Established in 1987, Fertility Associates is New Zealand’s leading provider of fertility treatment, offering a range of different treatments, such as: in-vitro fertilisation, ovulation induction, intra-uterine insemination and more.
With over 37 years of experience, 230 employees, and 16 clinics nationwide, they have supported the birth of 30,000 babies and are committed to providing a service that makes their clients feel seen, supported and cared for from the first point of contact.
Where were the friction areas in Fertility Associates’ processes?
From a reporting perspective, Fertility Associates knew they had significant blind spots in their marketing funnel. At that time, they
were tracking some of their marketing activities through Google Analytics and META Business Suite—but they weren’t getting as
much visibility as they wanted, and they knew they weren’t tracking their activity as well as they could have been.
Because of this, Fertility Associates:
The nature of what Fertility Associates does for their patients means that they have to be extra hands-on with clear, timely communications and interactions to guide their patients through their fertility journey. This process is very complex, and can be emotionally challenging for patients, with multiple touchpoints that Fertility Associates employees need to be aware of for every client.
In some instances, processes were being managed from several spreadsheets, increasing the risk of error. That also meant they were facing a higher risk of missing key checkpoints in their patient journeys. In this context, where the stakes are so high and the patients are very invested in the journey and its outcomes, any sort of oversight has the potential to really sour the experience.
Appointment booking
Previously there was no capability for potential patients to book an initial free consultation online through the website. The process to make a booking consisted of a phone call or a series of manual emails between the service team and the potential patient. Their teams were experiencing more pressure, for a process that was slower and less streamlined for their patients.
The lack of automation also meant appointments would have to be manually added to the relevant team member’s calendar—increasing the risk of double booking or missed appointments.
Patient communications
Most, if not all patient journeys with Fertility Associates, include many checkpoints where communication between the nurse or doctor, and the patient are needed. For example, patients may be waiting for medical test results that inform them of the next steps they need to take in their journey or appointment confirmations.
Sending these communications was entirely manual, requiring Fertility Associates employees to check a spreadsheet to determine patient progress and send the appropriate message via the right channel.
They wanted to build automation into key aspects of their process such as:
A key factor in the choice was how quickly Hype & Dexter grasped the intricacies of what Fertility Associates wanted.
Another factor in their choice was that Fertility Associates wanted to work with a HubSpot partner in the same city. As they were choosing a long-term partner for a significant investment and build, accessibility was just as important as expertise and skill.
When starting their journey, Fertility Associates assessed three systems; Salesforce, Microsoft365and HubSpot.
They had previously used Salesforce, but felt that the platform was more suited for organisations who are sellers—which Fertility Associates is not. In addition to that, they found that Salesforce wasn’t offering enough out-of-the-box solutions and required too many workarounds. Ultimately this made it complex and time-consuming to use.
When it came to Microsoft365, they found the front-end experience unattractive and didn’t think his would help to increase overall adoption with their team.
In the end, Fertility Associates chose HubSpot for its out-of-the-box capabilities paired with the high level of customisation available.
What was involved in helping Fertility Associates deliver a better experience for their customers?
In June 2024, HubSpot users could begin safely storing sensitive customer information within the platform.
What did this mean for Fertility Associates?
Some of their patient forms had free form text fields which patients often filled with sensitive medical information to provide more context to their situations. Logistically this provided quite the challenge as Fertility Associates could not store or access this information in a CRM that was not HIPAA compliant.
They were considering changing the text fields in their forms to drop down menus to mitigate the risk of sensitive information being provided, however, this meant their nurses would have less context going into consultations.
Ultimately, the limitations of a drop down menu would result in their nurses being less prepared walking into consultations and an overall drop in quality of customer service.
But with HubSpot becoming HIPAA compliant, they could use HubSpot forms and text fields to collect information from their patients that pertained to their medical history. Fertility Associates could store the sensitive medical information coming through the forms from their patients in the platform against the contact records, empowering their nurses with the context they need to engage with patients in the most informed and effective way possible.
HubSpot's HIPAA compliance empowered Fertility Associates to achieve:
Online booking solution
The first direct engagement for the vast majority of Fertility Associates patients is booking a nurse consultation. Patients can now go onto the website, self-select a date for their appointment, complete the form and submit.
The submission will trigger an automated confirmation response to the patient and block the date in the booking calendar, preventing other patients from booking that date/time slot. It also updates the nurses’ calendar so they are aware of the upcoming appointment. No intervention needed, it’s all automated.
Communications
With the use of HubSpot’s Marketing Hub email features in conjunction with HubSpot’s workflow automation capabilities, Fertility Associates is now able to send timely, relevant automated communications to their patients at various points in their journey.
How?
They have their standard checkpoint communications built out using customised HubSpot email templates.
These communications are then automatically sent to the patients through workflows built within the HubSpot platform. Each workflow has a different trigger. For example, appointment reminders (which previously required a person to check upcoming appointments and send reminders one by one) are now automated to be sent one day before the appointment, without fail.
Patient pipelines
Utilising HubSpot’s Sales Hub, Fertility Associates now has a pipeline set up whereby once a free nurse consultation is booked, that patient is automatically
added to the pipeline and will be moved to different stages of that pipeline according to various actions they take in their customer journey.
Fertility Associates is making a doctor-centric industry customer-centric, and the results are proof that it’s working.
Since implementation, Fertility Associates has already seen significant results that prove the success of their changes.
Delivering targeted campaigns
Fertility Associates is now able to track their audience's activity on their site. Because of this, they can deliver targeted campaigns to move their audience from the information seeking phase of their journey, to the consideration phase—bringing them one step closer to becoming a patient.
Free nurse consultation requests doubled
People are finding it easier to book their appointments because this new process puts the power in the hands of the patient.