Veterinary client communication | Channels, Best Practices and more

Here are some Veterinary client communication scenarios that can better help understand why text messaging would make the most sense based on the type of information to be shared.

Appointment reminders 

There are multiple ways to send appointment reminders to your clients; you can either call them, send them an email, or drop a text. Let’s say you have to remind 20 clients about their appointments scheduled for the next day. Calling each client would mean spending roughly 5 minutes on each call. This means you’d end up wasting more than 90 minutes of your time! This doesn’t even include the no responses, follow-up calls, etc. Instead, here’s what this process looks like with text messaging:

Create a list of all those 20 clients and send a personalized text message that would say, 

“Dear {client}, this is to remind you of your pet’s appointment scheduled for {date, day} at {time}. Please type ‘C’ to confirm.” 

What’s even better is that you can automate this entire process with text messaging software, you can customize the frequency, timing, content, etc. on reminder texts and also give your customer rescheduling options which will directly block and unblock your business calendar in real-time.

For appointment reminders, with text, you’d end up investing no time at all, and generate more responses and engagement as well

Review requests 

Sending review requests is a tricky path to tread as you’d want as many reviews as possible from your clients. 

Did you know that around 69% of customers prefer interacting with businesses via SMS, including leaving reviews? 

There are multiple ways you can ask for reviews from your clients: 

• Ask the client on the spot, right after the appointment 
• You can call the client and ask for a review. They might or might not act upon it as you have to send a review link from an alternate communication channel making it difficult for the customer to leave a review. 
• You can send an email asking for a review. Since emails have low open and response rates, you might or might not get reviews through this channel 
• You can send automated texts to your clients with the review link soon after the appointment. There is a high chance that they’d leave you a review. 

Payment follow-ups 

If you want to send payment follow-ups to your clients, then the most actionable way to do it is through texts. You can simply send them a text message that says,

“Hey {client}, your payment for the grooming session is due. Please complete your payment by clicking on this link: Enter link.” 

Texting for payment follow-ups is the most effective channel as it’s extremely actionable for your customers they can just click on a link and be done with the payment in 30 seconds or less – compare this to calls and emails that not only take a lot of time but also drive poor results.

Recall/reactivation 

There might be clients who had gotten their pets treated at your practice at some point in time. If you want to recall those patients, texting is the best medium to do so. Using automated schedule-based texting you can always be in touch with your past patients without spending any time whatsoever on patient communication

Surveys 

In order to collect the maximum feedback from your clients through surveys, you can utilize text better than any other channel for veterinary client communication. All you need to do is create a list of your clients, design your survey, and send it out as a broadcast text message. Doing so will save you a lot of time and will also bring in a lot of responses.

Updates 

Let’s say your area is affected by bad weather and you won’t be able to attend to any clients. If you have, say, 50 appointments scheduled for that day, how are you going to share this information with those clients? Calling all those 50 clients would mean spending hours on the phone. A better and more efficient way of communicating such information with your clients is via text, you can simply craft a mass text saying that your clinic will be closed for the day and then also share a link for the pet parents to reschedule the appointment. It’s that simple! You’ll be able to reach out to multiple clients at once, without having to spend so much time or resources. 

Patient Engagement 

If you have to send out medical reports to the pet parents, share quick updates, or send out discount offers, or seasonal greetings; text messages prove to be a great medium for such communication. It is quick, efficient, and cost-effective. Texting can replace calls, emails, and patient portals in a variety of ways, based on the kind of information that you want to share. 

While there are certain situations wherein in-person consultations and calls cannot be replaced, such as sensitive discussions and emergencies; text messaging can replace all other repetitive and time-consuming tasks for you. As a veterinarian, it is important that you use secure text messaging software to communicate with your clients. 

When it comes to driving patient engagement owing to the best open and response rate, texting is the best solution to ensure you retain your patients.