22 Jan 2018

Effective client communication

Peter Edmondson reviews a talk at the 2017 Australian Veterinary Association Annual Conference focusing on interactions.

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Peter Edmondson

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Effective client communication

Image © goodluz / Adobe Stock

Andy Roark – practising vet, international speaker, author and media personality – spoke at 2017’s Australian Veterinary Association Annual Conference about client and staff communication.

He has a successful online training course for vets and veterinary teams. While his popular Facebook page and YouTube show reach millions of people every month. He is also the founder of both the Uncharted Veterinary Conference and DrAndyRoark.com

Dr Roark talked about some interesting aspects of growing and building businesses. He had some great take-home messages, such as give a person a reputation. For example, you tell people Geoff is really good at explaining to the client what needs to be done with his or her pet and the cause of the problem. People generally live up to these reputations.

Create stars

Another example is you employ Miranda and tell your staff what a great person she is, how lucky the practice is to have her join the team and how good her client communication skills are. Your receptionists might say to the client: “You are so lucky you are seeing Miranda today. She is new and has just joined our team, but she has great clinical and communication skills.”

How would that make you feel if you were the client? Probably lucky and looking forward to the consultation. It is a great way to introduce new vets, and change how clients and staff perceive them.

Increase perceived values

Why do clients come to our practice? Lots of reasons – affirmation they are a good pet owner, reassurance, association, healthier pets and so on. What do they sacrifice to come to see you? Their time, money, anxiety from what you might say or suggest, stress in loading the animal into a basket to bring it in, they could be doing something else, and so on. Our clients are sacrificing quite a lot to visit you and they want something back.

How some practices work

I know a practice with an open surgery and was talking to the small animal vet who, one evening, opened the door to find 15 clients waiting. It took two hours to work through the 15 clients, by which time he was exhausted and stressed out.

This is clearly telling the clients the vet practice does not value their time, a “you can just wait and see us when you are ready“ message.

Treatment options

You could give a one-off antibiotic injection £18 or give tablets to the owner for £3 – what do you recommend and what is the perceived value? The owner might be much happier to pay the £18 to save the time, stress and hassle of trying to wrestle his or her pet to give it the final tablet. I know all too well from trying to wrestle with some of our animals at home to get the last two days’ treatment down their throat.

What I would have given for a one-off injection to avoid the stress and hassle. A trade off always exists.

Affirmation

We all like affirmation, as it’s great for self-esteem and confidence building. We can give affirmation to others. You could say, thanks for doing a great job, which is very vague. If you say “I was really impressed how you dealt with Mr X, whose dog was bleeding badly when he came into surgery and you saved the dog“, this is very personal and specific.

This is really valuable. My eldest son received a written note from his boss describing a specific task he did over and above what was expected. He was so proud. His boss took time to write the note and, to him, it was something he would treasure forever, and could not put a monetary value on.

Really listen to the clients and practise active listening. During a consult, you might say “sounds like…”, “if I understand you correctly then…” or “am I right in thinking…”. This ensures you have the correct summary of the problem and avoids any misunderstanding. Most of the problems we encounter are due to poor communication or miscommunication.