How and Why to Choose a CRM For Your Home Care Agency

Determining who your marketing reps should call on – This involves understanding the territory you service, who the referral sources are in that area, and what motivates them to refer.

Managing the contacts and interactions between the rep and the referral source – All CRM systems keep track of the calls, visits, emails, etc., but the best systems include forward-facing tickler systems to remind reps of when to re-connect with a prospect, and ensure promises made to prospects are kept and on time.

Ensuring referrals come with all necessary data – In the “old days” a referral could be a name and phone number, but today, many referrals come from clients with diverse pay sources that can range from private pay to Medicare waiver program, to private insurance, to Medicare. Some clients can also represent a mash-up of multiple payers, such as the “dual eligible” Medicare-Medicaid patient who is qualified for personal care services through a Medicaid waiver program, skilled service through Medicare, and private pay services to supplement them both.

The fact is that ALL different types of clients can come from the same referral sources, hospitals, SNFs, ALFs, physician referrals, and word of mouth. Your reps must understand the different types of referrals and be prepared to handle them, regardless of the situation.  A good CRM system will set the reps up for success, by ensuring the referrals include all of the required information.

Interfacing with your agency management system – It’s hard enough to manage the use of one system, but most homecare agencies manage several systems including their agency management system, billing system, payroll system, background check system, HR management system, and the list goes on. The last thing you need is one more system to manage, so you need to make sure your CRM system works seamlessly with your agency management system.

This means your CRM needs to do a one-time import of all your referral history data so it can serve as the “system of record” for referral management.  Once this is complete the CRM can then provide a one-way data flow from the CRM to the agency management system as referrals are received.

Flexibility! – While most agencies get to the same point eventually, no two get there the same way. Your CRM system needs to have the flexibility to adjust to your business model, NOT the other way around.  It should allow for changing labels on fields, so the fields are meaningful and clear to busy sales reps.  If you are in Louisiana, you need to change the “County” field to “Parrish”.  And you might call referrals prospects, or clients, or patients, or something else.  Your system needs to be flexible enough to manage it.

An edge over competitors – If you didn’t have any competition, you wouldn’t need a CRM system at all, the referrals would all just come to you. But you do have competition!  And your CRM system needs to be the edge you have over them.  Better intelligence, better preparedness, better referral data, and less wasted time, all add up to give you a competitive advantage.

A means to reliably measure rep performance – All performance is not the same! Some reps may have reliable referral sources that they don’t have to spend any time on at all and they still get great results.  Other reps are working like crazy and hardly make any progress at all.  Sometimes this is a function of effort and sometimes it’s just luck.  You need to make sure your CRM has the tools to help you see what’s really going on.

A roadmap for the future – Your CRM system is not just about hunting for new business, it’s also, and arguably more importantly, for maintaining your relationships with existing customers. Reps need to know when to re-contact their referral sources, plan for follow-up visits, and be able to “rank” referral sources based on their production.