Customer Story
How Village Vets Scaled Online Booking Adoption Across the 35-Clinic Group
Products: Direct Booking (Online Booking)
The challenge
Village Vets is one of Ireland’s largest veterinary groups, with 35 clinics spread across the country. Running a multi-site network means juggling consistency across locations, capturing demand outside business hours, and onboarding newly-acquired practices without slowing them down. Phones were a permanent pressure point — and visibility into what was happening across all sites was hard to come by.
The solution
Eight years ago, Village Vets partnered with Vetstoria to roll out real-time online booking across the group. The platform now syncs directly with the group’s PMS, captures bookings 24/7, and gives Alan Gallagher — Head of Client Experience — a single dashboard to see how each clinic is performing. Vetstoria’s customer success team meets with him monthly to align on growth, surface inconsistencies, and roll out new features across the network.
The results
📈 Online booking adoption grew steadily as client adoption increased over the years.
👥 Hundreds of brand-new customers booked via online booking.
🚀 Newly-acquired clinics ramp up their online booking share quickly.
>10% drop in missed calls, with staff freed for higher-value work.
🤝 60-minute support response times, with proactive feature updates from the Vetstoria team.
‘If you are a veterinary group and you do not have online booking, I would recommend you reach out to Vetstoria — because honestly, you will not regret it.’
‘Eight years in, and the experience has been seamless.’
A long partnership is a tough proof point to fake. Alan has had eight years to form a view of what Vetstoria is like to work with — and the answer hasn’t wavered.
“My experience with the Vetstoria team after working with them for nearly eight years now has been so seamless. They are always there to help and support us, and whenever I have an issue I normally get a quick response.”
‘Vetstoria has reshaped how our clients book.’
The most striking change in the partnership is how much of the booking mix has moved online. The shift is steady, and it’s still climbing.
“We have noticed a huge impact in relation to revenue, and we have noticed a huge improvement in clinic performance. When we first started with Vetstoria, only a small fraction of bookings were online. But to date, after eight years, a significant share of our customers now book online.”
‘We acquire many brand-new customers through online booking.’
The acquisition story is one Alan can pull straight out of the Vetstoria dashboard. He doesn’t have to estimate.
“Looking at our Vetstoria dashboard, we can see that we’ve received many brand-new customers that have gone through the Vetstoria online booking system — which is a fantastic achievement for Village Vets. This is thanks to the Vetstoria platform and the ease of our customers being able to go online and book those appointments.”
‘Vetstoria is a powerful tool. It's a real-time booking system that syncs directly with our PMS, and it's available 24/7 — a customer can pop on and book that appointment straight away.’
‘When we acquire a new clinic, online booking ramps up quickly.’
Bringing a new practice into the Village Vets family used to mean a long, slow shift in how clients book. With Vetstoria, that shift is now measured in weeks, not years.
“At Village Vets, we sometimes acquire new practices that have never used the online booking system before. Within a short space of time, they build up a meaningful share of online bookings within their clinic — thanks to Vetstoria. It’s an amazing tool for our clients.”
‘Out of hours, Vetstoria is the difference between a booked appointment and a lost client.’
Modern pet owners don’t wait for the clinic to open before they want to take action. Alan has a favourite story to illustrate the point.
“Online booking really helps us capture those appointments that might otherwise go as missed, or where the client might decide to go somewhere else. Just last week we had a client watching Love Island, sitting on the sofa with their dog, and they noticed their pet needed a nail clipping. During the ad breaks, they went onto our website, booked the appointment, and we saw them the following day.”
“Online booking really helps us capture those appointments that might otherwise go as missed, or where the client might decide to go somewhere else.”
‘Out-of-hours capture isn't just convenience — it's peace of mind.’
It’s not only social-media moments. For worried owners with a sick pet at night, online booking is the calmest path forward.
“It is so important for us to capture those appointments out of hours. For instance, we could have a pet at home that’s really sick — maybe cardiac, vomiting and diarrhoea — and they don’t know where to go. When they pop onto our website, they can see the booking tool and they get an appointment for the following day, which leads to a lot less stress for that customer.”
‘Missed calls are down >10% across the group.’
Every missed call is a potential lost client. Vetstoria has tightened that leak without anyone having to add headcount.
“Our missed call rates have reduced by more than 10%. Customers who would have hung up or gone elsewhere are now booking online instead.”
‘The dashboard gives me visibility I never had before.’
Running 35 clinics is impossible without good data. The Vetstoria dashboard is now a core part of how Alan sees the business.
“It is so important for us in Village Vets to have visibility across all our locations. The dashboard is so easy and simple to use, and it’s great because I do have a meeting once a month with my Customer Success Manager within Vetstoria.”
