Like many veterinary clinics, Brodheadsville Vet Clinic deals with high call volume, making it challenging to take care of every client’s needs. 

Amanda Mitchell, who serves as the clinic’s receptionist through Chronos — a company that provides customized remote teams to help support veterinary clinics’ in-house teams — experiences this struggle firsthand. 

“We get 3,000 calls a month. As soon as you hang up the phone, it’s ringing again. That’s the situation here most days,” she said. “Cutting down on phone calls… I can’t overstate how helpful that is.”

Fortunately, with Flow — the client communication and workflow management platform from Otto — Amanda and her team have been able to reduce call volume and spend less time on the phone when calls come through. 

In fact, Flow helped them reduce time spent on new patient intake calls by nearly 67%. 

“A call with a new client could easily take 15 minutes,” Amanda said. “With Flow, I can cut that down to five.”

Here’s how it works:

More productive client communication

Flow allows Brodheadsville Vet Clinic’s clients to text the clinic with any questions they have, which Amanda can respond to directly through Flow’s chat function. 

“I love being able to chat with the client,” Amanda said. “I would much rather use the chat than talk on the phone.”

That’s because using chat empowers her to help multiple clients at once.

“I can chat with clients and make appointments, refill medications, and answer questions, while at the same time, I can help other people on the phone,” Amanda explained. “It definitely increases the amount of clients that we can help during a given timespan.”

Flow also allows Amanda to create message templates to quickly respond to common questions. 

“I created all the templates I needed,” she said. “And I love that the templates can have forms we need to collect or populate with the client’s name.”

And the ease of communication Flow offers provides greater convenience for the clients. 

“If a client is at work or can’t speak with me over the phone for whatever reason, then we can just chat,” Amanda said. “It works out great.”

Streamlining simple, repetitive client requests

Flow’s website widget empowers Brodheadsville Vet Clinic to address simple, repetitive client requests quickly.

“On our website, we have the widget, which gives our clients a few options: Request an appointment, refill medications, request medical records, or chat with a team member,” Amanda said. 

Amanda went on to note that the widget is particularly helpful when handling medication refills. 

“It collects information like which pet it’s for, whether they want it filled at the clinic or a pharmacy, when they need it, and whether the pet is on other medications,” she said. 

“The technicians even use Flow to send notifications that medications are ready for pickup,” Amanda added. “That saves tons of time versus having to call each client individually,”

Set-it-and-forget-it messaging

Flow empowers Brodheadsville Vet Clinic to create set-it-and-forget-it messaging that automatically sends to clients at key times. 

“We have messaging that automatically goes out for appointment confirmations,” Amanda said. “We ask for cancellations 24 hours in advance, so at 36 hours, they get a notification saying, ‘Fluffy has an appointment tomorrow at 10:00. Click confirm or reschedule.’ That’s super helpful because I don’t have to call those people when they confirm.”

Brodheadsville Vet Clinic also uses Flow’s digital forms to collect essential information ahead of the appointment. 

“We have automated forms that go out when they confirm their appointment,” Amanda explained. “If it’s a sick appointment, we have an intake form they get. If it’s a well visit, we have a Fear Free questionnaire they fill out.” 

The digital forms play a vital role in the 67% reduction in time spent on new patient intake forms mentioned earlier. 

“We’ll send them our new client form through Flow,” Amanda said. “We get a lot of information through that — name, address, phone number. That cuts down on time we would spend giving the whole spiel on the phone and inputting information.

“That’s the key with a new client,” she added. “They can suck up a lot of your time on the phone.”

A better experience for clients and staff

Overall, Flow has made life much easier for Amanda and her team. 

“I love, love, love this platform,” she said. “I feel productive. Like, I’m chatting with everybody, getting everything done. I love it.”

And it offers a better client experience, as well.

“I think it’s giving people what they want in terms of how they can communicate with us,” Amanda said. 

For veterinary teams that feel like they’re too busy to adopt Flow, Amanda has this to say:

“Number one, it shouldn’t take you long to figure it out. It’s user-friendly and intuitive. Number two, it’s well worth it. In terms of time savings on the phone, the staff will definitely be less frazzled. Every veterinary clinic is overloaded, and anything we can do to lessen the load is so helpful.”