Busy v quiet periods? Try this clever VVN idea.

Matching your staff resources to fluctuating client demand can be a tricky balance.

You might have a frantic Monday morning packed with urgent visits, for instance, then just a trickle of clients booked between 1pm-3pm midweek.

If you want to fill those quieter patches with some pre-scheduled bookings, ask your Virtual Vet Nurse to do it! Here’s a great example from one of our clinics in Australia.

They scheduled free arthritis checks, using their Virtual Vet Nurse, Vivienne. (This clinic wasn’t actually having a slow patch, quite the opposite, but we thought their idea would translate brilliantly to that scenario).

Fill the quiet spots with scheduled free visits

Most clients love a “free visit” opportunity. It’s a great way to get them back through the doors of the clinic, particularly for lapsed or budget-conscious clients.

But from your perspective, you want to schedule free visits at the optimum time – i.e outside of your busy periods, and only when your team has the capacity.

Scheduled free visits allow you to:

• engage staff proactively during the quiet times
• attract lapsed clients back into the clinic (and reward regular clients)
• encourage follow-up bookings (e.g vaccinations, dentals etc)

Here’s how Vivienne did it

Through Vivienne, the clinic offered free arthritis assessments during two weeks in July. The offer was restricted to 5 free spots per day – at specific times that suited the clinic – on a first-come, first-served basis.

Here’s how it worked:

• The promo was publicized by Vivienne as part of an arthritis conversation.
• A quick hyperlink that ‘jumps’ to that particular arthritis conversation is sent to clients by email, SMS, or via social media.
• Once they’d seen the offer, clients had the option to click on the ‘free arthritis assessment’ button, which took them straight to the clinic’s booking schedule.*
• Vivienne was instructed to only offer 5 available timeslots per day. Accordingly, she automatically removed each slot as it was filled.

*Vivienne’s clinic uses ezyVet, which fully integrates with Virtual Vet Nurse, allowing for real-time bookings into the clinic’s calendar. 

This meant the entire promotion could be automatically run via Vivienne. She not only launched and publicized the offer, she also handled the bookings within the clinic’s calendar, and closed the promotion at the set date. 

And by ‘ring-fencing’ the offer to pre-selected days and times, the clinic was able to schedule the free visits at a time that suited their own staffing needs.

Some other door-swinger ideas

Of course, your Virtual Vet Nurse can run any type of promotion you choose.

But some other common ‘freebie’ consults include: 

• general wellness checks
• dental checks
• weight/body condition score
• eyes & ears check
• nail clipping
• whatever you’d like to offer!

Free visits are also a great idea when you want to introduce a new piece of kit to clients (such as the therapy mat in our clinic’s example).

Similarly, you may have free supplier samples or giveaways to offer clients who swing by the clinic to pick them up. Your Virtual Vet Nurse could also allocate these on a first come, first served basis.

The beauty of using your Virtual Vet Nurse

By using your Virtual Vet Nurse to run your promo, you can get it up and running straight away.

• it’s quick and easy to set up; it literally takes minutes to create the jumplink and hyperlink
• you can easily share the hyperlink via your social posts, emails, SMS, or QR code
• all bookings are automatically managed by your Virtual Vet Nurse (so your front-desk won’t have to field phone calls or fill the slots)
• you can ‘ringfence’ the days and times the free visits are available (e.g only Mondays and Wednesdays, between 11am – 1pm) so that you’re targeting your quieter spots
• you can choose to target certain clients for the promo (e.g lapsed clients only)
• it’s set-and-forget; you simply choose your timeframe (and your Virtual Vet Nurse will automatically end the promo for you)
• your Virtual Vet Nurse can also have conversations on the relevant topic (e.g if you’re promoting free dental checks, invite your clients to have a chat about teeth)

Marketing promos are just one feature of Virtual Vet Nurse

Marketing promos are just one of 10+ automated workflows provided by your Virtual Vet Nurse

All for an affordable monthly subscription  (see here), with no minimum term. It’s a plug-and-play offering that is installed on your website in under 30 minutes.

To find out more, contact the Virtual Vet Nurse team.