Hi everyone. Today I'm having a chat with veterinary team guru Alison Lambert from On Switch. Alison and I have a chat about the insights that we can take from the possible changes for the veterinary team and the customer care journey in light of COVID-19 and what that might mean in the short term, medium term, and some musings about the longer term.

Enjoy. So Alison has very kindly agreed to join us and give us, give us her 2 pence worth on the whole circumstance and and what we can maybe look at doing as as veterinary professionals to, to alleviate any of those pressures have changed. So, Allison, I wonder if you could just take 2 seconds to, to tell everybody who you are, those that have been under a rock and haven't heard of you.

Oh thanks Ben, and, and firstly, 2 seconds, right, OK. For those, for those who haven't met this somewhat old person, I am a member of the Royal College, qualified in 1989 from Liverpool, and went into practise and then spent time in industry and in 2001, left industry and started on Switch as a business, kind of combining what I'd learned in, in grocery, because I worked for the Mars organisation, not as a vet, so I left the profession completely. And ended up working in FMCG fast moving consumer goods, er for the Mars organisation.

So I learned an awful lot about customer understanding, customer experience, particularly from the shopping experience and insight work that, you know, why does someone buy a bounty bar or why does someone buy a Milky Way or why does someone buy a Snickers? Or, you know, why do some people not like Uncle Ben's and Dol Mia, those kind of things. So I learned a huge amount about the, the empirical understanding of customer, customer behaviour, customer shopping behaviour, customer understanding.

And how you then utilise that to position products and services. So when I left Mars, it was like, I know stuff about customer and I am a vet, so let's put those two together. And that was in 2001 where, quite frankly, the veterinary profession looked at me and went, What?

What, what, what are you going on about, girl? So it was a somewhat uphill battle in the beginning, but, you know, when you know something and then it's useful. And many ducks got into rows around that time, so, and people started to realise competition grew, there was suddenly the emergence of many new styles of practises, new, many more practises were opened and, you know, having a competitive.

Advantage became pretty obvious and it couldn't for most people be price so it had to be service delivery and service quality and customer experience. So, you know, planets aligned and the business grew and grew and so here we are today in 2020, which is what, 19 years later, . Where we have a, a business that works across Europe, Australia, New Zealand, helping, healthcare businesses, both animal health and also some human healthcare clients as well to optimise their customer experience or patient experience.

So that they, those patients get the service, and, and healthcare that they need. So our, our purpose, on Switch exists to inspire change, create customer centred practise, so pets, horses, and livestock receive best care from the veterinary profession's perspective. So what we try and do is, is look at the customer experience, plot customer journeys and say right, we need to optimise here and here because what we really want.

Is we want the profession to embrace the human carer, because if we can get the human carer to go, I get what you mean for my, my cat, dog, rabbit, horse, flock or herd, then those animal patients get the, the medical outcomes that they require or the interventions that they need. So welfare is optimised and the. Patients get the, the treatment they need.

We've got to learn human to care for animals, because the human is a gateway. You know, they're the ones that say, yes, go ahead with tests, or, yes, come and, you know, put a, a vaccine programme in for my, you know, for my cattle or, or whatever that is. We've gotta, we gotta speak human, we've got to get human.

We've got to understand human. So, COVID-19 happens and you just go, wow, what do we do now? Customer experience in a pandemic.

Fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And and I think that's it, is that, you know, we're so used to having that face to face interface with our clients, that all of a sudden that that sort of rug has been ripped out from under our feet. But of course, you know, a lot of your teaching, a lot of your training gears around, you know, sort of that that phone conversation with clients and, you know, things that are, are now not just, You know, sort of part of that journey, but are now almost, you know, the paramount elements of that journey.

So what, what sort of things can people take into consideration when the fact that, you know, they're, they're not necessarily going to be encouraging people to, to come into the practise? What can they do to to still maximise that that customer journey? It's a good question and we have to look at this situation we're all in, and we're all in it.

There's, there's very few. I can't think of a single person that I know who hasn't been materially impacted by COVID-19, 1 way or the other. And what we have to do is stop and say, right, what we do today will optimise us in a, a triage or an, an emergency situation.

But some of those things that we will do today will stay with us when we're back to what is our normal. And we will embrace remote consulting in. Way that we haven't done.

So remote consulting has a massive role to play for continuity of care for patients that have got established relationships with that practise. So that that's a big thing we can embrace straight away, however you do it, it's a way of maintaining continuity of care. But what we will learn is, we didn't know enough about our customer experience or journey before COVID-19.

