A consultation usually ends with the patient saying they want to think about it. That is not a soft no. It is an accurate description of what happens next.
New Phorest research with 795 aesthetics patients in the UK, Ireland and the United States found that 85% received a digital treatment quote after their consultation. Among the smaller group who did not, 74% said they would have wanted one. What our research does not record is who sent it, or what else arrived with it.
The short answer: within a few days of the consultation, send the treatment plan written for that patient, the quote they already saw in the room, and a personal message from the practitioner who ran the consultation asking whether anything has come up since. No offer, and no deadline. After treatment, send written aftercare organised by time rather than by topic, include the products you recommended with a way to buy them, and send it again after every appointment rather than only the first.
At Zapp Laser Studio, that first message goes out from the practitioner’s own account. Nothing is attached to it.
What to send the patient who is thinking about it
Zapp Laser Studio removes tattoos at three studios in Bristol, Hove and London. A course can run to ten treatments spaced ten weeks apart, so the studio often works with someone for the better part of two years. Almost all of that happens with nobody in the room.
Daisy, Studio Manager across the three sites, describes why the follow-up email exists: “Seven, eight times out of 10, you’ve gone away and gone, ‘I wish I asked this question.’ But sometimes that client’s not confident enough or feels comfortable enough reaching out first. So we do that initial reach out.”
The email is not there to ask for the booking. It is there to collect the question the patient thought of on the drive home. That changes what goes in it:
- The treatment plan written for them, not a generic outline
- The quote they already saw, so the number is not a surprise a second time
- An open question, which is the only part that needs the practitioner
The common alternative is a message asking whether they have had a chance to think about it. That puts the work back on the patient, and the patient’s difficulty was never a shortage of prompting.
It matters that it comes from the practitioner rather than reception. A patient deciding whether to go ahead has a clinical question, not a scheduling one.
How long should you wait before following up?
A few days. Long enough that the patient has genuinely thought about it, short enough that the consultation is still clear to them.
The two common failures sit at either end. Same-day follow-up reads as pressure, and arrives before the patient has had the conversation they need to have with whoever else is involved in the decision. A follow-up two weeks later arrives after they have either booked somewhere else or stopped thinking about it.
What matters more than the exact interval is that it is fixed. A follow-up that happens when somebody remembers is a follow-up that only happens for the patients seen on quiet days.
What a written quote does that a conversation cannot
Most clinics already send one. 85% of patients received a digital quote after their consultation, so this is not a gap in the industry. The 74% figure deserves the same precision: it describes the minority who received nothing, which works out at roughly one patient in nine overall.
The more useful question is what the written version does. A quote a patient can open again lets them check what was actually said rather than what they remember, compare it against another clinic honestly, and show it to whoever they share money with, who was not in the room and is often the person the decision waits on.
Zapp Laser Studio charges for consultations, which Daisy is direct about: “That does set us apart, but it’s not a five-minute free consultation.” Clients leave with a plan for their own tattoo, the quote, and three ways to pay for it. The pricing conversation finishes in the room rather than trailing behind the treatment.
This is what Treatment Plans are for, and the detail that matters is that the patient keeps a copy.
Why aftercare needs sending more than once
Aftercare is usually written once and sent once, on the assumption that the patient read it when it arrived and still has it. Both halves of that are normally wrong.
Zapp Laser Studio sets its aftercare out by time rather than by subject:
- The first 24 hours
- The next 72 hours
- What to do if the skin blisters
That structure matters more than the writing. A patient looking at something unexpected on their skin at eleven at night is not reading from the top. They are scanning for the part that covers right now.
It is present at checkout after every appointment rather than only the first. Daisy’s reasoning: “What you remember from your consultation in treatment number one might not be what you remember on treatment number nine or 10. It’s always good for them to revisit, and they don’t have to ask for it. It just gets sent out automatically.”
Most clinics are not running two-year courses. The principle holds for any treatment with a recovery period, because the moment a patient needs the instructions is almost never the moment they were handed them. Anything explained out loud while a patient was recovering, anxious, or getting dressed should be assumed lost. The alternative to a resend is a phone call to reception the next morning, which costs more of everyone’s time.
Where patients buy the products you recommend
Practitioner recommendations carry unusual weight. 93% of patients had bought a product a clinic professional suggested to them.
Where they bought it is the interesting part.
| Where they bought it | Share of purchasers |
| In the clinic | 54.71% |
| A supermarket | 21.43% |
| The clinic’s website | 19.16% |
| Another website | 4.71% |
Those are the three most common places. More patients bought from a supermarket than from the website of the clinic that made the recommendation.
That is not necessarily revenue taken from you. Some of it will be sun cream and cleanser, bought in a weekly shop, at a price and margin no clinic was ever going to match. The number worth looking at is the 19%.
A recommendation made once, out loud, in a room, asks the patient to remember a brand name for however long it takes them to act on it. Most do not. Sending the recommendation afterwards, with a way to buy it, is the difference between a suggestion and a purchase. For clinics with an Online Store, that is the whole mechanism.
The order to build this in
This is a sequence rather than a menu. Each step is harder to do well if the one before it is missing.
1. Everything discussed in the room leaves with the patient in writing. The plan and the quote, before anything else.
2. Name who follows up, and give it a deadline. The practitioner who ran the consultation, a fixed number of days afterwards, whether or not anyone is chasing them.
3. Make the repeats automatic. Aftercare and product recommendations should resend without anyone deciding to send them, because the point of them is that they arrive later.
How Phorest supports this
Most of this depends on the appointment leaving the room in a form the patient can open again:
- Treatment Plans put the recommendation and the pricing into one document the patient keeps, which makes the follow-up a continuation rather than a fresh pitch
- Two-Way Chat lets the practitioner send the follow-up themselves without handing out a personal number
- Pre & Post Care attaches instructions to the treatment rather than to a member of staff, and resends them after every appointment
- Online Store turns a verbal product recommendation into something the patient can act on the same evening
Our research found that 85% of patients already receive a digital quote. The clinics getting more from it are the ones where the same document is still there the week after, and the month after.
Where the decision actually happens
The consultation is where the recommendation gets made. It is rarely where it gets accepted. That happens a few days afterwards, at a kitchen table, from whatever the patient still has in front of them.
FAQs:
How quickly should an aesthetic clinic reply to an enquiry?
What should a clinic include in a first reply to an enquiry?
Is it better to call or email a new enquiry?
Why do patients enquire instead of booking straight away?
