September 23, 2025 • 31 mins
The digital revolution is transforming veterinary medicine, and nowhere is this more evident than in how practices handle scheduling and client communication. In this illuminating conversation, Bill Butler welcomes Joe Chickerillo from ChckVet to explore how automated scheduling systems are revolutionizing front desk operations and boosting practice performance.
Drawing from his successful background in dental technology, Joe shares compelling insights about the parallels between human healthcare and veterinary medicine when it comes to client expectations and operational efficiency. The numbers speak volumes: 51% of pet owners prefer scheduling appointments online, 59% of millennials would switch practices for better online access, and 38% of appointments are scheduled after hours when traditional phone systems aren't available.
Beyond just convenience, the conversation reveals how integrated scheduling and communication systems directly impact practice revenue and client retention. One practice collected $3,000 in accounts receivable over a single weekend using CheckVet's daily huddle feature, while others have seen dramatic increases in appointment bookings through targeted communication campaigns. We explore how customizable scheduling rules can accommodate even the most complex practice needs while saving front desk staff the average 8.1 minutes spent on each phone booking.
Perhaps most fascinating is the discussion about how independent practices can leverage their agility to implement these technologies faster than corporate consolidators, creating a competitive advantage in an increasingly challenging marketplace. Whether you're considering your first online booking system or looking to upgrade your current client communication tools, this episode offers practical guidance for practices of all sizes to enhance efficiency, improve client experience, and ultimately deliver better care.
Ready to transform your practice operations? Listen now to discover how the right technology can help you work smarter, not harder.
Host Information
Bill Butler – Contact Information
Direct – 952-208-7220
https://butlervetinsurance.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/billbutler-cic/
Schedule a Strategy Session with Bill – Strategy Session
Podcast Sponsored By:
Butler Vet Insurance: We wrote the Book on Veterinary Insurance
Running a successful veterinary practice comes with its challenges. At Butler Vet Insurance, we specialize in simplifying insurance for professionals like you.
"Protecting Your Veterinary Practice": Your Guide to Stress-Free Insurance
Insurance-related stress: Order Your Copy Now
Why Choose Butler Vet Insurance?
We specialize in risk management tailored for veterinarians, addressing unique challenges!
Butler Vet Insurance – Your Trusted Insurance Partner for Veterinary Practices.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to today's episode of the Veterinary
Blueprints podcast.
I am your host, bill Butler,and today I am joined by Joe
Ciccarello, my good buddy fromChicago.
Joe and his team are helpingpractices reduce no-shows,
increase bookings and deliver asmoother experience for both
teams and clients.
So if you're a solo vet orrunning a multi-location
hospital, joe is going to bringyou some actionable insights
(00:30):
into streamlining your frontdesk workflow and driving better
client engagement.
Welcome to the podcast, joe.
We have had the opportunity tohang out at some national events
here in the last year or so,having a good time out in Las
Vegas out on the strip andgetting to know you a little bit
better and what you do forveterinary practices, and I
thought you know.
We connected and said, hey,let's have you on the podcast.
(00:52):
So welcome.
Why don't you give now?
I know you have a background indental for many years and a
couple of years over in animalhealth, so why don't you tell
our listeners, kind of, how youwound up at CheckVet and what
you do and what your passion istowards animals and how you
wound up there?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, absolutely Appreciate you.
Having me Background is reallyI've been in human dentistry for
close to 15 years and I've beenat several different
back-to-back startup companies.
All have been successful.
The one that was the most funand was arguably the most
successful was called LocalMed,which was funny because it
wasn't local nor was it medical.
It was dental and it was onlinescheduling and that's all it
(01:28):
was right.
And back in 2016, when they tookthat to market, it was the only
tool in the dental space thathad the ability to read and
write right into the practicemanagement software.
So you know, there was allthese major benefits.
It's like it brings in morerevenue, it makes the front desk
life easier, so dramaticallybetter, right.
Saves tons of time, makes for abetter client experience and
people are just looking for it,right.
(01:49):
So we were wildly successfulwith that and fast forward a few
years.
We took it from like 30providers in like early 2016 to
a little over 9,000 at the endof 2019.
We got bought by a largercompany that does practice
analytics.
They would do things like, asan example, if you were
diagnosed with needing a crownbut you never came in to get it.
Hey, here's some low-hangingfruit people you can reach out
to to get scheduled, missedrevenue, help with forward
(02:11):
booking and things like that.
So we had the tool to know whatto do, who we wanted to get
scheduled.
We had the scheduling tool, butthey now needed the kind of
methodology to get thatscheduling tool into the hands
of those people.
So they bought a third companythat does like the text and
email.
So fast forward a couple ofyears and the guy who originally
built that online booking tool,who had stayed in charge of the
(02:32):
product during those twoacquisitions, at some point got
connected with these guys atCheckVent, and it's through all
mutual connections from LSU,their alma mater.
When they basically they werealready trying to build
something kind of like that forthe veterinary space, this other
guy that had built it in thedental space, basically, was
connected with them.
It was like okay, I see whatyou're doing, here's how you do
this, here's the pitfalls toavoid.
(02:54):
And so now we got to streamlinethat same build, but putting
all three tools under one roofinstead of like daisy chaining
them together.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Sure, instead of three different components,
you've put it all under one roof.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Instead of three different dashboards, three
different logins, threedifferent systems, yeah, it's
all under one roof.
So, essentially, when they wereready to take it to market, I
got the phone call and it waskind of like hey, you remember
that thing that we were reallysuccessful with, that was really
fun to do and that everybodyloved us for how would you like
(03:25):
to do that with animal people?
And I was like absolutely let'sgo, you know, yeah, so that's
how I got into the vet bed spaceand I've just I've been in for
about two years and I absolutelylove veterinary.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, it's a it's a fun group of people and you know
, I think one of the things thatyou know I love about the
animal spaces is my clients.
Like, I really like workingwith my clients.
I was just on the phone earliertoday with a legacy client auto
repair shop, something my dadwe actually acquired as part of
an agency acquisition not myfavorite, not my favorite to
(03:52):
deal with.
So you know, I think justveterinarians are great people
across the board.
The people who help them aregreat people across the board.
So it makes it so much more fun.
Like we had a great Las Vegas.
We were down there for a weekbetween vet partners and VVC, so
like that makes it so muchbetter when you're.
So the pain points I mean youtalked about some of the things
(04:12):
that you that you identified lowhanging fruit, not being able
to capitalize on it, schedulingthat sort of thing, what you
know when you're talking with,with practices out there, and
and what you're seeing.
What are the biggest painpoints when it comes to
veterinary scheduling?
I mean I'm going to be honest,I get emails and texts about my
cat and they're like, oh, youneed to come in for your vaccine
.
I'm like, okay, sounds good,and then so what are the pain
(04:34):
points that your team's seeingas it relates to scheduling at
vet practices?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, there's a bunch and it kind of falls into two
buckets.
So there's either people thathave online booking or don't.
Right, if they have onlinebooking, the pain points tend to
be what we're using isn'tcustomizable enough or it's not
as automated as we would like it.
For instance, if you're using asoftware that can write the
appointment into your practicemanagement system but if it
can't create the new clientrecord, somebody still on the
(05:01):
front desk side has to take thatinformation and create a record
for it and attach it.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
So there's still manual process right, which is
just kind of laborious, right,it's just, it's like it's
laborious, it's, it's just, it'smore I don't know, hole digging
work.
It's, it's busy work, it's notgenerally producing revenue,
it's just checking a box to makesure you're doing half of the
process.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Exactly and, by the way, that's much better than not
having it Like that's betterthan zero percent of the process
.
But yeah, if it's not fullyautomated, then it's not saving
you as much time.
So typically, somebody that hasonline booking is looking for
it to be more automated, morecustomizable, more marketable.
