In a recent article for Practice Life, Steve Manyak (DVM) spoke to what many veterinary teams now understand about pet owner communication platforms and managing appointment reminders and other veterinary client communications in a busy practice.
To save time while maintaining effective client communications, “Communication technology is part of the answer,” writes Dr. Manyak, adding, “Perhaps no part of veterinary practice has been more affected by the technological innovations of the past 25 years than communication, and failures in this regard represent one of the most common challenges in veterinary practice,” meaning Dr. Manyak recommends practices use veterinary client communication apps or pet owner communication platforms to operate more effectively and generate additional practice revenue with minimal administrative effort.
How to Boost Client Engagement When Using Veterinary Client Communications
Strike a Comfortable Balance Between Formal and Informal Writing
Clients trust you as an animal healthcare professional. That’s why they became clients. To maintain professionalism, avoid any liberal use of abbreviations, acronyms, texting language, emojis, and other conventions of contemporary informal writing. Yes, a smiley-face emoji can lighten the mood, but even so. Such informalities should be used sparingly in veterinary client communications.
Know Your Audience
Who are your clients? Where do they live? Are your veterinary client communications for all clients or just some? Whatever kind of pet owner communication platform you use, knowing such details helps personalize messages, which lets clients know you value them as real people and thereby helps improve engagement and compliance by motivating clients to act on your recommendations.
Incorporating client demographics and details into a veterinary client communication guide for staff helps keep your messaging and goals on track.
Keep Communications Brief
Concentrate on a single subject. Brevity and clarity hedge against information getting lost through oversaturation. This is important whether you’re using a veterinary client communication app to send emails or texts.
Take the Same Approach with Social Media
Social-media channels like Facebook are effective tools for practices to engage and share information with clients. Yet just like in any writing connected to your practice, maintain a balance between formal and informal writing that’s suitable for your practice, and make sure to include this information in any veterinary client communication guide for staff.
Be Mindful of Tone
Sarcasm used in person, for example, can be humorous. Yet sarcasm can easily be taken the wrong way in veterinary client communications because there’s no wink-wink feature to let readers know you’re kidding. To stay safe, avoid things like sarcasm and frame your thoughts in a clear, straightforward way. Clear tone is a key recommendation in every veterinary client communication guide.
At its core, personalized veterinary client communications ultimately serve the health of pets everywhere. According to Veterinary Practice News, regular personalized veterinary client communication helps increase after-care compliance, enhances client satisfaction and most importantly promotes better pet health outcomes. All of this combines to promote growth for your practice:
- According to research by InfoTrends, 84% of people surveyed said they’d be more likely to open personalized communications.
- In separate research by Evergage, 10% of businesses surveyed reported improved business results greater than 30% with personalized communication.
Labor Savings Are a Big Part of Veterinary Client Communication Technology
On average, roughly 42-50% of each dollar received by a practice (per Veterinary Business Matters) goes toward labor costs. Though using a pet owner communication platform may not reduce overall labor costs for practices (since they’re fixed costs), using a veterinary client communication app helps save time and labor costs directly associated with administrative function so staff can focus more on patient and client care.
This is particularly true when veterinary client communication systems come standard automated appointment reminders, mass communication templates, and other time-savings and efficiency solutions built right in.
This is why the AVMA recently recommended that practices “implement innovative and lasting approaches that harness technology, better utilize staff members, and engage our teams,” and why practices choose the veterinary client communication system AllyDVM.
Veterinary Client Communication Systems Like AllyDVM Offer Features That Pet Owners Prefer
According to a recent National Pet Owners Survey, 57% of pet owners receive veterinary appointment reminders by phone, and only 25% receive reminders via text messaging.
What Pet Owners Really Prefer
Though pet owners prefer the immediacy of phone calls for updates when their pets are hospitalized:
- 57% of millennial pet owners (the largest pet-owner demographic) want text messages for appointment reminders and other everyday veterinary client communications. (Weave)
- 86% want an appointment reminder by text—regardless of whether they received a phone call. (Weave)
- Only 29% of pet owners prefer phone calls. (National Pet Owner Survey)
Pet owners also prefer pet owner communication platforms that allow them to request appointments and prescription refills, view medical reminders and practice announcements, and manage their communication preferences.
Appointment Tracking Increases Practice Revenue
Pet owners often fail to show for veterinary appointments because they didn’t receive a reminder from their practice. This naturally impacts patient care and costs practices thousands in lost revenue. With veterinary client communication technology that syncs with your practice management software to automatically identify missed reminders and appointment opportunities, practices save time and reduce no-shows to increase practice revenue and patient care.
This is the heart of the veterinary client communication system AllyDVM.
AllyDVM’s Retention Calendar syncs client data from your practice management software to automatically identify missed reminders and appointment opportunities and flag clients with additional pets they could be bringing in. Built-in prompts make it easy for your team to book those appointments, which saves staff time, drives better health outcomes for patients, and more practice revenue.
According to research published in Veterinary Advantage, one group of practices saw a 17.9% drop in missed appointments and $59,000 in additional revenue over nine months after using AllyDVM.
Offering what pet owners prefer in communications, AllyDVM features a practice-branded, client-facing mobile app, enabling pet owners to:
- Request appointments
- Order prescription refills
- View practice announcements and updates
- Access select medical information for their pet
And much more.
As part of this industry-leading veterinary client communication system, AllyDVM also features an automated loyalty program to engage pet owners and encourage repeat visits.
“We just recently switched to AllyDVM, and it has been amazing,” writes Cheryl Wimmers, Practice Manager for Tansley Woods Animal Hospital. “AllyDVM does everything I wished our other communication system did, and it does it very well.”
Ready to level up your veterinary client communications to keep pet owners engaged, increase efficiency, and save time so your team can enjoy more wags, purrs, and pet owner smiles?
Find out more about AllyDVM—part of LifeLearn Animal Health’s comprehensive suite of practice education, efficiency, and growth marketing solutions.
