Top 3 Waiting Room TV Services for Medical Offices

Looking for the best TV service for your medical office? The most effective waiting room TV software both entertains patients and educates them on health topics. Medical offices use televisions to entertain patients as they wait for treatment; but there’s more they could be doing for you. While the trend of having TVs in waiting rooms started with cable/satellite, newer “custom” options have emerged that have the business and/or patients in mind. We’ve outlined 3 of the most used options below detailing how each impacts your patients and your bottom line.

We’ve also created a “Waiting Room Pain Scale” based off of the medical pain scale that shows patient’s relative satisfaction with each option.

Video: Comparing the Top 3 Medical Waiting Room TV Options

#1 – It’s Relevant TV

It’s Relevant TV achieves a great balance between entertaining your patients and informing them about your practice. By bringing in a selective set of short-form TV programs the customized broadcasts are better tailored to your patients and offer variety within a short period of time. Even if a patient doesn’t enjoy a particular program it’s over quick and a program of an entirely different type appears next. This creates more opportunities to get your patients engaged with the TV.

Once your patients are engaged, It’s Relevant TV provides a suite of easy-to-use promotional tools to get your messages across. These include “ads” that rotate automatically and display next to the TV programming, real-time social media updates from your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Accounts, and your own videos that can play between TV programs.

It’s Relevant TV is available for a modest subscription fee and provides medical offices with Competitive Ad Block® and Pharma Ad Block™, blocking out all advertisements from competitors and pharmaceutical companies. This keeps the focus on your practice. The content is customizable and does not loop. New programs are delivered automatically throughout the day.

#2 – Medical Information TV

Medical Info TV has your medical industry focus in mind, but can often upset your patients instead of healing them. Many doctors falsely assume that patients want to see medical information while they wait to be treated. In fact, our focus groups have shown the exact opposite! Patients often come into a waiting room somewhat nervous, and seeing medical information can add to their anxiety instead of reducing it.

Medical Info TV providers often provide the practice with a way to promote itself or its brand. This is a nice feature, but many patients won’t be watching long enough to take in the information. Without some interesting content on the screen to draw them in, patients resort to using their phones or reading magazines. If they aren’t looking at the TV, the practice can’t benefit from the custom messages on it.

Medical TV providers often offer their services “free of charge” to medical offices. As we know, nothing in this world is really “free”, but the cost can be tough to see at first glance. These organizations are usually backed by large Pharmaceutical companies and Medical TV providers are looking out for their best interest, not yours.

Why is big Pharma involved? Our research found that the majority of patients that saw drug ads on the waiting room TV assumed the drugs were endorsed by the doctor/practice when that wasn’t always the case. This helps to generate enormous revenues for both the Pharmaceutical companies and the Medical TV providers. But it doesn’t do anything for your bottom line.

#3 – Cable TV

Cable TV is still one of the most used TV services in medical environments. It has a focus on entertaining your patients, but it often misses the mark. Even with thousands of channels available, cable makes you pick just one at any given time. If you only have one person at a time in your waiting room cable might work. However, when you have multiple people, sticking with a single channel just won’t satisfy everyone.

In addition to having inadequate content to keep your patients happy, cable offers no way for you to promote yourself. When your patients are watching the TV screen you should be taking advantage of their attention. Your practice could be benefiting from having some information about you in front of them. Instead, cable TV allows your medical competitors to reach into your waiting room and talk to your patients!

Lastly, Cable TV is becoming increasingly expensive. It ranks as the most expensive out of the 3 services analyzed in this article.

Your TV is an Opportunity

Hospitals, urgent care centers, medical offices, and dentists put TVs in their waiting rooms in hopes of creating a better environment for their patients. While television is not the primary focus of your practice, it can really shape the attitudes of your patients. From the moment patients walk in, until the time they leave; they are judging your office. Furthermore, when they go home they might write a positive or negative review online that can have a real effect on attracting new patients in the future. Taking simple steps like incorporating a custom TV system that focuses on their needs can truly help you. The TV in your waiting room is an opportunity you don’t want to miss.