And that, that, I think, is one of the biggest learnings today, is you need to map your customer journey. And you might know us for phone calls, but, you know, we spend a huge amount of time working with people who do consults to actually optimise the consult experience. So we do a lot of remote access coaching of people who are consulting.

Bizarrely, most of it in Australia, for reasons I've never really understood. . So if we think, if we plot the customer journey as it was pre-COVID, it was, how did they find you?

So that your customer journey's got 4 quadrants to it. If you imagine like a dartboard or a clock face, you've, you've got a, a, a quadrant where they find you, they find out about you. So they're not talking to you, they're not in your building, they're not on your phone.

They might just have found you online or in social media or through a local community network. They then call you. For the vast majority of people, the phone is a primary access point.

Then they come in, or you end up on their yard or farm, and then they leave you and they talk about you. So you've got these 4 quadrants. They find you, they call you, they come in, they talk about you.

And that was, if you'd have, if you knew your customer journey in each of those touch points really well pre-COVID, you probably could switch on remote access and vets answering phone calls pretty quickly, because she knew how to process map. I think what's become very apparent is many people have not quite fully understood the journey of their customers. So the role of social media messaging or inbound emails or inquiry phone calls.

And now people are going, how do I manage this deluge of client need? The big thing here is, number one, speak to your clients, get on social media, ring them up if they're on repeat meds. Start communicating outbound, so you lessen the inquiry calls inbound.

And that's probably the biggest single thing you can do today is go, right. What can we say? Consistent clear messaging, fewer words, better said.

Get on the, get on your medium, you know, whether that's social media or whether that's text or whether that's email, or whether that's you ring up people. And tell them what's going on. Like this is what we're doing about annual health checks.

This is what we're doing about puppy kitten vaccines, this is what we're doing about flu and tech. This is what we're doing about TB testing. This is what we're doing.

Cause if they know what you're doing, they don't need to ring you and ask you or email you and ask you, or direct message you and ask you. So you're taking away inbound traffic. So on your process map, there's a bottleneck at the moment about inbound traffic.

And people are overwhelmed with inbound traffic because the furlough team members, you know, quite rightly, because protecting Cash He's king at the moment. I get that. And the government, by the way, you know, regardless of your politics, this is exceptional.

The support that we're getting. Now is exceptional, and imagine a world without furloughing, people would be redundant. So I, I do think we just need to frame where we are now is an extreme, unusual circumstance, and everybody's doing their damnedest to get us through this.

So just make your life easier and, and look at your process map and say, what is it when they're finding us? They're finding us and calling us to ask us if we're open. Now, that's a call that can be managed by a process.

So make that an outbound message. So that's step one. Step 2, When the inbound contact comes in, and that might be web chat, it might be phone, it might be email, it might be social message, you know, direct message on social media, you have to respond and signpost what happens next.

So have something on your website that explains remote consulting and the process map. Like, if you want a remote console, this is what we will do. Do a little video saying, this is what will happen in preparation for your remote console, you know, get some photos, take a video of the dog, do something, so that when we're talking, we've got a little bit more information.

So number one, decrease the amount of inbound phone calls asking you if you're open and are you're doing boosters. And ideally, don't go on the bloody telly and tell people it's OK to go and have your boosters. You know, I'm sorry, but vets who are doing press and media out there, please can you wind your neck in and read the BVA and our CVS guidelines, because that's actually really critical that we speak as one, you know, because that has caused merry hell yesterday.

So number one, decreasing in inbound traffic by outbound communication daily. You know, one of the things that, you know, again, let's keep politics out of this, but global leaders, some of them are doing this a bit better than others. Simple clarity, this is where we are, this is what's going on, you know, we're staying safe, we're staying home to stop the spread.

Simple. So just do this, you know, real clarity coming from some, some glo global leaders, and less clarity coming from others. So as a practise, be, be that clear voice of reason in your local community.

You serve the local community. They will be there for you when this is all over. If you're there for them now.

If you're there for them now, voice of reason, simple daily updates, do, you know, do a coffee break with the vet at 10:30, do a, a live video feed, just chat with people, reassure them, word will go around. Your local community will really appreciate, one, a different conversation. And they will remember that, how we handle this now is a brand reputation locally for all practises or local businesses, be personal, be real, eyeball to eyeball, do some video, don't do pap, you know, infographics, because that's just, it's just, it's dead, you know?

Get your personality out there, you know, you're a living, breathing human being. Let them see the emotion, let them feel that, and you will keep your clients connected. You'll reassure them, and they will be there for you after this is over, but the world will be very different after this.

