In this episode of the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark jumps into a crucial mailbag but this time with special guest Dr. Sarah Wolff. Together they tackle a pressing question from a practice manager struggling with maintaining the personal touch in client interactions after transitioning to digital communications.
Sarah Wolff, a seasoned veteran of the veterinary field, embarked on her journey inspired by James Herriot's tales. Over her 22-year career, she's navigated every role imaginable in a veterinary team, from humble beginnings as a kennel assistant to the esteemed position of medical director. Through her extensive experience, Sarah has witnessed the dynamic evolution of veterinary care, but one principle has remained constant: client relationships are the cornerstone of exceptional veterinary medicine. Today, she's dedicated to helping teams cultivate these relationships, fostering excellent client experiences that enrich both the practice and the individuals within it. For more insights from Sarah, visit her online at www.DrSarahWolff.com and follow her on Twitter @DrSarahWolff.
In this episode's mailbag entry, our featured practice manager voices a common concern among modern practices: striking a balance between efficiency-driven digital communications and maintaining the human connection with clients. With technology streamlining communication processes, practices risk losing the personal touch that sets them apart in the hearts of their clients. Let's get into this episode!
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Do you have something that you would love Andy and Stephanie to roleplay on the podcast – a situation where you would love some examples of what someone else would say and how they would say it? If so, send us a message through the mailbag! We want to hear your challenges and would love to feature your scenario on the podcast.
Submit your questions here: unchartedvet.com/mailbag
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Episode Transcript
Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Uncharted Veterinary Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark. Guys, I am here with the one and only Dr. Sarah Wolff today. So she is stepping in to Stephanie Goss Shoes, and we are taking a question from the mailbag about, is a great question. It is about a practice that has been working on their efficiency and communicating digitally and electronically, and they are really doing very well, but they're starting to get feedback from clients.
That it– you know, it's just, I don't know, the old, it doesn't feel the same way. And it's kind of this vague feedback, but the clients are just, you know, they're just not, they don't feel the personal touch like they used to. And I thought this was a great question, and Sarah Wolff is the perfect person to answer it. And so that is what we do. We dive in. Sarah is amazing. She will be speaking at the Uncharted Conference in my hometown, Greenville, South Carolina, April 18th through 20th. I will also be there. Stephanie Goss will also be there. It is going to be a fantastic place. If you can make it, do make it.
It's our standing out in a sea of noise conference. It is all about stuff just like this. So if you dig this episode, head out, head out to Greenville, get registered, get re You want to get registered before you go to Greenville. You should get registered before you leave, and then you and you should probably get a hotel.
You should get a place to stay. Anyway, you work out the logistics, and then you can book your travel to Greenville, South Carolina, and come and see us for the Uncharted conference. Anyway, guys, that's enough. Let's get into this.
Announcer: And now, the Uncharted Podcast.
Andy Roark: And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark, and the one and only Dr. Sarah Wolff. That's right. I'm spinning the wheel, making a left turn. Stephanie Goss is standing in front of her house, but the bus is not picking her up today. It's me. It's me and Sarah Wolff. For those who don't know her, Dr. Sarah Wolff, she's a good friend of mine.
She is speaking at the Uncharted Veterinary Conference in April. She's been an attendee many times. We've known each other for years now. You are also a you are currently At you are currently at a conference where you're speaking as we're recording this
Sarah Wolff: Well, I'm not speaking at it. I'm, to be totally transparent, I'm attending it and fangirling all the fabulous speakers.
Andy Roark: Oh wonderful. Oh, that's very nice. Well, so you are on the road, but you are a consultant you generally consult on The client experience in veterinary medicine. So, thanks for being here. How have you been?
Sarah Wolff: I've been great. It's been a great week of going to conferences and seeing friends and meeting new people and just hearing about all the fantastic things that are happening in the industry. So, I'm feeling very inspired at the moment.
Andy Roark: Oh, yeah, it's– I love going to conferences and getting all fired up, and then the real challenge is can I come home and organize my thoughts and actually turn them into things that happen. That's always, that's, the struggle where I am. I have, we just came back from a conference yesterday, and I think I'm, I think I'm doing a good job of converting my handwritten notes into actionable things I'm gonna actually do, but it's uh, I don't know.
Sarah Wolff: Yeah, I finally learned that I have to block off just a whole day after a conference. If I went to get ideas, I have to give myself a whole day to sit down, parcel through all the stuff I collected, all the names I wrote down, and figure out where do we go from here. Or else it just flies out the window and I never get to take full advantage of it.
Andy Roark: I leave my email responder on for two additional days. Like, from when I get back. From when I get back, you will still get emails that say, I'm out of the office! And I set it to be those extra days because I know I'm gonna come back and there's gonna be a pile of crap. And, if you respond early, people are like, wow, that's great!
But if their day hits and then they don't hear anything, then they'll email you again and it just adds to the pile. So, I have tried to create some space so that
Sarah Wolff: Wait, are you setting expectations that you can meet or exceed?
Andy Roark: Yes. Oh yeah. No, I've gotten a lot better at that as I've gotten older, a lot better, but boy, that was a terrible pain point for me.
I still say yes to too much stuff. I like there, everything on my calendar is just theoretical until I'm there and I'm miserable. You know what I mean? You're like that, block fits on my calendar in a two weeks. And then when I'm there, I'm like, why did I do this to myself? And so I think it's, it's always a back and forth, right? It's really hard. This is actually going to get into what our mailbag is about today. I think it's really hard to balance resting and working. And I really struggle with that, Sarah. Like, early in my career, I just, I always, when I was speaking and stuff, I was speaking a lot before the pandemic, and I just said yes.
I just said yes and then I was on the road a lot. I was on the road 130 days. And I was still practicing in 2016. So, I would I probably did way less practice than I did on the road, but I was still practicing. So I'm in practice. I've got kids at home. My wife works full time.