Change can be Hard. But It’s Worth it for Your Business.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building the new.”

-Socrates

Hesitant to Change Your TV Service? You’re not Alone.

Services like cable and satellite are bought and subscribed to as early as the point of purchasing a TV. From there on out, one’s choice of provider tends to adopt a Set It & Forget It sort of mentality. You’re comfortable with what you have, you don’t ever think to replace it, and you’re “happy“ with it.

But what does “happy” mean here? Are you excited? Does it help your business every day? Or is saying you are “happy” more like a nice way of saying that you’re settling for what you currently have because the alternative is something unfamiliar. Very few business and offices really LOVE or even LIKE the TV service they subscribe to.

Many of our clients hesitated at first to change from away from the TV service they had. Reasons included many false assumptions like needing to schedule an installation, reading long contracts, or having to make phone calls. These can all be avoided.

The single worst feedback we’ve heard is that some business owners don’t care about what’s on their TVs! Even if you don’t care, your customers DO! If you care about them, it’s worth considering what you put in front of them. Our clients find their visitors enjoy the programming more, complain far less, and leave better educated about their business. This can lead to a real return on investment from your TV. On top of the benefits, it’s also quite easy to make the switch. The installation is simple and doesn’t require scheduling an “appointment window”. You can install it yourself in under 5 minutes.

Why Fix what isn’t Broken?

Business owners and office managers should not settle. If there is something that is better and most cost-effective for our businesses we should explore it.

People tend to favor what’s familiar to them, pure and simple. That’s because with familiarity comes a sense of trust, reliance, and security. While there isn’t anything wrong with this, it can leave you blind to alternatives better suited for your needs. It’s less about fixing something that isn’t broken, and more about upgrading to better options.

airplane-open-seats-1

If you were in an airplane, squished in between two people for a flight, and were given the opportunity to sit in a set of seats completely open next to you, would you move? Of course you would! Your seat may not be broken, but it’s just not as comfortable as the open seats will be. The better option is worth taking, and the sooner you make the decision to move the more time you have to enjoy the results of the change.

Fit Your Business with something Made for Business

It’s Relevant TV is a cable alternative that’s designed for the business setting. It compliments the brief time that people are exposed to the TV and is tailored to the casual attention span of your visitors. It’s Relevant’s short-form content is easy to watch. And the diverse library of content gives your business enough categories to choose from, to be relevant to as many people possible.

Why It’s Relevant TV?

With It’s Relevant in the picture, you’re able to explore the ways in which your TV can be used to transform your business. Beyond short-form content that’s family-friendly, IRTV allows you to expose visitors to your social media and educate them about the services you provide. They become interested and engaged, come back more, and spend more on each visit. That’s where It’s Relevant TV excels. It’s built specifically for you, and it’s designed to MAKE your business money.

Generally speaking, when you see something new that you’re interested in, you look into it for more details. You take a closer look in order to see if it’s better or worse than what you currently have, and in the end chose whether or not to replace the old with the new. If you operate a business, office or public space with a TV take a few minutes to explore It’s Relevant TV. You can reach out to the staff for a personalized presentation by calling 855-ITS-RELE or emailing support {at} itsrelevant.com.

iOS 11 Hidden Feature That Will Help Your Business (iPhone/iPad)

With Apple’s release of iOS 11 on Tuesday September 19, 2017 many new features have been introduced to the iPhone and iPad. Most of these features matter mostly to consumers, not to business owners. But there is one feature in particular that businesses should take advantage of.

QR Code Scanning on the iPhone

Apple has made it easier than ever for consumers to scan QR codes while they are out and about. What are QR Codes? They are a lot like barcodes in that they are quick to scan from a compatible device but they are used in much more of an interactive way. QR codes have been used for about a decade now to bring users to web sites while out and about. They are really big in Asia, but never really took off here in the U.S.