So number one, decrease the number of inbound inquiry things about are you open, are you doing boosters? Number 2, outbound communicate through whatever medium you've got. Number 3, really clearly is get your, what, what a remote consult looks like.

Explain what that involves, do a video, do a dummy one, explain it, put it on your feeds, because at the moment, we need to. Get that first bit of the customer journey right. So first contact, resolve it, signpost, first call, resolve it, signpost to a remote consult, and then first consult resolution, get the remote consulting going as best you can.

Charge for it. One of the glories of this, I have to say, Ben, is that finally, hopefully, the profession have learned. That actually people are willing to pay for for professional advice.

There never was a monster cost objection to our fees. 90% of the, of the, the, the vet using community are more than happy with the fee structure. 10% aren't, can't and won't pay.

You know, they're not happy, they can't pay and they won't pay. But the vast majority actually are OK. And maybe this has been a way of us learning that we need to be.

Less concerned about our fee structure when it's professional fees. And also, the other thing to notice is, just a slight ramble here, is how much of your revenue at the moment is products that are available in other channels. So like flea worm products and food.

That seems to be a vast majority of the activity, but that could go tomorrow if people figure they can get that on subscription from, you know, a another source. So, yeah, yeah, there's a lot, a lot, I think we'll take from this is very positive when this is over. But know your customer journey.

Outbound communicate regularly, daily updates, make it a routine, 10:30 every morning, cup of tea and say right, you know, this is what's going on. If you need a remote console, this is how what we need to see, you know, those kind of things. But I think you alluded to something really interestingly there and that was that, you know, the.

The video interaction with people has very much come to the fore through all of this, and you know that that has given an added human element to those, those sort of digital interactions that that we we are now being, as you say, forced into having because of the circumstances that that are presented to us. But obviously in this short window of time, owners will have to. Adopt that and we'll have to engage with that wherever possible.

But of course this will come to an end at some point, you know, whenever that point is. But does the, the way that we work now, does that then shape a new future journey for for? Yeah, absolutely.

And I think one of the interesting things that if we, if we just replay what you just said, that the idea that owners are going to have to learn how to be digital and savvy, it's like, they already are. They don't need to learn how to be digital and savvy, because the whole world is. And that's, this is possibly the big disruption here is not on our consumer base, because they, they, they're very used to using, you know, apps, you know, everybody uses FaceTime, everybody is used to, you know, family communicating.

That this isn't new technology for the vast majority of clients. There are some demographies that may be slightly outside of it, but for the vast majority of people, the idea of saying, here's an app, click the link, talk to the vet. That isn't a new thing to the customer base.

It's actually yes, that makes absolute sense about it actually, you know, we all engage with them every day. I mean, even, you know, I mean my mum isn't old, she's 68, I think she'd probably lynch me if I said she's old, but it. But at the same time, you think, yeah, you know, she knows, you know, we do have a good laugh because it's watching her work slightly slower, but she still gets there and understands it, and, and you know, my my great auntie is 85 and she functions perfectly well on FaceTime and stuff like that.

So I do wonder if there is actually that assumption, that that people can't necessarily engage with that, but actually is that an assumption to protect our own. Concerns about, you know, one of the things that you you learn very quickly about customer understanding is that, you know, there are different ways of categorising different types of customers or consumers, and there there is no one type, but there are patterns and themes. And one of the big patterns and themes is the expectation that the older generation are less digit digitally able.

Well, that that doesn't follow through in most of the data because the digitally. Connected grandparents with kids who are, you know, have emigrated. I mean, those guys are Skyping and FaceTiming all the time.

They're, you know, booking flights, you know, they're travelling around, most of them have booked their cruises online. I'm sure most of them would maybe regretting that, but there is a digital capability across all demographies, and as a profession, we are inherently conservative with a small c, and we're inherently nervous around adopting new ways of behaving. The, the, the, the dynamic change here or the.

The the precipitation of new ways of behaving isn't in our customers. They've been doing it for long enough, it's us, it's definitely yours, and, and it will stay, and I think it's right that it stays. I think how we best use, different ways of communicating with our clients.

Within the, the Royal College framework, I think is the is the interesting question that the college you have to, you know, be very clear about what is an appropriate, you know, this brings in under our care, debate, but, you know, remote consulting, continuity of care consulting, so. A a practise keeping in touch with their clients where they've got their data, and they know that patient. So you've got an established vet client patient relationship, the VCPR is established, then remote follow up, you know, imagine having seen a patient for case presentation, I don't know, take a cat, CBA, CA presented, you know, you do a follow-up continuity consultation 4 days later, the cat doesn't need to get in a basket in the car and vomit and scream.

