Patients find doctors from ratings sites, ads, word of mouth, or even social media. But despite spending thousands of dollars in marketing, the doctors usually don’t know where exactly these leads come from, how much they cost to acquire, or if their message resonated.
“We wanted to come up with a solution to provide medical doctors a business process that could help optimize that critical bridge between marketing dollars spent and getting patients in the door,” says Bradley Blaser.
When it comes to incoming marketing leads, a doctor’s front desk staff isn’t incentivized to book more patients. They provide friendly information to callers, but aren’t trained like a salesperson to close the deal.
“Phones are a black box. Doctors don’t know how many new lead calls are being generated or what marketing channels are driving them. There’s no real process to optimize those conversations to increase their conversion rate,” says Blaser.
Blaser, along with co-founders Charlie Winn, Eric Blaser, and Andrew Johnson, founded Liine to help doctors apply the sales lead concept to patients.
Liine’s technology sits on top of the medical practice’s phone system, using natural language processing to analyze new patient calls. The data helps doctors optimize their marketing spend and improve staff performance based on conversion rates.
“The staff performance is really two-fold. Liine provides a messaging structure to keep the call on the right track for scheduling,” says CEO Blaser.
Liine also allows doctors to monetarily incentivize their front desk staff for booking those new patients and also provides them with training. “We want them to be part of the value creation,” says Blaser.
The platform is phone system-agnostic. It sets baseline metrics based on two weeks of call recording and then analyzes callers based on a per-person basis, not a per-call basis.
“If someone calls three times, they count as one lead. When you’re in the platform, you can see how many true new leads you received over any time and how many converted to appointments,” says Blaser.
Blaser claims that Liine can increase conversion rates from 29 percent to 61 percent.
The platform also lets doctors know what services each individual is calling about. This is especially helpful for providers in the aesthetic industry, where they are spending significant marketing dollars to drive leads for a specific type of procedure such as body contouring.
Liine’s customers are across the country, with the highest concentrations in plastic surgery, medical spas, and cosmetic dentists.
Though the Raleigh, North Carolina-based startup currently operates on a fee revenue model, they’re looking into shifting into a contingency fee — a fee collected per booked appointment.
“It aligns our value with the value we’re generating. We do better when the office does better,” says Blaser.
The seven-person team closed an $800,000 seed round this past March and has grown revenue 77 percent over the last six months.