I'm on the road 130 days, 2016. And it was not working for me. It was not working for me. And so I came back and I was like, I don't know how, where the off switch is because, as you say, as a business owner, I had employees at that point. So I've got employees, I've got payroll to make and things like that.
And I don't know how you turn away, you know, business because you don't know that it's going to, there's going to be more in the future and I think people who have owned businesses really probably know what this feels like and people who haven't are probably, it probably seems silly until you're, in it, but I really felt that way.
So I went and I asked my dad and I was like, Hey, you know, I'm working myself to death and, then I would have periods where no one would call like over the summers and I would be like, I'm going out of business and it was just, it was terrible. It's always terrible. One way or the other.
Sarah Wolff: And that's when you overbook then, because you're like, I'll say yes to everything, and then all of a sudden you're in the thick of it, and you're like, I said yes to too many things. I do the same when I'm booking myself, especially I do a lot of relief now, and like you said, theoretically, I'm like, amazing, four days that week, that'll be wonderful.
And then all of a sudden I'm driving to four completely different hospitals, practicing four different styles of medicine within five days, and at the end of the week, I need a whole day to turn back into a human, you know, and recharge myself.
Andy Roark: Well you're doing, follow up from people you saw at one clinic while you're at a different clinic and you're like, this is wildly inconvenient and, but yeah, but you, do it to yourself. But anyway, so I said that to my dad and I was like, you know, I'm having a hard time saying no. And he was a physician, he was a surgeon and he just, he had no advice. He had no advice. He was like, yep. He's like, I just. He's like, when we're dead, I'm like, we've got to get more stuff in here, and then, you know, stuff's coming in, and I just take it all, and everybody burns out, and then we just hope for a dead period, and anyway, it took me, the best advice I got, I'll give this to you, because your career is really blossoming, and you're traveling and stuff, I'll tell you this just for what it's worth, Sarah, but like, the best advice I got about this, and I asked a lot of people, was from Dr. Marty Becker, and I talked to Dr. Marty Becker, and I said, Marty, I'm killing myself, man. I am just, I'm saying yes to everything and I don't know how to be off. And he said what he did is this and I have done it and he's a genius. But basically what happened was he figured out at the beginning of the year how much he was going to be off.
Like, like counted out the weeks, and he was like, I am going to be off this amount. And then he put that off time on his calendar, and just put it there. And he said that he could move it, so if he needed to move and something came up, he could move the days. But he never deleted the blocks. Once they're on there, they're there.
And ultimately what happens is, you keep moving it and moving it, and then also like Tetris, you get like blocked in, you know what I mean? But you're blocked in with this off time. It's the best advice I ever got, because at 100%, I would take all the work you want, but we don't delete those blocks, and ultimately, I just can't, I can't take anymore, and so I do book myself solid, but I have built that rest time in, and like, kept it there, and so anyway, that's where the idea, I talk a lot about work, work life balance happens three months from now, it's because if you don't get out ahead of it and put that, those blocks in, you end up just getting squished, but, anyway, Let me give you, I have a question for the mailbag that is a hundred percent up your alley.
Sarah Wolff: Okay Yes.
Andy Roark: I want to give that to you. Is that okay? All right.
Sarah Woff: Of course. Let's get in.
Andy Roark: Alright, here's what I got. So from the mail bag, I get this question. It says, “typically we have a pretty, we have pretty happy clients and we rarely get complaints. Recently, though, we've been hearing that the customer experience is not the same, yet clients are super vague about what the reason why is.
Some say that our people aren't rude or anything, but I think what we're but the wait times for simple things like prescriptions seem longer or that they felt like they couldn't talk to the front desk and others have said that they just seemed rushed or that the personality isn't there. We haven't had any staffing changes that would, that would change the way that things feel or our wait times. Our wait times are the same as they have been according to our PIMS system. We have definitely moved over to using more technology to streamline communication so that the CSRs are doing a lot more digital communications. I'm wondering if perhaps splitting the roles between greeters and phones might help.
I'm just not sure what else we could do to improve the client experience when they come in. Texting and automations have really helped the CSRs control the volume of work so much that I can't get rid of that. But I also don't want our customer service to suffer because of it. How do you handle the client experience in the digital world?
Or are there things I could be doing to improve the customer service experience? So, so, I'll put that to you, Sarah, and sort of say, you know, when we Tackle these things here on the Uncharted podcast. We like to start with headspace. Like, why does this happen? Is this a common, is this a common feeling? Like where does your head kind of go immediately before we start fixing the problem?
Sarah Wolff: That's a great question. I think that This writer, I was going to say caller, but this writer is hitting a problem right on the nose that a lot of practices are facing, and that practices have always faced, just now it's texting and this level of digitization. But how do we balance the personal with the volume of work that we have to do?
And practices have been struggling with this for a long time, and now we're just facing the next round of what new things we're incorporating. It's something that has to be addressed in a new way because we're dealing with it with new challenges between us and our clients. I would also say that to let this person know, as a headspace thing, they are in the vast majority of practices right now.
This is a completely normal experience to be having. They're not doing anything wrong. It's just time to take a look at what they can do a little bit differently to retain the flavor of where they're at, you know, so just to kind of take the pressure off that this isn't because they're doing a bad job of anything.
Andy Roark: I like the retaining the flavor. Let, me, pitch you an idea because this is the headspace idea that sort of comes into my mind, but I feel like most things in business and in life are probably, they're on a pendulum, right? Like we swing one way and then we kind of swing the other way.
And we got buried with work, like pandemic workload was really high. And then also we've got these really great new technologies to go faster, to streamline, to take work and to automate it. It does not surprise me the idea that we Lean further into the digital communications and maybe sort of even overcorrect from where we were before.
So we went to like, we're swamped. Let's automate to get out of this, and then we swing too far. I could see that. The other thing that I, think is, and this is really sort of headspace, but this is philosophy, but I'll bounce it off of you. I think that through digital communications, I think they're wonderful, but I do think we're losing humanity as a society in some ways.
