There are many vet-client apps in the global marketplace these days – and it’s often assumed that Virtual Vet Nurse is another one.
But we’re not…we’re a different species altogether! When you compare the two, you’ll see that Virtual Vet Nurse is used by your clinic and your clients in very different ways.
Without getting too techie about it, we recap the 3 main points of difference between an app and an AI chatbot, and why they matter.
Most of us are very familiar with apps and have a bunch of them on our phones. There are the giant apps we all know: the likes of Tiktok, Zoom, Snapchat, Uber etc. Then there are millions more apps developed for specific purposes.
In the pet owner/veterinary space, the app is the ‘thing’ that’s been developed to connect the pet owner with their vet clinic, and allow them to interact.
By contrast, Virtual Vet Nurse is an AI-enabled platform. From within the ‘central brain’ of the Virtual Vet Nurse (where we train digital assistants to carry out many automated front-desk tasks), your clinic’s own personalized digital assistant/chatbot is created.
While apps are built to be used on one specific platform, chatbots can be accessed across multiple platforms – e.g a clinic’s website, email, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook and more. This means the end-user can reach out for help from any platform, and know their query will get a response.
Most veterinary apps require buy-in from both the pet-owner and their vet clinic – i.e the clinic buys and promotes the app, and their clients download and use it.
In order to work, it needs both sides on board. That’s why you’ll sometimes see veterinary apps prompting pet-owners: ‘Can’t see your clinic on our list yet? Ask them to join us…’
It also requires the pet-parent to remain actively engaged with the app. Most of us have languishing apps sitting on our phone that we simply don’t use, or have forgotten why we downloaded it in the first place!
By contrast, Virtual Vet Nurse lives and works on your clinic website. Clients know they’ll find your Virtual Vet Nurse whenever they visit your site. Or, they can be prompted to interact directly with your Virtual Vet Nurse each time they receive an SMS, text or email.
Importantly, there’s no client log-in, portal or passwords required to use Virtual Vet Nurse. It happens automatically.
Virtual Vet Nurse offers the same functionality (and often more) as many of the apps – e.g automated bookings, refills, pre-visit histories, post-op surveys, client reviews and more.
But a key difference is its powerful flexibility when creating conversations and workflows. Being an AI-enabled platform, Virtual Vet Nurse can provide ‘switches’ that can easily create new conversations, and customize the user experience for each individual clinic.
Each Virtual Vet Nurse communicates in human-like language. As ChatGPT comes online, this back-and-forth conversational style will become even more familiar (and expected).
It’s likely the world will move away from pre-programmed user experience (‘log-in and follow pre-set instructions’), toward the more fluid conversations offered by AI-based technologies (‘come and talk to me about my specific needs’).
At Virtual Vet Nurse, this has always been our wheelhouse!
Disclaimer: We’re the first to admit, we don’t know all the vet-to-pet apps in the marketplace, or the details of what they do. If you feel our blog needs amending, based on your experience using one of these apps, please let us know.
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
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