Front Desk Freedom: Automating Veterinary Scheduling

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Welcome to today's episode of the Veterinary Blueprints podcast.
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I am your host, bill Butler, and today I am joined by Joe Ciccarello, my good buddy from Chicago.
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Joe and his team are helping practices reduce no-shows, increase bookings and deliver a smoother experience for both teams and clients.
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So if you're a solo vet or running a multi-location hospital, joe is going to bring you some actionable insights into streamlining your front desk workflow and driving better client engagement.
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Welcome to the podcast, joe.
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We have had the opportunity to hang out at some national events here in the last year or so, having a good time out in Las Vegas out on the strip and getting to know you a little bit better and what you do for veterinary practices, and I thought you know.
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We connected and said, hey, let's have you on the podcast.
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So welcome.
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Why don't you give now?
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I know you have a background in dental for many years and a couple of years over in animal health, so why don't you tell our listeners, kind of, how you wound up at CheckVet and what you do and what your passion is towards animals and how you wound up there?
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Yeah, absolutely Appreciate you.
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Having me Background is really I've been in human dentistry for close to 15 years and I've been at several different back-to-back startup companies.
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All have been successful.
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The one that was the most fun and was arguably the most successful was called LocalMed, which was funny because it wasn't local nor was it medical.
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It was dental and it was online scheduling and that's all it was right.
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And back in 2016, when they took that to market, it was the only tool in the dental space that had the ability to read and write right into the practice management software.
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So you know, there was all these major benefits.
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It's like it brings in more revenue, it makes the front desk life easier, so dramatically better, right.
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Saves tons of time, makes for a better client experience and people are just looking for it, right.
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So we were wildly successful with that and fast forward a few years.
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We took it from like 30 providers in like early 2016 to a little over 9,000 at the end of 2019.
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We got bought by a larger company that does practice analytics.
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They would do things like, as an example, if you were diagnosed with needing a crown but you never came in to get it.
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Hey, here's some low-hanging fruit people you can reach out to to get scheduled, missed revenue, help with forward booking and things like that.
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So we had the tool to know what to do, who we wanted to get scheduled.
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We had the scheduling tool, but they now needed the kind of methodology to get that scheduling tool into the hands of those people.
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So they bought a third company that does like the text and email.
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So fast forward a couple of years and the guy who originally built that online booking tool, who had stayed in charge of the product during those two acquisitions, at some point got connected with these guys at CheckVent, and it's through all mutual connections from LSU, their alma mater.
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When they basically they were already trying to build something kind of like that for the veterinary space, this other guy that had built it in the dental space, basically, was connected with them.
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It was like okay, I see what you're doing, here's how you do this, here's the pitfalls to avoid.
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And so now we got to streamline that same build, but putting all three tools under one roof instead of like daisy chaining them together.
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Sure, instead of three different components, you've put it all under one roof.
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Instead of three different dashboards, three different logins, three different systems, yeah, it's all under one roof.
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So, essentially, when they were ready to take it to market, I got the phone call and it was kind of like hey, you remember that thing that we were really successful with, that was really fun to do and that everybody loved us for how would you like to do that with animal people?
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And I was like absolutely let's go, you know, yeah, so that's how I got into the vet bed space and I've just I've been in for about two years and I absolutely love veterinary.
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Yeah, it's a it's a fun group of people and you know, I think one of the things that you know I love about the animal spaces is my clients.
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Like, I really like working with my clients.
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I was just on the phone earlier today with a legacy client auto repair shop, something my dad we actually acquired as part of an agency acquisition not my favorite, not my favorite to deal with.
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So you know, I think just veterinarians are great people across the board.
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The people who help them are great people across the board.
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So it makes it so much more fun.
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Like we had a great Las Vegas.
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We were down there for a week between vet partners and VVC, so like that makes it so much better when you're.
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So the pain points I mean you talked about some of the things that you that you identified low hanging fruit, not being able to capitalize on it, scheduling that sort of thing, what you know when you're talking with, with practices out there, and and what you're seeing.
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What are the biggest pain points when it comes to veterinary scheduling?
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I mean I'm going to be honest, I get emails and texts about my cat and they're like, oh, you need to come in for your vaccine.
