Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today's webinar kindly sponsored by Virtual Recall. Our topic today is saving time for your team, automate your way to a lighter workload with digital technologies. And I have the pleasure of introducing you to our speaker, Doctor Jamie Crittle.

Jamie is co-founder of Virtual Recall, which provides iRecall and our vet shop. IRecall is the UK's most successful client communication solution and operates in over 1850 clinics across three continents. Our vet shop enables veterinary practises to provide their very own home delivery service to their clients.

Since Zoita's acquisition of virtual recall in July 2020, he was appointed senior commercial director within Zoe's excuse me, Digital practise Services business unit. In addition, Jamie owns and runs a 145 year old family owned multi-branch veterinary practise in Surrey. He has also had a 20 year career in media, appearing regularly as a vet on the Big Breakfast, Sky News, and co-presented Pet Rescuers and Pet Rescue Roadshow.

He regularly broadcasts around the country and is a regular speaker at UK Veterinary Business, Technology and marketing seminars, conferences and events. Jamie is an active trustee as well of the Pet Plan Charitable Trust. If you have any questions or comments for Jamie as we go along, please hoping your mouse on the screen, click on the Q&A box, and we will cover as many of those as we can at the end of the session.

Without further delay, let me extend a warm welcome to the webinar vet Jamie, and over to you. Oh, thanks so much Jackie, and thank you Dawn and to Anthony, who I understand is just recovering from COVID, so thank you webinar vet for having me. It's gonna be a whistle stop, hour, where hopefully I can help you, have ideas or at least learn a bit more how some digital technologies can actually free up your time in practise and make your lives easier.

At the end of the day. COVID has really created lots of challenges, and hopefully I can lighten that load. So I'm going to turn my camera off just because, of streaming will be easier.

So let me do that, and then I will jump right in. So, as Jackie says, I am a vet, and I own some veterinary practises. And everybody will understand this.

A normal day in a veterinary practise. You may be down to see 30 clients, and the first client arrives 15 minutes late and has an extra pet. One nurse is called in sick, the X-ray machine is broken.

The team member who does all of the vaccine reminders is away on holiday and the front of house is tied up on the phones, stock is running low, and the ordering deadline is fast approaching. And this is even before COVID has hit our veterinary practises. That can cause real upset and this hopefully we can try and avoid.

And I think that's why I want to talk to you about automation. It shouldn't be, robotic, it should be appropriate. Those things that will actually make a real difference to you and to your clients.

And one of the big things, huge bugbear for me, is double entry. We need to avoid that, but automated doesn't mean mindless. We need to make it absolutely become your ally.

Look at those ways that we can improve the customer experience, because ultimately all of us want to have healthy animals. And if we do have healthy animals, we're gonna have happier owners. We want to reduce that sort of bureaucratic, that administrative workload, because ultimately we want to feel more fulfilled.

And if we can improve the workflow. We're gonna make the practise more efficient. And I would say What has COVID sort of made happen within practise?

It's made us have to work differently. We have different expectations from our clients, and ultimately we still want to give the same level of care, but during these really quite challenging times, . There are some lovely statistics here.

62% of vets, see that actually there is this need, this desire from pet owners for increased remote care. 45% of pet owners say they want to actually have some input prior to even seeing their vets, and I can't see that that is actually gonna change. So how can we implement and instigate processes that will help both us and our clients?

And I think the most important thing is that we know our customers. We've now hit that milestone where more millennials and Gen Zers own pets. But it's really, really important that I'm a a Gen X, and there are baby boomers, my mother is still a very keen pet owner, but we mustn't alienate them.

But these younger generations really adopt technology. They're also our current and future workforce. And the one thing about millennials and Gen Zers, they love their mobiles.

They also love their pets, and if you can actually combine that, make their lives easier, ultimately that will make our lives easier and more enjoyable, more rewarding. So technology, the mobile phone, the smartphone. Great infographic here, actually, of course it's gonna be out of date already, especially with COP 26 at the moment.

Human numbers on the planet are growing, but equally the the mobile phone will be overtaking that. To give you an idea of actually how fast that is accelerating, this is a great sort of colourful picture from a a sort of a mum's net. Look at those technologies in which how long it took to reach 50 million users.

And it is just accelerating. If you can see down at the bottom, Pokemon Go took 19 days to get 50 million users. There are other things beginning with P that also took such a short time, to reach 50 million users.

