Webinar Wednesday Replay: Dr. Michele Drake and Harley Orion

 

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another Webinar Wednesdays presented by GeniusVets. I am your host, David Hall, and today I am thrilled to be covering this fantastic topic of the current phone frenzy happening in veterinary offices. It's not just the topic, though—our special guests happen to be both of my co-founders here at GeniusVets. We have Dr. Michele Drake joining us, who's also the owner of the Drake Center for Veterinary Care in Encinitas, California. Dr. Drake, welcome to the program. And along with Dr. Drake, we have Harley Orion who is our CEO here at GeniusVets.

 

Today we're going to be covering something that has just become an absolutely critical issue for veterinary practices across the country. Since businesses opened back up from the shutdown in COVID, we've had a tremendous spike in business in the veterinary business and practices across the country due to multiple factors. And we've been talking about those for the past few weeks in our Webinar Wednesdays. They include things like pent up demand from people not having gone to the veterinarian during the first few months of lockdown, to the biggest thing, biggest contributor, being that so many people went out and adopted puppies, and kittens, and dogs, and cats, from shelters and rescue centers across the nation, did one of the most heart-warming, fantastic stories of the entire COVID pandemic shutdown. So many people have become pet owners, and that has increased the number of pet owners across the country. So, we're feeling that now that demand, this rush of demand to veterinary practices across the country.

So, not only practices are growing in new clients, but one of the biggest things is that now with curbside service delivery being the way that most veterinary practices are delivering care, it's created a massive spike in the number of phone calls that practices are getting. We've been talking about this for the past couple of weeks with a variety of guests that, on average, for every single appointment, for every one person that shows up to an appointment, who used to get out of their car, go in the office, sit down and have a conversation face to face with the front desk staff member, now those it's creating up to five phone calls, or on average, five phone calls per appointment. Those people are pulling up, they are parking in the parking lot and they're calling to say, "I'm here." And then they're calling to say, "I've got my form completed," and then they're calling to ask another question, and then they're calling to check in on the status of their pet, and then they're calling in to make sure everything's good to go. And these additional phone calls are really weighing on the practice.

Harley, why don't you go ahead and take it away by diving into the topic of this phone frenzy and how to handle it?

Awesome. Thanks so much, David. So as you said, David, the phone's out of control. From our conversations with various practices, we know call volume is up minimally 30% nationwide, but in a study of our Genius calls system, which includes practices all over the country, our clients are seeing over 104% year over year increase in phone calls to July. So, it's really staggering. And any business that has 104% increase in anything is going to be struggling to keep up a little bit.

But the reality, if we're being completely honest, is most practices were struggling before. I think that it's fair to say that by and large, on an industry-wide level, front desks are not where they need to be. There were a lot of challenges just keeping up with the volume before this, and so COVID has really just magnified these things, that just the sheer increase in volume and the added chaos and confusion of this environment is really straining the existing staffs.

And so, it impacts business in a lot of ways. I mean, just to name a few, right? It impacts client satisfaction, it impacts the new patient account, right? It impacts staff retention, because if people are stressed, they're worried and anxious in their job, you're going to have trouble retaining them, and it also impacts your profitability because the efficiency of your practice operation and the ability too to move appointments through, the ability to fit the right number of appointments in a day, all of this is impacted by having chaos at the front desk. So anything that you can do as a practice to streamline and manage that better is going to really, really pay off in terms of improvements across all these things.

Dr. Drake, I'd love to have you talk about this. The first thing that we had spoken about is just defining and practicing your phone processes in the practice. And so we talked about a handful of specific things that the practices can do and that you're doing. I'd love for you to just kind of take us through some of these approaches and how you've been doing this at the Drake Center and how you've seen it helping.

So, let me go back just a step and from the practice owner's perspective of, first, the anxiety we dealt with initially with COVID and everybody kind of dropped some business, some more than others depending on what was going on in their state, but we all dropped down quite a bit. Then within a month or two, or in some states, three, all of a sudden the volume was turned on tremendously. So, here's what we have going on.

