We replaced our waiting room music with a podcast about our platform

For decades, the waiting room has been dead air. Saxophone covers of songs nobody chose, magazines nobody touched, a fish nobody fed. At Zero Health we looked at that experience and asked a simple question: what if it were content?

Starting this month, every virtual waiting room on our platform streams the Zero Health Podcast, hosted by me, about us. Early episodes include "Why the wait time estimator is always right", "A love letter to our notification settings", and a three-part series on our rebrand.

The metrics are undeniable

Since launch, average perceived wait time is down 40%, because patients can no longer perceive time while listening. Completion rate for the pre-consultation ad break is 96%, which is a number we were comfortable rounding up to "near-universal acclaim" in the board deck.

One patient wrote in to say the podcast was "still playing" after their appointment had ended, which we are counting as an engagement win and looking into separately.

What comes next

Q4 brings season two, recorded live in our wellness yurt, plus a companion app that lets you queue episodes for appointments you have not booked yet. The waiting room is dead. Long live the waiting room.