Meet the Team Mondays – Steve Caddy: Operations Manager

Vets Answering Service Meet the Team

Meet the Team Mondays – Steve Caddy: Operations Manager

Name 

Steve Caddy

Role 

Operations Manager

How long have you worked at Kernow?

Over 22 years.

What do you like about working at Kernow? 

Mainly working with the team!

What’s your favourite quote?  

You never see an old man eating a Twix. – Karl Pilkington

If you could remove one food from the planet, what would it be? And why?

Beans!! I seem to have a weird phobia of them.

Your guilty pleasure song?

I can’t think of one…..maybe my humps!

Do you have any pets?

We have inherited a weird dog called Buddy. He’s a jack russel cross pug, and he’s a strange-looking thing!

What would you take with you to a desert Island?

A yacht so I can sail away when I’m ready.

Top 5 people, alive or dead, you would invite to a dinner party? 

Tom Hardy, Karl Pilkington, Ricky Gervais, Steven Merchant, and Bill Bailey

If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Pizza

What’s the best thing that has happened to you so far this week?

It’s Monday, so not much has happened this week I did through a phone stress ball at my colleague, and it bounced right off the top of her head.

What are your 15 minutes of fame?

I once went to a gig at a small venue on Halloween dressed as a banana, and every band dedicated their set to me.

Unleash the Full Potential of Your Answering Service!

Unleash the Full Potential of Your Answering Service!

A dedicated veterinary answering service, like Kernow Vets Messaging, plays a vital role in the seamless operation of veterinary practices. Beyond simply answering calls, this service offers numerous advantages, such as improved customer service, efficient lead conversion, reduced staff stress levels, and much more. To ensure you make the most of Kernow Vets’ dedicated messaging service, here are our top tips: 

  1. Keep us Informed:  

Keeping our dedicated messaging team updated about any changes in your veterinary practice is crucial. By sharing essential business updates, staff changes, or alterations to internal procedures, we can provide you and your clients with the high-quality service you deserve. This ensures that messages are relayed accurately and promptly to the relevant departments or individuals. Regularly reviewing and updating procedures, especially for emergency callouts or specific medical practices, can further enhance the effectiveness of our service. 

  1. Put Our Service to the Test:  

To gauge the effectiveness of our dedicated messaging service, we encourage you to mystery shop our service by calling your own veterinary practice. This firsthand experience allows you to assess how we handle calls and interact with your clients. It also provides valuable insights into our processes, enabling you to identify areas for improvement. If you discover any aspects that could be enhanced, please inform us, and our team will collaborate with you to design call procedures tailored to your specific needs and those of your valued clients. 

  1. Work with Our Team:  

Whether you are new to utilizing a veterinary answering service or have recently switched providers, it takes time to fine-tune the service to align with your practice’s requirements perfectly. At Kernow Vets, we prioritize understanding your practice’s nuances and processes to provide the most effective support. The more we comprehend how your practice operates and what your clients expect, the better equipped we are to deliver exceptional service. 

  1. Embrace Change:  

Businesses are ever-evolving, and as your veterinary practice grows and changes, your telephone protocols may need to be updated accordingly. Do not hesitate to modify your protocols when you feel they no longer serve your needs optimally. Our dedicated messaging team is here to assist your practice, so reach out to us, share your objectives, and benefit from our wealth of experience. We can offer valuable feedback on what works well and suggest improvements to streamline your communication processes. 

  1. Involve Your Internal Team:  

When introducing an external veterinary answering service, the entire team at your practice can benefit in various ways. By involving every department and team member in the decision-making process, especially during the creation of protocols, you ensure that everyone reaps the maximum advantages of the service. Different individuals within your practice may have unique requirements and insights, so their involvement will help effectively shape your telephone answering protocols’ setup. 

  1. Respond to Messages:  

Ensure that you promptly receive messages from our dedicated messaging team and that they reach the intended recipient with all the necessary information. By replying to messages, you confirm receipt and have an opportunity to provide feedback if anything was missed. Quick responses allow our team to handle crucial customer messages, saving your staff time during busy periods and ensuring rapid resolutions for client issues. 

