Your clients come to you for help, encouragement, and guidance.
The last thing you want to do is overwhelm them with choices and change.
With Meal Garden, you can easily transform suggestions and recommendations into tangible and easy-to-follow steps for your clients.
In this article (and video), we will explore how using Meal Garden will help your clients succeed.
Table of Contents
Adding a Client
The first step is to add a client. To do this, you click on the 'Create' button in the top right-hand corner of the home screen and then click on 'Add a Client' at the bottom of the screen.
Once you've clicked 'Add a Client,' you'll be prompted to fill in their demographic details (name, email, birth dates, and gender); on the next screen, you can choose to invite them or create the account without inviting them.
(click here to skip to the instructions for inviting your client after you've set-up their access)
Setting Up Your Clients Meal Garden
Setting up your client's access to your Meal Garden includes a few simple steps, both from a 'behind the scenes and 'client experience' perspective. We'll start by taking a look at the 'behind the scenes' elements.
Behind the Scenes
When we say 'Behind the Scenes' we are referring to:
1) Details
The details tab is simply the demographic data about your client that you filled in when creating their record.
The one additional piece of data that you can add is their mobile phone number; the reason you'd add this is to take advantage of SMS communications with your client via Meal Garden's encouragement tools.
2) Online Filters
By default, your clients only have access to the information you explicitly share with them via the recommendations page in their portal.
You can change your defaults/universal settings through the settings screen.
You can also change these settings for individual clients via the Online Filters screen.
The filters you can use to adjust your client's experience in your Meal Garden include:
Recipes: You can provide access to all the recipes, only the recipes you've recommended for them or a combination of your public recipes (i.e., recipes on your home board) and the recommendations.
Fields: Depending on your practice, the particular client, and philosophies around data, you may want to hide certain fields contained in the meals. Click on the fields you'd like to suppress, and your client won't see that data when they explore and interact with Meal Garden.
Dietary Filters & Food Sensitivities: This is a great way to ensure the information available to your clients matches their protocols when you're focused on a specific condition or type of diet. You can also use this filter to exclude meals with specific ingredients.
ProTip: We are adding new dietary filters every day; if you have one that you'd like to see added, send us a note, and our Creative Services Team will get to work on it!
3) Documents
Meal Garden supports a variety of documents related to your patients, your plans, and your progress.
To add documents or notes, go to 'Documents' on the screen's left-hand side and click on 'add documents'.
From here, you have a few choices:
Type Notes: Great for charting or keeping a tally of conversations and progress.
Upload a file: use this for things like consent forms, intake documents, etc. You can also store any test results or requisitions here.
Enter measurements: An easy way to measure progress in a situation where you're working on weight loss/balance.
4) Week Schedules
As your clients start using Meal Garden, you'll be able to review their weekly schedules with them here.
5) Sent Emails
Any emails that you've sent through Meal Garden will be stored here.
The Recommendations Tab
This is where the online experience starts!
The recommendations page is where your client will land each time they log into Meal Garden.
It's created to be easy to update, easy to navigate, and provide a great user experience no matter what device, or, more importantly, the level of comfort your clients have with digital tools.
There are three main components to the recommendations page:
1) The introduction message
Similar to other aspects of Meal Garden, all messages can include any combination of text, video, and hyperlinks.
In terms of strategies for the introduction message, there are many, but two of the most popular are:
A brief welcome + a message about what your client can expect from your engagement (generally tied to the goals established during your intake efforts)
A video walkthrough for the client through the platform/experience.
The sky is really the limit here, but it's a good idea to use this field to build excitement and communicate the next steps.
2) Managing Content
Adding & Removing
You can add content in two ways, using pre-made content or creating content from scratch.
If you create content from scratch, it will automatically be added to the clients portal.
To delete content, simply click-and-drag to the bottom of the screen.
Arranging content
You can also click on 'Content Order' to arrange the content types to suit your needs.
Previewing content
Once you've added the content, you can click 'preview' to confirm that it looks the way you expect.
Send Content Update
Once you've invited and your client has accepted, this action will be available.
If you've made some changes to the portal, you can click 'send content update' and an email will be sent to your client (s) advising them that new content is available.
Working with Clients
Do you remember back when you started reading this document, we created a client but didn't send them an invite?
We did this so that we could set up their filters and recommendations.
Now that you have a client in your dashboard, your view will look like this:
Navigating Actions
Filters
The contacts screen presents both one-on-one clients and any contact that has registered for one of your programs.
You can use the filters to focus on clients or any combination of your clients and programs.
Contact Selection
If you want to take action with a subset of your clients, you can use the select contacts to select the ones you want to work with.
Status
The status provides icons that identify the status of a client, these can include:
Portal Not Activated
Invitation Sent
Portal Activated
In addition, if they are subscribed to a program, you'll see the program icon.
For additional details, you can hover over each icon.
Group Actions
Once you've filtered the contacts you can select them all and send a message or change their status.
Contact Actions
In addition, each contact has a set of individual actions.
These actions are:
Send an email
Send a direct message to your client or a group of clients.
Invite
One of the best things about Meal Garden is how easy it is to get your clients going.
When you create their accounts for them, they need to click on a link and create a password.
It's that easy.
Change Status
Within this action, you can:
Remove as a client
Subscribe the client (s) to a program
Unsubscribe a client (s) from a program
Impersonate
Essentially, you take on the persona of the client, accessing their portal as them.
Some of the things you can do with impersonation include:
Set up your client's families and personal anthropometrics
Set up schedules for your clients so that they can shop and cook.
Create welcome videos (tours, etc.)
Help your client reset passwords, troubleshoot access, etc.
Set up grocery stores and assign foods to grocery stores
The impersonate feature provides you the opportunity to experience Meal Garden as a client and to provide your clients 'concierge' services if you'd like.
Chat
Chat is an encrypted form of communication within the Meal Garden platform. The encryption supports or exceeds HIPPA requirements for online communications.
When you receive a chat, you are notified in the app, and an email is sent to the email associated with your Meal Garden account, and vice versa for your clients.
You can share documents, links, and other files, and you'll always have access to a complete history of your chat.
You can initiate a chat from the client dashboard or from within the client's record.
Conclusion
Providing your clients access to your Meal Garden is a sure-fire way to get them excited, show value early on, and make it simple for them to start building the habits they need to succeed.
We are focused on making the experience for you and your clients better every day.
Continued Reading
Now that you understand how to invite and engage clients interactively through Meal Garden start learning about the different types of content you can create to help them succeed and grow your business.
Clients (you are here)
How your clients experience Meal Garden (you are here)