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Captivate Website Visitors in 8 Seconds or Less

After successfully starting, growing and selling the home care agency NeuvaCare, Kamran Nassar set his sights on a new venture that would help home care agencies captivate website visitors in 8 seconds or less.  That company is appropriately named Captiva8 and you can learn more at Captiva8.com.

 

Kamran explains that many home care agencies spend a good deal of money creating their websites, optimizing them with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and driving traffic with Google Ad Words. But if those site visitors aren't instantly engaged, all of that effort is wasted. 

Some of Kamran's practical tips are as follows:

  • Recognize that both prospective clients and caregivers come to your site
  • Make your phone number very prominent and unobstructed
  • Provide a capture form, and DON'T make it hard to fill out. Instead, get a name and number and "how you can help"
  • Provide LIVE CHAT

Captiva8 is a live chat service that comes with both a chat technology, but more importantly it comes with 24 x 7 staffing with home care experts who can answer questions, capture leads, and even search for available caregivers. They literally get you clients and fill caregiver shifts while you sleep. Learn more at Captiva8.com.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

 

Transcript:
 

Ken Accardi (00:01):

Did you know that when someone visits your website, you have only eight seconds to capture their attention. Well, today's guest knows that full well, and he can explain how to make it work on your website, too. Enjoy!

Announcer (00:14):

Welcome to the home care heroes podcast, featuring trending topics and practical wisdom for success in home care. Here's your host, Ken Accardi.

Ken Accardi (00:29):

Welcome to the home care heroes podcast. I have a special guest today, Kamran Nasser, and Kamran's actually been on the podcast before he was on episode eight. And in that particular episode, we talked about Kamran's story with his home care agency, new wave of care and how he grew it starting in 2013 to being one of the fastest growing companies in the entire country and what he did. And we also talked about the book that Kamran wrote, which is called caring for millions. And we learned a real lot from the book, but at the end of that module or the end of that podcast, we mentioned that Kamran has a new venture. So Nuevacare has been sold and is continuing to flourish and thrive in the San Francisco Bay area where it is. But Kamran got this new idea for a new company called Captiva8. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So Kamran, welcome back to the podcast. First of all,

Kamran Nassar (01:30):

Thank you so much. It's great to be back.

Ken Accardi (01:32):

So let's just jump in and tell us the story of captivate. What was the story behind it and the motivation behind captivate and while you're there, let's tell everybody what the service is.

Kamran Nassar (01:41):

Oh, absolutely. So when I was running my own agency, the elements that helped me grow the company had to do a lot with marketing, with a referral sources. But a few of the things that I developed that were more like technology related, where a chat and an app that we had developed for Nuevacare. And they helped me quite a bit in growing the company. And the way it worked was that we had a live chat solution on our website that was managed and manned by trained individuals who knew about home care, who knew about nonmedical home care business and with their knowledge and ability to answer questions for the visitors who went to the website, we were able to capture leads and some of those leads were, you know, just very, you know, small customers, hourly customers, but some of them were much larger 24 seven.

Kamran Nassar (02:38):

It just became obvious to me that when you spent so much money on, you know SEO search engine optimization and Google ad words, and some agencies spent thousands of dollars to get visitors to our website. And we did that as well. And when people come to your website, you have to have ways to capture attention or click back and go to another website because we look just like any other business. We have so many competitors agencies are available out there. So visitors, if you don't engage with them immediately, they just go back to another agency's website. So having those ideas that really helped us grow the agency and made me think about actually developing those into a platform. After I sold my own agency, to be able to provide those services to other agencies, that's where the idea of captivate captivate came from. And so we developed those into solutions for other agencies. And currently we're working with several home care agencies and providing these services to them.

Ken Accardi (03:47):

This is great. So let me recap. So basically every home care agency we know they have a website they're working really hard to get people to come to the website. And when we just look at a website in general, let's talk about the basics. I guess there's a couple of different ways to capture somebodies attention when they come to your website, of course you want to have some pretty pictures there and things like that. But if you have a visitor and you have no idea who they are and they don't engage with your website, I guess the you're not really getting value out of them. So let's start with the basics. As a home care agency owner, what are the ways that somebody can engage with your agency when they come to a website?