But to give you an idea, TikTok's not even on here. It probably didn't do it in 19 days, but in its 3rd year, it already has over a billion users. Squid Games, and if any of you have watched the Netflix series, got to 142 million households watching it within the 1st 4 weeks.

It's staggering how we absorb information. But I love this picture of the iceberg. Ultimately, as vets, we feel it's really, really important that we're in control, to help our clients look after their pets.

But if a client was to bring their pet into the practise for an hour each year, bearing in mind most of us probably have 15 minute consults. They're spending less than 0.01% of the time in the practise.

The rest is at home. So how can we help beyond the, the, the practise gates actually give them all of that help and that information to effectively become effective partners in the health and wellbeing of their pets? To do that, convenience is really, really important.

For our clients, but also for us and our teams. So, I'm gonna come up with some suggestions, some ideas, I'm even gonna give some examples of some technologies and companies that I think are pretty cool, but they're only my own personal opinion. I'm not endorsing them, but hopefully giving you some ideas and companies in which to investigate further.

The first thing, which you might think, gosh, that's a bit odd, Jamie wanting clients to do things for themselves. But I think it's important. I think if we can look at how we can improve the customer experience, that client journey, looking at things that they want to be doing themselves, ultimately we'll be able to free up those times where actually we can only and we should only be the people involved.

And as a result, this real partnership will make it so much stronger. So the first thing I would say is some self-serve education, symptom checking. Allow clients to have your information.

Make sure that it's curated, that you think it's properly informed professional, information and make it accessible. So we've got VetStream here, we've got Vet Help Direct and. Clever, clever piece of technology using AI joy, that if you're in controlling, in control of this information for your clients, you'll absolutely be able to orchestrate how you can take them further, because ultimately if they want help, they want it then and there because they're worried.

Can you actually, Sort of free up that worry and alleviate those concerns in a way that actually helps you and reinforces that relationship between you and your pet. And their owners. You can do that with educational plans, and I apologise, there are gonna be a couple of plugs for virtual recall in our technologies, but we want to give really informative education that's targeted and.

Personalised to your clients. We can even add in symptom checkers here, so the owners can actually think, oh, OK, that's what I'm expecting. Oh, I'm seeing that.

I want to now get in touch. And how can we then move on to that element? Light touch triage, do we actually have to be involved in that?

Can it be asynchronous, i.e., can it be done at a separate time, if they just have a quick question that you want to alleviate that concern.

Doesn't mean that they're gonna leave you or a lot of us as vets or practise owners are concerned about charging. These are areas that actually maybe we can give that as part of our value add because when the real meaty things that. Those concerns or times and experience and services that we need to give him face to face suddenly become really well valued that we're not seen as just money grabbing, but we're being able to really, really help.

Now, live chat, email. WhatsApp, and that symbol is WhatsApp business because I think that's going to come into the UK. It's already used in Brazil and Mexico in a big way.

And almost you may have heard of WeChat for for China or Li in Japan, I can see that WhatsApp will become a really good communication channel for practises with their clients, but it would be a a business side. And also, Pets App. Here is a specific piece of technology designed by a vet for vets, and it enables this light touch triage, frees up time.

But of all, of course, don't forget the phone call. But if you're really stuck and you don't have somebody has called in sick or someone's on holiday. How can you avoid that and still give that personal touch?

Coming back to that customer experience, trying to rethink it, reimagine it. So, teleconsultations you can see. Remote consulting, we've done that for donkeys' years by answering the telephone out of hours.

But I think it really is here to stay. And there are third parties in the game that some of whom really do want to disintermediate us. I take our clients and actually get to see them more when actually we want to be doing that.

But ultimately there are technologies that we could be making use of that actually aren't trying to disintermediate. Viett, you can subscribe to this. And I think subscription, you'll get to hear me talk about subscription a lot over the next hour because recurring revenues are really, really important.

They're really valuable in everything because they also make things sticky. But the, if I was to say there are two things I'm gonna highlight that in my opinion, COVID, some good has come from it. And this is this overarching use of technology.

Doesn't matter about the generations, people know how to do FaceTime, to have a Zoom conference, use Microsoft Teams. So you may be able to make use of technology that a a client has already on their phone, in order to be able to do this. Yourselves in practise.

And this is just a sort of graph just showing how much this has really started to be used. That uptake, if I just sort of say, is coming from May last year, and it stayed there. I can't see it, it's gonna go down.

But nothing is gonna replace the face to face. It just needs to be appropriate. So as a result, .