The other side of things is themajority of practices don't
have any online booking, or whatthey do have is kind of more of
an appointment request system,and you know, there's just oh my
(05:45):
gosh, there's so many reasonsthat you, at this point, need to
adopt online booking.
I've got all these stats.
I'll just list a few off,because I've got them in a PDF
that we pass out and I've got itin front of me.
51% of pet owners prefer toschedule their appointments
online.
59% of millennials would switchpractices for better online
access.
So if you've got online booking, it's a competitive advantage.
(06:05):
38% of all appointments arescheduled after hours or on
weekends.
It takes an average of 8.1minutes to book somebody over
the phone, which is kind of likeyour other sort of option,
right?
And then 63% of those calls areplaced on hold at least one
time.
That's all my stats.
I'm done with it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
But essentially what it's doing is it's saving us ton
of time.
There's all this back and forth.
You send in an appointmentrequest.
You're essentially filling outa form on a website.
It sends an email to the officeand now it's up to them to
number one, recognize thatthey've gotten an email.
Have the time to make thatphone call?
Are you available for thatphone call in that moment?
Probably not.
Are they going to answer it?
Because they don't have yournumber, as a practice, saved
(06:40):
into their phone.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Let me put you on hold press two for scheduling
all of that kind of stuff, right?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Exactly so all that goes away.
It also picks up when youenable online booking.
It increases your conversionfrom marketing perspective I
know, obviously this is a lotabout like the business side of
things and the numbers Like itincreases your conversion for
any online marketing channel byanywhere between 35 and 70%, and
that's like relative to yourwebsite to Facebook, google,
instagram any ads you're runninglike anything you're doing to
(07:07):
connect with your clients.
You know what I mean, yeah,absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I mean I just think about my barber, right, like he
uses Square, and so I go toschedule an appointment with my
barber on Square and it's likewho do you want to meet with?
What day do you want to meetwith them?
I look at the thing ask for myemail and my phone number.
Yeah, I'm available at thattime and I booked the.
Booked the appointment insteadof like calling john, hey, are
you free?
He doesn't call me back, andthen I forget about scheduling a
haircut.
And then it's saturday and thenhe's booked out for the whole
week and then like a whole weekgoes by because I couldn't just
(07:35):
go on my phone this morning andjust like what are your?
what's your when you available?
All you're available nexttuesday at one.
I can go down there at 1o'clock, and so you know the
number one rule in sales atButler Vet Insurance is make it
easy for the clients Like youhave to make it easy because if
you put barriers in place,especially in today's speed
access, everything like if youmake it difficult to do, people
(07:58):
will not want to do it 100%,that's exactly it.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And, by the way, not just for your clients, but also
for the front office.
100%, that's exactly it.
And, by the way, not just foryour clients, but also for the
front office.
like you eliminate all thatphone tag.
Yeah, with that in mind.
So to your point.
Like the, the question of, likethe availability and all that,
the biggest hesitation that weget from vet practices that
don't have online booking is theconcept that like, oh no,
there's no way.
Our scheduling is too unique,our practice is too special,
it's too different and the funnything is, every single practice
(08:24):
thinks that right.
Sure the reality is there's anynumber of rules you can put in
and we've not come across there.
All right, there's been twotimes ever in in 10, uh, eight
years that we couldn't handlesomebody's scheduling.
One of them was this guy comesin and he's about to retire, so
give him a break here, but hecomes in every Sunday and
decides that day what days ofthat week he's going to be open.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Oh, so you can't preset the schedule?
I mean, I set up how weschedule this podcast.
I use Calendly, yeah right,which is, you know, it's a
scheduling software tool thatintegrates with Outlook.
And I say, hey, joe, would youlike to be on the podcast?
You say yes and I send you alink and you click the link and
you look at my schedule and saymy schedule and Bill's schedule
line up at this time, and thenin the thing it says, hey, tell
(09:06):
us three things you want to chatabout.
And so it's making the processof us getting connected for this
podcast so much easier, versusus calling on the phone and you
looking at your schedule and melooking at my schedule and email
back and forth and goingthrough all this hassle when we
just need to connect for half anhour on a podcast.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Exactly.
And the nice thing about thatsystem is it's looking at all of
your existing appointments andeverything you have in there,
which shows me what's left right.
That's what ours does.
You build in things like okay,we're going to look at the
schedule already.
We're going to know where youwant to book a certain type of
appointment.
Dogs are booked this way, catsare booked this way.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Maybe it's by species , maybe it's by breed right, we
do dental on Friday Exactly, andall the dental appointments.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
We're fear free.
We do X, y and Z.
Dr A always gets an extra 15minutes more than Dr B because
Dr A is super chatty and alwaystakes a long time.
You know, like all that stuffgets built in and then it just
automates it for you.
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, cause I only record podcasts on Thursday or
Friday because people aregenerally happier on Thursday
and Friday and it's a fun thingto do at the end of the week,
versus trying to like get inMonday morning and like, oh, I
got to do this podcast.
Not that podcasts aren't fun,but like my logic for podcasts
are they're only availableThursday and Friday after 2 PM,
like that, or after 1 PM orwhatever.
(10:21):
So so from traditionalappointment software, I mean
there's a bunch out there.
What feedback have you receivedabout differentiation between
your software and others outthere and what sets you apart?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Well, so the online booking itself is unique.
Nobody else does the onlinebooking the way that we do it,
where it's 100% automated and100% customizable and integrated
with all of the top practicemanagement systems, right?
So that's kind of the firstdifferentiator.
The other piece is that it'snot just online booking that
CheckVet does.
It's online booking practiceanalytics, two-way
communications.
So all your reminders, all yourconfirmations, all your two-way
(10:56):
texting and marketing and allthat reviews, management like
Google and Facebook, reviews,aggregation, responding, all
that type of stuff.
And then there's a clientportal with an app and there's
even digital forms.
So it's another differentiatorbetween us and other systems out
there is we're doing all thatunder one roof.
So we have a lot of clientsthat have come to us.
They're already using, you know, two, three, four different
programs and, by the way, a lotof times they're happy with them
(11:19):
.
But they're paying two to $400a month for three different
systems.
So you're looking at anywherebetween six and $1,200,
depending on what they're using.
That we roll under all underone roof for hundreds of dollars
savings every single month.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
And so for for some of your early adopters.
What have they seen?
As you know, some of the I meanin in today's age.
I think we just agree, whethera check vet or somebody else
else, you just should have somesort of automated appointment
scheduling for your new clientsor onboarding.
You just got to have somethingright.
Just trying to do it over thephone, I think.
(11:53):
I mean, if I get an email fromsomeone, I send them back my
appointment link.
If somebody calls in and saysI'd like to schedule an
appointment, I'm like here, letme send you a link and you can
schedule a time and then, like Idon't have to go hunting
through my we're not spendingthat 10 minutes on the phone to
try and find that time.
So what have your earlyadopters said about just like
having a scheduling process oran automated scheduling process
in place, and what's that donefor their practice?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Honestly there's been a lot of really good feedback.
We've got some case studies.
We've got some really greattestimonials.
I even was at like the VHMAmanagement exchange and got like
a video of you know, somebodywas walking around.
She's like I just love yoursoftware so much.
I'm like can I get a video ofyou making things more automated
?
One of the interesting thingsthis is a true story about the
like our practice analytics too,right.
(12:44):
So, like the analytics, it'stwo different sides to it.
There's a daily huddle thatgives the CSRs and the whole
front office team like all thesegreat action items on how to do
their job better day to day,like here's how you help your
forward booking, here's thepeople that came in yesterday
that don't have a forward bookedappointment, right.
Here's the people that aresupposed to be coming in today
that haven't confirmed yet.
And here's how you can do allthat right down the list first
(13:05):
thing in the morning.