You know what I mean? It's so convenient to text. But I don't think that we feel connected to people when we text like we do when we pick up the phone. And I think it's possible to hold two things in your head at the same time. I think that you can say, I'm busy. And I really don't want to call someone.
And then I think you can also say, If I never call anybody. I'm going to feel lonely. And I think both of those things can be true. And so, that's not putting it on, on, on vets or anything, but so much is handled in the app. Like Starbucks, like, I, I, if I go to Starbucks I talk to the barista and I ask him how their day is going and I just, this is kind of how I am.
But when I use their app, I just walk up to the pickup window, grab my thing, and walk back away, and that by itself is not a big deal. But if that is a picture of how your life is, I think that we're moving towards a place where people are going to feel less connected. And again, that also comes back to the customer service experience, right?
Like, we are a relationship business. And if you go too far away from that and too much towards automation, that relationship business breaks down. And I think that's really scary for vet medicine because I worry that's the path to a price war where if you don't talk to anybody and you just, you know, get the work done as fast as possible.
Very quickly, everybody's fast, and everybody's convenient. Then it becomes, well, who's cheapest? And then that really becomes the defining factor of, I'm not gonna talk to anybody. I just want this done. And the person down the road charges less than you, so I'm gonna go there. And that's justI'm sure I'm catastrophizing, but that's I worry about that. Does any of that sound reasonable to you?
Sarah Wolff: I think there's a yes and a no, as there are to most questions, that aren't actually, you know, super, super straightforward, that we know from research that the more our communications are digitized, so the more we're texting and using apps, the more value people across all ages are placing on actual human interaction.
So, we know that it's true, that the less we interact with people, the more we value the chances we do have to interact with people, you know, with the asterisks of as long as they're good interactions, right? There's nothing worse than going from a bad digital interaction to a bad personal interaction.
Andy Roark: Oh yeah, I would much rather get a mean text than have an angry person.
Sarah Wolff: Yeah, a phone call. Right. You know, so to some extent, you know, but we, there is a lot more value and we can talk about that when we're talking about solutions for this practice and for others out there, how we can take advantage of that truth, you know, that reality that's out there. But I think the other part of it is that different generations prefer to communicate in very different ways because of their experiences and how they've come up with the internet and with different technology.
And so, for Gen Z, texting, they do not want a phone call. Do not want one. That is a negative experience for them if they get a phone call, whereas a text message is okay. That doesn't mean, though, that all text messages are made the same, right? And I think that's where some more nuanced understanding of different communication comes in.
That a text message doesn't mean a preformatted text message. We all know now that this is really common, what a automated confirmation text message looks like when it comes through on your phone. You know, text Y to confirm your appointment. That feels very different from getting a text message like, Hey, it's Sally at ABC Vet Hospital.
We're so excited Fluffy's coming to see Dr. Roark tomorrow. Let me know if you need to change your appointment. We'll be here today till 5. Right? And then you walk in and it's actually Sally at the desk and she says, “Oh, thanks so much for letting me know you were running late. It's so great to see you, Dr. Roark's ready for you.” You know, there's, there can be a seamless integration of some of these communication channels that allow us to still use them efficiently, but retain the humanness of it and allow it to seamlessly flow into the personal interactions that we get to have. And I think that's the middle ground that we're struggling to find as some of us older generations are using this technology.
We're losing a little bit of that humanity, just as you said, and that's where we can infuse the branding, the flavor of our practices back into how we interact with our customers, even if we're not on the phone, you know,
Andy Roark: I like that a lot. And so when you say, you know, the more digital interactions we have, the more value there is in the personal interaction, I think that resonates a lot. I think I completely buy into this. I thought a lot about this, you know, in my life as a parent where, you know, because my wife works full time and I work full time and again I said I was, there's times in my life I was traveling a lot and I, would roll that around because I would feel, bad about the amount, the volume of time that I was away, you know, so I'm like, oh man, I'm not with my kids for like this amount of time and the best I'm the best answer I ever came up with was pretty early on I just decided down to my bones that I was going to be very present and very intentional for the times, you know, when I was with the kids.
And I just like, I'm not a great parent for a whole day. I'm a, but I can crush it for two hours. You know what I mean? Like, and again, that does not mean I'm like, I'm completely checked out. But you know, I mean, anyone with anyone, unless you were one of those people who really loves kids, you know what I'm talking about where it's like, no, I can be super fun dad and we can have that great afternoon, but then dad needs a nap. And, you know, and and then we're going to re engage and, have a really, we're not going to look at our phones at dinner. Like, we are going to come together at dinner and that's going to be the focal time. But you really can do, I think, you can do a lot for relationships just by being really present when you decide to be present.
And, so I think that's kind of what we're hitting on here is I don't think, I, know I don't think you're, saying this at all, but I don't think any of us are pushing to say, we need to go back to before we were texting and you need to be calling these people, you know, that's not, that doesn't make any sense, but there are ways that we interact with them and we can make a difference.
So, so your point about the personalized text and all texts are created equal. I think that's great. My favorite example that everybody's probably seen is the is the text from the groom or the boarding facilities that are really well done, when they send you the picture of your pet and say, “Oh, thanks for, you know, this is we took some pictures of Skipper. He had a wonderful time and this is one of his favorite things to do. And if you feel like leaving us a review, and it was like,” Oh, this is the review text. But also it's got a picture of Skipper and somebody clearly at least keyed it up. And it feels much more like an actual human interaction. And I think that, anyway, that, that, resonates with me.
I think that, that's a really good point.
Sarah Wolff: and I've, you know, I think for any of us, when we start using a technology, There is that real drive to try and use it to the utmost of its efficiency because we've justified the cost and the time and the training and the headache of changing our SOPs and all of that. So what we want to get out of it is as much efficiency as possible, but I think this writer, this question really hits on the head what we risk losing sometimes and as I said, it can be very vague.