Now we're providing a complete new business model with curbside, almost everyone I know has lost one or two staff members due to health concerns of not being exposed to COVID and having to either work remotely or just taking leave during this pandemic. So, they have less people at the practice, all of a sudden the volume is turned up, we're practicing curbside, a completely new way of practicing medicine, and now we have a decrease in staff also.

So, obviously, what we had to do in our practice was... I think any good entrepreneur takes a challenge, and this is a really big challenge, and turns it into opportunity. I love the opportunity to take something that's really tough and turn it into a win for my staff and my practice and my clients at the other end, and there's certainly been some struggles through it. So, I'm not going to tell you that I didn't get exhausted like everybody else, but just looking at it that way and staying super positive. So, we did hire some more people, but I remember I was probably a month into this just tremendous demand of phones, and it was just because the curbside does require more phone calls.

And Harley called me, he's like, "Michele, what can we do?" Because I was thinking, "What can Harley do for me?" I mean, Harley and David are amazing partners, super tech, amazing, capable guys, but running a veterinary practice. And so I tell them what's going on, and Harley said, "Okay, give me 24 hours." And the next day he came back to me and said, "I analyzed 12 systems," and he goes, "I have the best system for you, and it's this product called Zingle. And what it is, it's basically when your client arrives, it's this bot that's going to help to answer a few questions and then get them into your queue and get them going as quickly as possible for efficiency, and less phone calls, which we really needed, but also just being able to manage our clients better.

So, it's about helping my whole staff. Obviously, our culture is always about treating people with kindness and respect always, that's our whole team, obviously, our patients and certainly our customers, but worried about our customers and the experience that they were having and overwhelming my staff. So anyway, Harley brought this to me. And this has just been tremendously helpful for us just to manage the phone call system. So, always staying positive. We do need these phone calls. I so appreciate new customers no matter what.

I'm in a highly dense veterinary per capita area, I'm in Southern California in a beach community, and so I appreciate that I have to struggle. I still have to claw and scratch every new client I get, and now my new client numbers are three times what they have been for say the past 10 to 15 years. So, I'm appreciative of that opportunity to take really good care of these people and yet they're not even getting to come in the building and meet us. So, that's a little tough. I keep a super positive attitude though, paying attention and discussing any issues that come up, because things come up every day and having my staff be able to come talk to us while they're also training new people, which is really challenging for them.

And just referring back to who we are as a practice, our culture, and our mission, and who we are. We have to just constantly be providing good service and it's always just really about an attitude. I always tell my staff, "No matter how crazy the day is, we will all finish the work and walk out at the end of the day. And how we walk out at the end of the day depends on what our attitude is and if we have a good attitude or if we have a sour attitude." So, we're all going to finish the work and we're all going to walk out at the end of day, and either we're high-fiving each other and congratulating each other, or we're going to be rolling our eyes and stomping out. So, it's been very tough and very challenging. But I think if you continue to message this to your staff, it can make a huge difference.

My front staff, I value them tremendously. They are a bright bunch of young women. I'd be happy to have a man on there, but right now we have all women. And these are capable women and they do understand that their role in the practice is to connect the client that's calling with what their needs are and get those connected in into the hospital, whatever that means. Whether we need to have somebody get meds ready for them, whether we need to have their pet ready for them at a certain time, or whether we need to get them in for appointment that's urgent, or at least that the owner perceives it to be urgent. So, it's their role to come in to us when it's a really busy day and say, "Hey, can we squeeze one more person who really thinks their dog is uncomfortable?" And of course, we're always hopeful that we're going to be really good to them, our receptionist, and say, "Yeah, I can see that you think this person really needs this and we're going to do our best to fit it in for the day."

Having a great team that understands what our role is, which is to provide great service in a very compassionate environment and with each other also. So, this extends, obviously, beyond handling just the phone call itself but also just focus in in the hospital.

