Running an animal vet practice means you get to help animals and their two-legged companions live their very best lives, but there’s also lots of administrative work that goes along with it.
With so many things to do, from filing to faxing and answering the telephone, your staff isn’t really big enough to stay on top of everything all the time.
You need more help, but you don’t have the time to train anyone or anywhere to put them if you did. It sounds like it’s time to find the right answering service!
Answering Services Help Solve Problems for Vet Practices
It’s a common misconception that answering services can only be valuable for big companies or medical practices that cater to humans.
The fact is that having a 24/7 connection to the veterinarian of their choice is a huge selling point for the parents of your patients. Here are some other good reasons to sign up with a live answering service right away:
Immediately putting callers on hold gives a bad first impression. From where you’re sitting, you’re slammed and can’t take anymore calls, but the caller only sees that they were immediately greeted with five business killing words: “Hello, can you please hold?”
Often, the first impression a potential client has of the doctor they’re trusting their beloved companion with is over the phone. Even if your staff can’t answer the phone, your answering service can, leaving your caller with a much more accurate picture of how much you really do care.
Even your most loyal patients hate to wait. Established clients know it can take a long time to reach you by telephone, so they hesitate to call when they need to.
This creates a pretty bad feedback loop because by the time they do find the time to wait and wait for a person, their pet may be seriously behind on vaccinations or very sick. Even being able to leave a message with a phone answering service gives them the ability to be heard without spending their lunch break on hold.
Emergencies happen to pets, too. It’s not just people who have emergencies and need to be able to contact someone at their doctor’s office right away, animals do, too.
When pet owners call after hours, they may simply be trying to confirm whether or not their animal can wait until the morning to see you or if they have to seek out an emergency vet. A vet answering service can help sort out the callers based on criteria you provide, passing only the most dire of emergency calls to you.
Your busy front office doesn’t have to be stressful. Rather than leaving calls on hold for far too long, let an answering service help out. There are many different configurations available to create the ideal backup team for your in-house staff. From call overflow answering to emergency messaging and even the Follow Me service that can find you no matter where you are, answering services have tools for every vet practice.