What’s different now?

You used to need a dedicated app to scan a QR code on your iPhone. The problem has always been that once you saw a QR codeyou wanted to scan you had to fumble through your apps, find the QR scanning one, wait for it to load and then shoot the code. This long process made it hard to use QR codes in dynamic ways. Now Apple has built the technology into their standard Camera App. The Camera App remains one of the easiest to access apps on the phone, available right from the lock screen.

What are the opportunities for businesses?

Getting customers to access your websites while in your retail locations, or through ads in remote locations are a great way to grow your business. Once users access a link through a QR code, they can fill out a survey, join a loyalty club or even purchase a product that’s not available in the store.

iOS 11 QR Code Scanning App — QR Code Editing Tool inside of It’s Relevant TV

Make the most of this update with It’s Relevant TV

As you’ll see in the video below, It’s Relevant TV has a QR code generator built right into their free iPhone/iPad app. You can design, edit and upload interactive ads right from your phone to all of your business TVs using the service. IRTV puts these QR codes in a place that your customers can see and interact them. Customer awareness will be key to your success.

There is really no quicker way to easily build active links into your business signage. We hope that you’ll take advantage this great technology that is surely to gain usage in the months to come!

If you have questions or want to chat about ways to make this technology work for you, please reach out to us.

Triple Play from Cable TV = Big Strikeout for Businesses

Don’t TRIPLE PAY for TV Services in Your Business

Cable bills are a growing concern for businesses. If you’re like many of the other business owners in the country, you’re tired of it. How often do we hear about a new “promotional offer” for a “triple play” that gives us TV, internet, and phone with a great rate? And the rate is great – until the initial period ends and the bills go up. At that point it’s nearly impossible to get them back down. In fact, over time they triple for many. You thought you had a triple play when in reality it just became a triple PAY.

Whether you are looking for discounted rates with Optimum, Comcast, Time Warner, Xfinity, Charter, Cox Communications, Bright House, Cable One, RCN or Mediacom, it’s the value that’s missing from all of the business TV offerings.

Cable’s problem isn’t just the cost, it’s the lack of VALUE.

We compared the rates among many of the top cable companies offering service to businesses. The average customer we work with pays between $300 to $700 a month on their cable subscription services. Cable won’t compete with itself, which has left us with cable monopolies across the country forcing these high rates. In the end, that’s not just unaffordable for many, it’s unpredictable and gives nothing back to your business.

Regardless of how much your business’ cable bill is costing you – in all likelihood you’re missing a real return. TV has always been seen as a utility. At It’s Relevant, we see it as an investment. Instead of just paying for programming to distract your customers, we would encourage you to draw their attention to content that will grow your business.

The Cable TV Alternative for Businesses

It’s Relevant TV has developed a service that draws the attention of your customers and directs their focus to the things that make you more money. Services that they might not have been aware of, special deals or offers, and even local events. All of these things can be promoted on your TV with It’s Relevant, allowing you to get closer to visitors.

Why Customer Retention Should be a Higher Priority than Customer Acquisition

In-Location Marketing vs. External Advertising

Customer retention is key. Most marketing budgets center around getting a company’s message out to the masses. TV commercials, print ads, billboards, sponsorships, direct mail, are all forms of external advertising that are commonly used to attract new customers to businesses. But once you bring someone in, what are you doing to get them to come back?

Companies that have to advertise all of the time in order to stay in business are likely not doing enough to keep their customers happy.

Many business owners focus most of their efforts on attracting new customers in order to make more money. But you don’t only need new customers! If your goal this year was to grow your revenues by 10%, would you care if that increase came from new business, or increasing the average spend from your current customers? Of course not! More revenue is more revenue.

Money earned from new customer vs. existing

They look the same, don’t they? Because they are! An added dollar earned from an existing customer is just as good as a dollar form a new one. But it’s proven to earn that extra dollar from an existing customer than to get it from a new one.