Kamran Nassar (04:28):

Yeah. Great question. So what I learned was that you have to have, like, there are three elements that are really important as a home care agency to be able to convert visitors. And when I say visitors, I mean both potential clients and potential caregivers because caregivers also look for work online clients look for care online. And also caregivers look for work online. So you actually have two types of visitors to your website usually. And to be able to convert those, you need to have the most important three elements that are really crucial. Number one is your phone number. Now the phone number has to be prominent. It has to be on the upper right hand side of the website uncluttered with nothing around it. So our eye sees that immediately. Now the phone number is good for those people who are looking for immediate care, not everybody's going to call you, but for people let's say somebody is at the hospital. Somebody kids are just looking for an agency and they go to your website. They may want to call you not everybody calls. And for different types of care, people have different approaches. Let's say some kids have one of their parents who's been suffering from Alzheimer's. They go to your website. They're not in immediate need of care. So they approach things a little differently. They want to contact on it. Be able to start some sort of a conversation with you. So for those people, it's really important to have a contact form, a contact form needs to be on every page of your website. And it needs to be really simple. You just want to ask people what their name is, what their email address is and what they're concerned about. Like a commentary. You don't want to have a huge contact form asking for too many points of information, make it really simple.

Kamran Nassar (06:17):

So you have your phone number, you have your contact form, and then you have a chat. A chat is for those people who just want to ask some questions and start this relationship with you and having a chat contact form, and a phone number prominently placed on your website. You have three ways to capture the three types of customers that visit your website. And once you do that, then your conversion rate could go up and you will start seeing your return on investment on hundreds or thousands of dollars that you're spending on SEO and Google ad words. And I see that even now, when I talk to agencies, they spent a lot of money on SEO and ad words. But when you go to the website, they don't have these mechanisms in place. So they are, you know, spending a lot of money on creating visitors generating visitors to the website, but then they're losing those potentials without having these mechanisms in place.

Ken Accardi (07:17):

Okay. So let me recap a couple things. So first of all, great advice, and it sounds very basic, but the first thing you need on your website is a phone number. It needs to be easy to be seen uncluttered upper, right? This is how we call that's great. The next thing is the contact form. It has to be simple. And one thing that I've actually seen, and I'm glad that you brought up that a lot of the visitors to your site, they might be looking for care for their mom, let's say, but they also might be looking for a caregiver job. One thing I've seen is that the contact forms on some of the home care websites are too complicated. So especially on the caregiver side, it's like, okay, they, the caregiver looks at it and they say, Oh my gosh, they're going to ask me all these things.

Ken Accardi (07:59):

I have to feel in my experience where I went to school, my previous jobs, my references, they're not going to do it. Right. So you said that if you do have a contact form and you can say, tell me your name, your number, your email, and what you need, then that's really the way to go. And then you could get back to them. And this way you capture the lead and you don't frighten them away. So those were some things. And then we get to the third one. And I think it's the main one as you described for captivate, which is the chat. And so, first of all, let's, let's just talk about that for a minute. So why is chat so important and why, why did that make a difference for your agency? And, and why is that a real central tool for captivate?

Kamran Nassar (08:39):

Sure. So chat in general, if you look at data and statistics over the past five years about chat, it is becoming more and more popular because apparently people would prefer texting, which is really a form of chat. Chat really is a subset of texting. So people prefer texting then picking up the phone and calling, why is that? Because it's easier, it's immediate and you can do multitasking while you're texting or chatting. It can do other things. Usually with the phone, you end up leaving a message and somebody else has to call you back within, you know, a few hours. They, and sometimes according to our research, about 50% of agencies don't even call you back, which is really absolutely amazing to me. So he felt like chat because it's immediate, you get engaged immediately. They get their answer, they will get their questions answered, right, right there on the website. So chat is becoming more and more popular.

Ken Accardi (09:41):

I'll be there for one more minute. Kamran. So one thing that I, I also prefer chat and, you know, I love, let's say that I'm getting help from a tech company or something, and somebody's there to chat with me. You're right. I could parallel process. That's good. But a lot of times, what I see is, you know, a lot of agencies or a lot of companies will have this chat. And then when you start the chat, it looks like somebody there they're like, hi, what can we help you with? And you put your answer in, and then it comes back and says, let me get your email address so I can help you better in case we lose touch. And then you give them your email address and they say, well, we're not really here right now, but somebody will get back to you tomorrow.

Ken Accardi (10:20):

You know, what's your question. And, and in those cases I feel a little bit frustrated. I'm like, well, I was looking, I went to chat because I was looking for help right away. And then you kind of pulled this dirty trick on me where I didn't get help right away. And you were really just trying to get my, my email. But if I understand what you said right in the beginning is that you actually have live people who are answering the chat. And is that just during the day, or do you have that at night as well? How does that work?