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I'm like, okay, sounds good, and then so what are the pain points that your team's seeing as it relates to scheduling at vet practices?
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Well, there's a bunch and it kind of falls into two buckets.
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So there's either people that have online booking or don't.
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Right, if they have online booking, the pain points tend to be what we're using isn't customizable enough or it's not as automated as we would like it.
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For instance, if you're using a software that can write the appointment into your practice management system but if it can't create the new client record, somebody still on the front desk side has to take that information and create a record for it and attach it.
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So there's still manual process right, which is just kind of laborious, right, it's just, it's like it's laborious, it's, it's just, it's more I don't know, hole digging work.
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It's, it's busy work, it's not generally producing revenue, it's just checking a box to make sure you're doing half of the process.
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Exactly and, by the way, that's much better than not having it Like that's better than zero percent of the process.
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But yeah, if it's not fully automated, then it's not saving you as much time.
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So typically, somebody that has online booking is looking for it to be more automated, more customizable, more marketable.
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The other side of things is the majority of practices don't have any online booking, or what they do have is kind of more of an appointment request system, and you know, there's just oh my gosh, there's so many reasons that you, at this point, need to adopt online booking.
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I've got all these stats.
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I'll just list a few off, because I've got them in a PDF that we pass out and I've got it in front of me.
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51% of pet owners prefer to schedule their appointments online.
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59% of millennials would switch practices for better online access.
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So if you've got online booking, it's a competitive advantage.
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38% of all appointments are scheduled after hours or on weekends.
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It takes an average of 8.1 minutes to book somebody over the phone, which is kind of like your other sort of option, right?
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And then 63% of those calls are placed on hold at least one time.
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That's all my stats.
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I'm done with it.
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Okay.
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But essentially what it's doing is it's saving us ton of time.
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There's all this back and forth.
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You send in an appointment request.
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You're essentially filling out a form on a website.
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It sends an email to the office and now it's up to them to number one, recognize that they've gotten an email.
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Have the time to make that phone call?
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Are you available for that phone call in that moment?
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Probably not.
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Are they going to answer it?
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Because they don't have your number, as a practice, saved into their phone.
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Let me put you on hold press two for scheduling all of that kind of stuff, right?
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Exactly so all that goes away.
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It also picks up when you enable online booking.
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It increases your conversion from marketing perspective I know, obviously this is a lot about like the business side of things and the numbers Like it increases your conversion for any online marketing channel by anywhere between 35 and 70%, and that's like relative to your website to Facebook, google, instagram any ads you're running like anything you're doing to connect with your clients.
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You know what I mean, yeah, absolutely.
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I mean I just think about my barber, right, like he uses Square, and so I go to schedule an appointment with my barber on Square and it's like who do you want to meet with?
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What day do you want to meet with them?
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I look at the thing ask for my email and my phone number.
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Yeah, I'm available at that time and I booked the.
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Booked the appointment instead of like calling john, hey, are you free?
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He doesn't call me back, and then I forget about scheduling a haircut.
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And then it's saturday and then he's booked out for the whole week and then like a whole week goes by because I couldn't just go on my phone this morning and just like what are your?
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what's your when you available?
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All you're available next tuesday at one.
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I can go down there at 1 o'clock, and so you know the number one rule in sales at Butler Vet Insurance is make it easy for the clients Like you have to make it easy because if you put barriers in place, especially in today's speed access, everything like if you make it difficult to do, people will not want to do it 100%, that's exactly it.
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And, by the way, not just for your clients, but also for the front office.
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100%, that's exactly it.
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And, by the way, not just for your clients, but also for the front office.
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like you eliminate all that phone tag.
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Yeah, with that in mind.
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So to your point.
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Like the, the question of, like the availability and all that, the biggest hesitation that we get from vet practices that don't have online booking is the concept that like, oh no, there's no way.
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Our scheduling is too unique, our practice is too special, it's too different and the funny thing is, every single practice thinks that right.
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Sure the reality is there's any number of rules you can put in and we've not come across there.
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All right, there's been two times ever in in 10, uh, eight years that we couldn't handle somebody's scheduling.
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One of them was this guy comes in and he's about to retire, so give him a break here, but he comes in every Sunday and decides that day what days of that week he's going to be open.