One thing we have found that's been challenging also is that Zingle is a great tool, but no tool is perfect. There have been times when it has failed us, or more likely, the clients have failed to use the tool properly even though we have so much signage, it's crazy. Our clients are instructed to type our number in and type the word arrived, and it's written everywhere in front of our hospital, but on occasion, there's a mistake. So, we have found that needing to have the parking lot constantly watched to see who's coming in and making sure that that cone is being attended to. So, we have cones in our front of our hospital, and that's how we're operating at this point.

Also, just making sure that your team is not ever practicing medicine on the phone. This isn't just a COVID issue, or a curbside issue, but that's something I stress constant with my front staff. "I do not want you to diagnosing or prescribing," which means never giving any kind of instruction. And if it's telling someone to feed rice, and cottage cheese, which I hear so often, goes on in other hospitals and probably does in mine sometimes too. But just super important that our staff. If someone calls and say they're concerned about something, then sure, we're all just simply connect them with our services, which is a doctor examining that pet.

Thanks so much, Dr. Drake. So, some of the things that I picked up from that that I think really stick out for me. You talked in terms of being positive and being appreciative of the new clientele, and I know that the Drake Center has a really, really strong culture and I know that that really helps you to make the most of these opportunities. One thing that I've observed in talking with a lot of different practices is, as an owner, you recognize that more clients equals more growth, equals potentially more profitability and a more valuable practice, but obviously not everyone in the practice necessarily is going to see it that way.

So, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you communicate or how you model for your team to encourage them to be appreciative of those new clients like you are, because at the end of the day, if you really try to put yourself in the shoes of that front desk person, more clients means more stress, busier, rougher day, more hectic. So, there can be a subtext of, "Man, I wish this phone would stop ringing," right? But that's not what you want the attitude of your team to be. So, I'd love for you to share a little bit about how you model after your team, how you align those intentions.

That is super important. And what I always stress to my staff is that we have no idea what's going on the other side of that phone, whether or not there's something very minor or something very major. And I think all my staff really does truly care about pets, for sure, and they mostly care about people too. So, knowing that, knowing that this pet has a need, and right now with so many hospitals unable to accept more patients because they're unable to rise to the occasion that I think my hospital has done amazing job with doing, that we're gaining so much of other clients from other hospitals right around our area. So, just knowing that even though these aren't our clients, that they have a need, their pet really needs to be seen and their hospital will not see them. So, what's the option for these people? I mean, it's pretty limited. So, trying to put ourselves in their shoes, for sure.

I think what's so key is to have a front desk that these are humans that really want to care and they care about people. So, knowing that just means that that's what their goal is. It's a mission. Our mission is to help people and help their pets. And so having a front staff that isn't about trying to control things or make this a comfortable day for the doctor, or a comfortable day for our technicians, it's about taking care of people who call. And of course, there is a limit with how much business you can do, obviously, but really, if we just think about it, almost always we can find a way of taking care of one more patient every day.

With that being said, I think just also then treating my staff really well. So, I can't tell you how much good food, not pizzas, but really good food that I brought into the hospital, and also we've added bonuses for our staff during this time. It's a stressful time for everybody outside the practice. Their families have issues also, their kids are home, whatever, and so also just sharing in the additional income that the hospital's received with my staff, to add these bonuses on, make it an awareness that I do know that they are all having other issues. And I think things have settled down somewhat, but still, it's a stressful time for everybody. It's a stressful time for our country, so it is for my staff too, and being empathetic to that. So, empathy is huge for all aspects of what we're trying to accomplish, and certainly as an owner, being empathetic toward what your staff is trying to accomplish and to be their best advocate for them too.

Any advice for practice owners that had cultures that perhaps weren't so strong?

Yeah. Veterinarians, in their desire to be nice are, more often than not, very nice to the rest of the staff when we have some passive aggressive or some people who really do not fit our mission or our culture. Again, every time I hear someone say, "Oh, I'm too nice to do that." I'm thinking, "No, you're actually being not nice. By being nice to one person, you're being not nice to the other 10, to 30, or 40 employees that you have by allowing that person to stay in your practice." So, it might be a good time to clean house.