  1. Seek Advice from Our Team:  

Our dedicated messaging team has extensive experience working with a wide range of veterinary practices. By sharing your goals and providing insights into how your practice operates, we can offer valuable advice based on successful protocols implemented for similar practices. This guidance can help your veterinary practice thrive and achieve its goals. 

To learn more about Kernow Vets’ dedicated veterinary answering service, click here. If you would like to arrange a consultation to discuss how our service can benefit your practice, click here. 

How can Kernow Vets Messaging help you grow your vet practice?

As a veterinarian, you know that running a successful practice is about much more than just providing excellent medical care to your furry patients. It also involves creating a positive customer experience for their owners, and part of that experience is being available to answer their calls and inquiries. However, as your practice grows, so too does the volume of calls you receive, making it difficult to provide the level of customer service you want.

As a new vet practice, you may be planning how best to grow your practice, but you are probably struggling to allow enough spending to truly invest in your expansion. Growing a vet practice on a budget is hard work, and there is often risk associated with a drop in customer service levels.

If your expansion comes at the cost of service or customer experience, you may end up in a much worse position than you started in. Animal owners are unlikely to tolerate poor service for long and will likely look for an alternative vet. Currently, it almost certainly won’t take them long to find a new practice; many vet practices suffer from strong competition, particularly for small animal vets.

The importance of planning for your vet practice

To reduce the risks associated with expansion, you must ensure you have a well-prepared plan for your growth. This includes considering how you will facilitate the expansion.

Will your current premises be large enough for your planned growth?

How many new vets might you need to hire?

Will you need to invest in new equipment or systems?

How will you ensure the quality of service remains the same?

Will you need to hire new administrative employees?

Once you have considered what you will need to facilitate the expansion, you will have to consider the growth’s cost. How will you fund all these new investments in your vet practice?

One way to reduce the risks is to expand on a budget, but this requires careful planning to ensure you maintain service, reach your goals, stay competitive and remain on budget.

How to expand your vet practice on a budget?

One lower-cost option for expansion is to increase the opening hours for appointments. This allows you to welcome new customers who might not otherwise have been able to access your service. But it is also fairly low cost, as you don’t have to purchase additional equipment or expand your premises.

This could include opening late on specific days or offering Saturday appointments. Pet owners working full-time are likely to be particularly grateful for this service, and you may be able to target them directly in your marketing to tap into a new customer base. This is particularly effective if your local competition is not open during these times.

The most significant increase in costs for this form of expansion is wages. You will need to consider if you can ask your current veterinary staff to work additional hours or if you will need to hire new vets and/or vet nurses.

You will also need to consider the level of service you offer to your customers and whether you will need additional administrative staff. This is where Kernow Vets Messaging can help.

How can Kernow Vets Messaging reduce the cost of your vet practice expansion?

Rather than hiring internal administrative employees to answer phones outside of regular working hours, you can outsource your call handling to us. We can put processes in place to support the growth of your practice. We can provide call answering and customer handling within set hours when you may wish to avoid having in-house administrative employees, such as during unfavourable hours or weekends.

Or we can take over all the call handling for your vet practice day and night. In this way, you can reduce your spending on administrative staff and focus that extra budget on investing in your expansion.

We can remove the stress of customer services and call answering, giving your veterinary team the space to focus on their core roles as medical professionals.

We can also offer out-of-hours call handling to facilitate emergency vet call-outs. Many smaller vet practices have stopped offering this, so it could provide an ideal competitive advantage over the other vet practices in your area.

To learn more, check out this blog or contact us to discover how we can help.

How can we support your lone workers and ensure you have a safe lone worker policy?

veterinary lone worker

How can we support your lone workers and ensure you have a safe lone worker policy?

As a vet practice, there are often times you may have employees working alone. This could be an employee travelling to treat animals alone during an emergency, or this could be an employee working alone overnight at a practice with sick animals. Whatever the reason, all vet practices need to have a safe and well-prepared lone-worker policy that supports and protects their employees and their practice.