So the other side is like thepractice analytics, where it's
like okay, let's look at thingslike your revenue, your accounts
receivable, your appointmentnumbers and how many were
completed and versus new, versusreturning, and your fill rate
and your show rate, and allthat's by different doctors and
providers, new versus returning,and your fill rate and your
show rate, and all that's bydifferent doctors and providers.
However, you have it both.
But a couple cool things.
One we got just on March 31stfrom a client.
It's in our our celebrationchannel in slack chat.
(13:29):
In slack says we launched checkthat on Friday.
This came in on a Monday.
We launched check that onFriday and we're able to collect
three thousand dollars of ARjust from the daily huddle over
the weekend.
That was on a Monday fromsomebody who went live on Friday
two days earlier, three daysearlier.
So like that was a pretty coolone.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
That is pretty cool.
So I you know, I think in inthe very fast paced, uh world of
vet med these days fullschedule, short staffing, trying
to make sure that you'remaximizing your appointment
hours how does clientcommunication because obviously
that's a big component of whatyou do, it's not just the
scheduling but also the clientcommunication how does that help
(14:07):
reduce no-shows and improvepatient compliance, so to speak,
with what you're trying to do?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
It's a great question and it's really closely tied in
with the online booking.
So the communications we doeverything from appointment
confirmations, appointmentreminders, medical and vaccine
reminders, two-way texting,email, you know, like custom,
like marketing campaigns and allthat stuff right.
And the cool thing is, if youtie in the online booking into
that, it automates even morethan just having that on your
(14:34):
website.
So, for instance, I get a textmessage hey, joe, it's been
about a year since we've seenRocket click here to book his
next wellness exam.
Practice has had to do thatbecause they have it on the
cadence where, like at the 11month mark after somebody's last
appointment, make sure thatthey get a text message that
says x, y and z and it's just,it's automated fire and forget
it goes out exactly and when you, when you allow them to book
(14:54):
themselves in, you know, likeyou said, instead of like doing
that awkward over the phone,right, if you're allowing them
to look at their schedule andyours side by side and make the
best decision for themselvesrelative to what they have going
on, they're statistically waymore likely to show up.
And even if they can't, it'sbecause something came up like
last minute, let's say, like youknow, your kid got sick and you
couldn't pick them up fromschool or something, right?
(15:14):
So like they'll, they'll,they're more likely to change
their appointment.
And so you wind up with higherretention.
You wind up with higher forwardbooking because you're you have
all that on automation already.
And then you've also got theadditional functionality, which
this is not everybody does this,but, like in our marketing kind
of tools you've got the abilityto build out what we call
client segments and send outlike custom text and email type
(15:36):
stuff.
So real life example about fourmonths ago we had an office
manager they're at sorry, theyhave, like they had like a they
got a better version of it.
I don't know the name of it,but they got a better version of
a cat medication than they'vebeen prescribing for years.
So what this doctor did wasbuilt out a segment for all
clients who are active clients,who have a cat, that, uh, that
(15:56):
that has been prescribed thislike old medication in the past
that we haven't seen in at leastsix months and that the cat is
still alive.
That was the criteria.
Sent out a text, an email and apush notification through the
app to everybody that had thatcriteria, with the link to books
, saying, hey, we got this newversion of this medication.
I hope you can come on in andtalk to us.
Their conversion was likeridiculous.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, so I have this on're.
I have this on my desk and itreminds me I got it from a
business coach and it's to tomine your own acre of diamonds.
Because, you know, instead ofout, trying to get new clients
is trying to maximize the returnon investment and the the the
revenue per client, right, Liketrying to trying to get more
dollars out of your existingclients, versus trying to go
(16:37):
acquire new ones, Causeacquiring new ones is always,
you know, is always the harderget.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
from a sales perspective, it's easier to do
business with people you'realready doing business with.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, it's nine to 10 times harder to acquire new
clients than it is to retain anexisting one, or you're even
just upselling that one extramedication or vaccine, like, oh
yeah, I should come in for thatvaccine.
I'm glad you got a new one.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
So for busy practice managers out there listening
today, what is one small changethat they could make to improve
scheduling efficiency justoverall at a practice?
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, I mean, I'm beating a dead horse at this
point, but, like, enablingonline booking is by far like,
of everything that we do, thatis, without question, the most
impactful and the biggest impactof the sorry, the most
immediate and the biggest impactthat any practice will see is
just turning on online booking.
Aside from that, I wouldprobably say including the
ability to book an appointmentin all of your medical and
(17:34):
vaccine reminders.
You'll you'll just save so muchtime.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
It's, it's having again, like we've chatted about,
right, Like the ease ofscheduling and having some sort
of automated scheduling system,I mean it's made a huge impact
in how we do things with ourpractices we work with from a,
from a, you know, schedulingperspective.
I mean it's got a referral todayfrom a CPA said hey, you should
(17:59):
, you know, meet with thisclient, and so you know she
reached out immediately afterthat, actually beat me to the
email back and I said hey, I'dlove to meet with you.
Here's my scheduling link, likeyou know.
And now you know, 90% of thetime I would say they're,
they're scheduling thatappointment within a day or two
of that initial email out sayinghey, here's Bill, here's his
(18:19):
team, or we're getting thatintroduction.
So just the ease of gettingthat connection made in the
scheduling for us and thepractices we work with has made
it so much easier.
And then we're just managingthe schedule.
All right, what do we have thisweek?
We got three or four newappointments this week and we're
just, like you said, thathuddle component where you're
looking ahead and going OK, thisis what we got.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So I do this, I do presentations on stage a lot.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
One of the things I usually will give one of two
anecdotes and, like in Vegas forinstance, I'll do like hey,
show of hands, how many peopleflew here for this conference?
Like, basically every hand inthe room goes up.
All right, now keep your handup.
If you called and talked tosomebody on the phone to book
that flight, everybody's handgoes down.
I mean, as soon as Americansstarted offering that in the 90s
or whatever it was, it was likeeverybody had to follow suit.
Why would you ever callsomebody?
You know what I mean.
Absolutely so.
As the industry is changingover and you know client
engagement tools are moreprevalent, online scheduling is
more prevalent.
You probably have to have someof this in place.
And where does CheckVet see,you know, the future of client
engagement tools and onlinebooking over the next you know,
(19:28):
12 to 24 months, because thingsare changing very fast with AI
and everything else.
Where do you see things going?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
So the interesting thing about AI I'm a big fan of
AI, first of all, and I thinkthat right now we're in such a
boon because there's so manylarge language models that are
available for anybody to sort ofcreate their own and utilize
them to build on one another,and that's sort of what AI is
right it's iterating on itselfcontinually and improving all
the time.
So what I think is happeningwhat has been happening for
about the last year and I thinkwill continue happening for the
(19:57):
next I'm going to say probablytwo years is you're going to
continue to see all thesestartup companies that are
coming out building versions ofAI for individual small pieces
and then give it another twoyears and I think a lot of those
will go away as they getconsolidated or one becomes sort
of the leader in that space andthe other ones kind of fall off
, and I think at that point intime we'll have a much better
(20:18):
idea of what's actually possibleto automate Right now what
we're doing.
There are some AI componentsembedded in different pieces of
the workflow but, I, would notcall us an AI platform at all,
but there's opportunities forthings to be able to do even
more of that, and we've got notjust AI but a lot of other
really cool developments on theroadmap for enterprise, like
right now we've got the ability,as an example, something that
(20:40):
the group practices tend to likewhen they're talking to us is
we can link our platform with,let's say, you have a group of
like 50 offices and across those50 offices there are eight
different practice managementsystems.
We can actually tie into all ofthose practice management
systems and pull all of thatenterprise reporting data all
the financials, all theappointment numbers, the
production numbers, the fillrate and all that stuff I was
(21:01):
talking about before into onedashboard and normalize that
data across all of those.
And that's a thing that when wetalk to the bigger groups, the
consolidators even, just likethe independent, like you know,
but group practices that tendsto be something that everybody's
trying to tackle right now.