Here's the thing, hiring right now is difficult, but there are a lot of people who are out of work right now, and a lot of very capable people. So, it may not be that you have technicians lining up that have five years of awesome skill available to them, but there are a lot of very sharp, very capable individuals who want jobs. And my staff always understands we have to always be training, because... I mean, we have a very low turnover, but I've just had to hire an additional seven people into my hospital just to manage the influx of the increase of business between 15 and 25% over the last six months. So, I don't anticipate that it's going to stay that high forever. I'm sure things will correct at some point but, while it's going on, I'm hiring, and training, and actively participating in that.

I've had so many Zooms with my staff. So, I have individual teams. I had a meeting just for the new employees, a Zoom meeting just to go over the things that I normally spend with each person individually, sit them down and have a conversation with them. But we hired so many at one time that I had to do a Zoom and just share with them how important they are to us, how important their training is to us. If they have any issues, the chain of command for them to come chat with us about whatever is going on with them, something personal in their own life, their schedule, or something they're having a hard time learning and they need help with it.

I have a great manager in my hospital and other key employees who really help with this also, but that's just part of it. So, it's a lot of challenges all at once. But you just take a little bit every day and you just keep doing the best, and refocusing, and paying attention to the next steps, next steps. And I always tell all veterans whenever I have a chance to speak to them, that you have to take the time to plan because either you're going to make plans for what needs to go in your hospital and do this on a daily and a weekly basis. I'm planning daily and weekly all the time in addition to monthly and further out. But either you run your hospital or it runs you, and I much prefer to run my hospital.

You talked a little bit about training. I'd like to unpack that a little bit more. I've heard it said that people will hire a new receptionist for a veterinary practice, and then they hire them at noon, and by 12:15, they're on the phone. You're taking calls from people coming in. I think some of the things that you said about your front desk speak to the fact that you look at it differently. I think you recognize how critical they are in the success of your business more than probably a lot of veterinarians do and practice owners. I think a lot of times it's sort of an afterthought, when actually it really is the front line of your practice, is communication to the public. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you view that team and just a few of the things that you do to train them and make sure that they're doing a great job.

Yeah. So, we've had to bring on one, two, like five receptionists. So, three of them are full-time and two to three are college-aged, really bright young ladies who help us out with just all the running that needs to go on right now during COVID.

We do have a training manual for our receptionists, and we do have checklists of when you were trained on this. But training, it's very intensive for the people who are already working and are super busy. So, what I try to work with my staff is I always say, "Teach them the top 10 things that are going to be helpful for you guys right away. Get those top 10 things. What are those things for you guys?" Teach them how to put a call for, I don't know, whatever it might be, set up the phone system, the list that we use for recalls, all the different paperwork that we have to do, just what are the 10 things that you guys need? I don't even know what that list is. I ask my receptionist to find it, and say, "Train them on that first."

For one, they can feel like they're participating and being helpful right away and they're not just a bump on the log. Everyone wants to have an opportunity to engage quickly, especially if they're bright and they're capable people. So, teach them the top 10 things first, and then you guys know you have this other long list, and just take the next 10, and the next 10, and check them off as you go, and make sure you've asked some questions and have maybe cross training. But then during the day, because it's exhausting for the staff that's already there to add this into their work day, I add things in, like, there's manuals we get from AAHA, which are super helpful, and some training through them.

But in addition, I love Wendy Myers's training. She has all sorts of basic training for receptionists, veterinary receptionists that we actually have our staff go on to these, say, "Take an hour out," so you're kind of off the front desk and not stressful for the current team, but also give you a chance to just kind of breathe and just sit back and listen to something and absorb that. And we ask them to share what were the five things that they learned from that, and sometimes we even test them on it too, some of the things that we get from there.

We've used DAV also... or is that DEV. I forget which one. But anyway, it's another training veteran program, and we just select which are the things that we need you to learn so that my staff is training, we're using training tools, and we're also allowing those new people to be engaged and doing certain things that they can accomplish and be helpful with right away so that they feel part of the team.

