How do I reduce hold times at my vet clinic?
By the Margin Media team · Updated
To reduce hold times at a vet clinic, find the hours when calls stack up, take the routine calls off the front desk, and give overflow calls a second place to be answered. Hold time is a staffing sum: calls arriving against hands free. You can add hands, remove calls, or do both.
What causes long hold times at a vet clinic?
Long hold times at a vet clinic come from one desk doing two jobs. The same people greet arrivals, run the till, hand over medication and answer the phone. When three of those happen together, the phone is the one that waits, because the caller can't be seen.
A second cause is call length. A refill request, a question about a bill and a new client booking all take minutes, and each minute is a minute another caller spends holding.
What are the steps?
Work through these in order. The first two cost nothing but an afternoon, and they tell you whether you need the rest of the list at all.
- Pull a week of call logs and mark the hours when callers waited longest or hung up.
- Sort one day of calls by reason, so you know which could be handled without the desk.
- Move breaks and admin tasks away from the peak hours you found in the log.
- Put refill requests and routine messages on a path that doesn't need a live answer from the desk.
- Send overflow calls to a second answerer: a phones-only staff member, an answering service or an AI receptionist.
- Check the same log a month later and compare the hang-ups hour by hour.
Which second answerer suits which clinic?
A phones-only staff member suits a clinic with steady volume all day and room in the budget for a wage. An answering service suits a clinic that mainly wants messages taken. An AI receptionist suits a clinic whose peaks are short and sharp, where a person would sit idle between them.
How does Margin cut hold times for a vet clinic?
Margin sets up Mia to pick up the calls the desk can't reach, so nobody is asked to hold. She answers common questions, books an open time, and passes refill requests and messages to the team as a short callback list with the conversation attached.
Bookings land on the portal calendar and the office is told. Whether your practice software connects is looked at on the audit and you're told plainly. Urgent calls are passed straight to your team.
What Margin sets up for this.
- Mia, the AI receptionist, on every call
- Booking onto your calendar
- Your portal: every call, text and booking
What a business needs is decided on its audit. It is a one-time setup fee and a monthly fee, with exact numbers on the audit.
How Margin works for vet clinicsSee the portal with a sample business
Related questions
Is adding more phone lines the answer for a vet clinic?
More lines let more callers through at a vet clinic, but they don't add anyone to answer. Without a second answerer, extra lines turn a busy signal into a longer hold queue.
Should a vet clinic have a dedicated phone person?
If your vet clinic's calls are heavy all day, a dedicated phone person away from the counter is often the cleanest fix. If the pressure comes in short bursts, that person is idle between them, and overflow cover fits better.
Can online booking reduce hold times at a vet clinic?
It can remove some booking calls from a vet clinic's phone, if clients use it. Some still phone, especially when they are worried or unsure what kind of visit they need, so it rarely replaces answering.