It's a huge pain point.
So there's kind of a twofoldbenefit there.
Number one, you can see all ofthose across all the different
(21:24):
PIMs and normalize the data soyou can get true benchmarking
and know where you want toincrease.
For instance, an Imprimed,that's kind of an older system,
and then somebody else that's onlike a Shepard, that's like a
(21:52):
brand new system.
And you don't necessarily needto convert the old one into the
new one as quickly becauseyou're bringing them the same
functionality.
So I think over the next twoyears we are going to continue
building out more of thatenterprise functionality to kind
of normalize that data and thefunctionality across all of them
, and I think that you're goingto see AI tools that are either
doing that also on their own orthere's a couple of options
(22:12):
we've been looking at to tie itin in different ways for us to
sort of intuitively figure outsome of that stuff that even
quicker than we're doing it now,if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, it does.
You know if I'm a practice outthere, that's not currently
doing online booking at all andit's very old school manual.
Client calls in, we schedulethe appointment, we send out an
email reminder.
That's a non-automated process.
You have the front front deskCSRs reception team doing that.
Where do you see them in thatone to two year time frame,
(22:44):
because this is all moving sofast?
How much of a competitivedisadvantage are they Like?
As you said, 39% I think thestat you listed was 39% of
millennials or 54% ofmillennials would change
practices because of the ability.
59% would change practices withthe benefit of being able to do
(23:04):
online booking.
I mean, where do you see thosepractices that are hanging on to
that?
No, our clients want to speakwith someone every time they
call in.
We have to have that customerservice relationship.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, the personal touch, so to speak.
Yeah, that's what they all talkabout.
You know, here's the thingPhone calls are not going away.
There's always going to, atleast for the foreseeable future
.
There's always going to bephone calls right.
But I think that the practicesthat don't adopt new technology
to automate that and kind ofbring that, as Bruce Truman
describes, the digital frontdoor right, like let's open
ourselves up to what people arelooking for, I think the ones
(23:35):
that don't do that will continueto exist but I think they're
going to just like.
There's this overall trend inthe industry right now of
appointments going down, likevisits going down, spend going,
even though the cost is going.
The spend is going down averageof like 3% I think the last two
years.
I think that's going tocontinue in.
The practices that aren'tadopting this are going to fall
victim to, you know kind ofeither the corporate
(23:56):
consolidation or they're justgoing to be who are like
throwing money at this stuffLike nobody's business.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Cause they're trying to because the consolidators and
the aggregators and thecorporates are all trying to
build scale and efficiency andthey've got money to do it, and
so they're like, okay, well, wehave to scale this and build
efficiency across.
You know our 50 practices andeight different pims and how all
of that comes into play.
So we have to build theseefficiencies in, and if you're
(24:23):
not at least keeping pace withsome of that, you're at a
disadvantage 100%.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And, by the way, one of the nice things I see in the
vet space, relative to myexperience in dentistry,
dentistry tends to be a littlebit, I would say, ahead of the
curve, trend-wise, like bothwith AI, corporate consolidation
, different struggles anddifferent advances that they
make in technology, like five toseven years ahead of veterinary
.
And one of the things that Iwas very concerned about, that I
(24:49):
am still very concerned aboutin the dental space, is this
corporate consolidation.
In veterinary, I think thatthere's more of an awareness and
more of a desire to push backagainst it and preserve the
independent practice owner.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I think I mean again, I'm biased here, but I think
it's such a no brainer Like thisis how you compete with the
corporate consolidators Havingsystems that are more advanced,
more automated, more scalable,like if you're doing it, you
know, if you're working at 1.5times the pace of a big group,
well then you have nothing toworry about.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, there's a great book called David and Goliath
by Malcolm Gladwell and Gladwelland it always says that in that
book he basically lays out whyDavid can always beat Goliath is
because for Goliath and we dealwith this in the independent
world but for me, competing withlarger insurance agencies or
(25:38):
groups, I look at well, I don'thave as much money as them, how
am I going to compete with them?
I don't have as many staff, howam I going to compete with them
?
You can actually be more nimblebecause you don't have eight
different PIMs that you'retrying to integrate all that
stuff together with.
You've got one system.
You go okay, what system do weneed to solve for in this
equation?
And so you can actually be alittle bit more nimble, more
(25:59):
streamlined.
You're not trying to do thishuge scale of integrating
systems and processes acrossmulti-states,
multi-organizations,multi-technologies.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
And to your point about being nimble, two things.
Number one yes, when we do talkto, we're not really skewed.
We're definitely skewed towardshaving the more independent
offices.
We've got some larger groups,but those big corporate
consolidators, they just take solong to do anything, to make
any decisions, to really getanything implemented.
They'll reach out sometimes andwe'll have conversations that
(26:29):
go on for a year and a half andit's just about getting a pilot
for a couple of offices on.
So I think that nimbleness isreally what gives every
independent office the advantage.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And similarly.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Honestly, it's a big part of, I think, why we're
successful.
We're not owned by some largecorporate company.
So about a year and a half ago,two years, about two years ago,
coming up on um, that I joinedthe company, all we did was
online booking and daily ho.
We did not have the practiceanalytics, we didn't have the
enterprise stuff, we didn't havethe marketing, the
communications, the reviews, theportal, the app, the forms, all
that type of stuff, and everysingle thing that we have
(26:58):
continued to build is becausepeople that we're working with
are asking for this extra thing,so we're able to continue to
iterate and build all these newfeatures and everything.
It's like these other companiesthat have already been bought
out by by these largecorporations.
When's the last time you sawthem come out with anything new
we have, if you've not, like youknow, telling you to go follow
our social media, but if youlook like man, we put out stuff
every month it's like here's thefive things you're about this
(27:18):
month.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
I'm not going to name them, but there's a large
technology company and whatthey've done is either they, in
some case, what they do is theybuy a piece of technology or a
company to kill it.
So they're like, okay, we'regoing to buy this company, we
promise to do these things, andthen after five years, they wind
(27:41):
up sunsetting everything out ofthere.
Four years, they sunseteverything out of there and what
they did was they bought thecompetition to kill it off and
not growing it, but to say we,actually we do that over here
with this system and we weregoing to integrate them, but
actually everyone on this systemthat we bought we're going to
kill off.
And now, if you want the, the,if you want, it's comparable,
(28:01):
it's 60% more through us on thisother side.
And so you know some of that acorporate consolidation or large
tech consolidation, sometimesthe, the smaller tech guys, they
, they get bought out and thenyou wind up out in the cold.
Well, joe, if there's one thingthat I think you kind of
covered it, but if there's onething that that you would
recommend to a practice ownermanager out there looking at you
(28:24):
know, trying to figure out howto do online booking or some
efficiencies, what would you,what would your piece of advice
to them be?
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I'm probably just to to give it a try, be open to
change, ask a lot of questions,like you know, get your all your
concerns covered.
But like the person I was justtalking about, that we ran into
at VHMA, that did right, she wasI hope she listens to this she
was one of the hardest cellslike we went back and forth on
these long demos.
She had eight billion questionsand I'm like I'm telling you
like just give it a try.
Right, we wind up seeing herand she, she goes as soon as we
(28:54):
turn it out, she goes withinlike three days.
We were like, okay, this isgreat but, what they did, even
if uh, so, even if you'rehesitant about trying something
like this is what I'm getting toeven if you're hesitant about
trying either online booking orwhatever the new technology is,
see if you can try it out and doit in like a sandbox sort of
environment with your own team.
So this person told me and I'vebeen telling every demo that's
been, like you know, hesitantsince then this person at this
(29:17):
event told me she goes, werolled it out only to our team,
we didn't put it on our website,we didn't send it to any of our
clients, but we rolled it outto our team and we all sat
around at a table at lunchtimeone day and tried to and she
described it as tried to breakthe system.