And then my manager is amazing at hiring good people that fit our culture and are capable, but every now and then we find out within a couple weeks that someone doesn't fit our culture, and my staff will let me know, "This person is not working out." It doesn't happen very often because the manager is so good at this, but it does happen sometimes. So, then we decided that pretty quick and move on.

As you've mentioned, you can do some training, but at some point, the new team members, they've got to get on the phone with a client and you need to understand how they're doing. And so, Dr. Drake, maybe you could take us through some of these notes on what are you looking for when you review a call and how do you help that team member improve?

I always tell owners, when I speak to owners, that I think it's critical that owners listen to some of these calls. Obviously, your manager is the key person to listen to calls, but we try to listen to two a week for anyone that's new, and even two a month for some of the long term people, because by listening to their call, obviously you're going to find out where the holes are in their education. I would say if I have an employee who is not doing what I want, because I always see veterans always complain about their staff, and this is what I want to say to them all the time. "It's you. Either I haven't hired properly or I haven't trained properly. If something is being said from my front desk, it's my fault." And then that makes it so easy when I say that because then I have control over an outcome that I want to be different.

So, it is hard to listen these calls, I'm being honest because sometimes I'm surprised by the things I hear and that I wish I wasn't hearing, and I'll be totally honest. I have a great friend staff, but still information is misconstrued or they're telling a client, "Oh, you can probably just watch that till tomorrow," and I don't ever want those things to be said. So, what we do is we listened to the call. And what our manager does is she'll write down a list of things that she listened to in general that are things we need to retrain or reaffirm or whatever the whole staff on. Maybe there's some confusion with a new service or a new product that we're using, and although we don't use them, she'll explain it. Flea control, we have two basics that we use, Sentinel and Bravecto, and we want everyone to have a good understanding and working knowledge of those.

So, if we have somebody that's not saying the correct information, then we're going to review it with everyone, or if there's a few things that are like, "Holy cow," we're going to actually pull that staff member into an exam room and my manager is going to very kindly send each of us this call and tell me, "What is wrong with the call?"

And nobody likes to have that experience, but if we don't do it that way, then the significance of it could be a little bit lost. And then we're going to share that with everybody, but if it's a tough one, we're going to do that privately, otherwise, we take accumulation of the information we're hearing and we're saying, "Hey, several of you guys are still saying that our last appointment is at 6:00, and our last appointment is not till 7:00." So, whatever it is, that's the information you want to make sure is said correctly, or a new doctor you have, whatever it is, this is a good way to find out what they're saying.

And so if the owners don't listen sometimes, then the manager may have a more lux view of it, and I really want to know. So, I'm not doing it very often because my manager does a great job, but every now and then, I'm listening also. I want to make sure that they're composed, that they're listening well, that they're not sounding hurried when they answer the phone. Of course, wait times are tremendously important in my practice. We are never using a phone tree ever. As long as I own my business, we will never use a phone tree. But I don't want people waiting on the phone more than 30 seconds, that's a maximum. So, no more than 30 seconds on a phone. If for some reason you can't get to them, you're going to get on the phone with the client and say, "I'm so sorry, we're overwhelmed right now. Let me take your number and I will call you within five minutes."

Always getting the client's name and their pet's name. And just at the end, please don't forget to ask for the appointment. The most of them are calling here because you're concerned about something and it's not your job to diagnose, so please, in the end, so it sounds like you're concerned, "We have an appointment today at 3:00 and we have one tomorrow morning at eight o'clock. What works best for you?" So, to make sure that we ask for the appointment is huge.

Dr. Drake, maybe you could just walk folks through what is the workflow, because as David had mentioned at the top of the webinar, there's just the process of curbside, like, "I'm coming. I'm here." "Okay, your pet's done." "I have a question." It's like insanity, and that's why it generates so many calls. So, maybe you could walk us through the flow.

