The Key to Modernizing Practices in Your Veterinary Group

6 min read

Veterinary groups and practice consolidators focus on effectively managing all practices and ensuring the growth is scalable. While all operations are centralized, veterinary groups can massively benefit through automation at each of the practices. This is why an appointment scheduling software plays a central role.

The emergence of online booking 

Every industry out there now offers online booking. Businesses ranging from airlines to hairdressers, cinemas, and restaurants can all book seats or appointments online. That makes us wonder how “request an appointment” tools or even being on hold on your phone are still accepted methods. Imagine a scenario in which you had to request a seat from an airline. You might have to spend some time going back and forth to get the right seat confirmed. It would be easier for you to get to your destination by kayak instead. This is the experience of an “appointment request tool” for pet owners. 

The same applies if you want an appointment with a hairdresser, as this blog illustrates beautifully. As customers, we love to have choices, and tools like “request an appointment” limit that — and create additional work for practice teams. It’s far ideal to see the options available to you so you can book it online and get instant confirmation.

Pet owners — your customers — expect no less.

Why should your practices opt for an appointment scheduling software?

Improved pet owner experience. Customers prefer to book online and get instant confirmation when booking an appointment for their pets. 77% of U.S. customers expect to be able to book services online.

Maximized revenue. With online booking, there is potential to tap into unrealized revenue since traditional methods are unable to capture appointments made outside of normal business hours. This is also when most customers have the time to book an appointment. Vetstoria’s customers see at least 40% of appointments made outside office hours. This creates revenue that was unearnable before.

Maximized individual practice efficiency. With plenty of practices to manage, automation is the key to efficiency. Appointment reminders and confirmations take as much time as booking an appointment does; for some practices, it’s at least 15 minutes per appointment. An online scheduling platform can automate most of these tasks, including online payments, which helps teams stay productive and care for more pets.

How does Vetstoria address this burgeoning need for veterinary groups?

Integrates with more than 30 practice management software

Vetstoria integrates with more than 30 practice management software, so even if individual practices use heterogeneous PIMS, they can synchronize their availability with Vetstoria. Advanced customizations include syncing current availability, clinician scheduling, setting maximum appointments per appointment type, and excluding and offering slots to pet owners so they can make an appointment 24/7 from any device. Any other requirement, like confirming or reminding an appointment or triaging, can all be automated through Vetstoria’s appointment scheduling software, making client communications simple for front desk teams.

Analytics and reporting

Decision-making is more manageable when it is data-driven. But gathering and interpreting all the required data into meaningful insights is also a time cost center. With Vetstoria’s advanced analytics and reporting, veterinary groups can see the performance of all the practices they manage through a custom-built dashboard. This dashboard shows them trends and insights, including the total number of existing and new customers, appointments made outside office hours, appointment sources, devices, and other pet owner-related insights. Vetstoria also provides benchmarking capabilities, so you can evaluate a single practice’s performance versus other practices that use Vetstoria in a specific region. Better yet, our team will walk you through these numbers and share recommendations to simplify decision-making.

Branding each veterinary practice

Each practice may have its branding, and your group will have elements in your brand identity you want to keep consistent. Vetstoria allows the booking platform to be customized visually, aligning with the colors you wish to display. This helps you maintain uniformity and consistency across the practices that use Vetstoria’s intuitive appointment scheduling software.

Hassle-free online payments

Adding online payments to transactions is a no-brainer because it offers convenience for both pet owners and individual practices. Integrated with Stripe, Vetstoria offers secure payments to pet owners, reducing no-shows with various payment options such as pre-authorized payments or full payment before arrival. Practice managers can conduct easy reconciliations with transaction history reports easily retrieved via the Vetstoria dashboard.

Easy measuring of promotion campaigns

How can you get better ROI with your marketing spend? First, it should be easy to track your efforts. Next, manage these campaigns efficiently to increase visibility for your practices. Your marketing team can easily create and manage promotional campaigns by using Vetstoria’s promotion campaign builder. These are “smart links” generated with the rules and settings that are added by practice teams for any time slots or days you want to drive revenue with integrated booking links. These links can then be placed in email campaigns, texts, and social channels, helping you run targeted promotions. They also combine well with our analytics component, so measuring the effectiveness of campaigns is easy.

Constant innovation

Our product team focuses on providing state-of-the-art technology to ensure the platform is intuitive to help practices be efficient. Feature updates are provided regularly, and your dedicated customer success teams will help you implement these features.

Value additions to your teams

While managing a minimum of 30 or more individual practices, you want to ensure every practice experiences the same level of success. So how else does Vetstoria support veterinary groups?

Dedicated onboarding

Vetstoria’s friendly onboarding and implementation team will be with you from day one to set up Vetstoria seamlessly in each practice, guiding you through the onboarding process and customizing the journey for every practice within your group.

Dedicated customer success team

Once onboarding is complete, our specialized customer success team will regularly conduct performance reviews to communicate your performance insights and make recommendations to improve each practice through our reporting and analytics capabilities. The team will assist in building custom dashboards to help you make sense of data for informed decision-making.

Improved pet owner experience

Gain insights from our team to provide customers with a great user experience through online booking, get bespoke marketing collateral to encourage revenue, and reduce phone call volume in each practice.

24/7/365 support

Get access to omnichannel support (live chats, calls, and emails) to have any of your questions answered, to get help adding new features, or for any assistance your teams may need when using Vetstoria for no additional cost.

Want to learn more? Join our webinar to discover more about how we can help your veterinary group make the most of veterinary technology, or book a demo here.