Kamran Nassar (10:51):

So it says it's a 24 seven coverage. So we have people around the clock that can represent a home care agency as our client. And I think you brought up a really good point, the difference between a chat bot and a, an a live chat, which she managed by people, two different things. Chatbots are really great for very, very specific tasks. For example, let me give you a great application for a chat bot is finding out what is your balance in your bank account? We can go to your bank's website, you log in and the chat, what could really answer you to the penny? Hey, this is your balance. That's fantastic. But when you're looking for care for your mom or for your dad, it is really, the conversations are very not distinct. You don't know what the next question may be, or you just don't know what this person is looking for.

Kamran Nassar (11:47):

So chatbots are extremely at a very early stage, really extending conversations. They're not ready yet for helping somebody with health care related issues. And that's why we have people. So we have people who have been trained in answering questions regarding to non medical home care services. They understand Alzheimer's, they understand dementia. They understand the ease of finding a caregiver. They understand the difference between 24, seven and hourly. They understand the ADL's. They understand cooking and meal preparation doctor's appointments. So they know all of that stuff, and they're ready to help their goal is to help the visitor of your website. And if they can generate a lead for you, that's great. And that's what they will do. But their main goal is to help somebody who's on your website to see if they can somehow help them answer questions on behalf of your company. The other thing they can also do is they can help you get a caregiver application, a very simple application for caregivers who are looking for work, they ask a few questions about their experience and their skills, and then they pass that information along to you.

Kamran Nassar (12:56):

So that's really the distinction between a chat bot and a, and a live chat, which is really managed by trained people, makes a huge difference to confirm what you said. You go to some of these websites and they have a chat bot, and it's really nothing more than just a capture form. You end up giving your name and your email address, and that's it. You're like, there's really no conversation. There is no additional information that you can get from it. So it's kinda like it's kinda like having a phone and really not answering it. It's like sending everybody to your voicemail, which really defeats the purpose. So having a real chat with people behind the chat that can start a conversation is the way to go compared to just a simple chat bot. And that's what we have, and that's what we have. And that's what really helped my agency grow. And that's what I think we can provide to other agencies, you know, as a product of my new company, captivate.

Ken Accardi (13:55):

Okay, perfect. So we definitely want to educate first and then we'll come back to captivate and how they engage with you at the end. But, but just to be clear, I mean, if somebody subscribes to captivate, they get this chat capability that they can embed into their website and it's actually backed up by the live people 24 by seven. So they're essentially getting, not only a chat technology, but they're actually subscribing from you and getting a 24 by seven coverage of people who can answer their questions with knowledge of the industry. Is that

Kamran Nassar (14:26):

Right? Correct. Exactly.

Ken Accardi (14:29):

Okay. Perfect. And one thing before we started talking, you mentioned a really interesting statistic about an eight second rule when somebody comes to a website and tell us a little bit more about the, this eight seconds and people just coming to the site and then dropping off,

Kamran Nassar (14:47):

Right? So this is what I've heard. I've read it in many different news releases and news platforms that you basically have about eight seconds for grabbing somebody's attention. When they come to your website, people have really, really short attention spans these days when they're searching online for anything, it could be for home care, it could be for plumbing or whatever they're looking for. They just don't spend a lot of time looking for things. If it's not right in front of their eyes, if you don't make it easy for them, they just click back and look for something else. And that's why you don't have a lot of time. You don't have minutes for people to go through your website and do their own research and find out how great you are and find out what your phone number is. And, you know, get involved and start a conversation with you. You have to have mechanisms to get them engaged within a few seconds, or you may lose them. So that's where that thing comes in. The eight second time period comes in.

Ken Accardi (15:49):

Thank you for explaining that. One thing that I kind of consider even to be a knockout punch with captivate as well, and I know you have this with your own agency, is that the people on the chat could go even further and say, so what do you, you know, what do you need? Well, I'm looking for a living care for my mom and okay, what's her zip code? And do you want a female caregiver or a male caregiver, you know, and things like that. So not only does captivate activate the ability for this live team of people to be able to answer questions about home care, but you can actually go as far as to say, you know, let's try to find you a caregiver and you could, because what sometimes happens is that these individuals are calling agencies and maybe it's a couple of zip codes away, or maybe they are in really doing the best job, balancing their hiring with their recruiting of clients and things like that. So maybe they've talked to a couple of agencies that say, well, I really can't get you a caregiver until maybe next week or the week after. So, so how does captivate help with that aspect?

Kamran Nassar (16:56):

That's a great question. And I'm so happy that you brought it up. So we noticed that from the time of search from the time that somebody starts looking for care to the time to actually find it, it takes a few days. And we found that to be a great opportunity for us as an agency to shorten that. Because if you can shorten that you could get a lot of customers. Can you imagine if like the average industry to waiting time for finding a caregiver is like two days. And if you can bring that down to like one hour, your agency is playing in a different, at a different level. Now nobody could really compete with you. And that's what we did. So we use our data, our scheduling data information. We have all the caregivers there. We know exactly when they are available. We know their skills.

