How to Create Stand-Out Client Experiences At Your Veterinary Clinic

Not all client experiences are created equal. Just like your veterinary practice is not the same as the clinic down the road. From offering different services to providing a unique culture for your team and clients; your practice has its own brand. It’s own “flavor” if you will.?

So how do you create a stand-out client experience that fits your practice? With so many tools, available technologies, and touchpoints, where do you start?

Andy Roark recently sat down with Dr. Sarah Wolff , a well-known consultant specializing in client experience in veterinary medicine, to discuss personalization and client experiences in a digital world.

During their conversation, Dr. Wolff shared some helpful insights from her 20+ years in the veterinary industry on where to get started with evaluating client touchpoints and creating experiences that serve your team and your customers.

Balancing Digitization, Efficiency, and Personalization

Let’s review some facts:

• Digital tools and technologies provide ways to increase internal and client communication efficiencies for teams.
• Personalized communications are imperative to relationship building.
• Not all communications are created equal.

With an increased number of digital tools at our fingertips, how do we balance providing top-notch, personalized experiences with the volume of work that we have to do in the clinic?

If you’re currently asking yourself this question, you’re amongst a vast majority of practices. Over the past few years, practices needed to find new ways to reach customers while providing more efficient ways for team members to manage their workload. Insert technological solution here.

According to Dr. Wolff, “When we start using a technology, there is that real drive to use it to the utmost efficiency because we’ve justified the cost, time, training, and the headache of changing all of our SOPs. So what we want to get out of it is as much efficiency as possible.” And there’s nothing wrong with that approach.

What you want to be mindful of is finding ways to still maintain “the flavor” of your practice, as Sarah puts it so well.

Focus On What You Can Control

While it’s a challenge, it’s not a bad one to be facing. There is the opportunity to be really intentional about the way you interact with clients and how you shape what they experience at your clinic.

Before creating or adjusting your plan, Sarah shares, it’s important to understand that there are three things at play, only one of which is in your control.

1. Clients are going to come to you with pre-existing context; a set of experiences they’ve had or are having that has nothing to do with your practice.?
2. Clients have their own set of expectations, which differ from client to client, especially generationally.
3. Your practice will operate and engage with clients in its own defined way.

A client’s experiences and expectations are out of your control. So when deciding what steps to take or how to utilize communication tools, focus on what you can control: what you do in your practice and how you engage with your clients.

The 5 Phases Of The Client Experience Cycle

What interactions do your clients have with the practice? Looking at all of the ways you communicate with every customer, every day at once is overwhelming.?

Breaking client communications out into smaller segments based on the purpose or phase in which the interaction is taking place, it becomes easier to see what’s happening. It’s here you can become more intentional about the experiences you’re creating.

Dr. Wolff calls this the client experience cycle.?

“I like to think about it from the client’s perspective,” she says, and it starts from the first time a consumer encounters your brand.

The client experience cycle can generally be defined in five phases:

1. When a client is investigating who you are?
2. When a client reaches out to schedule appointments?
3. When a client is there physically interacting with you?
4. After a client appointment?
5. Between the follow-up from a client appointment and the next time a client schedules with you

Client interactions within these phases can look different from practice to practice. Make a list of all the ways in which a client engages with your practice during each phase. Look at it in chronological order, by department, by the communication medium.

Most practices have a system for the interactions in place. Now you can start evaluating and making changes in a manageable way. How are you doing it? What’s working? What’s not working? Where are there opportunities to create efficiencies for your practice? Where can you add more flavor?

Once you can see and understand the contact points you have with clients, there is more opportunity to create a top-notch client experience while balancing team efficiency.

Creating Great Experiences

Reminder: Not all communications are created equal.

Sending an email just to say you sent the email doesn’t make it a positive experience for the recipient. Using an automated text message to remind a client of an upcoming appointment may make it easier on the front desk, but how does it come across to the client?

Finding the balance between “the personal touch” and efficient communication is challenging. It’s possible to leverage automated messages and other digital tools in a way that still makes your client feel like there’s a human on the other end of it.

Here’s a great example from Sarah, “We all know now what an automated confirmation text message looks like when it comes through on your phone. You know, “Text “Y” to confirm your appointment.” That feels very different from getting a text message like, “Hey, it's Sally at ABC Vet Hospital. We're so excited Fluffy's coming to see Dr. Roark tomorrow. Let me know if you need to change your appointment. We'll be here today till 5.”

A simple shift in messaging allows you to utilize more efficient tools while still creating a positive experience for the client.

Creating a stand-out client experience means being intentional. Understand what your client experience cycle looks like and find a way to balance digitization, efficiency, and personalization throughout. The sky is the limit — just don’t forget to keep your “flavor.”

Interested in learning more about what it takes to create truly amazing client experiences? Dr. Andy Roark and Dr. Sarah Wolff dive deeper into this topic in this recent Uncharted Podcast episode. Or check out her upcoming workshop “Creating a Top-Notch Client Experience in a Sea of Noise” at the 2024 Uncharted Veterinary Conference in Greenville, South Carolina, on April 18-20th. Registration is closing soon!?