Clients want to see us and they will enjoy that experience. But how do we ensure that healthcare is carried out at the right time? One of the things as virtual recall, we automate communications.

We want to be able to look at those areas in which we can reach out. We, we look at them as micro moments that are really, really important to an owner. At the time that they need to be doing things, or may not even be aware, but we want to help them, and that may also bring them back into the practise or along those light touch ways, even if it is not.

Seeing face to face, but ultimately there are certain things that we do want to see face to face. We want to still do the annual health check. Give that vaccination in time that may be done by one of our qualified vets in the practise, but we want to be in control of it.

We want to be able to diagnose and then help down sort of chronic journeys. So we can help you with that, with automation. I'm just slightly concerned.

Jackie, can you, I've just had a message say I dropped off. Can you still hear me? I can still hear you Jamie, let me just check it and I'll check in the comments box in case anybody else have any problems, but I can still hear you loud and clear.

OK, fantastic, thank you for that. Sorry to interrupt. I want to introduce you to Pom, one of my dogs, and all of this is automated.

I just want to show you that it doesn't need to be robotic, so. Pom needs Saparica chew. We send that as a value add, in order that I remember when to give the chew, at the right time.

But I have a health plan and this would be included. So I can send this information and think actually I do want to, so I click on that link, the pet.lc and it brings me up to the practises health plan.

And gives all of the information, but also carries through in this instance, my wife's information. I've moved so I don't mind us sharing that. The simpler it is for a practise to do, we've learnt, gets done, but similarly, the simpler something is for a client, it gets done.

So she signs Pom up to our wellness plan. And immediately we send a thank you. But also we want to reinforce the value in that, so that Charlotte and I understand what's included.

Then, slightly later on, Pom is due a a vaccination with Cosmo, one of our cats. And because they're both on the wellness plan, that's included reinforcing that value. We can phone.

Can also book online. And this is a really clever online booking toolet Storia we work really closely with. And if you see the top on that sort of banner, there are 123 and 4.

Well, 1 and 2 get filled. I just have to be able to choose the time and the date on which I want to be seen. Then as we send an appointment reminder.

And let's say one of us had never been to the practise, we can include a Google link, and as a result, an owner can find out easily where they need to go. Then, having come in for that vaccination, we want feedback and that's one thing I'm going to sort of reiterate the power of getting immediate feedback and actually how you can celebrate those successes with the team and as a result, make life easier, make life better. And I actually did genuinely do this, we make use of the Net Promoters school, that, that question of how likely are you to recommend this service to a friend, family, or, or colleague.

And promoters, those scoring 9 or 10, we actively feed through to Google, you can do it to Facebook, to Vettel. And we'll talk about that. But I genuinely wrote this, and it just tickles me pink.

If you go on to Google, you'll see this, but because it's my posting, I get to see this. But I genuinely believe and know that I'm getting great care. I wanted the team to know that.

But part of the reason why these, I think, work, and we've got, we're a data driven company and we can see that the outcomes are better, is because they have such high contextual value. We're not sending messages to people who don't need them, we're sending them to their specific pets about their individual needs and requirements. We also, as you can see, we have a message builder, putting things together.

We send these communications out throughout the day, every day of the year. So let's say from a vaccine perspective, if you're still doing your own vaccine reminders on a batch, come the next month, it's either vaccine heaven or vaccine hell, depending on whether your vets like seeing er healthy pets for their annual health check and vaccinations. We even that out and we have these personalised calls to action.

We do it multi-channel, text, email, post, and I do think post is really, really important because across, and we're now coming up to 1900 sites worldwide, none of our customers have 100% digital contact details. On average, 20%. Practise doesn't have, so how do you send that?

By sending post, but you may have seen that we put a QR code, and here's an example I put in for me, putting that QR code, and this is the second thing where I feel that COVID has been a benefit to us. Who knew about QR codes before COVID? Well, we all understand what.

Therefore now, and this brings me straight through to a practise branded webpage with my personal details and I can add in or change my mobile number and email address. And I can also then personalise how I receive lots of these different communications. And that's all done seamlessly.

We're going back to this message builder, it's really important you don't spam your clients. The one on the left is a dog owner, and the one on the right, a cat lady. We all love all of our pets equally, but if you see there, she's got candy 3, she's probably had candy 1 and Candy 2, so maybe candy is her, her, her favourite.