And then take your eyes out in the consult room and go home again to be told, yeah, he's all right. You, you could see that that consult too, continuity of care, follow-up consult would be better done remotely, both for the client, the cat, and for you, and it's chargeable, either you charge it and you see one or you do it as a, as a C2 charge. It doesn't really matter.

Forget the charging. It just means you're doing what you would have done. But you're doing it in the context of a new remote way of doing it.

Nothing's changed here. You're still gonna do your consult. You're still gonna do stuff.

It's just they're not in front of you. And that's a new thing. We, we need to learn how to consult without touching our clients, not touching the clients, but touching the, the patients.

Yes. Well, maybe we do need to learn how to consult without touching our clients, but that's possibly another one for the college to consider. Let's not go there.

But, and that brings in, you know, where we spend most of our time, bizarrely, is looking at how we best use our consultation time. And when you've got remote consults, you haven't got step 4 in the seven-step consult, which is step 4 is actually the physical examination. You've not got it.

So steps 12, and 3 become much more important, which is, you know, being prepared, establishing that report, and then listening to the owner, asking questions and listening to the owner, because they need to help you. Yeah, this is gonna be, you know, remote access, continuity of care consultations for patients under your care with an established VCPR that client-patient relationship will be normal. It will have to get a bit more seamless than it is at the moment, because there seems to be about 60 ways to do this, and I'll shake down to 2 or 3 platforms that allow access to PMS data.

So you've got good, you know, patient data, good billing data, good continuity of script production. If people work. From home, they need to generate scripts of these remote consults.

I think it will refine down to better, but we are, let's remember we're in a battlefield at the moment. This is triage. This is like, do what you can, give them what you've got, you know, classic Apollo 13 moment, you know, if you've not seen the film Apollo 13, there's a brilliant bit in the middle where the CO2 oxygen philtre things broken, and they've got to build one from whatever they've got.

And if you want to look at creativity moments, it's like, given what you've got, what can you actually do or they don't. That's what that brilliant piece in Apollo 13 was, and that's where we are now. Given what we've got, what can we do to make sure these patients get good welfare outcomes?

Yeah, and I think that's something that, you know, for so many of us going, you know, I dare say that very few of us go into veterinary to vaccinate dogs and cats. But why not? What's wrong with vaccinating cats and dogs all day so that you maintain good health and well-being in those patients and those families have their best friend with them for longer.

100%, but I also think that so many people, I actually. A nice vaccine consult, but I also love that, that moment where we get an opportunity as a clinical professional to really sort of go, actually this is what I've trained for, this is what I've done, and this is what we can do in these circumstances. Now of course that's not for everybody and that can create a stressful environment if that's not the way that you're wife, but I, I also think it, it's a real opportunity for people to, you know, as, as professionals we are.

Inherently problem solvers, and I think, you know, this is one big problem that's thrown in, in our, in our sort of veterinary pool, but I also think there's gonna be so many positive solutions for different smaller problems. One of the big things that, and again. Is, you know, a personal perspective, and it may be right, it may be wrong, it may be half right, it may be half wrong, but it's just my perspective.

I, I genuinely think we will look back on this period of time, and let's hope it's no more than 3 or 4 months. You know, I fear it may be a bit longer. I don't know.

But let's just say we're in a year's time and, you know, we're in Manchester at the new BSABA and we're having a beer and going, right, good God, we all got through that. But if we hadn't have gone through that, we wouldn't be doing this now. If we think what those things would be, the new behaviours, one of the things that come out of this for me, hopefully, Will be that confidence in colleagues and in the team to say, it's not perfect, we haven't got what we normally have, we haven't got access to full teams, we haven't got access to full referral capability.

We haven't got access, but we can do a good job here. We can still do good welfare, we can still do good patient outcomes. And maybe that experience we're all going through now and for colleagues on the, literally on the, you know, in practise, dealing with less than optimal conditions.

They will learn that you can still do a really, really good job. And actually it's OK. It is actually OK.

And I saw a lovely quote on I know a thread somewhere. And someone was worrying about not having access to blood gas machines or something. And somebody from my vintage said, well, we never had them anyway, and we still managed.

You know, I'm not saying that's what we should go back to, but it just shows you can do. And I do think, you know, this adapting that, you know, what I did was good enough and good enough saved the dog's life, or good enough was right for that horse in that situation. I think maybe we'll learn to accept that good enough is OK.