It's not something where you're saying this exactly has changed, right? It's not that, oh, everyone's so rude. It's just, I used to feel a certain way when I interacted and engaged with your business and I don't feel quite as the same anymore. And to me, that feeling was a big part of the value of coming to you is that relationship and that feeling that I got.
And when we start to lose that feeling, that's when we know our client experience is starting to degrade a little bit and we can look at ways that we can ramp it back up, you know, so that feeling stays the same, even if the way that we're generating it for our clients is maybe a little bit different to adjust to new technologies, new needs, new demographics of clients we're serving. Maybe we want them to have the same feeling, but now we've got people who are 30 years younger than we did when we opened, and they have different expectations and different ways of getting to those same feelings.
And I think this writer seems to get all of that. They understand that's kind of what they're facing.
Andy Roark: Well, I love the question because they really capture for me, they capture this nebulousness that just, oh, it's the worst. If somebody says, I came in and Carol was rude to me, I'm like, I know how to fix that. You know what I mean? And again, I'm not immediately saying, maybe. Maybe Carol is rude, maybe she wasn't.
But at least there's someone I can go and talk to. You know, maybe we can pull, maybe we can pull the phone records and take a listen. And, like, there's just is this part of a pattern? Is this a coaching thing? But there's just a lot of immediate tools and I know where to at least start the process of working it through.
But when somebody comes to you and goes, Yeah, you know, not feeling it. It's like a relationship comes apart. It was like, oh, well. I just, I don't know. It's just, you know, the chemistry isn't there. You're like, I don't know how to fix that. It's kind of that kind of nebulous thing.
And so when I'm reading this, I feel like this person has done a really good job of kind of trying to drill in, trying to drill in. It is so, it sucks when there's nothing that's clearly broken. It's just not, they're just not feeling it. And so that's I think that's way more common than people think.
I think a lot of us are focused on real pain points. And so, we know we're like, this is broken and I'm working on it, this is broken, I'm working on it. And we don't, I don't know that we hear about the vague feelings of the clients just aren't as happy as they used to be. It's, I mean, it's kind of like if you have this practice and you used to pick up five star reviews all the time and people used to send thank you notes and now you're less thank you notes, you know what I mean?
And people just, they're not as excited about the clinic t-shirts that you're giving away as they used to be. You know, stuff like that. It's um, oh, but it's really, it's hard to pinpoint what that is if it's not a broken system. I mean, that's how I feel. Do you agree?
Sarah Wolff: I agree. I think for all of us, as you said, There are so many pain points and there's so many moving parts of a veterinary practice and really of any service industry gig. And I firmly believe that we are a service industry even more than a medical industry. You know, that trying to keep all those pieces going, all those pieces working, all those new employees up to snuff with everything is a full time job plus some.
So when you get to a point where, like you said, it's like we're 89 percent as good as we used to be.
Andy Roark: Yes.
Sarah Wolff: at this 50% of the job . You know, that's, that feels pretty fricking good, right? That's like a b plus. And you're like, cool, but we used to be a plus and the difference between a C and a B plus is probably about the same amount of work as a B plus to an A.
Right? Those final inches of improvement. Always take a lot more attention and a lot more nuance to achieve and to maintain because it's very easy for those things to start to slip. A few little things change and they have a knock on effect. You know, I would say for these, this practice, also kudos to this wonderful group of clients who have expressed this to them, right?
Because not only is it hard to see that from inside, but it's really hard to express a small piece of feedback like that, and that speaks volumes to what a place this practice has had in the community historically. That they've got clients dedicated enough and who care enough to say, you know, things are a little bit different, I don't like it as much.
That's a rare piece of feedback to get.
It is, man. And most people are craptastic at giving feedback. This is just in general. You know, it's like, I think about this, is everywhere go look at a movie review or go look at ratings of movies online. People will be like, This is terrible, but they don't know why it's terrible, especially if it's mediocre.
If it's terrible, they can be pretty specific about why it's terrible. But if it's just not a good movie, it's not really good, it's very hard for people to articulate why they just, why it was fine. I mean, think about with meals that you have. When someone brings you a meal, you go to a restaurant, and it's good.
And they were like, how did you like it? And you're like, oh, it's good. And they were like, how could it be great? And you're like, I don't know, make it better. I don't, that's
Sarah Wolff: And I would say it's not their job to know.
Andy Roark: Oh, sure!
Sarah Wolff: You know, it's not a client's job to know what they, and I think that's where, Things like Uncharted come into the picture, right? Where, when you're struggling with this stuff, you know, it's not our client's job to know. And so then you get this vague feedback, and then you're looking around, and you're like, I think things are actually working pretty well for us, you know, like looking around, this is actually ain't so bad. So then trying to suss out those more nuanced changes, I think that's where reaching out for help is really important because also sometimes it's hard. You know, if you've been in the weeds working your tushy off at your practice, you may not have seen what other people are doing with text messaging for a couple of years because you've been spending a couple of years training everyone to do it your place.
Andy Roark: Yeah, exactly right. Well, and also, you know, it's really hard to look at yourself, too, because you're in, like, you're in it and you're working hard. It's hard to see yourself and your business from outside. And so, like, that's, all of this is really challenging. So I just, I want to just validate this person's sort of struggle.
And I do agree with you. I don't, I'm not trying to say that the expectation is that clients give us actionable feedback. I think that's exceedingly rare. And, that's I guess that, that was sort of the point. Where I'm sort of going with that, but you know, I think the big headspace pieces I would put forward and then you can add, any, ones that you like is this is I think the ho hum feeling, I, think that's common.
I think, a lot of people, there's a lot of people who just, you know, think my vet is okay. This is not uncommon. I think that, yeah. Working hard to train your people and to implement digital communications and stuff to get more efficient. That's mission critical. Don't regret that. I completely agree with not wanting to back off of that.
