Meet Blake Lucas, Practiceland Co-Host & PatientFi Sr. Director of Customer Experience

Andrea (00:04):
Well, hi there. I am Andrea Watkins. And if you're listening to this, while juggling three patient calls, checking in a couple patients, taking a payment, selling skincare, and trying to catch your doctor in between procedures, you might be working in an aesthetic practice.

Blake (00:18):
And I'm Blake Lucas, and this is Practiceland. This is not your doctor's podcast.

Andrea (00:23):
Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? What's your current role?

Blake (00:28):
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a Southern California native and currently live in Corona, California, if you know where that is. But I'm a father of twin boys. I currently work at PatientFi as a senior director of customer experience, and I've been there for about seven years now or so.

Andrea (00:44):
Is this your first role in aesthetics or how long have you been in the aesthetics industry?

Blake (00:49):
I think that my experience in aesthetics really got started at a company called Alphaeon back in the day. So I had a chance to, that was kind of my first foray into it. Before that, I had a lot of customer experience in a company called Apple.

Andrea (01:02):
Who?

Blake (01:04):
Yeah, right, one of those. So I spent a good amount of time there about another eight years there. And so that's really where my career started.

Andrea (01:10):
So when you were in a senior role for customer experience at PatientFi, what does that mean?

Blake (01:15):
What I'm in charge of is a team that takes care of every patient or provider question or technical support or issues when they do come up. And so we have a great team of people that takes care of people interested in PatientFi applying for the very first time. Sometimes we're a little bit of a therapist and helping people deal with maybe the concerns of financing that they may have. We are a very busy team for sure.

Andrea (01:41):
I can imagine. And how many clients or practices do you support that use PatientFi?

Blake (01:47):
Right now we have thousands of providers and tens of thousands of patients or borrowers of ours that are using our product. So definitely a lot of people out there that we're trying to help.

Andrea (01:58):
What do you love the most about what you're doing now?

Blake (02:00):
I love the fact that PatientFi is making these types of procedures or treatments attainable for the average person, where in the past that may not have been the case. And so we're able to provide help that person get to where they really want to be, accomplish maybe the goals or the look that they're looking for and provide that confidence. And we're also expanding into areas of fertility, which I'm really excited.

Andrea (02:27):
Oh wow, that's incredible.

Blake (02:29):
Yeah, so we're really excited about that industry and it's booming and just having the opportunity to be a part of that process in some small way to help start a family is very, very rewarding for us. Aside from that too, is also just working with the individuals that I get to work with every single day is one of the things I find most joy in is the development of people and bringing those people up, giving them an opportunity to shine and really grow and see, we've seen such growth that we've been able to promote so many employees internally, which is something I'm extremely proud of that we're able to do that for everybody.

Andrea (03:07):
Here we are. We're doing Practiceland. We're putting together this awesome podcast to help educate, empower the administrative and the sales teams that are in aesthetic practices. So how did you end up here?

Blake (03:21):
I've had the good fortune to be a part of this PatientFi program for a long time in this business, and it's kind of a joke in the company that I'm a bit of our historian and so I tend to take new hires through our history and context and why we felt like we could really make some waves in the medical space or the financing medical space, this little niche that we found. And so I've just been lucky enough to be a part of that for so long and had an opportunity to maybe speak about my experience here and the things that I've maybe learned along the way that might be able to help and hopefully provide some value to some of the listeners or anyone that's watching.

Andrea (04:00):
What is that takeaway that you want people to listen to what we're sharing and the information and the value that we're trying to provide in your ideal world?

Blake (04:08):
Yeah, I would really hope that there's a value beyond even it's not just the financing world, obviously that's where I'm a part of, but I would really hope that someone watching or listening could take any piece of what we talk about and after listening to that or hearing or seeing this, that they feel like, okay, this is something I could actually apply to my real job here. This is actually something that's relative to me. So that would be my guiding North Star is if we can provide just a little bit of that and again, does not need to be financing. That's not always the sexiest thing to talk about, but if there is something interesting or at least one takeaway where they're like, that could make my life a little bit better, or I can be a better employee or a better person even, I'd be thrilled to be able to accomplish that.

Andrea (04:57):
Were you ever on the radio?

Blake (04:58):
No, I have not been on the radio, although I do have some family history there, so I don't know if you know Wink Martindale, but that's my grandfather.

Andrea (05:08):
Oh wow.

Blake (05:09):
Yeah. So I like to say there's something in the genes that I was, I wish I got into that a little bit.

Andrea (05:17):
So today you sit before us with a headset on your head and a mic, and that's how you were born as well. You came out of the womb, you were ready.

Blake (05:24):
Yeah. Doing game shows and tv. Yeah, exactly.

Andrea (05:27):
I love it.

Blake (05:28):
Yeah.

Andrea (05:29):
Perfect. So tell me, you obviously I'm sure deal with a lot of consumers, clients of PatientFi. Tell me what's one of the craziest experiences that you've had with either a patient or a provider, one of your customers?

Blake (05:44):
We don't live in a perfect world, that's for sure. And there are some people that want to break the law a little bit. And we do have some interesting stories about identity theft and fraud. We do our best to keep that at bay and we have a lot of great tools to block that. But even so, when someone wants to break the law, they're going to try to break the law. So there are some interesting stories. There's one individual including too many details, but there was one individual that I thought was really interesting. He did something kind of tricky. He had a similar name or he has a very common name and would steal the identity of other people with his same name. So it made it really easy to create IDs and things like that and those people's information. You just changed the address, but the names all the same.

(06:32):
And so he stole the identity once of an FBI agent, and that was fascinating. I worked really closely with that FBI agent to try to get as much information about this individual as we possibly could to get him indicted. They tapped his phone, they got into some of the data on his phone, the FBI did, and we actually were asked to come to be deposed in court in New York City. And so one of the FBI agents that was there talking about the case said that they were experiencing almost like a PTSD type symptom after seeing what was on this individual's phone. It is a fascinating, fascinating story. So that's probably, that one's probably the craziest.

Andrea (07:13):
How long has that been going on?

Blake (07:14):
I think they did wrap up the investigation on that one. I think they did catch the guy, but they didn't really need, once we were able to provide them everything that we did, they were kind of like, okay, we'll take it from here. Yeah, but there was three individuals, three guys with that share the same name as this other guy. They now have a support group where they get together now and they've become friends after all of this because all the trauma that they're bonding over after this guy took their info. So it was really fascinating. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Andrea (07:42):
Well, at least they'll have more new people to send Christmas cards to in their little trauma bonding group.

Blake (07:48):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they've gotten very close, I think. Got a wild customer service story or a sticky patient situation? Send us a message or voicemail. If your tale makes it into our "She did what?" segment, we'll send a thank you gift you'll actually love. Promise no cheap swag here.

Andrea (08:02):
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