And maybe that from our own well-being perspective, it will be. A real learning. A few of us older ones will remember, particularly foot and mouth, you know, where you just have to do what you had to do.

You know, two big financial crashes where people were laid off. I was made redundant. I've been made redundant twice for financial reasons.

You know, the idea that vets have been made redundant, you know, for a lot that want the, the, the more recently qualified generation, that is a concept they've never maybe never even thought about. But it happened, you know, two big crashes before and the foot and mouth. And maybe resilience is just learning to cope with these kind of things, you know, and maybe that's one thing I hope is that people will give themselves less of a hard time for not doing the perfect job, .

And it's one hell of a way to learn it, that's for sure. Yeah, and I think you know that is something that is definitely, you hope that people get this appreciation that actually, you know, like you say, just doing your best and doing a good job is good enough, and I think that is, that's fantastic. But I think what if you were to look at this, you know, as a, as a staunch advocate for the client experience and a staunch advocate for the profess.

As well, what to you is a, a positive outcome for all parties out of, out of this whole circumstance? It's a really good question, and I suppose like any good question in the middle of the eye of the storm, you see it as it is, in this moment. So you asked me the same question in 6 weeks' time, I might say something else.

But as it stands today, I think what for me, I hope will come through this is I hope that practises can work with their local communities, and they can embrace and engage and be personal, be intimate and personal with these guys, because it's about you as a community centred business. Venue practise is a community centred farm practise, know this, because it's in really embedded way of working in farm practise, equine more so than probably small animal practise. I hope that the profession embraced this reconnecting with the values of their local communities and what role they play in the lives of pet owners in a way that maybe we don't see in the hustle and bustle of the KPI driven veterinary world that some folks maybe are talking about.

It's, you know, these animals play a huge part in these people's lives. And they matter hugely, and just reconnecting on a really human level, I think that for me is one hope. The second one is, I think the reality of, we can get the job done, we can do a good job.

We actually can be decisive and quick and make decisions and try things. And if they don't work first time, do something different. Decision making, I think we learn to be better decision makers, and that it's OK to make a bad decision as long as you make a better one pretty quickly.

I think that's a good thing. And from the customer point of view, to embrace that those customers are on their particular, you know, animal healthcare journey, whether it's, you know, cats, dogs, horses, farms, flocks. And they actually need you as part of their journey, and we need to understand how they live, what matters to them.

And you know, when we're through all of this, every practise should come out of this COVID-19 period for me, with a deeper understanding of what their local communities's customer journey is, you know, how do they find you? What role key opinion leaders, we haven't even talked about key opinion leaders, you know, what are the kennels, catteries, groomers, farriers, yard owners, you know, agronomists, on, you know, nutritionists. What, what do these guys think about you?

You know, because they're saying, yeah, you know, keep paying that, that direct debit to the, you know, to the practise because you're gonna need them because your cows are gonna need whatever or if that, you know, on-farm consultant says mate, just, You know, hunker down, get the cash back, cancel the direct debit to the vet, you know, where, where are you positioned in that hierarchy? I think we need to understand our customer journey map and you've got some time now to think about it, not in these next few weeks. It's still too raw, still too edgy, still too much going on, but when we get that period of calm, which we will, it's creating a and fully understanding the, the customer journey map and the, the customer experience touch points is where are we good, where are we ropey, cos we're good at some stuff and we're pretty ropey at other stuff, .

And, and try and put in place optimisation for that when this is all over. Do you know what people need vets. People need vets, .

And maybe that will be a redefining of the relationship between the people who need the profession and the profession. With those people and that, you know, that there's been an encroaching anti-client kind of media and chatter on veterinary forums and in veterinary press there's often these, you know, horrible social media posts where we're we're disrespectful of our client base. Maybe that will go away.

That would be my hope that we actually, we learn to embrace the people who need us and actually like us. Yeah, well, I think that's a perfect way to sort of sum things up and say, look, you know, reconnect with your community and embrace them as your clients, and also, you know, your livelihood. So I think, you know, that's, I think it's a great insight into how we can continue and, and thrive at engaging with our clients and do it better and, and in a more wholesome manner movie.

Forward, so I think Alison, thank you so much for your time. I think, you know, an absolute wealth of knowledge on, on client care, and I know certainly there'll be a lot of people who will take some insight out of this. So thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you for, you know, asking me along and you know, I'm going to take my own medicine and we're doing a weekly Monday video on whatever topic people want to know about. So if anyone's got anything they want me to whittle on about on a Monday about 10:30, then do let me know. Brilliant.

Thanks, Alison. Cheers then. I'll speak to you all soon.

Take care.