Veterinary practices and clinics goes over several phases during acquiring clients. After several years we have two big groups of our clients so called active and inactive clients.

I found out interesting per cent count of active and inactive clients in veterinary practices (as well as in human health care). It varies with minor deviations from practice to practice.

Who is inactive client?

Inactive client is client which has not transacted at your practice in the last two years. Note, in some countries there is regulation that some animals must be revaccinated against rabies every year – so I recommend to consider inactive clients those clients that has not transacted in the last one year.
In some especially good working clinics inactive clients are those last seen under 1 year and for the best clinics they are even for lower time period – under 6 months. Usually there is only very very very small count of the greatest practices with period under 6 months in Slovakia and Czech republic.

So what’s the goal of our practice? We don’t need to acquire new and new clients. On the other hand the most effective way is to motivate and invite former clients for the next appointment. We want to reach the point when the same client visits our practice more than 2 times during one year (the more the better).
Some of my colleagues can say “This is not true for all practices” and they’re absolutely right! For high specialized and referral practices this is not absolutely true because they are receiving referred clients from lower level practices where veterinarians are not able to diagnose and treat illness due to lack of knowledge or instrumentation. Important point here:
Don’t forget, it is not shame to say to the client that I am not able to treat this problem and it need higher care level in referral practice. It’s always better to stay good doctor and refer client that trying to treat it myself with lack of knowledge. Of course in modern countries standard is that after examination and treatment referral practice will send back this client to his default doctor of choice. Are you doing it always? Well, try to answer truthfully my dears. (nice theme for another blogpost maybe soon)

Why should I target main focus on inactive clients and try to reactivate them?

Obtaining new clients cost you much more than to keep an existing client.

To be sure your active clients don’t fall in inactive clients’ group simply stay in touch with them even if they are out of your office. Communicate with them – you can remind them vaccination, deworming intervals, appointment reminders, special events such as events for geriatric patients, young animals, etc. It’s up to you which way of communication will you use. You have plenty of options in communication field such as short text messages SMS, emails, by post, phone calls… There are many situations when you should pick up the best info channels for this and not always fit for example SMS or emails the best.

Veterinary management software helps you to select inactive clients only. If you need help with this there are many people and they are specialist for veterinary management in practice and they are happy to help you with reactivation of inactive clients back to active clients’ group

One example from practice

I wanted to show you how you could write message or letter when you need to reactivate inactive client and get feedback. But I won’t. I will show you two examples here :) You can modify it and use it for phone calls or letter too. By the way e-mail is very impersonal way of communication so I don’t recommend it for this purpose.

Text No. 1
Dear Olivia Doe,

It’s been more than a year since we’ve seen you at our Bebee Animal Hospital. Regular visits in our hospital are necessary for continued good health. Animals age much faster than people, so an annual checkup for your pet is like a person seeing the doctor once every five to seven years.

Please let us know why you hasn’t shown at our animal hospital.
Please return your response in the enclosed postage-paid envelope or call us at +1 800 123 456.

Well, I think this is good example how it shouldn’t look like. What do you think – why? How do you feel when you finished reading this? Try to imagine situation when you open envelope. What’s in? Just I, I, I, I, (we’ve seen, me, our clinic, tell me, call me, return me, etc) don’t you think? There is especially what I want and not what my client wants. And this is false.

Try to check this better example – text No. 2
Dear Mrs. Olivia Doe,

You and Casper are our good clients for several years. It’s our honor and privilege to have provided your Casper with medical care in the past. However, we regret to say that it isn’t possible for us to do that because we haven’t seen you in a while. Regular Casper’s health care will bring you many wonderful years together.

We’d be happy to see you in our hospital anytime Casper needs it. We really appreciate your short answer in the enclosed postage-paid envelope or we are here to talk to you at +1 800 123 456, it’s up to you to choose the most comfortable way.

Yours truly,
MVDr. Filip Kovalovský

Try to read both texts again. Which one do you like the most?
Do you see the starting words of the second text? – “you and Casper”! So it is not about me but it’s all about my client and his pet – nice, isn’t it? It is more personal and customer oriented. No sweet words, just words you believe in.

Please leave your opinion in comments. Thanks!

Let’s see 2 examples:
1. example(how to NOT do it) “Hey, come in.”
2. better way “Hello Mr.Itaky, how are you doing? Please come in with Fluffy. Hey, Fluffy! :)”.

What’s the difference when you use example 1 or 2? Let’s try to imagine your client’s point of view. What do you like? Example with names and titles (the best case is to use both client’s and animal’s names) is more personal, compfortable, and better. Your client feels friendly environment and appreciate your services and care and knows you will take care about his pet. This should be the golden standard in your practice for you and you staff. You have to use it in all fields of communication, verbal, non-verbal, electronic. Relatively “cold” way of communication are SMS and emails but with these useful techniques you can make it more convenient and warm. This was also very important part of our VitalFox service so we advise to turn on personalization for your messages – both SMS and emails in your account, so we will add correct names (your client’s name and pet’s name too) . There is also possibility to use another personalization elements in your messages such as time elements in appointment messages, etc. A lot of owners have more than one animal. With personalized messages owners always know which pet should see a doctor. Just activate personalization in your settings and you are done! Your golden standard in communication goes hand in hand with VitalFox.

Well, and don’t forget – another important ingredient is smile:-). Your clients love it.

Squeeze the maximum from VitalFox. Personalize your messages with personalization elements, use your own text and content, the same way as for SMS – personalize your SMS messages and use up to 459 characters in long SMS. Set up your own Subject field in your emails, message content, your own name in From field with your own email address.

It is nice to use personal names – personalization in your emails and it is so easy as for SMS. Just use well-known personalization elements in your message content @name and @pet. @name is for owner’s name and @pet inserts pet’s name. Don’t forget to activate setting “Email personalization”. That’s it! VitalFox will identify these elements and inserts the right owner’s name and pet’s name too. So simple, isn’t it? And as usually everything works fully automatically and you need to set it up just once.

Email messages have their own settings so you are able to tune it up as you need from SMS or email sending functionality or you can even use and send both. For emails there is variety of settings for your own name as well as your own email address (so your client will see every message was sent by you), your own signature in messages, message content. There is another great feature of VitalFox – if you don’t have time to set it up you can use default system settings so you don’t need to set all fields as formerly mentioned. :-).

Hand in hand goes new change in our packages

Gifts for everyone! Send up to 1000 emails every month completely for FREE! All of our plans have now FREE emails included so you can send this amount according to your plan every month for FREE. Check out new positive changes in VitalFox plans for the same price . So, do you like it? :-)