As a coach, it doesn’t matter what your specialism is. It’s crucial you find a simple way to check-in with clients on a daily basis. A near-automatic routine that makes sure the people you’re working with, stay on the right track. When she was just starting out, this was precisely what Mollie McGlocklin wanted to do.
Mollie is the owner of Sleep Is A Skill: a consultancy that helps people optimize their sleep using technology, accountability, and behavioral science. Initially, Mollie’s system revolved around her typing check-in questions into a Google Doc — and asking her clients to answer them every day.
As Mollie put it, “It’s important to have a set of questions to send to my clients every day because doing so not only increases accountability. It reinforces the fact that I care about them, and it helps us paint a picture of how things are going.”
“And seeing this as a daily routine — instead of say, a once-a-week thing — is crucial for achieving enduring behavioral change. It’s all part of the science.”
Clients Won’t Always Share Updates
However, as every coach knows, most clients will not consistently record progress or update a journal when left to their own devices. Therefore, Mollie tried to build an automated text message-based system.
Geekbot’s product was so intuitive. I could easily tweak the setup and functionality.
She hoped that, as clients would automatically receive daily check-in questions on their phone, they’d be more likely to see the message and more inclined to respond versus her Google Docs approach.
But she found this both hard to set up and technically challenging to automate — that’s when Mollie turned to Geekbot for help.
Geekbot makes it easy to track client status
Initially, Mollie set up a private 1-2-1 report for every client. The report included her daily check-in questions, and Mollie could rely on Geekbot to send them on a set schedule.
But as every client has a bespoke treatment program, Mollie needed to tailor each report, alongside its sending schedule. Thanks to Geekbot’s super-simple interface, she found this just as easy to do.
Today, clients receive an alert on their phone with a prompt to answer a pre-defined question set — a sample of which you can find below:
- Would you call your sleep last night sufficient?
- Did you hit your target wind-down time (+/- 30 minutes)?
- What will your morning routine look like today?
As Mollie says, “Geekbot is so easy to use. Plus, the customer service is incredible. I wanted to put together an entirely automated daily check-in system, which felt daunting at first. But Geekbot’s product was so intuitive that it only took me a few minutes to set up — and I could tweak the functionality to each client’s particular needs.”
“What I really like about Geekbot is that it’s easy to shift the daily questions periodically for each client. Every couple of phone calls, there might be new things that we’re cuing into; that we’re going to focus on that month — or even just the next couple of weeks.” Mollie continued.
“With Geekbot, I’m able to go straight into the dashboard and quickly change the question setup, or add new check-in questions, if needed.”
At the recipient’s end, Mollie’s clients have the option to set reminders every few hours if they haven’t responded to the questions. And when they find a moment to complete them, it’s as simple as typing out a response in the Slack mobile app.
Slack then publishes the responses both in the private channel and in Mollie’s Geekbot dashboard — making the answers instantly visible to coach and client alike.
Geekbot is a driving force for dialogue and community-driven learning
A daily dialogue helps clients feel supported. It gives them a sense they have a guardian angel in whatever area of life they’re looking to improve. And Mollie recognizes the importance of Geekbot in keeping the dialogue alive.
“Geekbot helps get a dialogue going because it lets me respond directly to answers on a daily basis. As a result, my clients feel supported because they can see that someone is on the other end of the line.”
“They know I’m reading their logs every day — that I’m tracking their progress, and genuinely care about them achieving results.”
And Mollie plans to use Geekbot for more than 1-2-1 communication. She wants to leverage the tool for community-building by sending questions to a specific group so that clients can glean insights from their peers’ responses and experiences.
Users have found it’s a great way to discover new ideas — and it can even help introduce novel habits into their lives.