Assume there's a phone call for setting up an appointment, then when they come in, we have it... we have 10 parking spaces. I do a lot of business with 10 parking spaces. So, that in and of itself is a challenge. We have 10 cones, 10 numbers on them, and we have a giant sign. Three professional signs that were made that say, "Text the word 'arrived' to our phone number," and we clearly we put out what our phone number is, and we have 'arrived'. "Text the word 'arrived'." And then it prompts them to give us their name, their pet's name, the cone number, and the reason for their visit.

My friend Steph, we call her the Zingle girl, or the reconnaissance or this special ops person for the day or for the time, because there has to be someone who's the Zingle person all the time, and we have them facing the parking lot. And we are working on adjusting our cameras out there too so we can actually visualize everything, but it just helps to watch the cars come into our lot. So, the Zingle person is responsible for taking... the bot will tell us when this is prompted, they'll give you this information. Now you know who is in cone one and why they're here and what their name is and their pet's name. So, my receptionist doesn't have to go through, "Oh, hey. How are you? What's going on?" "Oh, I got a hangnail on my right foot." I'll take it off. And we just know why they're here. And then we respond with a text back saying, "So great. We'll have a technician out with you in a matter of two minutes."

And we have instructed people when they call us, and it's like, "If there are any issues, please call us." Like one of my staff makes the original point, we say, "If there's any issues, if you're not able to get through to us right away, please call if within a few minutes, we haven't responded." And the reason we say that is because there have been some mistakes with the clients. And we've had a few people that have been sitting out there. Why would you sit out there for 30 minutes without letting us know? But it has happened and then you get somebody really unhappy.

We've had a few things happen, but for the most part, we now know who's here, why they're here, or, "Hey, I'm here just to pick up my medication." And we'll say, "Great. We'll be right out to cone one with your meds in two minutes." So, that's how we use Zingle, and then you know, we do the curbside experience, and the Zingle call kind of stays with us while the pet's there. And then the client may leave and come back later to pick up their pet or whatever we decided. And they go to the same process again, "Hey, it's me. I'm at cone four now and I'm here to pick up Fluffy who I dropped off earlier." "Okay, great. Fluffy is all ready to go." And we're just texting this.

So, the texting itself probably takes, I would bet, at least two minutes off every call, because the exchanges that humans have to have, and some humans have a lot more exchanges that have to go on just to say, "I'm here with Fluffy," as opposed to like... I mean, I don't know about you guys, but my mom can make a lot of words about nothing. And so if she were to show up, it would be like, "Oh my God, thank goodness we can texts with my mom, because it's so much quicker that way."

Those are the things that I just can't tell you how much helpful. When you think about the number of phone calls that have to go on with curbside right now, this is tremendously, tremendously helpful for us.

To recap, so basically you've got the client arrives, they pull up at a cone, and they see a sign that says, "Text the word arrived" to the practice's phone number. They text the word, "arrived".  Zingle is going to fire off some questions to them to find out where they are, what they're there for, their name and their pet's name. It's going to relay that to your receptionist who's going to communicate back and forth with that person. I know we worked on setting up some pre-written stock messages, so just a couple of clicks to say like, "Got your food. On my way out with it," things like that.

All my staff, working on social distancing, but we have usually four people on. I also have remote person going at the same time from my front desk, and I call it kind of like the person who's the parking lot, the inbound person, it's like, "I want you to know inbound," and then I want another one of my receptionists to know who's on technician-wise and where are they so they know who to address to bring out to get them going, because there are crazy times in our hospital, like everyone's, and just staying abreast of that.

And then sometimes they'll be a little more assertive person because they got to get the text wrangle and say, "Oh, you're all busy. Who is going to be unbusy the soonest?" And so then we have that flow going on so that we're not like, "Yeah, someone will be out in a minute," and then you like, "Meh, who was going out? I don't know," because it's a different team. So, that's a key important thing. That's important always, but I think having the Zingle role in our hospital, and of course, that person can be doing other things, because this again, you're not even having to speak, you're just texting, and all young people are real good at that. So, no issues with them texting back and forth and being exceptionally capable right off the bat.