But all of this comes at one, with one caveat. Some of us, and vets are. Sort of notoriously good or notoriously bad at making applying their knowledge, thinking actually I don't have a field for this, I know where I'll put it.

So how many of you are putting information after the pet's name or the client's name in your practise management systems? Well, if you don't have an intelligent way to clean that data. That information goes out.

And we see that and as a result, as a company we continuously enhance our ability to clean data for our customers because people don't want that. If, if it says Honey VIP, they may not be offended, but honey, do not give Pet Health Club products yet has not paid, . Is not so pos positive.

And we can make it really, really complicated. That's the beauty of digital technology. You don't need to know what's going on in the background as long as it works, as long as it's calling clients and looking and making sure that it's contextual and individual and personal to them, and as a result they do more.

Because ultimately we want to drive better animal health and wellbeing. It's about driving compliance, and I recall does make a big difference, but we're not complacent. We're a restless company.

Until we get to 100% compliance, there must be a different way, must be a better way to try and encourage owners to do what we want them to do as their care providers, their trusted vets. So other things, as you saw with the example with with Pom, seamless online booking. And I've mentioned Vetstoria, but we also work with another company in Australia, Pet Yeti.

There are other companies doing. But they're really, really good, and Vet Storia is so widely accessible. And this writes directly back into many practise management systems, and is really, really great.

But sometimes you don't want to do that. We use appointment requests from an owner's perspective, again carrying through their information and this gets emailed back to the practise. And in some ways that's great, it enables the practise just to give a sense check and make sure that it's the the right time or with the right vet.

Everything is about convenience, convenience is king. I talked about these short links, that pet.tlc at the bottom of that SMS and that then links straight through that you can reorder even when a practise is shut.

And they can do that sort of click and collect. But ultimately, I reckon home delivery at this time is really, really important. In fact, I think every practise should have home delivery.

We did a lot of market research pre-COVID, and you can see this dates back to 2017. And we asked almost 1000 clients who almost 1000 clients answered this around the country from several practises. How many would absolutely use a home delivery service.

And the numbers are brilliant. You may sort of ask, yeah, but only 19%, 1 in 5 would use it for food. But if you think about it statistically, probably only one in 20 people are buying food from you.

So suddenly we've quadrupled that number. And at the same time, we asked about pet health plans, and most of us would agree a pet health plan is probably the gold standard. But over a third would be more interested in this than a health plan.

And then now with COVID, there is a huge choice already. Pets at home, Pets Corner, great pet retailers are doing it. Then those people who are trying to disintermediate us, going for a subscription service.

And interestingly this week, It won an award for their service. Amazon, there's the big Goliath, and interestingly they've come up with a subscribe and save element. And the way they're depicting it is all about pets.

Can you just see that paw print and the bones? So they can see this and within the veterinary channel. Vet post, and vets deliver from pharmaceuticals.

Vet post is delivered by Zoettis, but our vet.shop, virtual recalls home delivery service. So, pet health plan or a product subscription?

I would argue we want both. We want to give our clients those options. Maybe the pet health plan is the gold standard, but if somebody just wants to subscribe to a a flea and tick parasiticide product, brilliant, because you may then be able to get them up.

But it has real operational benefits. Just think of all that time and money tied up in your dispensary, having team members pick and packer and then actually do that ordering. You can save all of that.

You can even use it as a payment sort of digital, seamless safe payment gateway for for your clients. You can manage it remotely. Can link in with your communications, and it can improve your cash flow.

But I'd always say choose your partner carefully, make sure you're in control. Make sure that you've got a wide catalogue of those products that you might want to to be able to offer to your clients by subscription on health plan or just on that ad hoc basis. Make it, as I say, a secure payment portal.

It really helps to build your brand and eases that load from you and your team. And as I say, make sure you're benefiting. Be able to have clients reorder simply, have it delivered to them so you're not even touching it.

Remind them when to use it and they'll reorder. So here's another plug, our vet.shop.

And Putting my practise owner hat on, how do I do it? I want my clients to be able to have whatever they want when they want it, how they want it, and ideally from me. I don't want to be disintermediated.

I don't want Amazon, I don't want internet pharmacies to take business away from me. And I think it builds my brand. As I say, Beach House Vets, over 145 years old, owned by two families in that time.

I want, you could say I'm very traditional, I'm very old, but I want to appear modern and give clients what I know they want and they need at this stage, and I make it accessible. And I see that it really does make a difference and is a real value to the practise, but also to the team. Yes, there's work involved, but balanced out, it's reducing the amount of money I've got tied up in stock.