“Research shows that it can cost up to 30 times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. It pays to stay very close to your customers, so you know their exact needs, today and tomorrow. Your aim is to be irreplaceable as their supplier.”
–Mike Johnston, The Chartered Institute of Marketing

An Inexpensive Solution

It’s Relevant TV has come up with an easy way to increase customer retention (getting customers to come back more often). Each custom TV network IRTV creates is unique to each business that displays it. Short-form TV programs grab the attention of visitors while the integrated real-time social media and promotional tools help get the business’ message across.

If you own or manage a business and have a TV, It’s Relevant TV offers a free consultation. You can explore various types of programming with an expert and start to craft something that will do much more for your business.

For more information check out It’s Relevant TV’s official site: http://www.itsrelevant.com or call their U.S. Headquarters at: (203) 588-1689

Controlling Multiple TVs Across Your Business or Organization

Easy to Manage One or Multiple Business TV Screens

Do you have a business or practice with more than one location? Many managers, franchise owners, and practice managers have found it to be increasingly difficult to get a consistent message out to multiple locations.

Printing and distributing fliers or emailing announcements often get overlooked, and are hard to police. We’ve found that being able to put the messaging up directly is the best way. But how can you control all of your TVs from one place? It’s Relevant TV makes it easy.

iPhone X (iPhone 10) - Home Screen — iPhone X (Apple iPhone 10)

It’s as easy as accessing logging in to the website or free iPhone/iPad app and selecting what you want to have shown on your screens. The settings can be updated 24/7 from anywhere.

You can control one or multiple screens at once. This gives national brands dual level control. You can design ads, mix in images, change your social media preferences, and upload videos of your own. And best of all, the messages you distribute get seen! They garner more attention by being mixed with TV programs your customers want to watch.

It’s your TV, make it work for you!

It’s Relevant features more than just TV content. Custom messaging and weather from each location’s zip code are easily added and managed. The service gives you the ability to reach out to visitors in ways you can’t with basic cable. IRTV can be linked to your social media feeds, showcasing your most recent posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

It’s Relevant TV’s platform boasts a number of features that make the digital signage/video service an invaluable tool for businesses. Its library of 500,000+ short-form content licensed for public display is the largest of its kind, with the videos are spread across 40+ categories – allowing you to customize your waiting room TVs in ways that just aren’t possible with basic cable. One might expect a system as innovative as IRTV to be complicated, or run the risk of being too confusing to operate – but it’s easy!

You’re Always in Control

One of It’s Relevant’s most handy features, is Competetive Ad Block®. Competetive Ad Block® does what it says, it blocks competitive ads from showing up on your TV. With it in place, you never run the risk of people in your business seeing an ad for a “better” or more enticing deal across the street. Businesses that settle for basic cable have no control over outside messaging.

The most valued feature of It’s Relevant TV is the free ad space which allows you to expose visitors to your brand and promotions. Between, and during videos, you have the option to showcase your brand on the side of the screen and inform visitors of any services or specials you want them to see. New products and services, catering, limited-time offers, members rewards, or even staff highlights, are just a few of the things you can promote.

It’s Relevant TV is found in restaurants, medical offices, malls, retailers, sports arenas, car dealerships, pharmacies, salons, spas, and more.

Are Your Employees Watching TV At Work? A Better TV For Your Business

Employees watching TV at work is frustrating if you’re a business owner, or you’re in charge of managing a business. If you have TVs in your business, you probably put them there for the benefit of your customers. But have your employees become the primary audience instead? If you fear that this is the case, follow this link and check out the solution we recommend.

Today, TVs are a utility that fewer and fewer businesses are without. A growing number of locations with sit-downs or long expected waits have a TV somewhere within sight. With all of the TVs in businesses, an important question comes to mind; who chooses what’s on?

It shouldn’t be your employees!

Where’s the Remote, and Who is in Control?