As I said, we've got Maddie Miller from Zingle on the webinar today. Maddie, I'd love to turn this over to you and kind of show us around the product a little bit, talk about how you've got this thing set up and how you're able to help in the practice with the text messages.

Yeah, great. Thank you guys. Again, my name is Maddie Miller. I'm a sales director here at Zingle. And thank you guys for giving that context, Harley and Michele, that was the perfect way to tee me up and it's great to hear the feedback of how this is helping because I don't get to see it live. So, that's awesome to hear. I'm super excited to be here, and thanks for letting me share some more information.

I'm going to share my screen here. So, the number one thing, like Harley talked about, is the influx of all our call volume and having trouble with managing that, your staff managing that, right? So, a staff member can only be on the phone with one client at a time, but they can text multiple people at once. So, one of the big features of Zingle is the automation system. And Michele mentioned this a little bit with asking questions. So, our automation system is very robust, and in this case, it's helpful for staff to be more efficient and gather that information from clients as they arrive. And then not only is it good for a Zingle tool for your staff to help manage all this communication and the arrivals, but it's also a better experience for your clients, right? So, they arrive, they get a text back right away, they don't have to wait on hold, and it's just quicker customer service. You're also complying with all the safety regulations so your clients feel safe and comfortable as well.

I am going to show you a quick video of an example of an automation. Michele kind of just explained this process, but I'll show you what it looks like from the Zingle side. So, what you're seeing now is this Zingle inbox in the far left. So, this is what your staff is seeing. And it's a team inbox, so multiple people can manage it at once. And then on the right, you're just seeing my cell phone. So, like Michele said, there's a sign. I'm sure you guys have signs outside that say, "Call this number when you arrive," so instead, we're texting the number. So, your clients are instructed to text a keyword. I have some vets that do, arrive, or RX. So, if they're picking up for a prescription, then we have different automated texts that send back based off of what they are there for.

So, you'll see this video kind of play out. Here's me texting in as an example, as if I were a client. So, it's also very convenient for your clients too, they just have to take out their cell phone and send a text message. They're not having to download an app or anything like that. And then what happens from here is there's an automated text that we'll send right back to your client. So, they get a response right away, usually say something like, "Thanks for visiting us. We're here to check you in quickly," and so on, so that they know that they're being attended to. And then you can ask whatever kind of information you need. So, "What's your name? Pet's name? Do you have an appointment? What's the reason for your visit?" I've seen a lot of variety as far as the sequence of questions and what vets are asking depending on how they operate or what services they have.

Here you can see that flow. So, this automation is helping your staff gather all this information without having to have those back and forth conversations, like Michele said. And then it's gathering all the information on the far right. So, you'll see the contact fields, the cone number that they're at, and whatnot, so your staff can quickly just look at that and assist the client.

This is all happening automatically. That's how it helps yourself be more efficient, and then your clients are getting a fast response. And again, these messages or these questions that you're gathering or asking might be different for each vet clinic. The great thing is that it's super easy to create the automations and edit them. So, you can go in at any time, change the messages. You might kind of figure out what works and what doesn't work. We also have a customer success team, so some of the things that you mentioned, Michele, we might be able to solve some of those, but kind of going through best practices and what works best for operations to help things move smoothly.

That's one example of the automation system to help things be more efficient. Also, you can have back and forth conversations with Zingle. So, there are a lot of other uses too. This is the main thing as far as the arrival process when people are checking in, but you can send updates to your clients on their pet, you can jump in at any time and have manual back and forth conversations. And the platform and implementation and setup, it's super simple and easy. Like Michele said, they got up and running like that. So, for busy staff, it's important to not overwhelm them even more than they are. So, implementation is pretty smooth. We have our teams to help and everything. But that's kind of the beauty of it, your team will catch on pretty quick.