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Oh, so you can't preset the schedule?
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I mean, I set up how we schedule this podcast.
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I use Calendly, yeah right, which is, you know, it's a scheduling software tool that integrates with Outlook.
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And I say, hey, joe, would you like to be on the podcast?
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You say yes and I send you a link and you click the link and you look at my schedule and say my schedule and Bill's schedule line up at this time, and then in the thing it says, hey, tell us three things you want to chat about.
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And so it's making the process of us getting connected for this podcast so much easier, versus us calling on the phone and you looking at your schedule and me looking at my schedule and email back and forth and going through all this hassle when we just need to connect for half an hour on a podcast.
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Exactly.
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And the nice thing about that system is it's looking at all of your existing appointments and everything you have in there, which shows me what's left right.
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That's what ours does.
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You build in things like okay, we're going to look at the schedule already.
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We're going to know where you want to book a certain type of appointment.
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Dogs are booked this way, cats are booked this way.
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Maybe it's by species, maybe it's by breed right, we do dental on Friday Exactly, and all the dental appointments.
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We're fear free.
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We do X, y and Z.
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Dr A always gets an extra 15 minutes more than Dr B because Dr A is super chatty and always takes a long time.
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You know, like all that stuff gets built in and then it just automates it for you.
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It's amazing.
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Yeah, cause I only record podcasts on Thursday or Friday because people are generally happier on Thursday and Friday and it's a fun thing to do at the end of the week, versus trying to like get in Monday morning and like, oh, I got to do this podcast.
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Not that podcasts aren't fun, but like my logic for podcasts are they're only available Thursday and Friday after 2 PM, like that, or after 1 PM or whatever.
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So so from traditional appointment software, I mean there's a bunch out there.
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What feedback have you received about differentiation between your software and others out there and what sets you apart?
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Well, so the online booking itself is unique.
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Nobody else does the online booking the way that we do it, where it's 100% automated and 100% customizable and integrated with all of the top practice management systems, right?
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So that's kind of the first differentiator.
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The other piece is that it's not just online booking that CheckVet does.
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It's online booking practice analytics, two-way communications.
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So all your reminders, all your confirmations, all your two-way texting and marketing and all that reviews, management like Google and Facebook, reviews, aggregation, responding, all that type of stuff.
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And then there's a client portal with an app and there's even digital forms.
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So it's another differentiator between us and other systems out there is we're doing all that under one roof.
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So we have a lot of clients that have come to us.
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They're already using, you know, two, three, four different programs and, by the way, a lot of times they're happy with them.
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But they're paying two to $400 a month for three different systems.
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So you're looking at anywhere between six and $1,200, depending on what they're using.
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That we roll under all under one roof for hundreds of dollars savings every single month.
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You know what I mean.
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And so for for some of your early adopters.
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What have they seen?
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As you know, some of the I mean in in today's age.
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I think we just agree, whether a check vet or somebody else else, you just should have some sort of automated appointment scheduling for your new clients or onboarding.
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You just got to have something right.
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Just trying to do it over the phone, I think.
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I mean, if I get an email from someone, I send them back my appointment link.
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If somebody calls in and says I'd like to schedule an appointment, I'm like here, let me send you a link and you can schedule a time and then, like I don't have to go hunting through my we're not spending that 10 minutes on the phone to try and find that time.
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So what have your early adopters said about just like having a scheduling process or an automated scheduling process in place, and what's that done for their practice?
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Honestly there's been a lot of really good feedback.
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We've got some case studies.
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We've got some really great testimonials.
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I even was at like the VHMA management exchange and got like a video of you know, somebody was walking around.
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She's like I just love your software so much.
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I'm like can I get a video of you making things more automated?
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One of the interesting things this is a true story about the like our practice analytics too, right.
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So, like the analytics, it's two different sides to it.
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There's a daily huddle that gives the CSRs and the whole front office team like all these great action items on how to do their job better day to day, like here's how you help your forward booking, here's the people that came in yesterday that don't have a forward booked appointment, right.
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Here's the people that are supposed to be coming in today that haven't confirmed yet.
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And here's how you can do all that right down the list first thing in the morning.