This varies from business to business. Example: in a setting like a bar or restaurant, the remote might not be available to customers- whereas in a waiting room, the remote might be there for any visitors to control. However in some cases, an employee is the one in charge of the remote. When an employee decides what to put on the TV, he or she might very well put something on the that they want to watch, instead of something that the customers, or visitors, would rather have on.

The TV is a wonderful distraction for visitors. Unfortunately, it can be just as distracting for employees.

One thing is true; the fact that people want to change the channel at all illustrates that even with thousands of channels out there, it is nearly impossible to pick one that everyone will enjoy.

What’s the Perfect Channel?

People and personality types are as diverse as a bag of M&Ms; you won’t be able to please everyone by putting on a channel that only caters to one or two colors. In order to appeal to the interests of all of your visitors, you need an all-inclusive channel that changes between content types. The greater the diversity in content, the more eyes you can attract to your TV.

What Brings it all Together?

A custom TV channel from It’s Relevant TV. IRTV runs diverse short-form programming designed with businesses in mind. In addition to its vast library of licensed content, the platform features space for businesses to promote additional services or specials that otherwise might go unnoticed.

It’s Relevant is focused on customer retention. The service prioritizes the people who are in your business with the intention of getting them to come back more, and spend more. Unlike cable bills that are flat expenses and give nothing back, IRTV is designed to generate revenue through its engaging features and put money into your pockets.

Are your employees watching TV when they should be working? If they’re in control of the television and you’re not around, there’s a good chance that they are. Allowing it to continue is doing a disservice to your business, and your visitors who want to watch the TV. It’s Relevant TV can help you put meaningful programming on the TV to keep customers engaged, and make you more money.

DIY TV – Customize The TV In Your Business

As technology grows and becomes more innovative, more and more business owners are turning to DIY solutions and beginning to explore new ways of doing things. We live in an age where reaching out and connecting with people is as easy as pressing a button – though just as easily, someone is capable of finding you and following you online or on social media – which when it comes to businesses, can be a potential client or customer’s first impression of your brand.

It’s Never Been More Important to Reach Your Visitors

A business wouldn’t be a business without people coming in and giving you their time and money. That’s why any respectable business will always invest in the comfort and consideration of the people who come to frequent their establishment. The most common means of catering to the comfort of visitors is the Television. TVs hang in the lobbies of medical offices, hospitals have TVs in their waiting areas, and bars and restaurants have them so people can watch as they eat.

Medical Waiting Room TV - Doctors Express Television — Medical Waiting Room TV

With customer comfort being the priority it is, it only makes sense for business owners to invest in ways to make waiting areas more inviting. Those who run something other than basic cable tend to settle on one of a few do-it-yourself alternatives. People try things ranging from stiff looping slideshows, digital signs, and streaming sticks, to playing DVDs. While these options have no regular monetary cost, they provide no real value to your business. Certain solutions may be illegal depending upon what you are showing. (See the article: Using Netflix & DVDs in Your Business).

So what’s the solution?

When homegrown DIY alternatives fall short of providing an ideal the answer is a custom TV network for your business. A network that brings the TV programs in legally and lets you message to your customers at the same time.

With It’s Relevant TV, it’s just easy. It’s Relevant gives you access to a living network, which features short-form family-friendly content designed with business settings in mind. The service allows you to customize your TV, giving you control over which categories play and what visitors see. It’s Relevant can also be used to display posts from social media accounts in real-time. This helps you to further positively promote your brand and get people to follow you online.

Car Dealership TV Systems – The Top 5 Most Important Elements

What do you need to consider when putting a TV service into your car dealership sales department or service department? Car dealership marketing extends beyond billboards and TV commercials. Using the dealership TV is one of the cheapest ways to get your ads seen, while bringing life to your waiting room.

Here are the top 5 elements to a quality TV system for car dealership waiting areas and lobbies:

1. Interesting TV Programming

Customers could be waiting minutes or hours. Regardless of how long they are waiting, you want to provide them with something entertaining or informative to watch. Just having videos about serving their vehicle or commercials about your dealership aren’t going to cut it.