That makes a ton of sense to me. I would really push to have this person not take this too hard, and not to think that this is hopeless. A lot of times when I get vague feedback, it feels hopeless, because I'm like, I'm not exactly sure what to do with this, and that makes it much, like, I can sit with it a lot more and go, I don't, is it even worth the effort?
Like, I'm not exactly sure where to push. And so, that can be an overwhelming feeling. But, this doesn't strike me in that regard. I really think that this is one of those things where they can, we can get intentional. I think we'll do the action steps, but I think we can push in a couple strategic places and really make a huge difference.
Like we can add some pieces that wow pet owners. We don't have to give up all the things that we have found that have really made life better and made people more efficient.
Sarah Wolff: I would agree. I think the only thing I would add is that whenever we're dealing with a situation like this with clients, there's really three parts to it and we can only control one. We can control what we do at our practice and how we engage with our clients and allow them to engage with us.
Awesome. And that's what we'll talk about with action steps. What we can't control are two parts of our client's context that they're going to come to us with. One, the other experiences they're having. So if you're the 15th business in a small town to implement digital communication, it might be that they've reached their limit of wanting to deal with it, and it's not because of you.
It's because they have other experiences that are coming to you, and they're just over it, and they feel comfortable talking to you about the fact that they don't really like it as much as how things used to be done in their town. You know? But you're one of many. And the second part of their context we can't control is their expectations, and that's going to change, especially generationally.
You know, what do they expect when it comes to text messaging? Maybe it's very different than what we think a text message is, right? And so we can learn about that, and we can implement, we can utilize that information when we create our own action plans. But we have to remember, we really only control one third of what's happening in this picture.
Andy Roark: No, I think you're spot on. Well, let's let's take a little break and then we'll come back and get into some action steps.
Sarah Wolff: Alright.
Dr. Andy Roark: Hey guys, is your clinic slowing down? Are you having more open appointments than you had in the past? Are you wondering a little bit about what you need to do to get clients to, one, come into the building, and then, two, listen to your doctors and your staff when they get there? Well, you, my friend, might need to head over to the Uncharted conference in April.
That's right! It's in Greenville, South Carolina. It is April 18th through the 20th. This is the granddaddy of the Uncharted Veterinary Conferences. This is the one that we started with. This is our marketing and strategy conference back to our roots. I love this stuff! The theme of this conference is ‘Standing Out In A Sea Of Noise'
It is all about strategic communication. It is about getting heard. This is going to be a lot about your brand identity is understanding the modern consumer who is getting more price conscious because things are getting more expensive. We are going to need to up our marketing game, our communication game, our client bonding game, our trust building game, we're going to have to turn the volume over on that stuff.
Guys, we didn't have to do that for the last couple of years. People have been coming in, the pandemic was a surge in business. A lot of us are trying to keep our head above water. It's not going to be that way going forward. It's time to re-engage with our clients in a motivating, educating way to get them coming back into the building.
Guys, Uncharted is not a bunch of lectures. You are not going to come here and sit in lectures. You are going to work on your business at this conference. You are going to be surrounded by butt-kicking, positive people who love that medicine, who love pet owners, and who want to create a great experience and make a wonderful place for pets to get the care that they need.
They want to have a positive workplace. They want to have a place where people smile when they come to work and they're working on making that happen. And so if that sounds like you, or if you want to be surrounded by those people, you got to come to the April conference. Also, this is the last time for a while that the April Uncharted conference is going to be in Greenville, South Carolina.
This is our birthplace. It's our home base. It's our nest, this is kind of a big deal for me. At least I, you know, I, I have loved this conference in Greenville. I still love it in Greenville. I think Greenville will always be our home, but guys, we're spreading our wings. We are going to be moving out and doing new things and going to new places.
And it is going to be amazing. But if you want the original Uncharted experience, if you are like, man, I've heard so many people talk about Uncharted in downtown Greenville and how the conference just fits into that community and how amazing it is, this is your chance. You want to be here. Also, if you have been an Uncharted member, if you've come to our conferences before, if you loved it, you always thought there'd be a chance to come back to the old Westin Poinsett and downtown Greenville you should grab a spot.
I think that there will probably be a chance in the future, but it won't be for a while. I think there's going to be a lot of people coming back because they want to do it one more time at the Westin before we move on and check out some new places and do some new stuff.
So I do expect this event will sell out. Guys, go ahead, head over to UnchartedVet.com and grab your registration spot right now. I'll put a link down in the show notes. Again, you do not want to miss it. This is an investment in yourself and in your practice and your future. It is an investment in skills that you will have and use again and again, and it's an investment in connections.
You are the average of the people you spend time with and you're about to be surrounded and spend time with some really amazing people. Anyway, let's get back into this episode.
Andy Roark: Alright, so let's get into some action steps here, Sarah. So, we laid this thing out. I think we're, I think we're in a good head space. I feel pretty comfortable starting to walk into this. So, if you're going in, you're working with a client. They've got this certain feedback.
It's sort of this nebulous, like, clients maybe aren't feeling it like they used to. Where do you start your process of fixing this? Do you go into, do you go into diagnostics? Or, like, how do you do that?
Sarah Wolff: For me, I find it's the most helpful to just create some sort of context for yourself, because when you're looking at something like this, it can feel really overwhelming to think, Oh my gosh, all the interactions that everyone on our team has with every single client everywhere, right? That's an impossible hill to look at.
So instead of doing that, because that will, I'm going to try to figure out, you know, what, yeah, it's just too much for any of us. We need smaller chunks. So I like to look through what are the interactions that our clients have with our practice? How do they engage with us? And just make a list of them, you know, and you can do it in chronological order or by department or whatever works for you and your brain and your team's brains.
So then at least you've got this hit list of what are all of the different ways they engage with us. And then you can start looking through those to say, which ones have we changed? Which ones are going well? Which ones aren't going well? You can even recruit some of these fabulous clients who've reached out and said that things feel a little different and just ask them specifically, “What interactions have you had that felt different, you know, or what do you miss?
