Like most businesses in the medical profession, veterinary offices have a need for emergency dispatch and 24 hour emergency service. Vet offices can benefit from letting a telephone answering service manage their after hours and emergency calls.
As many of you know,
animals can mean many things to their owners; whether it is a set of eyes to a blind person, a child-like figure, or just a smiling face to come home to every day. With that said, answering services understands the connection between owner and animal. Services also realize that veterinarians, like doctors for people, need to be connected with their patients at any time. Understanding this, many call centers offer special, customizable service to veterinarians with such features as live operator service and emergency dispatch. With these features, in combination with a skilled operator staff, veterinary answering services can be an asset to your vet''s office.
Veterinary Emergency Calls
When an animal is injured, the owner will be under immediate and overwhelming stress, and will quickly pick up the phone to call your practice. The problem is, you''re closed, or in the middle of an important surgery. With a telephone answering service as your businesses partner, this emergency call will be answered, and dealt with properly and professionally. Phone services provide the following:
Kind and Professional Attendants: Attendants will answer emergency calls with kind and soothing voices, calming down the caller and efficiently record the problem and act accordingly.
Trained Professionals: The staff, once the problem is assessed, act efficiently to find the proper person to contact to fix the problem with the animal.
Proper Contacts: Many services will accept a list of contacts for those times when a disaster happens after hours. With these contacts, they can contact you, an associate, or another trained professional to make sure this disaster is solved correctly and efficiently.
Not every practice performs the same tasks, or if they do perform the same tasks, not at the same quality level. By employing a service that has experience with veterinary calls, they will be more skilled when they inform clients of what your practice can and cannot do for their pets. So if you have the proper equipment to do x-ray analysis or animal acupuncture, clients will know and use your practice. Every office is not the same and vets offices have different specialties. To make sure your answering service understands and is able to convey what your practice can and can''t do, keep them updated with what you do so they can better represent your business.
Phone Services Can Save Your Vet Office Time & Money
Is your staff overworked or stressed? Do you not want to hire a secretary or service unfit for your practice? An answering service can help free up your staff as well as save you money by reducing employee overhead. When you are shopping for the right partner for your company, make sure you assess the following:
If they offer flexible rates on a per call or per minute basis
If they can forward urgent calls, messages, or questions to you or a qualified associate
If they are knowledgeable of what they are doing, and trained particularly for serving your industry
Ate the attendants patient, lively, and receptive to creates a great impression of your practice to your customers
Emergency Dispatch & Customized Scripts Are Essential
Emergencies are situations where the animals are either too big to be moved, moving it may cause further injury, or maybe the client is unable to move their pet for any other reason. For these types of calls, emergency dispatch is needed. Just like for people doctors, veterinarians also have emergency dispatch services for these situations. With an answering service, they can assess the emergency nature of the situation and direct the call the proper person to immediately get to the scene of the injury. When you are looking for the proper service to manage your emergency situations, note the following:
Quick Response: Attendants will be quick in order to not waste precious time
Trained Staff: Staff that will know who to call, because they are trained in best responding to these situations
Contacts: Can you supply a list of contacts, so time will not be wasted finding contacts, thus making the process quick and pain free
No two veterinary practices are the same, so none should be treated the same. When you are looking for the proper telephone answering service for your practice, make sure you call other customers and even test call the service to make sure they are up to your standards. Regardless if you are calling after hours, have a small or large practice, or if you need phone answering with voicemail and appointment setting, be sure to do your research and test all aspects of the service before you commit. When a client calls your veterinary practice, they will be much happier to hear a living person''s voice, rather than an automated machine. With a live operator service, you get that voice, and just from that your practice will be greatly improved.