Sure we tried to sneak inappointments where they where we
wouldn't want them to go, andthey found some kind of
loopholes in the way that theydo things, and so we built in
rules around those.
Yeah, so like the whole teamwas bought in on it, they were
(29:39):
comfortable with it, theyalready tried everything and
she's our biggest advocate.
So my advice would be be opento change and just give things a
try cool.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Well, if uh anyone listening here wants to reach
out to you or check that, how dothey, how do they find you, joe
?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
go to check thatcom.
C-h-c-k-v-e-t.
So not, it's like check withoutthe e, but check thatcom.
You can book an eight minutedemo on there.
Our demo is super quick andeasy, takes eight minutes.
Start to finish our contactinfo, info all like FAQs us
versus everything else and allthe features and everything.
It's all listed on there,awesome.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well, thanks so much for your insights, joe.
As always, like listen andshare to the podcast with your
friends and veterinarycompatriots out there, and
thanks for joining us, joe.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Appreciate having me man.
It's always a good time allright.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the
veterinary blueprints podcast.
Welcome to today's episode of the Veterinary
Blueprints podcast.
I am your host, bill Butler,and today I am joined by Joe
Ciccarello, my good buddy fromChicago.
Joe and his team are helpingpractices reduce no-shows,
increase bookings and deliver asmoother experience for both
teams and clients.
So if you're a solo vet orrunning a multi-location
hospital, joe is going to bringyou some actionable insights
(00:30):
into streamlining your frontdesk workflow and driving better
client engagement.
Welcome to the podcast, joe.
We have had the opportunity tohang out at some national events
here in the last year or so,having a good time out in Las
Vegas out on the strip andgetting to know you a little bit
better and what you do forveterinary practices, and I
thought you know.
We connected and said, hey,let's have you on the podcast.
(00:52):
So welcome.
Why don't you give now?
I know you have a background indental for many years and a
couple of years over in animalhealth, so why don't you tell
our listeners, kind of, how youwound up at CheckVet and what
you do and what your passion istowards animals and how you
wound up there?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, absolutely Appreciate you.
Having me Background is reallyI've been in human dentistry for
close to 15 years and I've beenat several different
back-to-back startup companies.
All have been successful.
The one that was the most funand was arguably the most
successful was called LocalMed,which was funny because it
wasn't local nor was it medical.
It was dental and it was onlinescheduling and that's all it
(01:28):
was right.
And back in 2016, when they tookthat to market, it was the only
tool in the dental space thathad the ability to read and
write right into the practicemanagement software.
So you know, there was allthese major benefits.
It's like it brings in morerevenue, it makes the front desk
life easier, so dramaticallybetter, right.
Saves tons of time, makes for abetter client experience and
people are just looking for it,right.
(01:49):
So we were wildly successfulwith that and fast forward a few
years.
We took it from like 30providers in like early 2016 to
a little over 9,000 at the endof 2019.
We got bought by a largercompany that does practice
analytics.
They would do things like, asan example, if you were
diagnosed with needing a crownbut you never came in to get it.
Hey, here's some low-hangingfruit people you can reach out
to to get scheduled, missedrevenue, help with forward
(02:11):
booking and things like that.
So we had the tool to know whatto do, who we wanted to get
scheduled.
We had the scheduling tool, butthey now needed the kind of
methodology to get thatscheduling tool into the hands
of those people.
So they bought a third companythat does like the text and
email.
So fast forward a couple ofyears and the guy who originally
built that online booking tool,who had stayed in charge of the
(02:32):
product during those twoacquisitions, at some point got
connected with these guys atCheckVent, and it's through all
mutual connections from LSU,their alma mater.
When they basically they werealready trying to build
something kind of like that forthe veterinary space, this other
guy that had built it in thedental space, basically, was
connected with them.
It was like okay, I see whatyou're doing, here's how you do
this, here's the pitfalls toavoid.
(02:54):
And so now we got to streamlinethat same build, but putting
all three tools under one roofinstead of like daisy chaining
them together.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Sure, instead of three different components,
you've put it all under one roof.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Instead of three different dashboards, three
different logins, threedifferent systems, yeah, it's
all under one roof.
So, essentially, when they wereready to take it to market, I
got the phone call and it waskind of like hey, you remember
that thing that we were reallysuccessful with, that was really
fun to do and that everybodyloved us for how would you like
(03:25):
to do that with animal people?
And I was like absolutely let'sgo, you know, yeah, so that's
how I got into the vet bed spaceand I've just I've been in for
about two years and I absolutelylove veterinary.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yeah, it's a it's a fun group of people and you know
, I think one of the things thatyou know I love about the
animal spaces is my clients.
Like, I really like workingwith my clients.
I was just on the phone earliertoday with a legacy client auto
repair shop, something my dadwe actually acquired as part of
an agency acquisition not myfavorite, not my favorite to
(03:52):
deal with.
So you know, I think justveterinarians are great people
across the board.
The people who help them aregreat people across the board.
So it makes it so much more fun.
Like we had a great Las Vegas.
We were down there for a weekbetween vet partners and VVC, so
like that makes it so muchbetter when you're.
So the pain points I mean youtalked about some of the things
(04:12):
that you that you identified lowhanging fruit, not being able
to capitalize on it, schedulingthat sort of thing, what you
know when you're talking with,with practices out there, and
and what you're seeing.
What are the biggest painpoints when it comes to
veterinary scheduling?
I mean I'm going to be honest,I get emails and texts about my
cat and they're like, oh, youneed to come in for your vaccine
.
I'm like, okay, sounds good,and then so what are the pain
(04:34):
points that your team's seeingas it relates to scheduling at
vet practices?
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Well, there's a bunch and it kind of falls into two
buckets.
So there's either people thathave online booking or don't.
Right, if they have onlinebooking, the pain points tend to
be what we're using isn'tcustomizable enough or it's not
as automated as we would like it.
For instance, if you're using asoftware that can write the
appointment into your practicemanagement system but if it
can't create the new clientrecord, somebody still on the
(05:01):
front desk side has to take thatinformation and create a record
for it and attach it.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
So there's still manual process right, which is
just kind of laborious, right,it's just, it's like it's
laborious, it's, it's just, it'smore I don't know, hole digging
work.
It's, it's busy work, it's notgenerally producing revenue,
it's just checking a box to makesure you're doing half of the
process.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Exactly and, by the way, that's much better than not
having it Like that's betterthan zero percent of the process
.
But yeah, if it's not fullyautomated, then it's not saving
you as much time.
So typically, somebody that hasonline booking is looking for
it to be more automated, morecustomizable, more marketable.
The other side of things is themajority of practices don't
have any online booking, or whatthey do have is kind of more of
an appointment request system,and you know, there's just oh my
(05:45):
gosh, there's so many reasonsthat you, at this point, need to
adopt online booking.
I've got all these stats.
I'll just list a few off,because I've got them in a PDF
that we pass out and I've got itin front of me.
51% of pet owners prefer toschedule their appointments
online.
59% of millennials would switchpractices for better online
access.
So if you've got online booking, it's a competitive advantage.
(06:05):
38% of all appointments arescheduled after hours or on
weekends.
It takes an average of 8.1minutes to book somebody over
the phone, which is kind of likeyour other sort of option,
right?
And then 63% of those calls areplaced on hold at least one
time.
That's all my stats.
I'm done with it.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
But essentially what it's doing is it's saving us ton
of time.
There's all this back and forth.
You send in an appointmentrequest.
You're essentially filling outa form on a website.
It sends an email to the officeand now it's up to them to
number one, recognize thatthey've gotten an email.
Have the time to make thatphone call?
Are you available for thatphone call in that moment?
Probably not.
Are they going to answer it?
Because they don't have yournumber, as a practice, saved
(06:40):
into their phone.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Let me put you on hold press two for scheduling
all of that kind of stuff, right?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Exactly so all that goes away.