What was better before that” and it can be vague still but it might help you pinpoint where on this long list Are we seeing some weaknesses? And at least that gives you a more concrete place to start looking at action steps instead of just an overwhelming vagueness of everything is not as good as it used to be.
Andy Roark: Yeah, I really like, what do you miss? I think that's a really good question. color in the lines a little bit more for me, Sarah, because I, think I understand what you're saying, but I want to make sure. So, when you talk about sort of making a list of the client interactions, you're not just talking about texting, email, blah, blah, blah.
You're thinking about specific things. Are you breaking it down? So, okay, so let me, So usually when I start thinking about efficiency in practices, I like to break it up into systems based on what services we're providing. And so I usually break a practice up into like five pieces. So I'll do like wellness appointments sick appointments surgery and dentistry Boarding, grooming, if they have that, but but that level tech appointments, like, those would be the five.
And so I'd say those are the five big services and I kind of go through those services. Are you sort of thinking in that regard of like, okay, let's look at, let's look at wellness services. How do they book appointments? Things like that. Are you more talking about modalities? Like, this is when we text them and how, help me understand what this list looks like or give me some examples of things.
Sarah Wolff: I think the way I think about it is from the client's perspective and there are different models that pull this apart in different ways. But I think about what I call the client experience cycle. So from when the first time they encounter your brand, be that on a website, a yellow pages ad back in the day, Instagram, driving by, whatever, to the point they're in your hospital till afterwards.
And so you can look at different phases of that, and it's gonna be a bit different depending on your business model, but when they're investigating who you are, when they're reaching out to you to schedule appointments, when they're there physically interacting with you. After the appointment, so your follow up period, and then the interim between that follow up period and the next time they schedule with you.
So you end up with these sort of five different phases of the cycle. And different practices have different ways of interacting with clients during those different phases. A lot of us will have, you call us to book, right? Then we send you a confirmation call or text. And you end up with very clear, contact points that you've engineered, whether or not you realize it for your clients to access you and you can make a list of the times that either you're reaching out to them or they're reaching out to you and see what systems you have in place, whether they're de facto or very carefully thought out to see how our clients being able to interact with you and for a lot of our clients that are long term clients, the vast majority of their interactions might be in between appointments.
You know, it might be that long term medication refill that they get every six weeks, right? That might be 90 percent of their interactions with us. But if you can think about that, most practices actually have a system for each of those specific interactions in place, and then that gives you a concrete place to start evaluating, how are we doing it, what's working, what's not working, and any changes you make that way are also then on a very manageable scale.
Right. It's not just every single time we call a client, it's different, you know,
Andy Roark: No. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's really important and not making people feel this is going to be overwhelming. I think anytime we start making a change to how we just generally talk on the phone, like that's a lot. it's a lot of phone talking. So we talked about sort of, creating context. We started talking about looking at, you know, how are they reaching out? What does that look like? So, so you sort of start to audit that and at least sort of feel what, figure out what you're sort of, your communication pathways are, if you will.
So that, that makes sense to me. I really like the idea of what do you miss? Anything like that. And granted, it probably is going to turn up nothing, but it's question to ask.
Sarah Wolff: I live in a very small town, and this always makes me think of this town because we've, there's been a big influx of people moving there over the last 20 years, and then even more since the pandemic because we're commuting distance to New York City. And when we first moved there about seven years ago, people would talk to us all the time like, Ugh, we missed this town back in the day.
You know? And we'd ask like, Well, what, was so great about this town back in the day? Like, you wouldn't believe it. You'd walk down Main Street, you would get stabbed. That was one of the most common answers to what was the town like back in the day. And so it's this joke now amongst kind of everyone in the town, sort of the old town and the new town, like, Oh, I miss those days when we used to get stabbed walking on Main Street.
You know, but just that idea that um, we always miss what, there isn't anymore. You know, there's always that nostalgia. So then once you ask those clients, you can get a better sense of, you know, how much of this is because times have changed and how much of this is because we've changed, you know, to go from there.
And then I think once you've got that audit, you can figure out what are your high value touch points, you know, what are the places that you think are going to have the biggest impact on your client's perception of you as a business, and there's different ways to define that, and that might come down a little bit more to some of your harder numbers, are you trying to get new clients, are you trying to retain clients, are you trying to increase your transaction value, right, and then you can figure out based on that, kind of what are the touch points that play into that, So you can prioritize where you might want to start making some tweaks and see how they go.
Andy Roark: eah, that, totally makes sense to me. I, one of the things that stuck out to me in this question, It was the, there was, they actually asked, like, what about splitting up the roles at the front desk of the communication, texting, and the in person people? That is actually something that I think is probably worth exploring.
I think, sometimes it's not about the digital communication. It's about multitasking. You know, and if I put someone at the front desk, and they're supposed to be the face of the practice, and they're just continually checking their monitor and you like head down. That's like a different level of connection. You know whenever you're talking to someone and they are in their screen.
That's just, it's, almost like, It's worse if they're just sitting, it's worse than if they're just sitting there. Cause they are like actively, I– you can't help but feel so ignored. Even if they're working on your thing. And again, this is old school, but you know, We used to talk to the doctors and coach doctors, Please don't go into the room, And just sit with your back to the client and type in the computer.
Please don't do that. And it was just because It feels so off putting. It feels so– you feel so insignificant when people do that. And I can, I, totally can see in practices this idea that we're going to multitask. So, whether you have someone who is good at letting text messages just ping in, and not responding to them until I get this client fully taken care of, and then I'm going to dive back in, I think that can be fine. Or, you can divide and conquer where one person is doing digital communication and the other person is on face duty and then we switch, but that whole juggling, I think that hurts people in significant ways. I think also I would be looking out here for a lack of clarity of expectation for the front desk.
