guess, it’s important for all these healthcare marketers to be able to differentiate themselves. They’re typically doing that through a paid search strategy. We typically say, “Start there, optimize those paid search keywords, optimize those campaigns, optimize the landing page experience as you see fit. Then you can use our signal AI technology to not only understand which paid search keywords and campaigns are driving high call volume, high duration calls but the right calls, calls that are driving, net new patient appointment bookings.”

Then from there, we typically recommend you expand into maybe your location pages. If you have a multi-location senior care facility, for instance, how do we make sure that we’re getting the right calls, not only at the contact center but then also at the location as well. Things like a find a doctor page or working with a partner, a listings partner, yes, something along those lines. It’s really moving from, “I get a lot of calls, and they drive a ton of activity. Therefore, I must be doing my job,” into, “I’m getting the right calls that are driving the right outcomes that push the business forward and create underneath all of that really cohesive patient experience.”

Alex: Only knowing who the right calls are, can you feedback information into the algorithms? For us as the ad agency, that’s the most important part is knowing who were the good calls, who were the net new patient bookings. Y’all’s technology enables us to differentiate between returning and that new patient, correct? Then that helps form bidding strategies as well, once you know that, right?

Lyndey: Yes, absolutely. A lot of people will come to us and say, “I don’t want to just track all of these calls. I don’t want to buy a ton of calls from Invoca just to have all this visibility.” We prefer actually you drive down your total call volume over time because you’re getting the right calls at the right time from the right patient. What you’re able to do is if I have campaign A, not just say, “Hey, it’s driving a thousand calls. It must be successful.” Campaign, “Hey, I need it to drive 750 net new patient calls.”

Then I’m going to look at those 250 existing patient calls or whatever they are and understand what is it about them that’s not driving the business forward and how do I optimize that. How do I go get more net new patients knowing what’s happening on those calls, and how do I decrease the amount of non-new patient calls? Do I improve my website? Do I improve my copy? Do I train the contact center to take questions differently? Do I turn on some of Invoca’s dynamic routing capabilities and get those calls shuttled somewhere else at the right time?

Alex: I love it. Getting to the net-new patient calls and knowing every bit of information you potentially can about how they became a net new patient call also important. How many signals do we have awareness into? How deep into the patient journey we just know landing page, and it was PPC.

Lyndey: Yes, absolutely. The customer with Invoca has the ability to create signals as they see fit. We can turn on rule-based signals. The call was four minutes long. The call came from this page. The call happened at this time of day. Those are where some customers will start, when we get into the AI, you can turn on signals around things like I am a new patient, or I’ve never been with this brand before, or things as technical as if it’s a med device company, “I am looking to have my knee replaced using your fiber one titanium technology.”

For instance, we can get into brand name keywords. We can get into model numbers. We can get into different types of therapy as well. The great thing is that the customer can create those. Our technology can look for them, and it can self-train as it goes.

Alex: I love it. That’s crazy. The robots are coming, Lyndey. They’re figuring everything out for us. Yes. You just have to enable the robot and give them the right data and then let them loose until they become Arnold. I like it. I like it. I like it. Okay. We will know as much patient session data as possible. You can use it. It depends on how the marketer sets it up. Okay. I got it. Then what they’re going to want to know is how do we marry–

You guys have the matchback potentially into the EHR, but then there’s other kinds of traffic and signals marketers will need to pull in. Do you guys integrate with the heaps and mixed panels and all that fun stuff?

Lyndey: Yes. Yes, absolutely. We do have the ability to integrate with not only your EHR or your CRM, whatever your brand is using, but we can also integrate with a Google, a fresh paint of HIPAA as a concern, mixed panel or heap as you see fit. We also have a low code, no code integration library. You can browse through the library. You can work with your customer team at Invoca, and you can plug into some of these integrations yourself or work with your product team on your side, your technical resource team on your side and our integrations product team to build something custom as you see fit.

