Veterinary medicine has reached the precipice of a fantastic turning point.  For years, the pet ownership market has been stagnant - stable through rough economic waters, but offering little quarter to rising numbers of veterinary graduates.

However, recent statistics show that there is much more than a glimmer at the end of the tunnel! We are beginning to see veterinary medicine emerge under blinding stadium lighting, ready for the primetime, all because of two demographic trends: the novel attitudes of Millennial pet owners, and the resiliency of baby boomers.  In this blog we will be focusing on the former.

Alright veterinarians, vet techs, practice managers, and pet health professionals of all sorts, are you ready for a mind-blowing statistic?  Take a seat for this one, it’s a doozy.

The average veterinary clinic is missing out on $123,000 of gross revenue due to inefficiencies in phone-based customer service.

We’re talking boatloads of annoyed or impatient folks giving up on attempts to contact your practice, not because the front desk is struggling, but because it’s just impossible to provide pet owners with the instantaneous gratification they expect - a sisyphean task even for the most experienced front desk administrators.

Just take a look at a few of the results from VitusVet’s recent calling study:

VitusVet has partnered with Pet Poison Helpline to implement a one-touch call button, and make their entire database of veterinary toxins available for free to app users, hoping that knowledge of poisons will help save pets’ lives.

Columbia, Maryland - VitusVet, a mobile app solutions provider, has partnered with Pet Poison Helpline, a 24/7 animal poison control center, to give pet owners and veterinary professionals access to potentially lifesaving information from an app on their mobile phones. Pet Poison Helpline has managed over one million cases since its inception over 12 years ago, and provides treatment advice for poisoning cases of all species, including dogs, cats, birds, small mammals, large animals, and exotic species. Both VitusVet and Pet Poison Helpline share the common goal to improve the health and well-being of pets, and the partnership will allow both companies to save even more lives in an innovative, and always accessible manner.

Customer churn is a well known concept in business, but it's an oft-ignored statistic in veterinary economics.  And it could be costing your practice revenue, big time!

For veterinary clinics, churn refers to whenever a customer chooses to no longer use your services for their pet.  Because this decision is often made without your practice management software's knowledge, your contacts database could be hemorrhaging clients and you'd have no idea the extent of the bleeding!  

Measuring your clinic’s customer churn rate will allow you to determine the number of lost customers in a time period, help identify if you have a client retention problem, and also gauge the effectiveness of any changes you make.

Two years ago marked a dramatic turning point in the continued evolution of the web: the smartphone dethroned the desktop as king of connected devices.  More than 80% of internet users own a smartphone and the usage gap will only continue to widen.

What does this have to do with veterinary medicine?  Our profession has always maintained a healthy scientific skepticism, and sometimes this translates into a reluctance to embrace newer technologies.  Thus, we have become the sad beneficiaries of the pet portal, a revolutionary solution only for denizens of the early 2000s.

Depending on the platform, ”pet portals” allow owners to view veterinary records, make appointments, request medications or food, print vaccination histories, read clinic news, and other assorted functions.  Sounds okay, right?  Not in a world dominated by smartphones!