In less than 12 months, Goulburn Veterinary Clinic transformed their customer experience (CX) and are now ranked 2nd in the country for CX in Vet CX’s Customer Care Insights program.

The Vet CX Customer Care Insight Program compares 1000 veterinary practices each month in their approach to managing prospective clients who contact their practice by phone.

Goulburn Veterinary Clinic joined the program in October 2019 and with a bit of training and CX focus, the clinic has moved from below average, to 2nd in the country, making the regional clinic’s story truly remarkable.

Dr Zachary Lederhose, Owner of Goulburn Veterinary Clinic shares his story of why he joined the program and how he has built a strong culture for CX to succeed. 

“Goulburn is a regional city of about 26,000 people and its growing steadily. I started this practice in 2018 and have always been really big advocate for creating the right culture for the team around CX,” says Dr Lederhose.

“I absolutely love feedback whether sending out surveys or asking people on social media, getting feedback is so important because if you never ask you never know. We actually did a bit of community engagement through Vet CX and that was very useful.

“But giving feedback on phone manner is quite hard when you’re actually dealing with a real customer as you only get a one-sided view. This was one of the reasons why I found the insights program quite useful.

“Getting the team on board was a bit challenging – but the key is a slow and steady process.

“We started with a bit of training, talking about what goes into a good phone call and finding teachable moments for our staff to start to identify what the difference is between a good phone call and a bad phone call.

“I tried not to focus too intensely on scripting and set that expectation like ‘hey, we know it’s going to not be the best at first, we know we’re probably all going to laugh at each other and be embarrassed’. And it was awkward the first few times, but after that as people started to get the hang of it they started to really look forward to it.”

“For the first few months our team thought every call was a mystery shop almost – they couldn’t tell the difference so it was great. They all had different tones of voice, different accents and different ways of talking about their pets as well!

“After the first month when we got the report, we all sat down in a meeting together feeling quite nervous about listening to the recordings. We make it less scary by allowing the person whose recording it is to pick out what they did well and that just helps shift them into a positive state of mind. There are always good things you can find like listening, asking a good question or explaining things in a good way.

“We then open it up to the rest of the team to share what they thought their colleague did well. After this we go through the other side of things – what they thought they could improve upon for next time.

“It’s really about creating that safe space for staff to give and receive feedback on their phone manner. While in the beginning this took a bit longer to go through, now the process is so streamlined it only takes about 30 minutes each month for us to sit down and reflect on things.”

The Vet CX Customer Care Insights program allows practices to discover what customers are experiencing when they contact a practice by phone. Members of the program are mystery shopped each month and are asked typical questions that pet owners would generally ask. Practice owners/managers are provided with a recording of the calls and a report benchmarking each practice with the State/National averages, as well as other vet practices in the local area. Click the link to find out more here.