The dangers of vets lone working

When vets are working alone, there can be additional risks to both them and the animals they are treating. Common risk factors for lone working vets include fatigue, stress, and physical injury. Vets who are suffering from fatigue are more likely to make mistakes as tiredness can lead to errors of judgement, such as missing key information during a diagnosis or misjudging the risk of injury when handling large animals. Fatigue also poses a specific risk to vets who are travelling to visit animals, as high levels of fatigue impact road safety and driving awareness. In addition, there is also the risk of cross-contamination, as vets often move between different animal species and facilities.

Stress can be caused by workload, shift patterns, or external factors such as personal concerns. Stress can lead to burnout, which can make a vet more susceptible to accidents and injury. When vets regularly have to operate as lone workers, signs of stress can be missed, which increases the risk of it leading to other dangers.

Physical injury is a real concern for many vets, even when working with others. However, the risk of physical injury is significantly increased when working alone and away from the vet practice. This is due to the increased need for self-reliance and the potential for less-than-ideal control options for large animals. For example, when treating horses in an owner’s yard, there may not be the option to put the horse in cross ties, a stock stall, or similar. This increases the risk of the horse being able to injure the vet.

The highest risk time is during emergency out-of-hours visits. Emergency calls are often late at night, which increases the risk of the vet suffering from fatigue, while also increasing the risk of driving due to nighttime road conditions. The vet is also more likely to be travelling to the animal’s location, which carries its own risks.

To ensure safety, it is important for vets to take regular breaks, use appropriate protective equipment, and have a buddy system in place in case of an emergency.

Keeping lone working veterinarians safe


Keeping lone working veterinarians safe is a priority, both from a business standpoint and on a personal responsibility front. To ensure their safety, it is important to ensure that they are properly trained on safety protocols, have access to emergency contacts, and are aware of the potential dangers of their work environment.

Additionally, providing lone working veterinarians with personal protective equipment, such as high-visibility clothing, can help improve their visibility and safety. It is also important to ensure that lone working veterinarians are regularly checking in with their managers before, during, and after their shifts, and that they have access to a dedicated emergency contact in the event of an emergency.

Finally, offering lone-working veterinarians access to mental health support and resources can help them to stay safe and healthy.

Lone working for farm vets

Farm vets are at particularly high risk when working alone. Firstly, they are more likely to be lone working due to the nature of their role. But they are also more likely to be travelling to an animal at their location, which increases the risk of driving concerns, isolation, poor communication and poor infrastructure.

Working alone as a farm vet can be a difficult and dangerous job, as you are often dealing with large animals in unfamiliar environments. To ensure your safety and the safety of the animals, it is important to take the correct precautions. Have a plan in place if something were to go wrong, such as a first-aid kit, a way to contact someone in case of an emergency, and a method of defending yourself if needed.

Additionally, be sure to take regular breaks to stay alert and refreshed, and don’t be afraid to ask for help when needed. With the right preparation and mindset, you can work safely and confidently as a farm vet.

Lone-worker services from Kernow:

At Kernow vets messaging, we offer two main lone-worker services to help keep your vets safe. Our lone-worker protocols are designed to ensure that should the worst happen, we can get help to your vets as soon as possible and ensure their safety, regardless of location, time of day or the concern.

We have several different ways for you to monitor the whereabouts and well-being of your staff, including:

Call check-in service

In this option, your staff member checks in with us by calling at the start and the end of a job, trip, or shift. We then have escalation policies that will be followed accordingly if the check-in call is not received. The escalation process will depend on your specific requirements as a vet practice, but we are happy to offer advice and guidance when deciding on that process. For many clients, the process includes elements such as attempting to contact the lone worker, then informing a manager, and/or monitoring the location of the vet through tracking software in the vehicle.

Hourly check services

If safety is a regular concern, and your vets are working in a higher-risk setting, we have an hourly check-in service. Your staff member can call our dedicated line at pre-arranged times to check in. As mentioned above, we then have escalation policies to follow if check calls are missed.

How to manage sensitive end-of-life calls with pet owners      

How to manage sensitive end-of-life calls with pet owners

Almost certainly, one of the worst parts of being a vet is having to inform owners when you are unable to save their beloved pet.