It also picks up when youenable online booking.
It increases your conversionfrom marketing perspective I
know, obviously this is a lotabout like the business side of
things and the numbers Like itincreases your conversion for
any online marketing channel byanywhere between 35 and 70%, and
that's like relative to yourwebsite to Facebook, google,
instagram any ads you're runninglike anything you're doing to
(07:07):
connect with your clients.
You know what I mean, yeah,absolutely.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I mean I just think about my barber, right, like he
uses Square, and so I go toschedule an appointment with my
barber on Square and it's likewho do you want to meet with?
What day do you want to meetwith them?
I look at the thing ask for myemail and my phone number.
Yeah, I'm available at thattime and I booked the.
Booked the appointment insteadof like calling john, hey, are
you free?
He doesn't call me back, andthen I forget about scheduling a
haircut.
And then it's saturday and thenhe's booked out for the whole
week and then like a whole weekgoes by because I couldn't just
(07:35):
go on my phone this morning andjust like what are your?
what's your when you available?
All you're available nexttuesday at one.
I can go down there at 1o'clock, and so you know the
number one rule in sales atButler Vet Insurance is make it
easy for the clients Like youhave to make it easy because if
you put barriers in place,especially in today's speed
access, everything like if youmake it difficult to do, people
(07:58):
will not want to do it 100%,that's exactly it.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
And, by the way, not just for your clients, but also
for the front office.
100%, that's exactly it.
And, by the way, not just foryour clients, but also for the
front office.
like you eliminate all thatphone tag.
Yeah, with that in mind.
So to your point.
Like the, the question of, likethe availability and all that,
the biggest hesitation that weget from vet practices that
don't have online booking is theconcept that like, oh no,
there's no way.
Our scheduling is too unique,our practice is too special,
it's too different and the funnything is, every single practice
(08:24):
thinks that right.
Sure the reality is there's anynumber of rules you can put in
and we've not come across there.
All right, there's been twotimes ever in in 10, uh, eight
years that we couldn't handlesomebody's scheduling.
One of them was this guy comesin and he's about to retire, so
give him a break here, but hecomes in every Sunday and
decides that day what days ofthat week he's going to be open.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Oh, so you can't preset the schedule?
I mean, I set up how weschedule this podcast.
I use Calendly, yeah right,which is, you know, it's a
scheduling software tool thatintegrates with Outlook.
And I say, hey, joe, would youlike to be on the podcast?
You say yes and I send you alink and you click the link and
you look at my schedule and saymy schedule and Bill's schedule
line up at this time, and thenin the thing it says, hey, tell
(09:06):
us three things you want to chatabout.
And so it's making the processof us getting connected for this
podcast so much easier, versusus calling on the phone and you
looking at your schedule and melooking at my schedule and email
back and forth and goingthrough all this hassle when we
just need to connect for half anhour on a podcast.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Exactly.
And the nice thing about thatsystem is it's looking at all of
your existing appointments andeverything you have in there,
which shows me what's left right.
That's what ours does.
You build in things like okay,we're going to look at the
schedule already.
We're going to know where youwant to book a certain type of
appointment.
Dogs are booked this way, catsare booked this way.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Maybe it's by species , maybe it's by breed right, we
do dental on Friday Exactly, andall the dental appointments.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
We're fear free.
We do X, y and Z.
Dr A always gets an extra 15minutes more than Dr B because
Dr A is super chatty and alwaystakes a long time.
You know, like all that stuffgets built in and then it just
automates it for you.
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, cause I only record podcasts on Thursday or
Friday because people aregenerally happier on Thursday
and Friday and it's a fun thingto do at the end of the week,
versus trying to like get inMonday morning and like, oh, I
got to do this podcast.
Not that podcasts aren't fun,but like my logic for podcasts
are they're only availableThursday and Friday after 2 PM,
like that, or after 1 PM orwhatever.
(10:21):
So so from traditionalappointment software, I mean
there's a bunch out there.
What feedback have you receivedabout differentiation between
your software and others outthere and what sets you apart?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Well, so the online booking itself is unique.
Nobody else does the onlinebooking the way that we do it,
where it's 100% automated and100% customizable and integrated
with all of the top practicemanagement systems, right?
So that's kind of the firstdifferentiator.
The other piece is that it'snot just online booking that
CheckVet does.
It's online booking practiceanalytics, two-way
communications.
So all your reminders, all yourconfirmations, all your two-way
(10:56):
texting and marketing and allthat reviews, management like
Google and Facebook, reviews,aggregation, responding, all
that type of stuff.
And then there's a clientportal with an app and there's
even digital forms.
So it's another differentiatorbetween us and other systems out
there is we're doing all thatunder one roof.
So we have a lot of clientsthat have come to us.
They're already using, you know, two, three, four different
programs and, by the way, a lotof times they're happy with them
(11:19):
.
But they're paying two to $400a month for three different
systems.
So you're looking at anywherebetween six and $1,200,
depending on what they're using.
That we roll under all underone roof for hundreds of dollars
savings every single month.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
And so for for some of your early adopters.
What have they seen?
As you know, some of the I meanin in today's age.
I think we just agree, whethera check vet or somebody else
else, you just should have somesort of automated appointment
scheduling for your new clientsor onboarding.
You just got to have somethingright.
Just trying to do it over thephone, I think.
(11:53):
I mean, if I get an email fromsomeone, I send them back my
appointment link.
If somebody calls in and saysI'd like to schedule an
appointment, I'm like here, letme send you a link and you can
schedule a time and then, like Idon't have to go hunting
through my we're not spendingthat 10 minutes on the phone to
try and find that time.
So what have your earlyadopters said about just like
having a scheduling process oran automated scheduling process
in place, and what's that donefor their practice?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Honestly there's been a lot of really good feedback.
We've got some case studies.
We've got some really greattestimonials.
I even was at like the VHMAmanagement exchange and got like
a video of you know, somebodywas walking around.
She's like I just love yoursoftware so much.
I'm like can I get a video ofyou making things more automated
?
One of the interesting thingsthis is a true story about the
like our practice analytics too,right.
(12:44):
So, like the analytics, it'stwo different sides to it.
There's a daily huddle thatgives the CSRs and the whole
front office team like all thesegreat action items on how to do
their job better day to day,like here's how you help your
forward booking, here's thepeople that came in yesterday
that don't have a forward bookedappointment, right.
Here's the people that aresupposed to be coming in today
that haven't confirmed yet.
And here's how you can do allthat right down the list first
(13:05):
thing in the morning.
So the other side is like thepractice analytics, where it's
like okay, let's look at thingslike your revenue, your accounts
receivable, your appointmentnumbers and how many were
completed and versus new, versusreturning, and your fill rate
and your show rate, and allthat's by different doctors and
providers, new versus returning,and your fill rate and your
show rate, and all that's bydifferent doctors and providers.
However, you have it both.
But a couple cool things.
One we got just on March 31stfrom a client.
It's in our our celebrationchannel in slack chat.
(13:29):
In slack says we launched checkthat on Friday.
This came in on a Monday.
We launched check that onFriday and we're able to collect
three thousand dollars of ARjust from the daily huddle over
the weekend.
That was on a Monday fromsomebody who went live on Friday
two days earlier, three daysearlier.
So like that was a pretty coolone.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
That is pretty cool.
So I you know, I think in inthe very fast paced, uh world of
vet med these days fullschedule, short staffing, trying
to make sure that you'remaximizing your appointment
hours how does clientcommunication because obviously
that's a big component of whatyou do, it's not just the
scheduling but also the clientcommunication how does that help
(14:07):
reduce no-shows and improvepatient compliance, so to speak,
with what you're trying to do?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
It's a great question and it's really closely tied in
with the online booking.
