Trying to treat one of your patients while the phone is ringing can induce stress faster and give you a headache. It can be hard to manage all incoming calls during peak hours, even with other staff members.
Answering the phone also comes with administrative burdens, such as taking down important information, scheduling appointments, and taking messages. These tasks can overwhelm you in a short time.
You need a veterinary answering service that can help you run an efficient veterinary practice. A veterinary answering service can:
- Keep you focused and on task.
- Record calls and relay important information to you.
- Let you set a custom greeting and script.
Today, we will explain how a veterinary answering service can benefit you and your patients.
Stay Focused With a Veterinary Answering Service
A study conducted by the University of California, Irvine has found that better concentration leads to less room for errors. This is because the more frequently that we are interrupted, the faster we try to work to make up for the lost time. This inevitably leads to committing more mistakes.
In fact, that same study found that even when an individual realizes that they’ve made a mistake, they usually overlook it on purpose. Choosing to ignore these errors is another way that those who have been interrupted from their work attempt to “get back on track”.
Focused Solution
Committing mistakes and then choosing to ignore them is not the kind of treatment that’ll bring you success when running a veterinary practice. Employing a veterinary or health care call center like Always Answer that is capable of picking up all your calls is a great way to ensure that you remove one massive distractor from your workflow.
A top-quality veterinary answering service will answer your calls, write down any information that you have deemed relevant, and then send you that information via email or text. This means that even if you aren’t answering any calls, you can rest assured that you’ll receive every bit of pertinent information from each one.
How a Veterinary Answering Service Lets Your Customers Know That You Care
Patient-centered care has been gaining prominence in hospitals and hospital call centers, more so around the world than in the United States. What patient-centered care entitles is that patients are treated with dignity and respect when being treated. Stopping an appointment every five minutes to answer a phone call or respond to a message is the exact opposite of these qualities.
By employing a veterinary answering service, you are showing your clients that you care about the needs of their pets. A service like Always Answer allows you to give each patient your undivided attention. In fact, Always Answer has a special feature that is sure to please the most detail-oriented individuals.
Record Every Detail
Always Answer has a special record calls feature that automatically records any call answered by the service and keeps it in a cloud server storage for 30 days. This feature comes to you at no additional charge and is activated the moment you subscribe to the service.
In addition to that, you can even choose to have your calls stored for much longer periods of time and even increase your overall storage if you choose to subscribe to their extended version of the feature. This way, you can replay all phone calls on your own time and gather important information that way.
Answering More Calls for Help With a Veterinary Answering Service
Pets are loved and cherished around the world. In fact, most people would consider their pets an integral member of their family. As such, most pet owners fear that something may go wrong or that they may need help at odd hours of the day or night, when most veterinary practices are closed.
Having a veterinary answering service or a medical call center means that you can count on all your phone calls being answered. In fact, top services like Always Answer provide 24/7 availability. This means that should one of your client’s pets need help even at late hours into the night, their call will be answered and you will be informed.
However, the magic of Always Answer isn’t just that they provide a 24/7 service but that their service is entirely staffed by live agents.
A Human Touch
With Always Answer, when somebody calls your veterinary practice, they won’t be met by some odd and downright useless AI voice prattling out questions. Instead, they’ll be greeted by a real person who is trained in providing quality customer service.
These live agents are available at all hours of the day and night, seven days a week. You shouldn’t worry about paying for all that time because, with Always Answer, you only pay for the phone calls that are answered. You aren’t paying for the time but rather the actual work that the service does for you.
Live Call Transfer Helps You Answer Important Calls
According to industry surveys, the main issue that businesses have with health and pharmacy answering services is that they don’t offer any flexibility in the way they operate. With most services, the second a call is answered is the second you lose control over that customer or client interaction.
This can no doubt be a slight bother at best or a nightmare at worst. There are many instances in which you may want to directly interact with a certain client, they include:
- When privacy is absolutely the top priority.
- When you have to give a client detailed instructions on how to administer a certain medication.
- When your client has a question about their pet.
Fortunately, Always Answer offers a solution to this all too common problem. With live call transfers, you can instruct the live agents of Always Answer to transfer certain calls to you based on whatever information you give them.
If they receive a call about a certain patient or perhaps are getting questions that you would rather handle on your own, then the live agents can automatically transfer the call over to you. This gives you full control over your customer handling operations without overwhelming you.
A Veterinary Answering Service That Can Be Completely Customized
In line with the call transferring flexibility that was discussed in the previous section, Always Answer also offers a custom greeting feature and a custom scripts feature. These two features work in tandem to give you the most customizable veterinary answering service in the world.
With the custom greetings feature, you can set how Always Answer’s live agents greet your clients. You can instruct them to say something that fits whatever theme or atmosphere you are trying to give off.
The custom scripts feature is a bit more robust, allowing you to customize the questions that live agents ask and what they are allowed to say to your clients. The more control you have over the service the better you are at having your personality or brand shine through.
FAQs About Veterinary Answering Services
We’ve taken the liberty of answering the most pressing questions related to veterinary answering services.
How Does a Veterinary Answering Service Handle Emergency Calls?
Veterinary answering services are equipped to handle emergency calls promptly. They follow predefined protocols provided by the veterinary clinic to assess the urgency of the situation, provide initial guidance to the caller, and alert on-call veterinarians or staff if immediate attention is required.
Can a Veterinary Answering Service Assist With Appointment Scheduling and Reminders?
Yes, veterinary answering services assist with appointment scheduling, confirmations, and reminders. They can efficiently manage the clinic’s appointment calendar, reducing the administrative burden on clinic staff and helping to minimize missed appointments.
Is It Cost-Effective for a Veterinary Clinic to Use an Answering Service?
Yes, utilizing a veterinary answering service is cost-effective for veterinary clinics. It eliminates the need to hire additional in-house staff for call management, reducing labor costs. The service ensures efficient communication, enhances client experience, and allows clinic staff to focus on providing quality care to animals.
The Best Veterinary Answering Service for You in 2024
You need a veterinary answering service that understands the dynamic needs of your business. The people behind Always Answer can offer you fully trained live agents who are always available, even on holidays, to take your calls and send you important information from each call.
Learn more about how we can help you improve your patient care by contacting us today.