Often the initial conversation needs to be had over the phone, either because the pet is at home and needs to be seen immediately to ease their suffering or because the pet may have been at the vets and the owners at home awaiting news.

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Five ways your clients benefit from a vet’s answering service

Five ways your clients benefit from a vet’s answering service

There are lots of benefits to using a vet’s answering service: there are staff benefits, there are business benefits, and there are benefits to your customers. Here are a few ways to use a dedicated vet’s answering service to benefit your customers.

1.     A vet’s answering service can improve customer retention

One of the most common reasons for a pet owner to move vets is due to concerns over customer service and their experience with emergency calls. If a pet owner is unable to get through to your practice when they are genuinely concerned for their pet’s wellbeing, they are likely to try calling other local vets. If this happens, they are highly likely to move to whichever vet practice they feel can provide them with that quick service.

A vet’s answering service ensures your practice never misses a call and quickly answers calls. Customers will value this efficient and reliable service, which improves their satisfaction levels, making them far less likely to go looking for another vet practice.

2.     Your customer care can be improved by using our service

Having a dedicated vet’s messaging service means your customers never have to be rerouted to another vet practice, which ensures that you can provide the best possible customer care. Depending on how you choose to set up your answering service with us, we could operate as an extension of your reception team. This means we can reassure and care for customers exactly as suits their needs. As such, we can provide a personal service that improves customer satisfaction.

We can also provide a buffer between the vets, and the customers, which is useful when dealing with non-emergency enquires that the customers see as a more significant issue than it truly is. At the end of the day, vets are there to care for the animals, but we can be there to care for their owners.

3.     Reduce customer stress over automation

When you are worried about your pet, you are unlikely to be calm and controlled. This can mean shouting at an automated call service desperately trying to get through to a real person. Automated calls can work well for some businesses, but for vet practices, they are unlikely to win you any customers.

Using our vet’s answering service, your customers get straight through to a real person who can listen to their situation and help calm them while getting through to the appropriate vet. By providing this calm customer handling process, we can reduce customers’ stress levels and ensure we have collected all the relevant information for the vets so they can deal with the situation as efficiently as possible.

4.     Provide a 24-hour answering service with a vet’s answering service

One of pet owners’ biggest concerns is ensuring they can get hold of their vet practice in an emergency. Emergencies inevitably occur outside of normal hours, whether on Sundays at 6 am or Wednesdays at 1 am. Customers want to know they can contact their vet practice whenever they need to. By using a vet answering service, you can provide 24-hour phone cover, so you never miss a call, and your customers can always get hold of their vet during an emergency.

Outsourcing this 24-hour call cover to us also allows you to reduce the need for reception staff outside of normal hours. Additionally, it improves how emergency calls are dealt with by providing a buffer between the on-call vet and the customer, giving the vet thinking time to wake up and evaluate the situation before speaking to the customer directly.

5.  Improve customer–vet communication by using our service

Let’s be honest; most vets didn’t become vets to speak to customers; they became vets because they love animals. In fact, I would argue that most vets became vets rather than doctors because they prefer animals to people. Unfortunately for most vets, that is, unless you are some sort of wildlife vet, most animals have an owner attached to them. This means being a vet involves almost as much people management as animal management.

Vets aren’t always the best at dealing with customers. This might be because they disagree with the owner’s animal husbandry choices, or they might find the person an added stress to an already difficult situation, or maybe they just aren’t a people person.

Having a vet’s answering service allows your vets to do what they are good at – treating the animals      – while we deal with the stuff we are good at – managing the people. We can offer that buffer between the customers and the vets to help the vets but also ensure better communication between vets and customers. We can ensure all the appropriate information is collected and transmitted in such a way that both parties understand. Whether that is filtering out unhelpful information when talking to a customer about an emergency or passing on information from the vet to the customer.

Get in touch with the team to learn more about our service. 

How Kernow Vets Messaging can help your practice with recruitment and retention.

How Kernow Vets Messaging can help your practice with recruitment and retention

A recent report by RCVS into the trends within the veterinary workforce highlighted the ongoing issue of staff shortages. Workforce shortages are not a new issue for the UK veterinary profession, but there have been increasing pressures caused by the combination of the Covid pandemic and Brexit. The number of EU vets working in the UK has decreased, while the increase in animal ownership following the pandemic has increased, compounding the problem.