So the communications we doeverything from appointment
confirmations, appointmentreminders, medical and vaccine
reminders, two-way texting,email, you know, like custom,
like marketing campaigns and allthat stuff right.
And the cool thing is, if youtie in the online booking into
that, it automates even morethan just having that on your
(14:34):
website.
So, for instance, I get a textmessage hey, joe, it's been
about a year since we've seenRocket click here to book his
next wellness exam.
Practice has had to do thatbecause they have it on the
cadence where, like at the 11month mark after somebody's last
appointment, make sure thatthey get a text message that
says x, y and z and it's just,it's automated fire and forget
it goes out exactly and when you, when you allow them to book
(14:54):
themselves in, you know, likeyou said, instead of like doing
that awkward over the phone,right, if you're allowing them
to look at their schedule andyours side by side and make the
best decision for themselvesrelative to what they have going
on, they're statistically waymore likely to show up.
And even if they can't, it'sbecause something came up like
last minute, let's say, like youknow, your kid got sick and you
couldn't pick them up fromschool or something, right?
(15:14):
So like they'll, they'll,they're more likely to change
their appointment.
And so you wind up with higherretention.
You wind up with higher forwardbooking because you're you have
all that on automation already.
And then you've also got theadditional functionality, which
this is not everybody does this,but, like in our marketing kind
of tools you've got the abilityto build out what we call
client segments and send outlike custom text and email type
(15:36):
stuff.
So real life example about fourmonths ago we had an office
manager they're at sorry, theyhave, like they had like a they
got a better version of it.
I don't know the name of it,but they got a better version of
a cat medication than they'vebeen prescribing for years.
So what this doctor did wasbuilt out a segment for all
clients who are active clients,who have a cat, that, uh, that
(15:56):
that has been prescribed thislike old medication in the past
that we haven't seen in at leastsix months and that the cat is
still alive.
That was the criteria.
Sent out a text, an email and apush notification through the
app to everybody that had thatcriteria, with the link to books
, saying, hey, we got this newversion of this medication.
I hope you can come on in andtalk to us.
Their conversion was likeridiculous.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, so I have this on're.
I have this on my desk and itreminds me I got it from a
business coach and it's to tomine your own acre of diamonds.
Because, you know, instead ofout, trying to get new clients
is trying to maximize the returnon investment and the the the
revenue per client, right, Liketrying to trying to get more
dollars out of your existingclients, versus trying to go
(16:37):
acquire new ones, Causeacquiring new ones is always,
you know, is always the harderget.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
from a sales perspective, it's easier to do
business with people you'realready doing business with.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
Yeah, it's nine to 10 times harder to acquire new
clients than it is to retain anexisting one, or you're even
just upselling that one extramedication or vaccine, like, oh
yeah, I should come in for thatvaccine.
I'm glad you got a new one.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
So for busy practice managers out there listening
today, what is one small changethat they could make to improve
scheduling efficiency justoverall at a practice?
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Well, I mean, I'm beating a dead horse at this
point, but, like, enablingonline booking is by far like,
of everything that we do, thatis, without question, the most
impactful and the biggest impactof the sorry, the most
immediate and the biggest impactthat any practice will see is
just turning on online booking.
Aside from that, I wouldprobably say including the
ability to book an appointmentin all of your medical and
(17:34):
vaccine reminders.
You'll you'll just save so muchtime.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
It's, it's having again, like we've chatted about,
right, Like the ease ofscheduling and having some sort
of automated scheduling system,I mean it's made a huge impact
in how we do things with ourpractices we work with from a,
from a, you know, schedulingperspective.
I mean it's got a referral todayfrom a CPA said hey, you should
(17:59):
, you know, meet with thisclient, and so you know she
reached out immediately afterthat, actually beat me to the
email back and I said hey, I'dlove to meet with you.
Here's my scheduling link, likeyou know.
And now you know, 90% of thetime I would say they're,
they're scheduling thatappointment within a day or two
of that initial email out sayinghey, here's Bill, here's his
(18:19):
team, or we're getting thatintroduction.
So just the ease of gettingthat connection made in the
scheduling for us and thepractices we work with has made
it so much easier.
And then we're just managingthe schedule.
All right, what do we have thisweek?
We got three or four newappointments this week and we're
just, like you said, thathuddle component where you're
looking ahead and going OK, thisis what we got.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So I do this, I do presentations on stage a lot.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
One of the things I usually will give one of two
anecdotes and, like in Vegas forinstance, I'll do like hey,
show of hands, how many peopleflew here for this conference?
Like, basically every hand inthe room goes up.
All right, now keep your handup.
If you called and talked tosomebody on the phone to book
that flight, everybody's handgoes down.
I mean, as soon as Americansstarted offering that in the 90s
or whatever it was, it was likeeverybody had to follow suit.
Why would you ever callsomebody?
You know what I mean.
Absolutely so.
As the industry is changingover and you know client
engagement tools are moreprevalent, online scheduling is
more prevalent.
You probably have to have someof this in place.
And where does CheckVet see,you know, the future of client
engagement tools and onlinebooking over the next you know,
(19:28):
12 to 24 months, because thingsare changing very fast with AI
and everything else.
Where do you see things going?
Speaker 2 (19:34):
So the interesting thing about AI I'm a big fan of
AI, first of all, and I thinkthat right now we're in such a
boon because there's so manylarge language models that are
available for anybody to sort ofcreate their own and utilize
them to build on one another,and that's sort of what AI is
right it's iterating on itselfcontinually and improving all
the time.
So what I think is happeningwhat has been happening for
about the last year and I thinkwill continue happening for the
(19:57):
next I'm going to say probablytwo years is you're going to
continue to see all thesestartup companies that are
coming out building versions ofAI for individual small pieces
and then give it another twoyears and I think a lot of those
will go away as they getconsolidated or one becomes sort
of the leader in that space andthe other ones kind of fall off
, and I think at that point intime we'll have a much better
(20:18):
idea of what's actually possibleto automate Right now what
we're doing.
There are some AI componentsembedded in different pieces of
the workflow but, I, would notcall us an AI platform at all,
but there's opportunities forthings to be able to do even
more of that, and we've got notjust AI but a lot of other
really cool developments on theroadmap for enterprise, like
right now we've got the ability,as an example, something that
(20:40):
the group practices tend to likewhen they're talking to us is
we can link our platform with,let's say, you have a group of
like 50 offices and across those50 offices there are eight
different practice managementsystems.
We can actually tie into all ofthose practice management
systems and pull all of thatenterprise reporting data all
the financials, all theappointment numbers, the
production numbers, the fillrate and all that stuff I was
(21:01):
talking about before into onedashboard and normalize that
data across all of those.
And that's a thing that when wetalk to the bigger groups, the
consolidators even, just likethe independent, like you know,
but group practices that tendsto be something that everybody's
trying to tackle right now.
It's a huge pain point.
So there's kind of a twofoldbenefit there.
Number one, you can see all ofthose across all the different
(21:24):
PIMs and normalize the data soyou can get true benchmarking
and know where you want toincrease.
For instance, an Imprimed,that's kind of an older system,
and then somebody else that's onlike a Shepard, that's like a
(21:52):
brand new system.
And you don't necessarily needto convert the old one into the
new one as quickly becauseyou're bringing them the same
functionality.
So I think over the next twoyears we are going to continue
building out more of thatenterprise functionality to kind
of normalize that data and thefunctionality across all of them
, and I think that you're goingto see AI tools that are either
doing that also on their own orthere's a couple of options
(22:12):
we've been looking at to tie itin in different ways for us to
sort of intuitively figure outsome of that stuff that even
quicker than we're doing it now,if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, it does.
You know if I'm a practice outthere, that's not currently
doing online booking at all andit's very old school manual.
Client calls in, we schedulethe appointment, we send out an
email reminder.
That's a non-automated process.
You have the front front deskCSRs reception team doing that.