So if I say to the front desk, your job is to handle communication as efficiently as possible. Then, really what I'm saying to them is you should be knocking these texts uh, and digital emails and things out as fast as possible, but that's not really what I want. I, yes, efficiency is important, but that client experience for the client who is in our building, I think that is more important now than ever.
And so just clearly articulating the expectations you have for the front desk and what the, what your values are, and what your goals are, and how you want people to feel. That may sound silly and you think, oh, everybody knows that. I don't think the, I don't think that you do. I think it's easy.
Especially if you've added technology. It’s– you creep. You know what I mean? Like you add a new technology and people kind of start to use it. And then you get a little bit more efficient with it and they start to use it a little bit more and at some point you have kind of passed the point where you're not looking people in the eye anymore.
Because you're in this technology. If you'd walked in and just said, this is what we do, and I just didn't look you in the eye, you would notice it. But if it, if you're doing it and you just keep adding things, you creep that way and you don't realize how far you've kind of drifted. And so, that resetting of expectations and reminding people of the why, I think that's really powerful.
I also think you can really motivate people when you stop and say, Hey, we're taking care of these people. Like, like, this is a, possibly a scary time for them. We're going to really be there and be present for them. I think a lot of our people get really excited about that because they want to help people.
Sarah Wolff: I would add to that, I think splitting the roles could be really powerful depending on the size of your practice and your setup and if you've got space for that to happen. What I would say is that using some of these technology tools requires really understanding what the expectation from clients is with them.
And the expectation is very different for a phone call versus text messaging. That, especially for younger clients, if you offer text messaging, the expectation is a very rapid response not 10 minutes later, not 20 minutes later, certainly not hours later. That if they're able to text you during business hours, the expectation is that within a minute or two they're getting an effective response to it.
And I think if we, when we look at different things that we can add to our practices in terms of communication, we really have to think, is this something that we're going to utilize well? And if we're going to offer text messaging, it needs to be because we've got somebody who's on the text messages.
Not that once an hour and, you know, multitasking CSR has a chance to check that tab on their browser. And so I think if you've got a practice where you've got a lot of that going on, absolutely splitting up the roles so somebody can be more focused on that and giving those quick responses without impairing the ability to interact with the person at the front desk is a really good idea.
And as you said, you know, that, that chance to create a personal connection is so powerful for our clients, but also for our team members, you know, that creates so much more fulfillment in our day when we get to have those positive interactions and we have so much in common with our clients already, right?
We're all the crazy cat ladies and all of that. That's why we do this and that's why they come to us a lot of the time that we get to have this wonderful personal connection we might not get outside of our workplace too. To add to it, I think there's even more training we can do to improve those moments when we do have personal interaction, even if we've got the energy to have it, or the time and the focus, to teach people, teach our team members, especially new ones, what is that interaction going to look like at our practice?
You know, you were talking about the values. A value can be as simple as we respect everybody, and a respectful interaction is going to be very different for different people, right? For somebody in their 60s or 70s, that might be, or mean being called Mr. Smith, right? But a respectful interaction for a 25 year old client might be, Hey Jim, right?
And those two different people might get the same feeling from very different types of interactions. And it's not such a huge range of things, right? It might be three or four different ways that we could address people or tones that we could take with people. And if we give our teams that are on the front line of creating that human experience some of that training and some of that knowledge, it can empower them to have much better interactions in a way that might not come naturally to them if they don't have that opportunity to learn it.
Andy Roark: No, I do like that a lot. I think I think the tra– I think the training part is important. And just, mean to your point about the way we sort of engage with people differently to try to create that experience. We often don't practice that, and we often don't put our, like, front desk staff in a place where they see what other front desk staff do.
They're kind of in a little bubble, and they're talking on the phone the way that they talk on the phone. What are your sort of favorite tools, what are your favorite tools for that type of training, Sarah?
Sarah Wolff: I love having baseline scripts, so not scripts that everybody has to follow word for word because that eliminates the humanness, right? You have to be able to ad lib a little bit. But I love knowing what are the different types of interactions that we have with clients. And here's a baseline for what we want you to communicate when you have those interactions.
And so, the first time caller, here's how we talk to them. And it can be as simple as here's a suggested way of saying it, and here are the four bullet points you have to hit. Right? And then giving them a chance to do it 3, 4, 5, 2000 times. Right? And making sure that they have a chance to do it and figure out the way that they can say it that's natural to them but also supports the practice's vision for how we present ourselves and how we package veterinary care.
And if we can give them that opportunity before we put them on a hot phone, we're going to have a much better chance of them succeeding and our clients seeing that, but also them feeling really good and being able to knock it out of the ballpark right from the beginning and avoid some of that early stress and energy drain that we can see in new hires who don't get that same support and that chance to just have that little practice.
Because if you haven't worked a front desk before. that's a hard job. That is a really hard job that requires a lot of thinking on your feet, you know, and in the room we have spiels. So why wouldn't we expect our front desk team to need time to practice their spiels, right? Like I've got the way I describe a food trial and I've honed it over years of messing it up, right?
We need to give our front desk the same space to create the way they can do a spiel effectively. And be able to give them some positive feedback about what's working and what else we want them to include. So just having kind of those sample scripts for maybe those ten common conversations that your front desk is going to be asked to have regularly, and then giving them the opportunity to practice that and get it in their own words, can go a long way to smoothing those early transactions with clients.
Andy Roark: Yeah. I love that. I really like case based learning, which is, you know, we use that a lot in training veterinarians and technicians now. Why don't we use it at the front desk? I mean, they have cases and I'm just a huge fan of bringing the CSRs together and let them work in groups.
It's less scary when people work in groups, but I think that we can present to them case studies and say, let's imagine that we have this, a client is coming in and you can pick one. That's an actual client that they know and then just frame, frame up an issue for them and say this person is coming in and this is going on, you know, I want you, I'm going to give you guys five minutes to huddle up and decide how you would handle this and then we'll come back and we're going to talk through it.
