Each month, Activated Insights conducts thousands of interviews with home care clients across the country. During these interviews, Activated Insights associates ask clients, “Why did you select your provider over others?” Their answers to this question were recorded and analyzed for the recently published 2016 Home Care Benchmarking Study. Here are the five most common responses:

You may notice that none of these reasons includes a list of specific services, locations, or even costs. The top reasons consumers select a home care provider revolve around the reputation and outside perceptions of the company by others. Now more than ever, clients are turning to friends, professionals, and the web to help them select a home care provider, and their decisions are based on more than the provider’s list of costs or services.

As providers look to increase client acquisitions, they should start by evaluating their performance in these five areas. As they gauge perceptions of their business in relation to these categories, they’ll be able to take more action to improve. Providers can then focus their efforts on improving their areas of weakness and utilizing their strengths.

Read How to Match Home Care Clients With the Perfect Caregiver

As part of this process, providers can better organize their resources, especially in relation to referrals, by creating a client referral program, improving SEO, or strengthening relationships with professional referral sources. One of the best ways to do this is through the Activated Insights Satisfaction Management program. As part of the program, Activated Insights associates contact a portion of your clients and caregivers each month to get detailed feedback on their satisfaction. These interviews not only provide you with detailed feedback on how you can improve, they also show you which clients would be willing to offer referrals.

Improving acquisitions requires active engagement with clients and caregivers. The more you invest in improving not only client perceptions of your care but also the real-life quality of that care, the greater your reputation will be and the more clients will be drawn to your company.