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So the other side is like the practice analytics, where it's like okay, let's look at things like your revenue, your accounts receivable, your appointment numbers and how many were completed and versus new, versus returning, and your fill rate and your show rate, and all that's by different doctors and providers, new versus returning, and your fill rate and your show rate, and all that's by different doctors and providers.
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However, you have it both.
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But a couple cool things.
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One we got just on March 31st from a client.
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It's in our our celebration channel in slack chat.
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In slack says we launched check that on Friday.
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This came in on a Monday.
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We launched check that on Friday and we're able to collect three thousand dollars of AR just from the daily huddle over the weekend.
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That was on a Monday from somebody who went live on Friday two days earlier, three days earlier.
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So like that was a pretty cool one.
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That is pretty cool.
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So I you know, I think in in the very fast paced, uh world of vet med these days full schedule, short staffing, trying to make sure that you're maximizing your appointment hours how does client communication because obviously that's a big component of what you do, it's not just the scheduling but also the client communication how does that help reduce no-shows and improve patient compliance, so to speak, with what you're trying to do?
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It's a great question and it's really closely tied in with the online booking.
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So the communications we do everything from appointment confirmations, appointment reminders, medical and vaccine reminders, two-way texting, email, you know, like custom, like marketing campaigns and all that stuff right.
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And the cool thing is, if you tie in the online booking into that, it automates even more than just having that on your website.
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So, for instance, I get a text message hey, joe, it's been about a year since we've seen Rocket click here to book his next wellness exam.
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Practice has had to do that because they have it on the cadence where, like at the 11 month mark after somebody's last appointment, make sure that they get a text message that says x, y and z and it's just, it's automated fire and forget it goes out exactly and when you, when you allow them to book themselves in, you know, like you said, instead of like doing that awkward over the phone, right, if you're allowing them to look at their schedule and yours side by side and make the best decision for themselves relative to what they have going on, they're statistically way more likely to show up.
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And even if they can't, it's because something came up like last minute, let's say, like you know, your kid got sick and you couldn't pick them up from school or something, right?
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So like they'll, they'll, they're more likely to change their appointment.
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And so you wind up with higher retention.
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You wind up with higher forward booking because you're you have all that on automation already.
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And then you've also got the additional functionality, which this is not everybody does this, but, like in our marketing kind of tools you've got the ability to build out what we call client segments and send out like custom text and email type stuff.
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So real life example about four months ago we had an office manager they're at sorry, they have, like they had like a they got a better version of it.
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I don't know the name of it, but they got a better version of a cat medication than they've been prescribing for years.
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So what this doctor did was built out a segment for all clients who are active clients, who have a cat, that, uh, that that has been prescribed this like old medication in the past that we haven't seen in at least six months and that the cat is still alive.
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That was the criteria.
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Sent out a text, an email and a push notification through the app to everybody that had that criteria, with the link to books, saying, hey, we got this new version of this medication.
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I hope you can come on in and talk to us.
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Their conversion was like ridiculous.
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You know what I mean.
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Yeah, so I have this on're.
00:16:18.318 --> 00:16:24.197
I have this on my desk and it reminds me I got it from a business coach and it's to to mine your own acre of diamonds.
00:16:24.197 --> 00:16:45.433
Because, you know, instead of out, trying to get new clients is trying to maximize the return on investment and the the the revenue per client, right, Like trying to trying to get more dollars out of your existing clients, versus trying to go acquire new ones, Cause acquiring new ones is always, you know, is always the harder get.
00:16:45.453 --> 00:16:47.524
from a sales perspective, it's easier to do business with people you're already doing business with.
00:16:47.544 --> 00:17:57.926
Yeah, it's nine to 10 times harder to acquire new clients than it is to retain an existing one, or you're even just upselling that one extra medication or vaccine, like, oh yeah, I should come in for that vaccine.
00:17:57.926 --> 00:17:58.807
I'm glad you got a new one.
00:17:59.729 --> 00:17:59.949
Right.
00:18:00.730 --> 00:18:11.932
So for busy practice managers out there listening today, what is one small change that they could make to improve scheduling efficiency just overall at a practice?