The report highlighted that 80% of vets have seen an increase in workload, with 65% saying this has caused conflict between their work life and personal well-being. These stats not only highlight the issue of staff recruitment that the veterinary industry is facing but also show the impact of this on the stress level within the sector, leading to increased retention issues.

At Kernow Vets Messaging, we offer three services that can help vet practices to reduce the impact of some of these factors. In today’s blog, we are going to look at how we do that.

How does our out-of-hours service improve your staff recruitment and retention?

Our out-of-hours service means no more passing around the shared out-of-hours mobile. We can take and filter calls, so your vets only need to be disturbed for truly important out-of-hours calls. We can filter those annoying, unnecessary calls that often plague the emergency line. This gives your vets the chance to have better rest when on call and reduces the impact of out-of-hours calls on their work-life balance.

The benefit of using an outsourced emergency practice for your out-of-hours care is that you don’t have to provide veterinary staff to cover from your own practice. If you are a small practice, this is particularly useful as there may not be enough vets to cover out-of-hours care without overworking all the vets.

We collect all the relevant information and then contact the vet covering the night shift directly to discuss the information. This gives the vet a chance to wake up and prepare themselves before dealing with the emergency client. This improves customer service and reduces the stress placed on the vet.

Many practices are giving up their out-of-hours work, either to another practice or a dedicated emergency vet. Only 51% of vets now provide their own out-of-hours cover. But this can cause added stress for your customers as they would be dealing with an unfamiliar practice and may have to travel to a different location to take their pets into the vet. But when we provide OOH cover, we work as an extension of your vet practice, and the customer never needs to know we are not based at your location. This can reassure the customer and mean that your vet experiences a less stressed customer once they reach them. You can read more about how our out-of-hours service can help your practice here.

How does our lone-worker service improve your staff recruitment and retention?

Often vets work alone in challenging circumstances. This is particularly true of equine and farm vets, who attend animals in isolated locations at all hours of day and night. The RCVS report found that vets who had experienced concerns for their personal safety were over twice as likely to plan to leave a practice than those who hadn’t had concerns.

By ensuring that your practice has clear procedures to protect and support lone working vets, you can significantly improve your staff retention as vets feel safe working for the practice. Additionally, it can be seen as a recruiting benefit for those vets who have left another practice due to concerns over their safety.

Our lone-worker service helps ensure your vets are safe and means they can get help easily should the worst happen. We can offer both check-in services and routine calls, so that the lone working vet can confirm they are safe or, if this is not done, we can escalate the concern and get them help should they need it. For vets who are working in potentially hazardous situations, this can be a lifeline. Whether the hazard is dangerous road or weather conditions or concerns regarding the potential risk of working with large animals, we are here to help.

As the number of female vets increases, particularly in the equine and farm sectors, this is increasingly important as female vets may be more vulnerable when dealing with out-of-hours calls at night in isolated locations.

How does our overflow service improve your staff recruitment and retention?

If you run a small practice or one that doesn’t have a dedicated office team, you may find it is your vet staff who are having to answer customer calls. This can be a huge distraction while working with other clients, which not only adds stress to the vet but also reduces the level of service the customers receive. An overflow line allows us to ensure all your calls are answered promptly without taking your veterinary staff away from more critical tasks.

Workplace stress can also be caused by customers: when customers call the vets, they are often worried about their animal and as such can be irate and difficult to manage. This can add to the stresses of the vets and lead to an uncomfortable working environment. By providing a barrier between the vets and the customers, we calm the customer before passing them to a vet and/or give the vet some thinking time before they have to speak directly with the customer.

We can also provide a priority scale where we can feed back to the vets which enquires are more urgent, so they can tackle these first rather than reactively responding to enquires in the order they come in. This triaging approach makes it easier for vets to deal with busy, high-stress periods.

Get in touch with the team to learn more about our service. 

Meet the Team Mondays – Toby Whiteford: Operations Manager

Veterinary answering service, meet the team.

