Do your staff feel like they’re running on a hamster wheel that’s spinning faster than ever? Rest assured, you’re not alone! These days, clinic teams are stretched thinner than a cat’s patience at bath time. With ever-growing lists of responsibilities, staff are pulled left and right throughout the day, and too often it’s away from their true value offering: providing top-notch care to patients plus personalised, caring service to clients. Juggling admin duties and minor requests may seem like a necessary priority but such demands often add little, if any, bankable value. You know the feeling of ending a hectic shift and thinking, “Did I actually achieve anything today?” It’s the soul-crushing reality of ‘busywork,’ which offers no job satisfaction and leaves everyone simply feeling drained. Burnout and high turnover are the inevitable consequences, compounding the stress and making staff retention more critical than ever. Keeping your skilled team members—those who are the lifeblood of your practice—is essential for maintaining the continuity and quality of care that keeps your clients happy and your patients healthy.
So, how can you, as a staff member, tackle these challenges? Imagine your business as a game of Jenga: each piece is a task that appears to have a genuine place in the total entity of your operations. However, if you carefully pull out the non-core, low value tasks one by one, you afford what remains more air flow while reducing the overall burden. Without toppling the operation, you are eventually left with the pieces that were genuinely contributing to the structure. Now apply this analogy to your business and start with the low-hanging fruit –you’ll earn some quick wins and build critical momentum. Create an initial list of tasks that can be delegated, automated, or eliminated. Each minor victory will yield a perpetual gain for the business and create space for additional improvement, somewhat like a compounding investment. Adopting new technologies to handle routine administrative work can be a game-changer, and redistributing duties based on each team member’s strengths is akin to helping them rediscover that passion from the early days of their career. While there’s no magic bullet, each step is small and very manageable, so this need not be a grind as you walk your team towards a more streamlined and focused business. Having a clear vision will be your roadmap to success. Imagine your practice where every key staff member spends all their time engaging with clients and attending to the healthcare needs of patients -completely free from all other duties. Think how impressive the brand experience would be for your clients. Think how much more valuable your service offering would be perceived. What precisely can be done here? While every practice is nuanced to some degree, there are plenty of fundamental similarities so why not start with some familiar and practical suggestions that Vetplus has to offer.
Update to the Pet Health Passport app
How much time is spent in your consult rooms attending to booklets, sticking on vaccine labels and writing up vaccination records? A minute here, a minute there… add it all up throughout the year it’s likely to be multiples of days. Unnecessary days lost from the engine room of your business revenue generation. Administrative tasks belong outside of consult rooms, no matter how trivial they might seem. The new Pet Health Passport app will be your ally in this process change –not only does it eliminate the burden of inventory, ordering and wastage from paper pet records, it enables clients to digitally capture their own official vaccination record using a mobile phone. All it takes is a single QR code scan while they are settling the bill, and the job is done.
Another familiar timesaver is that you’ll never have a client forgetting their booklet, then requesting a new one or coming back another time to get it written up and signed by their vet. The only thing more certain than a finding an entire tennis ball in a labrador’s stomach, is that clients will always have their phone with them during each visit.
The digital version of the Pet Health Passport also has the benefit of automated actions that allow your staff to dispense with common non-billable service requests. We know that pet boarding is always coupled with proof of vaccination and the easiest option for pet owners is to call their vet and get all the details emailed through. While necessary for that client, such requests only thin out your team’s ability to serve the more immediate needs of clients sitting in your waiting room. With the Pet Health Passport app, clients can send a full boarding intake email, complete with all current vaccination certificates and pet details directly to their boarding facility. Accurate, up-to-the minute information, and all without bothering your staff. Better for everyone.
Beyond that, the Pet Health Passport also features a host of health monitoring and compliance support tools that serve to actively contribute to better healthcare outcomes. Test it out among your staff and discover firsthand what it can do for your practice.
Feeding the beast: marketing, social media and website
If your business has prescribed itself protocols for any brand building, marketing and awareness programs, you’ll know too well how much time investment is required to sustain each of these endeavours. Writing articles for webpages, blogs or social media is a valid and valuable contributor to your digital presence, however it’s hours that would be far better spent on the tools, so to speak. But who has floating funds to hire creative contractors and the time needed to manage them? With Vetplus you can jettison the headache, cost and drag on your time with a suite of ready-to-use marketing campaigns, social media content and professionally written website articles. The very next time your staff need content for marketing, they simply login and place an order. It’s free for Vetplus members, and your printed materials will be delivered straight to your door. Digital assets can be downloaded instantly, and you can even schedule a full 12-month marketing plan that will remind the right person at just the right time for each seasonal marketing window.
The Vetplus website editor is also a great time saver if you understand what it takes to harness the full pulling power of your website. Websites as a business tool have rapidly evolved and we are far from the old ‘set & forget’ mentality. Consumer expectations are what set the benchmarks and we know that pet owners need to be attracted to your business through an online presence that’s enticing, current and dynamic. What was once a static web page is now a hybrid of blog/social/web, all alive and moving continuously. With a Vetplus website, your staff can do it all -no technical understanding of HTML, coding, sandboxes or publishing is needed. Just login, make an edit, throw in a splash of creative flair, and push your changes to Live! No more liaising with web designers, coders and agencies –it’s instant and it’s easy. Think of it as perfect side-hustle for your receptionist in-between serving clients. Better yet, the entire system and creative library is available for free to Vetplus member clinics. Cut costs, save time, stay active, stay fresh.
Priority 1 automation: reminders and bookings
Does anyone still dial a phone number to book a hotel room or order an Uber? How many dealerships send postal reminders when your car service is due? Such industries have led us all toward more eco-efficient methods of appointment reminders and booking services, and a landslide of consumer behaviour has shifted forever with it. Putting aside the differences in approach and efficacy, all agree on the inevitable necessity to utilise online booking and automated reminders, or simply be left behind. Without these fundamental provisions to a clinic’s service offering, a retail service business in any type of competitive landscape will simply fall under the radar of emerging customer groups, continually losing both traction and significance.
If your practice has already adopted these automation services, then your only endeavour should be tightening the ratchets to achieve optimal efficacy. Through Vetplus, Boehringer Ingelheim has partnered with industry leaders in online bookings and vaccination appointment reminders to help connect more veterinary partners with the expertise that will maximise the automation and time-savings for your staff, while also achieving the highest rates of client engagement. If you haven’t yet made the connection for online bookings or automated vaccination reminders, Vetplus offers financial support to incentivise your practice toward onboarding as soon as possible with these foundation technology upgrades. Take a step towards freedom. Getting started will be even easier if you partner with Boehringer Ingelheim and benefit from the assorted toolset that Vetplus has to offer. Call your Boehringer Ingelheim Territory Manager if you’re ready to start freeing up your staff from mundane, lower-priority tasks. Take the first step out of the vortex and into a more efficient, satisfying, and successful practice.