Where do you see them in thatone to two year time frame,
(22:44):
because this is all moving sofast?
How much of a competitivedisadvantage are they Like?
As you said, 39% I think thestat you listed was 39% of
millennials or 54% ofmillennials would change
practices because of the ability.
59% would change practices withthe benefit of being able to do
(23:04):
online booking.
I mean, where do you see thosepractices that are hanging on to
that?
No, our clients want to speakwith someone every time they
call in.
We have to have that customerservice relationship.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, the personal touch, so to speak.
Yeah, that's what they all talkabout.
You know, here's the thingPhone calls are not going away.
There's always going to, atleast for the foreseeable future
.
There's always going to bephone calls right.
But I think that the practicesthat don't adopt new technology
to automate that and kind ofbring that, as Bruce Truman
describes, the digital frontdoor right, like let's open
ourselves up to what people arelooking for, I think the ones
(23:35):
that don't do that will continueto exist but I think they're
going to just like.
There's this overall trend inthe industry right now of
appointments going down, likevisits going down, spend going,
even though the cost is going.
The spend is going down averageof like 3% I think the last two
years.
I think that's going tocontinue in.
The practices that aren'tadopting this are going to fall
victim to, you know kind ofeither the corporate
(23:56):
consolidation or they're justgoing to be who are like
throwing money at this stuffLike nobody's business.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Cause they're trying to because the consolidators and
the aggregators and thecorporates are all trying to
build scale and efficiency andthey've got money to do it, and
so they're like, okay, well, wehave to scale this and build
efficiency across.
You know our 50 practices andeight different pims and how all
of that comes into play.
So we have to build theseefficiencies in, and if you're
(24:23):
not at least keeping pace withsome of that, you're at a
disadvantage 100%.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And, by the way, one of the nice things I see in the
vet space, relative to myexperience in dentistry,
dentistry tends to be a littlebit, I would say, ahead of the
curve, trend-wise, like bothwith AI, corporate consolidation
, different struggles anddifferent advances that they
make in technology, like five toseven years ahead of veterinary
.
And one of the things that Iwas very concerned about, that I
(24:49):
am still very concerned aboutin the dental space, is this
corporate consolidation.
In veterinary, I think thatthere's more of an awareness and
more of a desire to push backagainst it and preserve the
independent practice owner.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I think I mean again, I'm biased here, but I think
it's such a no brainer Like thisis how you compete with the
corporate consolidators Havingsystems that are more advanced,
more automated, more scalable,like if you're doing it, you
know, if you're working at 1.5times the pace of a big group,
well then you have nothing toworry about.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, there's a great book called David and Goliath
by Malcolm Gladwell and Gladwelland it always says that in that
book he basically lays out whyDavid can always beat Goliath is
because for Goliath and we dealwith this in the independent
world but for me, competing withlarger insurance agencies or
(25:38):
groups, I look at well, I don'thave as much money as them, how
am I going to compete with them?
I don't have as many staff, howam I going to compete with them
?
You can actually be more nimblebecause you don't have eight
different PIMs that you'retrying to integrate all that
stuff together with.
You've got one system.
You go okay, what system do weneed to solve for in this
equation?
And so you can actually be alittle bit more nimble, more
(25:59):
streamlined.
You're not trying to do thishuge scale of integrating
systems and processes acrossmulti-states,
multi-organizations,multi-technologies.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
And to your point about being nimble, two things.
Number one yes, when we do talkto, we're not really skewed.
We're definitely skewed towardshaving the more independent
offices.
We've got some larger groups,but those big corporate
consolidators, they just take solong to do anything, to make
any decisions, to really getanything implemented.
They'll reach out sometimes andwe'll have conversations that
(26:29):
go on for a year and a half andit's just about getting a pilot
for a couple of offices on.
So I think that nimbleness isreally what gives every
independent office the advantage.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
And similarly.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Honestly, it's a big part of, I think, why we're
successful.
We're not owned by some largecorporate company.
So about a year and a half ago,two years, about two years ago,
coming up on um, that I joinedthe company, all we did was
online booking and daily ho.
We did not have the practiceanalytics, we didn't have the
enterprise stuff, we didn't havethe marketing, the
communications, the reviews, theportal, the app, the forms, all
that type of stuff, and everysingle thing that we have
(26:58):
continued to build is becausepeople that we're working with
are asking for this extra thing,so we're able to continue to
iterate and build all these newfeatures and everything.
It's like these other companiesthat have already been bought
out by by these largecorporations.
When's the last time you sawthem come out with anything new
we have, if you've not, like youknow, telling you to go follow
our social media, but if youlook like man, we put out stuff
every month it's like here's thefive things you're about this
(27:18):
month.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
I'm not going to name them, but there's a large
technology company and whatthey've done is either they, in
some case, what they do is theybuy a piece of technology or a
company to kill it.
So they're like, okay, we'regoing to buy this company, we
promise to do these things, andthen after five years, they wind
(27:41):
up sunsetting everything out ofthere.
Four years, they sunseteverything out of there and what
they did was they bought thecompetition to kill it off and
not growing it, but to say we,actually we do that over here
with this system and we weregoing to integrate them, but
actually everyone on this systemthat we bought we're going to
kill off.
And now, if you want the, the,if you want, it's comparable,
(28:01):
it's 60% more through us on thisother side.
And so you know some of that acorporate consolidation or large
tech consolidation, sometimesthe, the smaller tech guys, they
, they get bought out and thenyou wind up out in the cold.
Well, joe, if there's one thingthat I think you kind of
covered it, but if there's onething that that you would
recommend to a practice ownermanager out there looking at you
(28:24):
know, trying to figure out howto do online booking or some
efficiencies, what would you,what would your piece of advice
to them be?
Speaker 2 (28:30):
I'm probably just to to give it a try, be open to
change, ask a lot of questions,like you know, get your all your
concerns covered.
But like the person I was justtalking about, that we ran into
at VHMA, that did right, she wasI hope she listens to this she
was one of the hardest cellslike we went back and forth on
these long demos.
She had eight billion questionsand I'm like I'm telling you
like just give it a try.
Right, we wind up seeing herand she, she goes as soon as we
(28:54):
turn it out, she goes withinlike three days.
We were like, okay, this isgreat but, what they did, even
if uh, so, even if you'rehesitant about trying something
like this is what I'm getting toeven if you're hesitant about
trying either online booking orwhatever the new technology is,
see if you can try it out and doit in like a sandbox sort of
environment with your own team.
So this person told me and I'vebeen telling every demo that's
been, like you know, hesitantsince then this person at this
(29:17):
event told me she goes, werolled it out only to our team,
we didn't put it on our website,we didn't send it to any of our
clients, but we rolled it outto our team and we all sat
around at a table at lunchtimeone day and tried to and she
described it as tried to breakthe system.
Sure we tried to sneak inappointments where they where we
wouldn't want them to go, andthey found some kind of
loopholes in the way that theydo things, and so we built in
rules around those.
Yeah, so like the whole teamwas bought in on it, they were
(29:39):
comfortable with it, theyalready tried everything and
she's our biggest advocate.
So my advice would be be opento change and just give things a
try cool.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Well, if uh anyone listening here wants to reach
out to you or check that, how dothey, how do they find you, joe
?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
go to check thatcom.
C-h-c-k-v-e-t.
So not, it's like check withoutthe e, but check thatcom.
You can book an eight minutedemo on there.
Our demo is super quick andeasy, takes eight minutes.
Start to finish our contactinfo, info all like FAQs us
versus everything else and allthe features and everything.
It's all listed on there,awesome.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Well, thanks so much for your insights, joe.
As always, like listen andshare to the podcast with your
friends and veterinarycompatriots out there, and
thanks for joining us, joe.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Appreciate having me man.
It's always a good time allright.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Thanks for listening to this episode of the
veterinary blueprints podcast.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.