Meet the Team Mondays – Toby Whiteford: Operations Manager

Name 

Toby Whiteford

Role 

Operations Manager

How long have you worked at Kernow?

6 + years, maybe? It’s all a blur.

What do you like about working at Kernow? 

Flexible hours, a great team, and a relaxed environment.

What’s the most exciting part of your job?

Every day is different. I enjoy coaching the team and helping them to feel confident in their roles. I enjoy solving problems for customers and improving service where I can.

What do you want to be when you grow up? 

A public aquarium owner, but I need to win the lottery first.

Favourite Quote 

“I will do it dreckly”

If you could remove one food from the planet, what would it be? And why?

Mushrooms. I haven’t got ‘mush’ room for them…


What’s the best place you’ve travelled to?

South Africa

What’s your secret party trick? 

Sucking up a crème caramel off a plate in one…

Your guilty pleasure song?

Any Disney film song!

Do you have any pets?

An elderly dog, two ragdoll cats and a reef tank.

Have you ever met anyone famous?

I met the late Queen Elizabeth II at Truro cathedral when I was in primary school.

What would you take with you to a desert Island?

My phone.

Top 5 people, alive or dead, you would invite to a dinner party? 

Sir David Attenborough,
Steve Irwin,
Jeremy Wade,
Bear Grylls,
Gordon Ramsey

If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Full English breakfast.

What’s the best thing that has happened to you so far this week?

Saw my unborn baby girl on a 4d scan.

What job would you be terrible at?

Any type of manual work.

What’s a topic you wish you knew more about?

Anything building related. I wish I could make/fix more things.

What is your favourite film?

Hot Fuzz

Meet the Team Mondays – Rudi Grenfell: Business Manager

Meet the Team Mondays – Rudi Grenfell: Business Manager

Name 

Rudi Grenfell

Role 

Business Manager

How long have you worked at Kernow

5 years

What do you like about working at Kernow? 

Without a doubt, the team

What do you want to be when you grow up? 

Wiser

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?

I love to do DIY.

Do you have any pets?

2 Springer Spaniels, Delilah and Guinness

Have you ever met anyone famous?

Jack Nowell, English Rugby Player who comes from Newlyn, it was an honour.

If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

It would have to be Chicken curry.

What’s the best thing that has happened to you so far this week?

I’ve woken up every day.

10 reasons your vet practice needs a telephone answering service.

Why would you use a telephone answering service for your veterinary practice?

As a vet practice, you are never truly off the clock: animals can and will become unwell or be injured at all hours of day or night. So, what happens at your practice when an owner needs to contact you in the middle of the night? A telephone answering service could be the ideal solution.

We have compiled 10 ways our telephone answering service can help your veterinary practice based on honest feedback from our client base of over 400 vet practices nationwide.

1.     Improve your customer service

When your customers call the vet practice, it is often because they are deeply concerned about their animal. This is especially true if they make an out-of-hours call; no one likes to call their vet out of hours unless it’s a real emergency – at least in their mind, it is an emergency.

Customers are likely to be stressed, so having an experienced call-handling team means we can calm customers and provide a supportive and polite service that is sympathetic. This helps customers feel reassured, allowing us to obtain all the relevant information to pass to your veterinary team as required.

Our clients say this helps their customers to feel at ease and has improved their customer service levels. We also ensure that vets get the right information and have a chance to make a plan before speaking directly with the customer. One client referred to this as the ‘’thinking gap’’ which has been invaluable for their team. Customers feel more confident when they speak to the vet, as the vet has had a chance to formulate a plan and prepare for the situation.

A telephone answering service also stops vets from having to answer customer calls while in consultations, which further improves customer service. Nobody likes to feel that their vet is distracted by other calls or patients.

2.     Daily reporting for customer billing

We are proud of the systems we have created and how they support our veterinary clients. One of the benefits of working with us is we can provide daily reporting on calls that allows you to ensure that customer billing is actioned swiftly and accurately.

3.     Protecting your vet’s work-life balance

Being a successful vet practice relies on having a robust out-of-hours answering process. For years, many small practices have relied on vets being on call with a mobile next to them all night. But this lack of sleep can have a negative effect on vets and create an unstable work–life balance.