00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:28.045
Well, I mean, I'm beating a dead horse at this point, but, like, enabling online booking is by far like, of everything that we do, that is, without question, the most impactful and the biggest impact of the sorry, the most immediate and the biggest impact that any practice will see is just turning on online booking.
00:18:28.045 --> 00:18:35.912
Aside from that, I would probably say including the ability to book an appointment in all of your medical and vaccine reminders.
00:18:35.912 --> 00:18:37.521
You'll you'll just save so much time.
00:18:37.622 --> 00:18:55.806
It's, it's having again, like we've chatted about, right, Like the ease of scheduling and having some sort of automated scheduling system, I mean it's made a huge impact in how we do things with our practices we work with from a, from a, you know, scheduling perspective.
00:18:55.826 --> 00:19:09.221
I mean it's got a referral today from a CPA said hey, you should, you know, meet with this client, and so you know she reached out immediately after that, actually beat me to the email back and I said hey, I'd love to meet with you.
00:19:09.221 --> 00:19:10.987
Here's my scheduling link, like you know.
00:19:10.987 --> 00:19:22.992
And now you know, 90% of the time I would say they're, they're scheduling that appointment within a day or two of that initial email out saying hey, here's Bill, here's his team, or we're getting that introduction.
00:19:22.992 --> 00:19:29.648
So just the ease of getting that connection made in the scheduling for us and the practices we work with has made it so much easier.
00:19:29.648 --> 00:19:31.404
And then we're just managing the schedule.
00:19:31.404 --> 00:19:32.408
All right, what do we have this week?
00:19:32.408 --> 00:19:40.188
We got three or four new appointments this week and we're just, like you said, that huddle component where you're looking ahead and going OK, this is what we got.
00:20:07.299 --> 00:20:08.260
So I do this, I do presentations on stage a lot.
00:20:08.280 --> 00:20:11.806
One of the things I usually will give one of two anecdotes and, like in Vegas for instance, I'll do like hey, show of hands, how many people flew here for this conference?
00:20:11.806 --> 00:20:12.767
Like, basically every hand in the room goes up.
00:20:12.767 --> 00:20:13.407
All right, now keep your hand up.
00:20:13.407 --> 00:20:15.450
If you called and talked to somebody on the phone to book that flight, everybody's hand goes down.
00:20:15.450 --> 00:20:18.033
I mean, as soon as Americans started offering that in the 90s or whatever it was, it was like everybody had to follow suit.
00:20:18.033 --> 00:20:18.694
Why would you ever call somebody?
00:20:18.694 --> 00:20:19.115
You know what I mean.
00:20:19.115 --> 00:20:19.395
Absolutely so.
00:20:19.395 --> 00:20:21.919
As the industry is changing over and you know client engagement tools are more prevalent, online scheduling is more prevalent.
00:20:21.919 --> 00:20:22.879
You probably have to have some of this in place.
00:20:22.879 --> 00:20:33.210
And where does CheckVet see, you know, the future of client engagement tools and online booking over the next you know, 12 to 24 months, because things are changing very fast with AI and everything else.
00:20:33.210 --> 00:20:34.866
Where do you see things going?
00:20:35.160 --> 00:20:52.047
So the interesting thing about AI I'm a big fan of AI, first of all, and I think that right now we're in such a boon because there's so many large language models that are available for anybody to sort of create their own and utilize them to build on one another, and that's sort of what AI is right it's iterating on itself continually and improving all the time.
00:20:52.047 --> 00:21:21.925
So what I think is happening what has been happening for about the last year and I think will continue happening for the next I'm going to say probably two years is you're going to continue to see all these startup companies that are coming out building versions of AI for individual small pieces and then give it another two years and I think a lot of those will go away as they get consolidated or one becomes sort of the leader in that space and the other ones kind of fall off, and I think at that point in time we'll have a much better idea of what's actually possible to automate Right now what we're doing.
00:21:21.965 --> 00:21:51.320
There are some AI components embedded in different pieces of the workflow but, I, would not call us an AI platform at all, but there's opportunities for things to be able to do even more of that, and we've got not just AI but a lot of other really cool developments on the roadmap for enterprise, like right now we've got the ability, as an example, something that the group practices tend to like when they're talking to us is we can link our platform with, let's say, you have a group of like 50 offices and across those 50 offices there are eight different practice management systems.