2. Block Out Ads from Your Competitors

The time your customers are waiting for their vehicles to be serviced is the absolute worst moment for them to see an attractive message from a competing dealership. Block out the competition with Competitive Ad Block®. The service automatically blocks any outside car commercials from appearing on the TV. Instead, you get more quality programming and your own promotions for your customers to engage with.

3. Ability to Share Custom Messages

The time your customers spend waiting is an opportunity for you to tell them you care about them. Educate them about your inventory, policies and what sets your dealership apart. They are going to be watching the TVs for at least a portion of the time they wait so it’s a great opportunity to put your own messaging in front of them.

4. Real-Time Social Media

If customers leave without buying you need a gentle way to bring them back. Social media is a great way to connect with repeat customers and prospects alike. Get them interested in your dealership. Showcase your most recent posts on the TV and gently entice them to follow your accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Showcasing multiple accounts is great because it allows them to follow on the platform they use the most.

5. Showcase your Dealership’s Videos and Commercials

You’ve spent time and money making videos, why not get more mileage out of them? So many dealerships produce videos that just end up on YouTube or for a limited time on local cable. You can use these same videos inside your dealership to increase customer awareness of your promotions, inventory, and specials.

What are you using in your dealership today? If it’s Cable or satellite, you are missing a great opportunity to both spread your own messaging and to block out messages from your competition. If it’s a custom solution you may not be showing enough interesting content, and/or might be paying too much for it. See what It’s Relevant TV for Car Dealerships has to offer. For less than most dealerships pay for a basic cable service, It’s Relevant is able to achieve all 5 goals above, with a unique non-looping platform.

You can speak to a TV consultant about dealer TV options by calling toll free: 855-ITS-RELE or by emailing: sales@itsrelevant.com.

Medical Office TV – Where Waiting Presents an Opportunity

It’s Relevant has been working with urgent cares, dentists, and medical offices across the country in order to improve patient experience by doing more with the TVs in their waiting rooms. When it comes to medical offices there aren’t a lot of television options for waiting rooms, and any practice that strives to put patients first will often invest in a waiting area TV service of some kind.

Choosing the Right Service.

Medical lobby TVs should never settle for basic cable. Between the dwell time of patients, and the amount of people that come in and out of the office on any given day, there’s a lot of opportunities to expose them to your brand, services, and reasons for them to come back – none of which is taken advantage of when cable is in the picture. Digital sinage software like It’s Relevant TV gives you the freedom to customize the TV in your waiting room, and is the ideal service when trying to make your waiting room more inviting.

Why the TV?

TVs are a great way to engage with people because you don’t have to tell someone to look at the screen for them to notice what’s on. With TVs being as prevalent as they are, people are used to watching them. Televisions are familiar and catch the eye better than posters, banners, or signs ever could.

Patients wait in waiting rooms. Hence the namesake. They wait to be seen and the wait can be a long one. During that time, if there is a TV present in the room then it’s fair game to assume that someone is going to look at it at some point. This is your prime opportunity. As they watch and you have their attention, you can be messaging to them.

What’s on the TV?

In the case of waiting rooms, the TVs we have seen are most often tuned to the news or some light programming with the patients’ comfort in mind. In practice this is a good gesture. However, in an age of rising technology, there exists an alternative. You can still offer patients comfort, but bring more for your practice at the same time.

It’s Relevant TV offers more than cable.

Cable is great for use at home. The programming that airs on television is intended for the comfort of living rooms where people sit down with the vested interest of watching TV. With the exception of the news, the average runtime of content on TV ranges from 30-60 minutes with an engaging plot or storyline. People in waiting rooms aren’t there to watch these shows. It doesn’t fit with the structure of a waiting room, whereas It’s Relevant’s TV’s short-form content is designed with the brief waiting period of patients in mind. IRTV provides short-form shows that are engaging and informative. They are the sort of thing you can walk away from with something interesting to talk about.