Let’s be honest, most vets probably don’t have the best work-life balance, but the stresses of being a vet can take a significant toll on a person, with many vets commenting on experiencing issues around work-life balance, exhaustion and work stress.

Having a telephone answering service can help reduce the impact of out-of-hours calls on vets, which can improve their work-life balance and reduce their stress levels. Using our service means our clients no longer need to use a shared out-of-hours mobile or have a member of the veterinary team based at the practice out of hours to cover calls.

Instead, our team is provided with clear procedures from our clients on how to contact a vet out of hours. This can be done by call or text, as you prefer, which helps ensure the vet has the correct information on hand and gives them a chance to get going in the middle of the night.

4.     Never miss a call from your customers

When customers are calling you out of hours, they are likely to be worried and may become very stressed if calls are not answered in a timely manner. As a veterinary practice, a customer not being able to get through could have a hugely detrimental impact, not only on your customer service but also on the animal’s welfare. By having a telephone answering service, you can ensure a call is never missed.

As well as an out-of-hours service, we can provide a call overflow service for busy periods to ensure every call is answered. We answer all calls quickly, within 6 seconds on average, and with a personalised response acting as your practice, so your customers never need to know your calls are outsourced.  

5.     A telephone answering service can filter unnecessary calls 

Although most people who call a vet, especially out of hours, believe they are experiencing a veterinary emergency, this is not always the case.

Sometimes, customers call not realising it’s out of hours and just want to know when you open, and 4 am seems a great time for them to call you to find out.

Sometimes, customers call thinking something is an emergency, but it turns out to not be urgent or only requires a phone call from a vet rather than a full visit.

A telephone answering service is a barrier between the customers and your veterinary team. This helps to sift out unnecessary calls and allows the vet team to prioritise different out-of-hour calls as appropriate.

One of our clients also recently commented that it allows vets to have a chance to wake themselves up properly before dealing with the client. This helped them to make better-triaging decisions depending on the severity of the situation.

If you are a mixed practice, customers may call the wrong line accidentally. By using a telephone answering service, we can ensure that the customer calls the correct line or department and redirect the call if required.

6.     Using our telephone answering service helps you to reduce costs

Using our telephone answering service means our clients don’t need to employ staff to cover out-of-hours phones. This reduces their overheads and can improve staff retention, as employees may prefer not to work overnight or late in the evening to cover calls.

Many of our clients now do not keep employees at their practice overnight, with the on-call team simply coming in as necessary.

7.     If your vets are working in poor reception areas, calls still get answered

Farm and equine vets often end up working in areas with very poor reception. This can make handling calls particularly difficult. But by using our telephone answering service, customers always get through to someone who can handle their call and then communicate with the veterinary team as needed.

Many of our clients would struggle to answer calls reliably due to the poor reception in the area or when they are busy dealing with a horse or large farm animal.

8.     Keep lone workers safe

We also have lone worker service, which clients use to protect their veterinary team when working alone in potentially hazardous situations. We can monitor and check in on lone workers to ensure they are safe and give you better piece of mind.

9.     Robust escalations for your veterinary practice

When taking on a new veterinary practice client, we take the time to understand your working processes and ensure we create a robust set of procedures and escalation processes to ensure your customers always get the help they need.

For many of our clients, this involves taking details of the customer and the situation before passing it on to the duty vet. This typically includes the name, address, contact number, and an overview of the situation. This can be provided by phone, text, or both, as preferred by the vet practice. But we can create a bespoke set of processes specifically for your practice.

This is what one client had to say: “Your staff filtering the calls using the agreed call-flow menu helps reduce the number of non-urgent or routine calls that would take up valuable time of the clinical out-of-hours teams trying to prioritise inpatients and urgent referrals only.”

10. Dedicated veterinary telephone answering service 

As a dedicated service for veterinary practices, we have expert knowledge of your industry that allows us to provide a higher level of support and customer service than an average telephone answering service. Our team is well versed in veterinary call management, and as a business, we have over 30 years of experience in the industry.

Our industry knowledge allows us to help prioritise and manage calls based on your escalation processes.

Get in touch with the team to learn more about our service.