Creating the “Easy” Experience for Clients Brian Conrad, CVPM Meadow Hills Veterinary Center Kennewick, WA

Creating the “Easy” Experience for Clients Brian Conrad, CVPM Meadow Hills Veterinary Center Kennewick, WA Year after year we sit and preach to our staff about offering WOW Service and instill into them that they must exceed client expectations every week, every day, at every appointment….How are we doing? I will guarantee we are not doing as well as we think we are. Have you ever taken a moment to consider what it is you are asking them? You tell them: “Go Exceed Expectations”. What in the hell does that mean? First off, do we know what the client expectations are? For a few that can answer that honestly as Yes, then tell me how does the client perceive if the client expectation has been exceeded? If we as the management and leadership team struggle to define this, imagine our poor receptionist who hears time and time again to go exceed expectations. After all, his/her next pay raise could be counting on it. While I am playing devil’s advocate slightly and yes, I truly do believe in incredible client service and exceeding expectations but I have found over the years it is very subjective. We have focused at Meadow Hills Veterinary Center where I manager on “Making it EASY” for the client. If you tell your staff to make it EASY to do business with your clients than they have a much better understanding of their role. After all, we can list out all kinds of ways to make life easy for our clients and their pets. See the difference? In 2010, The Harvard Business Review published results from a study they conducted using over 75,000 consumers to learn more about exceeding expectations vs. making business easy on customers. The first intriguing fact was 84% of those surveyed indicated their expectations had not been met in one of their most recent service interactions. 2 Critical factors came from the study that suggests Delighting Customers does not build loyalty but reducing their effort does. Interesting. So the first finding indicates that if we do more of the work for the client there is a higher probability of them sticking around for next year’s services. Finding number 2 stated Acting deliberately on this insight can help improve service reduce customer service costs, and decrease customer agitation and defection. So in essence, if we have our team members in our veterinary clinics make it easy on our clients such as reminding them 7 days before they are about to run out of a long term medication for their pet than they are going to be much more loyal and the probability of them staying with our clinic is high. Let’s put this in terms we can relate to. Weight loss is a fairly easy concept to understand. If input of calories is less than output of energy in calories (i.e. burn off of calories) then you will lose weight. Obviously the opposite is true with weight gain. If we know this easy equation of eating and exercising a healthy lifestyle, then why is it Americans will spend some 35 billion dollars on weight loss products, pills, powders, additives etc. Why? Because it seems so much easier to take a magical pill than be good about what you eat and hit the gym. Kodak makes incredible cameras yet they are in bankruptcy. We don’t use these incredible camera but instead take the majority of our pictures with our smart phones because it is so convenient and easy. With a touch of a screen we are posting them on social media and texting them to family and friends. We are willing to give up some quality for ease. Relate this back to your veterinary hospital. Are there systems and processes that place too much work on our clients? Are there ways to cut down on the amount of effort which is placed on the client? During a recent lecture on phone call systems in the veterinary office, participants identified clients calling to get updates as one of the top 5 reasons the phone rings. With a focus to lower the effort and anticipate the client’s needs for continual updates, imagine if we texted them as the patient headed into surgery, another text as they exited, and another as the patient woke up safely from anesthesia. This just removed 3 times the client has to attempt to call in to see how their baby is doing from a simple spay or neuter procedure. Don’t assume you are doing all of the work. Ask the client in a survey using a “Customer Effort Score (CES). This is generally expressed on a scale of 1-5. One indicating very little effort was put forth by the client and a five indicating the client felt they had to do more than expected. The question would read: “On a scale of 1-5 how much effort did you have to put forth to have you and your pet’s needs and requests taken care of?” You of course would define what the scale of 1-5 indicating for the answering client. Very interesting information. In fact, a client who gives Meadow Hills Veterinary Centers where I manage a score of 3-5, I am immediately on the phone with them to find out where we went wrong. Take the time to learn more about your clients’ needs and wants. This activity can be a real eye opener. Make sure you are constantly sharing the results with the staff and making changes as necessary. Still not convinced? The study continued on and found of the consumers that indicated effort was low on their part, 94% indicated they would be back for re-purchase of services or products. 88% indicated they would increase their spending. Only 1% noted they would speak negatively about the company. Of the clients that noted a high effort score, 81% said they would speak negatively about the company. Let’s look at a couple of examples of companies in the United States that have put this into action. Chrysler sent a development team to the parking lots of grocery stores across the country. What they found is mom or dad coming out in the middle of the day with kids and arms full of groceries fumbling for the resemblance of the van keys and having a difficult time getting into the car. In came the invention of the auto-slider door on the min-van in efforts of eliminating effort. A big success for the families. 553 Lowes Home Improvement store launched “My Lowes” a web-based platform which organizes all of your personal preferences for your home and garden projects. It will keep track of the paint colors for each room of the house, specific annual plants and quantities you use for your garden each year and even remind you to purchase and replace your air filter. In other words, they are doing the work for you to keep your home maintenance organized. It’s working for them too in the way of re-purchase revenues. In 2012, a report was release on grocery store trends. One of the indicators which was measured was the reason a grocery store is selected. 3 out of the top 5 reasons were for reducing effort on the consumer with convenient location, simple to shop, and easy in and out access. It is another indicator this paradigm shift for our veterinary hospitals is real and much needed for us to continue to find success with our clientele. I encourage you to sit down with your staff and make a list of the reasons clients come into your doors. Exams, prescription refills, surgery, dentals, diagnostics, retail purchases, boarding, grooming etc. Make a road map of each reason and steps that have to be taken and list out ways your team can take on more of the effort for the client. Start to survey the Customer Effort Score and make sure the changes are being noticed and recognized by your clients. If they are not, then you need to go back to the drawing board and evaluate where the team is missing the effort connection. Taking a proactive approach will end result in a happier, more loyal, and more profitable clientele. 554 Make Your Next Team Meeting Work Brian Conrad, CVPM Meadow Hills Veterinary Center Kennewick, WA At one point or another each of us discussed the possibility of holding a staff meeting to get everyone together to solve the day to day problems the clinic is currently facing. It seems like a good idea but when I do talk with hospital owners and managers I generally hear the following about their staff meetings: We don’t have the time, we can’t get the staff to attend, they just turn into complaint sessions, or they are so expensive. I agree, with these thoughts I wouldn’t want to have meetings either. In fact, five or six years ago we had similar sentiments about our staff meetings at Meadow Hills Animal Hospitals in Kennewick, WA where I manage. I can remember a meeting that was so dull, boring and unproductive I was ready to give up in the idea of having meetings all together. I am so happy we pushed through those difficult times and now have excellent staff meetings each month. If some of the descriptions above sound like your team meetings it might be time to reevaluate and make some changes. Before we are able to jazz up our meetings we needed to offer some additional structure I like to refer to the who, what, where, and when.

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