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VETERINARY PRACTICE MANAGEMENT – Veterinary Hospitals Need to Return to Pre-Pandemic Habits to Stop Decreasing Client Numbers
March 1, 2025
Please see the March Edition of The Canadian Veterinary Journal (CVJ) for the article featuring all tables, graphs, and charts.
Results from the most recent CVMA Practice Owners Economic Survey show the number of pet owners visiting veterinary hospitals continues to decrease. Since hitting an all-time high in 2020, thanks to the COVID-19 driven pet population boom, client visits have fallen to a point in which many hospitals are finding themselves with fewer clients than before the pandemic. Despite experiencing fewer clients for several years, many veterinary hospitals are still behaving as though the pandemic is still on and have done very little to get clients back into the clinic.
Most front-line veterinary staff were hired in the throes of the pandemic and don’t know what life was like before. Prior to the pandemic, clients were pre-booked for their next appointment and staff emailed or called clients to schedule and confirm appointments. During the pandemic, resources in the hospital were spread thin, demand was out of control, and many hospitals did not have any available appointment slots. Pre-booking stopped, emailing and calling clients to remind them of their appointment stopped, and staff were trained to keep people out of the clinic. The most recent client numbers from the 2024 CVMA Practice Owners Economic Survey show that hospitals must get back to their old habits to turn client numbers around (Figure 1, Table 1).
The first place to turn for more clients is existing clients. A big mistake small business owners (veterinarians included) make is to focus most of their marketing efforts on new clients. New clients are important, but not as important as retaining existing clients. It is a lot less expensive and easier to retain existing clients because you already have their phone number, their email, their pet’s name, and their pet’s medical history. All this information can be used to internally market to your existing clients more effectively than searching for people you don’t know.
One critical success factor in maintaining a higher number of existing clients is callbacks — either virtual with client contact software or over the phone. Before the pandemic, most front-line staff accepted that emailing, texting, and cold calling clients was a big part of their job. When things were slow, staff did callbacks. Staff called clients to rebook lapsed appointments, they followed up on dental recommendations, and they scheduled diagnostics for clients on chronic medication requiring on-going bloodwork. Even in a small hospital, this was a full-time job.
Deciding who to call involves digging into your practice management software. Unfortunately, most software is designed to only make 3 attempts to get clients in for their appointment. If there is no reply in 3 tries, the software assumes the client does not want to come in and gives up on further communication. This is where the staff have to step in and search for active clients who came in last year and did not come in this year, and follow up with those who require dental recommendations or are overdue (or due) for diagnostic tests.
Callbacks are like financial collections in that the more current the clients, the more likely you are to collect or connect. Someone who just missed their appointment last week may still remember the reason for coming in and is more likely to book than someone who has not been in for over a year. When deciding who to email or call, start with the most current appointments or recommendations and work backwards.
Electronic communication through client communication apps is a lot more effective to get the same message to many people, but it is not the only way. If it worked well, there would be no lapsed clients. If email and text don’t work, staff need to pick up the phone and start calling people. Although not nearly as effective as email, a phone call from the veterinary staff does have that personal touch an email or text does not, and it offers the opportunity for staff to explain the importance of the pending appointment or procedure.
Getting back on track with callbacks requires training the new people, setting new operations standards, and allocating specific people to contact clients during specific times. Callbacks never happen on their own. Most staff would rather clean kennels than talk to someone on the phone. Make time in the staff schedule for call backs and set expectations for a certain number of calls per hour, per day, and per week. Help the staff member develop a dialogue that sends a positive message to the client and leaves the client with the impression that the veterinarian and staff care about their pet. Don’t say, “you missed your appointment, you need to come in,” but rather, “you are due for your appointment. I see Tuesdays work for you. Can I book you in for Tuesday at 1:00 pm?”
Given the number of clients that were coming in during the COVID-19 pet population boom, there is a lot of opportunity. Re-engaging 10 lapsed clients per month would get the average practice back to the boom numbers in less than a year.
-Amy Noonan, Darren Osborne