00:21:51.320 --> 00:22:06.462
We can actually tie into all of those practice management systems and pull all of that enterprise reporting data all the financials, all the appointment numbers, the production numbers, the fill rate and all that stuff I was talking about before into one dashboard and normalize that data across all of those.
00:22:06.462 --> 00:22:17.904
And that's a thing that when we talk to the bigger groups, the consolidators even, just like the independent, like you know, but group practices that tends to be something that everybody's trying to tackle right now.
00:22:18.145 --> 00:22:19.288
It's a huge pain point.
00:22:19.288 --> 00:22:21.660
So there's kind of a twofold benefit there.
00:22:21.660 --> 00:22:29.265
Number one, you can see all of those across all the different PIMs and normalize the data so you can get true benchmarking and know where you want to increase.
00:22:29.265 --> 00:22:53.425
For instance, an Imprimed, that's kind of an older system, and then somebody else that's on like a Shepard, that's like a brand new system.
00:22:53.467 --> 00:22:59.031
And you don't necessarily need to convert the old one into the new one as quickly because you're bringing them the same functionality.
00:22:59.031 --> 00:23:21.087
So I think over the next two years we are going to continue building out more of that enterprise functionality to kind of normalize that data and the functionality across all of them, and I think that you're going to see AI tools that are either doing that also on their own or there's a couple of options we've been looking at to tie it in in different ways for us to sort of intuitively figure out some of that stuff that even quicker than we're doing it now, if that makes sense.
00:23:21.248 --> 00:23:21.769
Yeah, it does.
00:23:22.230 --> 00:23:29.948
You know if I'm a practice out there, that's not currently doing online booking at all and it's very old school manual.
00:23:29.948 --> 00:23:34.124
Client calls in, we schedule the appointment, we send out an email reminder.
00:23:34.124 --> 00:23:36.289
That's a non-automated process.
00:23:36.289 --> 00:23:40.308
You have the front front desk CSRs reception team doing that.
00:23:40.308 --> 00:23:46.767
Where do you see them in that one to two year time frame, because this is all moving so fast?
00:23:46.767 --> 00:23:50.566
How much of a competitive disadvantage are they Like?
00:23:50.566 --> 00:24:00.557
As you said, 39% I think the stat you listed was 39% of millennials or 54% of millennials would change practices because of the ability.
00:24:00.557 --> 00:24:05.948
59% would change practices with the benefit of being able to do online booking.
00:24:05.948 --> 00:24:08.733
I mean, where do you see those practices that are hanging on to that?
00:24:08.733 --> 00:24:12.129
No, our clients want to speak with someone every time they call in.
00:24:12.129 --> 00:24:14.950
We have to have that customer service relationship.
00:24:15.181 --> 00:24:16.666
Yeah, the personal touch, so to speak.
00:24:16.839 --> 00:24:17.904
Yeah, that's what they all talk about.
00:24:17.904 --> 00:24:20.605
You know, here's the thing Phone calls are not going away.
00:24:20.605 --> 00:24:23.124
There's always going to, at least for the foreseeable future.
00:24:23.124 --> 00:24:24.425
There's always going to be phone calls right.
00:24:24.425 --> 00:24:40.061
But I think that the practices that don't adopt new technology to automate that and kind of bring that, as Bruce Truman describes, the digital front door right, like let's open ourselves up to what people are looking for, I think the ones that don't do that will continue to exist but I think they're going to just like.
00:24:40.061 --> 00:24:46.191
There's this overall trend in the industry right now of appointments going down, like visits going down, spend going, even though the cost is going.
00:24:46.191 --> 00:24:48.875
The spend is going down average of like 3% I think the last two years.
00:24:48.875 --> 00:24:50.225
I think that's going to continue in.
00:24:50.225 --> 00:25:02.209
The practices that aren't adopting this are going to fall victim to, you know kind of either the corporate consolidation or they're just going to be who are like throwing money at this stuff Like nobody's business.
00:25:02.490 --> 00:25:15.574
Cause they're trying to because the consolidators and the aggregators and the corporates are all trying to build scale and efficiency and they've got money to do it, and so they're like, okay, well, we have to scale this and build efficiency across.