Harley: With that, I'd like to talk about a program that we've put together to help practices cope with this. As you know, GeniusVets, our mission is to help independent veterinary practices thrive. Our primary product is a marketing solution to help practices grow their business, bring in more new patients, and improve their profitability, their recruitment, their retention, and the overall performance and value of their practice. But we know a pain point when we see one, and we've been talking to practice owners all over the country and we've heard it loud and clear that finding solutions to this phone situation is just such an important thing. So, we kind of rolled up our sleeves and put together a program that integrates some of our GeniusVets tools along with the Zingle tools and some special training just to help practices cope with this a bit better. So, I'm going to share a screen again here.

We'd like to make a special offer for everyone who has joined us for the webinar, and we're calling this our Telephone Triumph Package, getting control of those phones once and for all. So, that's going to include a GeniusVets ebook. It's a $49 value. It's called Telephone Triumphs: how to get control of your practice's phone traffic while improving client experience and increasing appointments. You're also going to get a GeniusVets phone call tip sheet. This is a simple little 8.5 by 11 sheet that you can pop up next to your front desk, and it gives you some tips from both Dr. Drake and other leading professionals on how to make sure that your practice is doing the best possible job on the phone. So, little key insights, like make sure you've asked for the appointment, make sure you don't practice medicine over the phone, etc. So, just a little reminder sheet that you can have at your front desk to help your staff stay on task.

You're also going to get your enhanced profile at GeniusVets.com. Geniusvets.com is our directory that includes every veterinary practice in the country, along with information on that practice, their culture, their team, how they're handling COVID, and much, much more. As you can see, a fully enhanced profile on geniusvets.com is, in many cases, it's as nice or even nicer than a practice's own website. You can see it allows them to tell the story of the practice, talk about their doctors, their hours, share video, brand affiliations, products, as well as blog posts and social media content. And what you'll see up at the top here is people also have the ability to contact your practice through your GeniusVets profile to request an appointment. So, that's another way we can help get people set up for an appointment in your practice without having to burn up those phone lines. So, that enhanced profile is a $247 value included in this package.

You're also going to get an hour of call management coaching from one of our veterinarian marketing consultants to help your practice make the most of these tools. And you're going to get a free trial of the Zingle text messaging system. Now, if you choose to sign up with Zingle, you're going get access to our GeniusVets exclusive discounted pricing, and it's a really significant discount, so don't miss out on that. As well as you're going to get our pre-built templates, so the actual workflows that we recommend using for text messaging for the greatest efficiency, and we'll give you an actual diagram of how that workflow is set up as well as have it set up inside the Zingle product for you by our Zingle reps.

The total value of this package is $475. The special we're offering today as part of our webinar is $199, so it's a 58% discount from retail. So, I really, really hope that you'll take advantage of this. When we do a package like this with this kind of a discount, we're honestly not doing it for the revenue. We're doing it because we see this as a real pain point and we want to do everything we can to help. Obviously, we're hoping that you'll get to the GeniusVets through this and we offer many, many other professional services, but for now, our focus is just on giving you something that's going to really help your practice to get control of those phones now and start moving forward.

To sign up for this, you're just going to go to geniusvets.com/phone, that's geniusvets.com/phone, fill out the simple form and request more information and we'll get right back to you with all these materials.

With that, I just want to thank everybody for being here today. I really appreciate your time, Dr. Drake, and for sharing some of the things that you've been doing in your practice and that it's great to get you out of the practice long enough to be able to talk to everybody today. We really appreciate that. I know it's crazy busy over there. And Maddie, thank you for being with us as well. David, thanks, as always, for hosting. I really appreciate all of your time.

David: Tune in for next week's Webinar Wednesday where we're going to be hosting Dr. John Tait, an absolutely just brilliant, brilliant mind in the veterinary industry. That's one you don't want to miss, as he'll be sharing a lot of just fantastic information. And remember, every single veterinary practice in the entire country, this means you, has a full page profile currently live at geniusvets.com. So, if you haven't looked at your profile yet, go to geniusvets.com/start. There's a quick little one-minute video, it tells you what it's all about. Look up your profile, claim it, it's all free, it's incredible, and it might be nicer than your current website. Check it out.