I have been thinking a lot about the things we miss measuring in Veterinary practices. Since most of my focus is on the client experience, I was pondering how we can do a better job seeing into the client experience and then doing something about plugging the holes.
How many opportunities do we miss when we don’t answer the phone? Recently I was speaking with a friend about SEO and AI and how the dynamic of search has changed. He shared a story that really struck me. He had a marketing client who was spending a lot of money on driving calls to the practice. It was working because more than 300 new clients were calling every month. Unfortunately, only 3% of those were booking an appointment. Why?
It turns out that the CSRs had either not been trained or were poorly trained to capture these callers. They were telling callers they were booked when there were many open appointment slots. They were not offering answers beyond simple “Yes, we vaccinate cats” to owners investigating care. So, not only was the potential revenue from all these clients lost, but the money spent on search optimization was. too.
The good news is after some training, the booking rate jumped to 38% of callers. Poor team phone training caused an “invisible” loss.
Then there are the “No’s.” Clients who are saying no to their pet’s care because we don’t explain the need in terms they can understand and we don’t share the options we have for paying for those services. I remember attending a class over 30 years ago and learning that customers are always concerned about costs when they are unfamiliar with what they are purchasing. Typically, we are all prepared for the price of a dozen eggs, but not the cost of a hotspot treatment. Vet med is unknown territory for most clients. The instructor advised us to always put the clings for credit cards on the front door right near the door handle. This assured clients that we had some payment options available, just in case they needed them, before they walked through the door. How much revenue do we lose because we don’t share our payment options in advance and how many clients are blindsided by fees we didn’t prepare them for–not in the moment of need–but years prior as their pet matured? We have the data on lifetime cost of care, yet we don’t share that with our clients.
As AI advances, it is now capable of calling our practice and asking for our fees. Transparency is going to be the new standard–even if we don’t like it. My practices always quoted fees over the phone, but I have been told of practices that will not allow the staff to share prices with callers. Honestly, if I got that roadblock response to a question about price I would hang up and call another practice.
Poor transparency about fees is causing another “invisible” loss.
How about the invisible loss of TIME? All business managers know that time equals money and wasting time diminishes profitability. But we often have systems in place that worked well in years past, but are terribly inefficient today.
Do we persist in having phone systems that do not allow text messaging? Tick tock–time wasted.
How about our antiquated PIMS system that requires us to click ten times to open a patient history or enter fees? Tick tock–time wasted.
We don’t trust scribing technology to capture our medical notes so we waste 1–2 hours of productive time a day doing something that AI can do and probably do more thoroughly. Tick tock–time wasted. Even worse, we are still using paper charts that we are constantly trying to track down and writing rushed hyper abbreviated notes because we just don’t have time to do them right. Tick tock–time wasted.
But perhaps more importantly–this time waste reflects on our DVMs quality of life. Overly committed and constantly pushed doctors are not at their best. They drive on through their day, but exhaustion will have a negative impact on client communication, create a lack of patience with animals and humans and lead to poor quality medical decision making. On the outside, it appears we are driving more revenue, but when analyzed, we are losing. Many studies show that when doctors and technicians are allowed sufficient time in rooms with clients to not only get good history, but to connect and bond as people, case averages increase and patient care improves. Trust increases and client churn diminishes. Inefficient time use is an invisible loss we never measure.
As a consultant, I get one consistent question from new clients, “How can I get more new clients?” My response is what are you doing to keep the ones you already have? Client churn happens. Pets pass away, clients move, a new practice opens closer to the client’s home, or they give away their pet. Life happens. But it is amazing to see the number of “one and done” charts in the typical hospital. The pandemic certainly created some of these one-time visits as clients seeking care for pets were calling to get in any practice that had available appointments. Prior to Covid and now post-Covid, it was rare to find a practice that measured client retention. Most PIMS measure new clients for us, but few automatically run retention reports. Yet, retaining clients is the most important aspect of a sustainable income and creates a highly coveted practice at sale time.
In a recent conversation with someone who used to sell Yellow Pages advertising, I mentioned that I tracked where all my new clients came from. On check-in, we asked if they were referred by a current client, found us in the Yellow Pages, saw us driving by, saw an ad or Other. This was long before online ads existed. Almost 90% of new clients were referred by current clients. My Yellow Page friend said, “Oh, you were the kind of customer Yellow Page sales reps dreaded. A customer who tracked and KNEW where their clients came from!.” Our team had created a “Raving Fan” client base that recruited their friends and family to our practice. As we continued to talk, my friend said, “We are now in an economy where no one trusts anyone. We can’t believe the media and social posts and thanks to AI, not even the photos and videos we see with our own eyes. How do people now make buying decisions? We trust our fellow humans.”
Giving Gold Star service in practice creates complimentary reviews and raving fans. Yet we focus on advancing medical care and lag on client service skills. We can measure medical outcomes based on how our patients fare, but the invisible loss of the disappearing client is rarely measured. Not only that, but we also make little to no effort to find out why they left or to reclaim their business. I encourage practices to run “patients with no reminders “reports to look at the animals who come into practice with illnesses only. We tend to treat and not always get reminder history, so these animals get “lost” in limbo. Perhaps the owners had an enjoyable experience and will return if we only remind them. Then I suggest running an “overdue reminder report for animals over 6 months behind” on routine care. Again, this is an opportunity to reclaim these clients, make sure our patients are protected and if the client has moved to another city or practice, we can clean up our database and inactivate a client who is intentionally gone. We should also be tracking the reasons they are gone. Reviews do not tell us the entire story. They only let us see what responding clients share. Most people don’t leave reviews–even when prompted. Let’s ask them.
There are so many other areas of invisible loss we fail to measure. Like all those medications we refill but never get picked up, uncharged services we gave away, staff errors due to poor training or miscommunication, and tasks that get overlooked or have too many staff members involved because there is no assignment or organization. Then there is the missing inventory we could have sold if only it had been on the shelf.
Speed is often the mode of clinic operation when we would all be better suited to slow down, block time to perform tasks and create protocols that make us better. We need to stop ignoring the invisible losses and actively pursue plugging these holes in our dyke. We do not have to work harder to be more profitable–just more organized and more client-service focused.