00:25:15.574 --> 00:25:21.214
You know our 50 practices and eight different pims and how all of that comes into play.
00:25:21.214 --> 00:25:27.853
So we have to build these efficiencies in, and if you're not at least keeping pace with some of that, you're at a disadvantage 100%.
00:25:29.703 --> 00:25:47.523
And, by the way, one of the nice things I see in the vet space, relative to my experience in dentistry, dentistry tends to be a little bit, I would say, ahead of the curve, trend-wise, like both with AI, corporate consolidation, different struggles and different advances that they make in technology, like five to seven years ahead of veterinary.
00:25:47.523 --> 00:25:53.907
And one of the things that I was very concerned about, that I am still very concerned about in the dental space, is this corporate consolidation.
00:25:53.907 --> 00:26:00.781
In veterinary, I think that there's more of an awareness and more of a desire to push back against it and preserve the independent practice owner.
00:26:01.343 --> 00:26:01.482
And.
00:26:01.723 --> 00:26:16.850
I think I mean again, I'm biased here, but I think it's such a no brainer Like this is how you compete with the corporate consolidators Having systems that are more advanced, more automated, more scalable, like if you're doing it, you know, if you're working at 1.5 times the pace of a big group, well then you have nothing to worry about.
00:26:16.850 --> 00:26:17.295
You know what I mean.
00:26:17.739 --> 00:26:42.750
Yeah, there's a great book called David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell and Gladwell and it always says that in that book he basically lays out why David can always beat Goliath is because for Goliath and we deal with this in the independent world but for me, competing with larger insurance agencies or groups, I look at well, I don't have as much money as them, how am I going to compete with them?
00:26:42.750 --> 00:26:45.001
I don't have as many staff, how am I going to compete with them?
00:26:45.001 --> 00:26:50.948
You can actually be more nimble because you don't have eight different PIMs that you're trying to integrate all that stuff together with.
00:26:50.948 --> 00:26:52.253
You've got one system.
00:26:52.253 --> 00:26:56.987
You go okay, what system do we need to solve for in this equation?
00:26:56.987 --> 00:27:00.520
And so you can actually be a little bit more nimble, more streamlined.
00:27:00.520 --> 00:27:08.522
You're not trying to do this huge scale of integrating systems and processes across multi-states, multi-organizations, multi-technologies.
00:27:08.823 --> 00:27:11.609
And to your point about being nimble, two things.
00:27:11.609 --> 00:27:15.326
Number one yes, when we do talk to, we're not really skewed.
00:27:15.326 --> 00:27:17.862
We're definitely skewed towards having the more independent offices.
00:27:17.862 --> 00:27:25.491
We've got some larger groups, but those big corporate consolidators, they just take so long to do anything, to make any decisions, to really get anything implemented.
00:27:25.491 --> 00:27:32.135
They'll reach out sometimes and we'll have conversations that go on for a year and a half and it's just about getting a pilot for a couple of offices on.
00:27:32.135 --> 00:27:35.767
So I think that nimbleness is really what gives every independent office the advantage.
00:27:35.787 --> 00:27:36.628
And similarly.
00:27:36.930 --> 00:27:39.344
Honestly, it's a big part of, I think, why we're successful.
00:27:39.344 --> 00:27:41.530
We're not owned by some large corporate company.
00:27:41.530 --> 00:27:52.032
So about a year and a half ago, two years, about two years ago, coming up on um, that I joined the company, all we did was online booking and daily ho.
00:27:52.032 --> 00:28:05.666
We did not have the practice analytics, we didn't have the enterprise stuff, we didn't have the marketing, the communications, the reviews, the portal, the app, the forms, all that type of stuff, and every single thing that we have continued to build is because people that we're working with are asking for this extra thing, so we're able to continue to iterate and build all these new features and everything.
00:28:05.706 --> 00:28:09.544
It's like these other companies that have already been bought out by by these large corporations.
00:28:09.544 --> 00:28:19.085
When's the last time you saw them come out with anything new we have, if you've not, like you know, telling you to go follow our social media, but if you look like man, we put out stuff every month it's like here's the five things you're about this month.
