Joining up online-to-offline customer experiences, A How To - with the BVRA & Pennard Vets

This webinar is aimed at all members of the practice team, including veterinary receptionists.

Although COVID has driven many practices to engaging with their clients using Telehealth technologies, some practices and practitioners have been more hesitant to adopt – and retain – these than others. There are various reasons why this has happened. These include uncertainty about regulation, using the technology as well as integrating the technology into the logistics of a busy practice.

This session will explore how practices and receptionists can embrace chat Apps which connect new and existing clients to the practice. Typically, uses include requests for products and appointments as well as updating clients about their pet’s status. Whilst such systems are unlikely to entirely replace the telephone as the primary means of making contact with the practice, they can certainly decrease it. I am sure we will all be familiar with how frantic the veterinary reception area can become when colleagues are struggling to field incoming calls whilst dealing with clients standing in front of them. Chat App information technology can relieve much of this pressure since client requests can be fielded from virtually anywhere as long as we have access to the PMS.

So why not join Brian Faulkner in conversation with veterinary receptionist Emma Harrison to discuss the who, what, why, where, when and how’s of using Chat Apps as a client engagement tool in modern veterinary practice.

Brian Faulkner graduated from Edinburgh Vet School in 1995 and worked in mixed practice. Over his 25-year career Brian has worked in more than 250 veterinary practices as a locum vet as well as setting up 5 veterinary practices in Suffolk. He also works as a practice management consultant and communications psychologist. Brian was the Petplan UK Vet of the Year in 2008 after having been runner-up in 2007. He is Honorary Associate Professor in Veterinary Business at Nottingham University as well as working as the Media and PR vet for Petplan Pet Insurance.

Brian was the President of the UK Society of Practising Veterinary Surgeons in 2017. He is also the Founder of Colourful CPD (www.colourfulcpd.com), an online CPD provider of veterinary training all around the world. Brian also founded the British Veterinary Receptionist Association (www.bvra.co.uk) and created the Accredited Veterinary Receptionist Award. In 2020 Brian was awarded Fellowship of The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (FRCVS) in recognition of ‘outstanding contribution to clinical practice’.

In 2017 Brian raised £120,000 for Brooke Animal Hospital by running 10 marathons in 10 consecutive days all across the UK and Ireland. In August 2020 Brian ran 31 marathons in 31 days from John O’Groats to Lands End (jogle2020.co.uk) to raise £10,000 for a charity called ‘Street Vet ‘ which attends to the dogs of the homeless.

Emma Morrison has worked in the client care team at Pennards for around fifteen months but has been a client of the practice for nearly twenty years. Prior to working as a receptionist, she has undertaken several diverse roles at both a senior and junior level, which had been ’tailored’ to meet the needs of a hectic family life. She attained a degree in Banking & Finance, prior to working in the City for many years as a Corporate Finance Manager for a leading Bank, leaving to have two daughters. This role taught her as many useful skills as any other role in relation to leadership, project/time management, organisational capability and being a ‘completer/finisher'. More recently, she worked as a teaching assistant and set up a small doggy day care business before making the decision to return to the workplace in a more permanent role as her children are now older and self sufficient. Her eldest is in her second year studying veterinary medicine and the youngest studying A levels. She thoroughly enjoys her client facing role within Pennards and its varied, fast pace and brilliant team make it a very satisfying role. When she ‘grows up’, her dream role would be to work in ‘forensics’ with animals as her companions, but she hasen't quite figured this one out yet!