Playbook, veterinary clinic
Handing over fast when an owner is frightened or grieving
Two very different messages need the same immediate handover at a veterinary practice, and getting either of them wrong is the worst thing this widget could do. One is typed in a panic. The other is typed quietly, and often looks like a price question.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for asking for a person holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Two opposite messages need the same immediate handover here, a suspected poisoning where minutes count, and an end of life question where the owner needs a person rather than a page.
- The poisoning message arrives in fragments and is read at a glance, so the reply has to be short enough to take in at once and must contain a telephone number.
- The end of life message is the reverse, arriving quietly and often phrased as a price question, and answering it as a price question is the failure.
- Neither can be handled by a form that reaches somebody by email later, because both are about something happening right now.
How it arrives
- my dog ate chocolate
- my cat has chewed a lily
- she has eaten my tablets what do i do
- i think it is time to have my dog put to sleep
- can someone call me about my old cat
- how much does it cost to put a dog down
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The practice number and the out of hours number | Both written where the assistant can quote them without reconstructing anything. These two lines carry more weight than every other document on the site. |
|---|---|
| Your end of life services in the practice's own words | That the service exists, roughly how an appointment is arranged, and who an owner should ask for. Written kindly, because it will be read by somebody who is upset. |
| Where an urgent enquiry lands and who watches it | The address the form reaches and how quickly it is seen, so the assistant never implies somebody is reading at ten at night when nobody is. |
| The wording of your refusal for anything clinical | Short, warm, and ending in a number. In this trade the fallback message is a piece of safety design rather than a nicety. |
The reply
I am very sorry. That is something to talk through with a vet rather than something I should answer here. We do offer this at the practice and there is information about how it works on our website [1], but please ring us on the number above and ask for the team, and they will give you time. If it is easier, leave me your name and an email and I will pass it on so somebody can call you.
It acknowledges the message before doing anything else, because an owner asking this is not looking for information. It confirms the service exists so the visitor is not left uncertain, then moves to a person quickly. The callback is offered because some people cannot make that telephone call themselves.
Where it stops
The trigger. The owner says the animal has eaten something: chocolate, grapes or raisins, a lily, antifreeze, or any human medication.
Please stop and ring us now on the number above, or the out of hours service if we are closed. I cannot tell you whether that is dangerous, and it should not wait.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say whether something an animal has eaten is harmful, or how much of it would be.
- Never suggest making an animal sick, or any other measure at home.
- Never quote a price in reply to a first message about putting an animal to sleep.
- Never tell an owner the animal will be fine.
Questions
- Why put the end of life question in a handover page rather than a pricing one?
- Because it arrives as a price question and is not one. Treating it as pricing produces a figure in reply to the hardest message a practice receives, which is the outcome to design against.
- Should the poisoning reply say anything else at all?
- No. Every extra sentence pushes the number further down the reply, and the number is the only thing that helps.
- Is a message form appropriate here?
- As a secondary route, and only for the end of life case where somebody may not be able to speak on the phone. It is never an alternative to ringing when something has been eaten.
Keep reading
- Everything for a veterinary clinicOwners ask about price, hours and emergencies at once. Here is what a vet practice can automate and where it must hand over fast.
- Handling asking for a person in generalThe design question at the centre of a support assistant. Offer early, offer once, collect what a reply needs, promise a time you can keep.
- The owner wants to move it, and the animal has not eaten since last nightAn admission for surgery moves on different terms from a booster. What fasting, theatre days and vaccination intervals do to the answer.
- Which veterinary queue is the owner actually asking aboutThree queues a practice calls the waiting list. Only one is the practice's own, and the referral wait belongs to another hospital entirely.
- Why a veterinary practice cannot publish one pair of timesA practice can be staffed while it is closed to consults. What to publish about session times, theatre mornings and the out of hours handover.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.