Alex: I love it. I love it. Lyndey, I’ve only got you for a few more minutes. What are your top tips for maximizing lead value instead of lead volume? Anything there we should be leaving people with? Then I want to ask for specific wins. My final question just to let you all know is how are you not a good client of Invoca, you’re not willing to do certain things? Let’s first talk about what are your top tips for maximizing lead value.

Lyndey: My top tips for maximizing lead value is that context is key. Again, it’s not just more data for the sake of data. Five and six years ago, we just thought more is more, everything is better if I just have a lot of it. Now it’s like, what are the top five data points that really drive my business forward? Is it net new patient volume? Is it recurring patient visits? Is it getting them to book an onsite visit at a senior care center? Because I know if I get them onsite, they’re X percent more likely to book. It’s moving with a ton of context and rather than moving with just a ton of volume of data.

That’s probably my number one. My number two is to really dig in with your partners and really make sure you’re getting the full value of everything. Am I getting the right data points that I should be? What else could I be doing? Am I integrated with multiple different points at my brand? Then third is to always really push yourself forward. How do you make sure you’re staying on the cutting edge of things? You see how not only your business is evolving, but your industry as a whole, and how you relate to macroeconomic trends that we’re seeing.

Alex: Yes, I love that. It’s the right data, not all the data. I just posted about that today. It’s like, as marketers, Lyndey, our job has changed from just coming up with creative ad campaigns to also being technologists, lawyers and integrators. It’s too much. We get lost in all of this stuff, and it starts with narrowing down what’s the best KPI for this provider group or health system. Is it all of those options you said?

Then guys, let’s make sure we track that and let’s make sure we upload that back into the ad platform so that they can go find more of that. At its simplest, that’s what it is. That’s the key to using your technology and better advertising, right?

Lyndey: Yes. That’s exactly right.

Alex: Thanks. I just validated my own question. [unintelligible 00:21:24] Anyways. Lyndey, one more thing, who is not a good client for Invoca or call tracking in general? You mentioned, they’re going to look at it and say the cost, I don’t want to pay for call. Who’s not a good client, and you should wait until X? What advice can you give us?

Lyndey: I think you should wait until, if you’re not a good client of Invoca, you are someone who does not understand that the phone channel is still deeply relevant to your brand because it is deeply relevant to the patient. I think so many people get really lulled to sleep by chatbots, web forms and digital experiences. Those are not going away by any means. The phone is also not going away.

When people need something, when they want to speak to their provider, they are picking up the phone and calling. The two will exist together for decades to come. There’s a reason that there is a phone image on every Google listings page. There’s a reason that there is a phone number in so many, I don’t even want to throw out a percentage, but probably greater than 90% of all healthcare brands in the header. It’s really important that when you’re ready to prioritize the phone that you call Invoca. If you’re not, then we’re just not the brand for you.

Alex: I love that. It’s important to know how to buy, who to buy and when not to buy, guys, because you’re going to waste your time investment and be annoyed and never do call tracking again. That hurts your advertising, and you’ll never move forward. Follow Lyndey’s advice and wait till you’re going to take it seriously. Yes. Online booking email forms will always sit alongside calls. It will always be part of it.

Guys, the more AI and the more robots that we have out there, the more we’re going to love just calling someone because we’re going to start not trusting this. I really think so. It’s going to get to a point where you’re like, “Oh my God, are you real? Cindy, are you real? Oh my God, this is so nice.” I get an appointment and the more high acuity stuff, definitely you want a phone call.

Lyndey, this was awesome. Thank you for walking us through Invoca. It’s critical. Those signals that you guys are able to generate for us, the operational efficiencies I’ve seen you generate for clients, not only help marketing but how the patient experiences them as a brand and how their operations run so that they can provide more access to care. I love it. It’s not just called tracking. It’s business optimization. Lyndey, thanks for joining us on Ignite.

Lyndey: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

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