00:28:19.125 --> 00:28:34.346
I'm not going to name them, but there's a large technology company and what they've done is either they, in some case, what they do is they buy a piece of technology or a company to kill it.
00:28:35.086 --> 00:28:43.201
So they're like, okay, we're going to buy this company, we promise to do these things, and then after five years, they wind up sunsetting everything out of there.
00:28:43.280 --> 00:28:57.768
Four years, they sunset everything out of there and what they did was they bought the competition to kill it off and not growing it, but to say we, actually we do that over here with this system and we were going to integrate them, but actually everyone on this system that we bought we're going to kill off.
00:28:57.768 --> 00:29:06.011
And now, if you want the, the, if you want, it's comparable, it's 60% more through us on this other side.
00:29:06.011 --> 00:29:16.689
And so you know some of that a corporate consolidation or large tech consolidation, sometimes the, the smaller tech guys, they, they get bought out and then you wind up out in the cold.
00:29:16.689 --> 00:29:31.346
Well, joe, if there's one thing that I think you kind of covered it, but if there's one thing that that you would recommend to a practice owner manager out there looking at you know, trying to figure out how to do online booking or some efficiencies, what would you, what would your piece of advice to them be?
00:29:31.500 --> 00:29:37.019
I'm probably just to to give it a try, be open to change, ask a lot of questions, like you know, get your all your concerns covered.
00:29:37.019 --> 00:29:47.502
But like the person I was just talking about, that we ran into at VHMA, that did right, she was I hope she listens to this she was one of the hardest cells like we went back and forth on these long demos.
00:29:47.502 --> 00:29:51.463
She had eight billion questions and I'm like I'm telling you like just give it a try.
00:29:51.463 --> 00:29:56.242
Right, we wind up seeing her and she, she goes as soon as we turn it out, she goes within like three days.
00:29:56.302 --> 00:30:11.663
We were like, okay, this is great but, what they did, even if uh, so, even if you're hesitant about trying something like this is what I'm getting to even if you're hesitant about trying either online booking or whatever the new technology is, see if you can try it out and do it in like a sandbox sort of environment with your own team.
00:30:11.663 --> 00:30:28.875
So this person told me and I've been telling every demo that's been, like you know, hesitant since then this person at this event told me she goes, we rolled it out only to our team, we didn't put it on our website, we didn't send it to any of our clients, but we rolled it out to our team and we all sat around at a table at lunchtime one day and tried to and she described it as tried to break the system.
00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:37.221
Sure we tried to sneak in appointments where they where we wouldn't want them to go, and they found some kind of loopholes in the way that they do things, and so we built in rules around those.
00:30:37.221 --> 00:30:43.631
Yeah, so like the whole team was bought in on it, they were comfortable with it, they already tried everything and she's our biggest advocate.
00:30:43.631 --> 00:30:48.702
So my advice would be be open to change and just give things a try cool.
00:30:48.963 --> 00:30:55.123
Well, if uh anyone listening here wants to reach out to you or check that, how do they, how do they find you, joe?
00:30:55.323 --> 00:30:56.486
go to check thatcom.
00:30:56.486 --> 00:30:59.050
C-h-c-k-v-e-t.
00:30:59.050 --> 00:31:02.067
So not, it's like check without the e, but check thatcom.
00:31:02.067 --> 00:31:03.835
You can book an eight minute demo on there.
00:31:03.835 --> 00:31:05.762
Our demo is super quick and easy, takes eight minutes.
00:31:05.762 --> 00:31:11.182
Start to finish our contact info, info all like FAQs us versus everything else and all the features and everything.
00:31:11.182 --> 00:31:13.347
It's all listed on there, awesome.
00:31:13.848 --> 00:31:15.521
Well, thanks so much for your insights, joe.
00:31:15.521 --> 00:31:23.884
As always, like listen and share to the podcast with your friends and veterinary compatriots out there, and thanks for joining us, joe.
00:31:24.045 --> 00:31:25.047
Appreciate having me man.
00:31:25.047 --> 00:31:26.390
It's always a good time all right.
00:31:26.430 --> 00:31:29.295
Thanks for listening to this episode of the veterinary blueprints podcast.