‘Monthly meetings with our CSM help us find the gaps and close them.’
Vetstoria’s customer success team doesn’t just hand over a tool. They sit with Alan once a month to interpret the data and find growth opportunities.
"The data we receive from Vetstoria is second to none. We're able to see how our clinics are growing, but also able to see where our clinics might be falling short. I have monthly meetings with my Customer Success Manager in Vetstoria, and she's able to tell me how we're doing within Village Vets, what we can do to help improve, where we might be lacking, and where we can grow."
“The Vetstoria dashboard really helps us keep consistency across locations. If I have one clinic seeing a high volume of online bookings, and another seeing far fewer — we know something is wrong within these practices. What I want to do is align them so that both clinics are identical and both performing well.”
‘Vetstoria solved a problem in our cat-only clinic quickly.’
When Alan needed a Fear Free configuration in the group’s Just Cats Clinic — eliminating stressful repeat visits for cats — Vetstoria turned it around almost immediately.
“Vetstoria solved an issue for us in our Just Cats Clinic — which is a cat-only clinic we have in Dublin. We’re all for Fear Free within Village Vets. The clinic identified the appointments they would like to have within that clinic, and within 30 minutes Vetstoria had changed all those appointment types for our Fear Free friends. Vetstoria were able to adapt the type of bookings we had available for cats to make them more cat-friendly and reduce fear and unnecessary vet visits.”
‘Vetstoria's support is one of the best we use.’
Village Vets uses a lot of software. Vetstoria’s support stands out.
‘Vetstoria's customer service really stands out as one of the best customer service tools we've had. Within Village Vets, they're always there at the end of the phone, they're always there to support us with any issues we have. We have 35 branches — we do have a lot of other softwares available, but Vetstoria is up there at the top when it comes to the care, the support, and the attention to detail.’
‘Vetstoria always takes our input on how we want new features rolled out.’
The relationship runs in both directions. Vetstoria treats Village Vets as a partner, not just a customer.
“Having such a dedicated support team makes us much more confident when we’re implementing these new systems across our clinics. Whenever we want to introduce something, they’re always there to support us, but they will also run things by us to get our opinion on if we think it’s going to work or not, or how we might do things a little bit differently.”
‘There's no chasing — they're always one step ahead.’
A common frustration with vendors is the constant need to follow up. Alan has the opposite experience with Vetstoria.
“Vetstoria help us to improve by always getting in contact with us with items they want to develop. They’re always there to support us and always keep us up to date. There’s never any follow-up that I have to do from my side — they’re always one step ahead of us.”
‘Vetstoria is now part of how we stay competitive.’
In a market where many veterinary clinics still don’t offer online booking, Village Vets stands out — and that’s becoming a stronger differentiator every year.
“The Vetstoria tool really helps us with our competitors, because a lot of our competitors do not have online booking, and we’re moving into the times where our customers want to book everything online. So the ease for our clients to do that is absolutely massive — and this is the reason why our customers want to choose Village Vets.”
‘If Vetstoria disappeared tomorrow, we'd have to hire more staff just to answer the phone.’
Asked what Village Vets would lose without Vetstoria, Alan doesn’t hesitate. The platform is now load-bearing for the group’s daily operations.
“If we did not have Vetstoria within Village Vets, our staff would not be happy.”
“If we did not have Vetstoria within Village Vets, our staff would not be happy. They would not get their lunch breaks, they would not leave on time, they would not be able to handle the amount of phone calls coming through our phone lines. We would have to hire more staff to deal with those phone calls.”
‘Vetstoria will be central to how we grow.’
The relationship hasn’t peaked. Alan sees Vetstoria as a partner in whatever Village Vets does next.
Village Vets wants to grow within Ireland, and Vetstoria is going to be a huge asset for us. It's going to help us grow and develop and bring new initiatives for our customers and within the Village Vets community. After working with us, we want to grow and develop and think of new initiatives Vetstoria can bring for us and our customers.
Vetstoria’s real-time online booking drastically reduces phone calls and keeps you in control.
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Vetstoria’s real-time online booking drastically reduces phone calls and keeps you in control.
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Alan Gallagher | Head of Client Experience, Village Vets
Alan Gallagher is Head of Client Experience at Village Vets, where he oversees client experience across 35 veterinary clinics in Ireland. He has been working with Vetstoria for nearly eight years and meets monthly with the Vetstoria customer success team to align on group performance, identify growth opportunities, and roll out new features across the network. Alan is the operational engine behind how Village Vets keeps the client experience consistent across every site.