Kamran Nassar (17:50):

We know when they want to work all data is there. It's just a question of being able to access that data. So with captivate, what we can also do is access that data through integration and be able to provide some caregiver matches. If somebody's looking for care for their mom, let's say in a specific zip code who needs somebody with Alzheimer's experience, who can also drive her mom to doctor's appointments, and they need this person to go visit her mom on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays, that data all in this scheduling system, within a few clicks, that data could be really revealed. And we found that if we provide caregiver options to potential customers, they would love to know that they will love to know if agency a can provide with a few caregiver options like today rather than three days from now, from agency B.

Kamran Nassar (18:47):

So that was really helpful for us. Not only we found that our potential customers direct customers like that, but even more than that referral sources were so much more interested in using a tool like that for all sources, such as hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, who were working with us as partners that were really excited in terms of using a tool like that, that they were able to find out if I like our agency had a potential caregiver for this specific patient thought having to call email back and forth. So that was a very efficient way of, again, for us finding new customers and really being completed different, being differentiated our agency from other agencies in the area.

Ken Accardi (19:35):

Perfect. So really our first podcast that we did together, the title that we put for the podcast was really about being different as a way of differentiating, you know, your agency succeed by being different, that I believe was the, was the title. And you did talk about some very, very interesting things, and it looks like captivate becomes just one more way that you can make yourself different and better and faster. And I guess just in, I remember when Amazon com first came out and we used to have a joke, we were pretty early users of amazon.com. I used to joke that Jeff Bezos would send my wife a Christmas card because she was ordering so many things. We would get these packages in, you know, when Amazon first started, it's like, wow, I order this and I get it in a week. And I thought that was great.

Ken Accardi (20:21):

And now Amazon has gone, you know, to the point where somethings are going to come today and some things are going to come tomorrow. So the service has really gotten better. And now, and we're in an industry where there's a shortage of caregivers and if they could come to you and you could say, yes, I have somebody right in that zip code who could start when they're discharged tomorrow. That's a really, really big differentiator. And I think that captivates going to be a great service. Okay. So to recap, so captivate a new company by Kamran Nasser and it's captivate.com. So C a P T I V a h.com. And right there, you can go ahead and you could sign up for the service. And when we talk on the home care heroes podcast, we're really trying to provide general information for the industry. But as your hosts, I work with the software company and Coda, and we're actually working with captivate so we could integrate captivate directly into our product.

Ken Accardi (21:14):

So basically somebody using captivate and using an Coda would be able to have the service so that these experts around the would be able to not only grab the information about this prospect or this caregiver who wants a job, but also look for potential caregivers for them. So in that same chat session, right, in a few minutes, they can say, yes, we have a caregiver in your area that can do this Monday, Wednesday, Friday case through your mom or somebody who can start meeting with your mom, right. When she's discharged on Thursday. I think that's a really great service. Okay. So let me turn it back over to you. Tell the individuals a little bit more, how would they get in touch with you? And what's the next step when they come and start to try to work with captivate?

Kamran Nassar (21:59):

Oh, sure. So you go to the website, which is C A P T I V A 8.com (captiva8.com). You can sign up for a free trial on our website and we'll sign up with no risks. So when you sign up, we don't ask for any credit card information. I would love to just have home care agencies, try this, and that's really the goal. Or if you want to set up a demo, there's a demo button right on the website.

Ken Accardi (22:23):

The first podcast that we did together was about your book, caring for millions. And I believe that on the captiva8 website, you can actually see some excerpts of caring for millions and even download chapters of the book and read about that. And for those of you who aren't going to go back and listen to our first podcast, the book caring for millions is a really, really great book that talks about how Kamran learned about the home care industry and became successful in it. So if you're a young home care agency owner, I would highly recommend that you go and download a couple of those chapters and get some, some really good information there. But for now, I think we're going to wrap up for today, Kamran, thanks again for being on the podcast again. And maybe there'll be a third time, but for now we want to congratulate you on launching Captiva8 and thank you again for being on home care heroes.

Kamran Nassar (23:12):

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure again, and I look forward to talking to you again.

Ken Accardi (23:19):

Thanks for joining us today on the home care heroes podcast, home care heroes is produced by Ankota the software for the heroes of home care. You can listen to back episodes by visiting 4homecareheroes.com. That's the number four. Then the words, home care heroes dot com.

 

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