In a recent newsletter from hospitality guru Will Guideria, he shared a story of receiving promotional DVDs from companies looking for his endorsement.
Since few households, including his, have DVD players anymore, the DVDs sat in a stack unplayed. Then one company sent him a small photographic folder with a QR code that allowed him to instantly see the movie they were promoting. No DVD player needed. They made it easy to accomplish the goal of viewing their product.
This made me think about veterinary medicine. Do we make it easy to work with us?
Since I have the experience of visiting a LOT of veterinary hospitals, from one Doctor GPs to 75 DVM specialty to colleges of veterinary medicine, I think – maybe not but we are working on it.
A lot has changed in the world of vet med since I began, but some things remain pretty standard. For example, appointment workflows are important. Clients make appointments, the check in at the front desk, a CSR or assistant rooms them, the tech takes history and the doctor comes in and asks the same or similar questions and performs the exam. We are all pretty comfortable with this workflow, but what if we changed a few things?
What if we sent a history form out to clients BEFORE they come so they can really consider the answers to our questions or even speak with the person in their home who knows the right responses?
I have had everyone from the nanny to a taxi driver bring in my client’s pets and believe me the taxi driver didn’t have a clue what the two Dalmatians in his cab were eating! With new technologies like Weave phones, we can text documents to our clients like the afore-mentioned history questions or the surgical release forms people sign and never read at the front desk and even our payment options, before clients enter the building. We can share videos of how to actually give that pill we prescribed.
But let’s back up even more to before clients come in. Can they get in your parking spaces and get a cat carrier out of the car without hitting the car beside them? Seriously, if you are building a new office or restriping your parking lot…make the spaces large.
How about making routine care easy? We know that we live in a world where subscriptions are in every area of our lives. We have phone apps like Calm, TV apps like Netflix or Paramount+, personal care like Planet Fitness and Massage Envy as proven models, so why don’t more practices have subscription pet care? Years ago, when Dr. Wendy Hauser and I wrote our book The Veterinarian’s Guide to Healthy Pet Plans, working these plans out was not so easy. The discounts to give – or not, how to pay production to doctors who didn’t start the plans with a patient, how to manage the monthly fee, and how to teach the staff how to promote them were all more challenging than in today’s world.
Now we have plans built into PIMS, companies like Snout Plans who offer easy solutions by allowing clients to just use a Snout card to pay as they manage the plan components and decline availability with ease, and also years of data showing that hospitals who successfully implement subscriptions are making life easier for their clients and better for their patients.
How about making after-hours medical decisions easier for our clients? All we need to do is engage a company like Guardian Vets or Pet Triage or one of the new AI companies to be our after-hours voice and guide our clients towards a good decision about what needs to go to the ER and what can wait until the next day. Clients can feel good about going to the ER because they know it is necessary and not be upset if they go and spend money on something that could wait. Plus, our ERs aren’t dealing with anal glands at 2AM and can concentrate on really emergent cases.
Finally, we have to talk about making money easier. This starts with our teams’ educating clients on the potential costs of caring for a pet BEFORE it gets sick. We have so many great opportunities to discuss costs using studies like CareCredit’s Lifetime of Care Study or the ASPCAs cost of care information as reference material. We can also tell our own patient stories (with owner permission) as cautionary tales. Pet owners don’t have a baseline for the unusual cases and often are surprised by routine care costs. Transparency is the “easy button” to help our clients and in addition, help ourselves. Prepared clients are less likely to react when financial discussions get heavy because we taught them to know the possibilities. This also gives us a strong base for pet insurance promotion as clients are now being informed about potential major costs.
I work with practices that have house calls one day every other week, that offer nail trim clinics on Saturday after closing performed by a groomer, that have elite memberships that offer “Coffee with the Vet” one morning a month to learn about animal care along with other special perks. My practice even had a pet limousine that would pick up and return your pet after grooming or routine care. It was the best rolling advertisement we could ever have bought.
Be CREATIVE! That is what makes it fun!
If you need help, I am always here to put my imagination to work for you.