And that may sound silly, but there's, it's so easy. Even it doesn't even matter what they say to me. It's the fact that they are going to huddle up together and get on the same page and sort of compare notes. And then I, can walk them towards. Let's, what would you actually say? What would that look like?
And it's just that's the type of sort of, communication challenge case study training that I just, I think it's, I think it's really good. And I think a lot of people think that you only train like that when you're onboarding somebody new. And I disagree. I think you can do it when you onboard somebody new and you include the senior people and you say, oh, you know, we're onboarding, so, so come on and be a part of this, but the reality is they're going to get so much out of having to talk to each other and even having to revisit these issues again. It's really funny. It's kind of, there's great power in saying, I know you know this and then telling them what you want them to know because it sort of lets people off the hook.
So bringing them together and just go, I know you guys know this, but just, it's because of the new technology. we're gonna, we're gonna do some cases together. And then, let them talk it out. But I think that can be so valuable. Especially if you have a stated purpose and you say, Hey guys, I really want to do some cases.
I want to focus with you guys on personal connection. And so imagine this is coming in and we're focusing on personal connection. How do we have this conversation with an emphasis on personal connection? And you will see people really raise their game and they'll start working on what their language is and they'll see other people. How they engage, and it can be a really good way to kind of set the tone. Everybody laughs, don't take it too seriously. and just get them thinking in that way.
Sarah Wolff: I agree, and I think it's, you can almost do rounds the same way you do, like, M&M rounds for medical things, you know, and the other thing that helps generate within your practice is consistency, and what you want is consistency. You want a client not to have to worry about when they call or when their appointment is, or who they're seeing or who's picking up the phone, right?
And so the more you have those group exercises, The more you're going to see consistency in the type of customer service that you're providing. And that's going to come back to you tenfold as your clients can trust the whole practice. They don't only call Tuesdays at three when Sally's on the front desk because she always figures it out for them, right? That puts Sally in a tough spot. It puts everyone else in a tough spot. And when you present those things to your team, you know, it's easy to say, this is a problem I want us to fix, but. That doesn't always make everyone feel really excited about it. So instead of approaching it from a, Hey, we've implemented a lot of new technology, being a personalized service, and really being a part of this community is extremely important to all of us, and we've always done a really good job of it, and we want to make sure we maintain that while we're using these new technologies.
Let's practice or brainstorm some different ways that we can communicate using them to maintain that in our team because that's what we really value in all of you and we don't want to lose that. We don't want clients to lose that wonderful part of you. And so if you frame it in that positive way, it's going to get everybody so much more jazzed up and on board with going through with the exercise in the first place and then following through on whatever you come up with going forward.
Andy Roark: Yeah. Well, you're spot on. and, you know, it's, I think, you touched on, and we should put this back in headspace, but you, you touched on something I think is really important, Sarah, is like, we always have to be careful when we're trying to make changes of the old “beatings will continue until morale improves” approach, you know, and so if the clients are like I'm just not feeling it and you're like, all right, everybody's in trouble like that's the Antithetical to them creating the inviting fun We're all happy experience that you need to be successful here And so that whole don't go in say guys this isn't working the clients don't like us.
Like you're just making your job harder. Go in and say, guys, I'm really proud of you. And I love the work that we do here. And you guys are doing fantastic. And I want us to go the next level. I want us to really start to weave in this type of, you know, deep connection that I know that we all feel good about and we all enjoy and you can, celebrate them to success. You do not have to go in. And try to, you know, give them the stick instead of the carrot to get them moving in the right direction. That's just, it's really hard to negative, to use negative reinforcement to build the type of culture that we're talking about.
So I, anyway, I think you're spot on. Have you got anything else?
Sarah Wolff: I would just encourage this practice and any other practice in this spot to know that they're doing a great job and that they've got wonderful humans and they've just got to keep figuring out how to make that humanity shine through whatever communications they're using.
Andy Roark: Yeah, I, agree. I think I really, takeaways from this is remember to lean into your positive reinforcement and if we're not messing up, we have an opportunity to make people feel special. And now that we have figured out our efficiency in a much, in a really significant way, now we have the opportunity to go back and really make them feel that love and reconnect with them, which is what we want.
I think that's, I think that's really cool. I think I think owning the fact that we leaned in and we worked hard on efficiency and now we're going to lean back and work on customer experience while we maintain efficiency. I mean, that's really kind of what it's like kind of climbing a ladder is you got to put the left hand up and then you gotta put the right hand up, but you don't take the left hand back down.
And so it's the same thing. Efficiency and then experience and then efficiency and experience and you just can't you can't increase your efficiency while tinkering with the experience dial very well. We've all got to be intentional you choose what you're going to work on you work on it. You look around and you make some adjustments.
I think that they're in that normal healthy cycle And so that makes me really happy. Yeah, I think good training ideas. Yeah, I'm gonna have to sit. I'm gonna go away and sit and think about how do I make my text messaging feel like not just an automated text message?
You know what I mean? I think there's real opportunities there to get creative. It's almost like, it's the same muscles you use when you say, How do I write an exceptional thank you note? There's the same type of muscle. You know, it's like, I don't want it to–
Sarah Wolff: It is, and there's formulas. This isn't, there are formulas, there are lots of resources, and there's infinite room for creativity. Just like the rest of Vet Med, the sky is the limit here, you know? There are so many different ways that you can get creative with this, and just knock it out of the park.
Andy Roark: If you want to learn more about client experience, if you want to talk more with Sarah Wolff about what she does and about about things like this, come and check her out at the April uncharted conference. It's in Greenville, South Carolina. She's gonna be speaking there. I will be there as well.We'll be hanging out. Come and visit with us, Sarah. Thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate you.
Sarah Wolff: sThank you for having me, it's been a blast.
And that's what we got guys. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks to Dr. Sarah Wolff for being here. She's amazing. I really enjoyed having her on the podcast. Guys, take care of yourselves, everybody. Thanks again for being here. I'd love to see you in April.
