Playbook

Veterinarian Text Messaging

Text messaging will help your veterinary clinic get faster responses, cut hold times, and receive payments quicker.

Ready to see how? Our guide below can apply to vet clinics of all sizes, but we do have small to mid-sized ones in mind.

3 Essentials Before Your Veterinary Clinic Can Start Text Messaging

1. A list of customer phone numbers to contact.

You most likely already have a list of your pet owner’s phone numbers in a spreadsheet or customer relationship management software (CRM). Take that list and prep it for upload into Text Request.

Put your existing numbers into a new spreadsheet. If you aren't sure which are landline vs. cell numbers, reach out to our team about cleaning up your list. We can clean any landline numbers from it, so you know which pet owners you still need to contact for their mobile numbers later.

Now organize your cleaned spreadsheet by:

Cell phone numbers in column A
Pet owner names in column B
Any merge fields you’d like to include (like First Name, Pet Name, Breed, Last Visit, etc.) in the other columns

Now you’re ready to start texting your clinic’s contact list later.

2. Software for tracking new customers and scheduling pet services.

Text messaging is going to help your vet clinic increase its client base, so you need software in place to help you organize all of your new contacts. Here’s what we recommend:

HubSpot: Everything you need for marketing, sales, content management, and customer service in one place

Constant Contact and Mailchimp: Email marketing tools to keep pet owners in the loop for care check-ins and promotions

Quickbooks and Square: Auto-tracks income and expenses to streamline accounting

Zapier: Creates automations based on a pet owner’s behavior, like when they schedule a service using an online form

We have integrations with each of these software and more, so your new text messaging capabilities can mix right in.

3. Google Business or Facebook page for reviews.

Online reviews are how people decide which vets to trust their pets with. Being present on review platforms and actively gathering feedback is one of the best investments your veterinary clinic can make for itself.

Why?

The more positive online reviews you have, the higher you rank in search results, which in turn increases your chances of winning more new clients. We recommend you get listed on Google Business or Facebook to start, so you can connect your page to Text Request later and start earning more online reviews through text.

We’ll show you how to implement text messaging into your clinic’s processes to gather more online reviews and more next.

8 Ways Veterinarians Can Use Business Text Messaging

1. Create a smoother customer experience with text-to-pay.

No one wants to stand in line with an anxious animal to get their invoice. Text-to-pay eliminates that headache. Pet owners can simply open a texted link to make their payment instead.

You text the request payment, the owner enters their credit card through a secure link, and they're finished paying before they even pick their pet up. That’s less time they have to spend at your front desk checking out, and a win-win for everybody!

2. Schedule appointments with texted links.

Calling to schedule pet care is a major timesuck. You almost always end up leaving a voicemail—which results in the client never showing up for routine care visits or refilling prescriptions.

SMS appointment scheduling is faster, easier, and will save time by cutting down on phone calls. Here’s a SMS scheduling process your veterinarian clinic:

Text your scheduling link to clients
Text appointment confirmations and care reminders. Share any updates along the way, as well as what clients should expect, so they and their pet are prepared for the visit.
Keep it going. If someone is overdue for an appointment, reach out again with your scheduling link to get them back on the books.

That kind of workflow means more revenue in your vet clinic’s bank and less scheduling headaches for you to deal with.

3. Sell more products and services to pet owners with mass texting.

Clients won’t schedule routine care check-ins or purchase pet products, unless you tell them why they need to. Mass texts help you tap into that extra revenue.

Mass texts are a quick way to get your entire client base engaged in using your pet services and products, including:

Specialty treats to boost health
Discounted grooming services
Pet boarding promotions
Specials on spaying and neutering
And so much more

The goal is to educate clients about why these services and products are helpful. Clients who have additional questions about these topics will automatically start one-on-one text conversation when they respond to your mass texts—just like BCC email.

Segment the contacts you upload to Text Request into groups, so your promotions can be targeted ongoing. This keeps clients invested in petcare and regularly coming back to your veterinary clinic.

You can also track the click rates of any links you include in your mass texts to determine if customers are taking any nibbles at your offers.

4. Provide stellar customer service with two-way text conversations.

Clients have questions, and they usually call to ask them. That drains on your staff, clients have to wait longer, and your customer experience suffers overall.

Text messaging makes it easy to answer care-related questions quickly, send pictures of their happy pet in your care, and prevent your receptionist from being tied up on the phone all day. With picture messaging in particular, pet owners can just send a picture or video of what their furry companion is experiencing, which speeds up the entire care process for everyone.

Show pet owners their fur-baby is in good hands with you, by providing the smoothest customer experience possible with text messaging.

5. Conduct post-appointment care by text.

Quick post-care follow-ups after treatments or surgeries are more efficient with text messaging. It only takes one short message to:

Check-in to see how the pet is doing or what their pain level is at
Share reminders about when to take pills or do exercises
Provide educational tips on what stage of recovery the pet is in, or how they should be feeling

There’s plenty of room for these touch points to turn into full text conversations—and often that’s where some of the best client experiences come from.

Clients expect your pet clinic to text, just like all the other businesses they work with. SMS has become a standard, and without it you risk losing out to other local clinics that provide better customer service.

6. Speed up common communication with templates.

The more time you save, the better customer service and returns you’re going to see. Templates go hand in hand with that goal. They’re the Text Request version of saved messages, and you can create as many as you need for things like:

Scheduling and reminders
Prescription and product refill requests
Pet boarding information
Grooming information
Common treatment info
Pet pickup alerts
Review requests
And more

We have a full selection of premade text message templates for your veterinarian clinic to edit and use for your needs.

7. Use SMS Chat to attract more new clients.

Potential clients want to work with vets they know are responsive. They most likely have a ton of questions about their fur-baby’s health, so they’re going to love having the power to ask them instantly with a tool like SMS Chat.

SMS Chat is a widget that captures pet owners’ attention by letting them text you directly from your website. It also helps you capture leads and start conversations even outside of business hours when no one is available to take a call.

Businesses that add an SMS Chat widget to their website tend to see an increase in conversions of 30-100%, because they can follow up via text even after that person leaves the website.

Giving pet owners the power to communicate with you the way they most prefer will draw more of them to you.

8. Gather more online reviews.

Your vet clinic won’t show up in search results without reviews. It’s that simple. Gathering reviews ongoing is an absolute must if you’re going to compete with other local clinics in your area.

Here’s how:

Connect your Google Business or Facebook page to Text Request
Insert custom reviews links into your texts asking customers for feedback
Monitor and respond to oncoming reviews from inside Text Request

There's a direct line between earning online reviews, improving your Google search results, and increasing your overall client base. Text messaging is the fastest way to reach clients for those reviews, and Text Request gives you one place to manage them.