And what is my biggest bugbear is when a product goes out of date, one of those things that you need to have, but actually, maybe. You can have that at the time and delivered to the owner. And also, during COVID, we really benefited from the furlough scheme, but our staff really wanted to work.

This is something, it's cloud based. Can be managed elsewhere. So, I'm moving now into the practise.

Some of that face to face, the really key thing. How can we reduce that administrative workload? How can we actually really make better value of the, the face to face?

I write copious notes, so a lot of my time was nosed down on the keyboard, looking at a screen rather than talking to my owners. I was never very good at multitasking. But there's some great sort of voice to text, like Siri.

Maybe you can do it from your mobile phone, but Talker 2 has been specifically designed for the vet. I can see that they'll branch out into medical because they've been able to absolutely nail. Down, the spelling of veterinary terms.

Hepetoencephalitis, and you just see it written and it's there on, on the screen. How many of you can't spell diarrhoea, so why do we put V and D? All of that can be there, so even the note get better.

Improving work flows across the hospital, many of you will have heard of SmartFlow, but another product is Vet radar. And they're trying to help and as I've already mentioned, COP 26 and the environment, going paperless, making these things better for the environment, improving your workflow, and ultimately they need to have a return on investment, so increase that revenue. Vet DB another really clever piece of technology coming from Australia, and again, capturing, sort of details and making use of blockchain.

So linking vaccinations. Laboratory results, pathology results, to a microchip, and really clever. So helping a client almost have that vaccine passport that is guaranteed, it can't be fraudulent, really, really neat.

Insurance. I'm sure like me, you love having as many insured patients as possible because it means that we can look after a pet when it's sick and give the level of care without being confined on cost, that you can just do what is needed. But that means you've got to be promoting insurance within the, the what is allowed.

But we've teamed up with Pet Plan to effectively create a seamless, process. Again, reducing that double entry which I loathe. So we ask a client whether they would be happy for Pet Plan to get in touch in order to get 4 weeks free cover for life insurance, and by just.

Ticking and invoicing a zero price code, that then has this digital handover to PET plan and they take over the communications with the, the client, and as a result, we're seeing more sign ups. Similarly, When you do have a sick animal, you need to make insurance claims, really onerous. But can we make that simpler and vet envoy, and having all of the other insurance companies try to sort of go through that, so with one simple process we can facilitate that, and I can see that's only gonna get better and better.

I'm sure everybody in the call listening to this will have in-house laboratory capabilities. They're digital now. Either you'll have Idex or you'll have VET scan.

But it it's, how do you enhance that? How do you make it better? How do you be able to report back to owners.

And again, reduce or avoid that double entry, making sure that there's bidirectional flow with your practise management system. And Fuse and the VetConnect plus enable that, and for those seamless integrations. But what is quite neat at the moment.

Is this system called Imagist using AI to identify parasiticides. The technology platform is only going to expand. So almost improving that patient, that bedside care that we might be able to offer to our owners whilst they wait.

So we're not then having to go back after the event. It'll just make it neater and smoother. Taking it one stage further, but of course there are lots of ambulatory specialists who will come to the practise.

We enjoy those beach house vets. Owners like to know the people who are caring for their sick animals and by bringing in a specialist house. But now there's technology.

Vet CT and virtual veterinary specialists are there on hand. Albeit remotely, to help you in practise, a learn, learn on the job. Help within that process of providing a specialist care in practise.

And there's a fantastic fact here. Every vet spends almost 10 hours a week seeking additional advice, investigating, doing research, but actually being able to have that in from your mobile phone. Or using other technologies is fantastic.

It enhances that level of care that we can provide to our owners. Now, back to the team, how can we show that we care? How can we demonstrate that our clients really appreciate them?

And we make use of, as I say, net promoter score, asking for immediate feedback and timing is so important and as a result we get such a high response. And the beauty of it, most clients love what we do. The average net promoter score, that we see is over 83, bearing in mind, Southwest Airlines, Apple, and John Lewis are known worldwide as giving the best customer experience, and they get now.

Promoted scores in the 70s. Clients love their vets. They like what we do.

But sometimes, because we care so much, if we hear something negative, we feel that the wheels have fallen off the bus, and that's what we focus on. But we ask for feedback and get testimonials, and if something isn't right, we try to get a way to be able to avoid that going beyond the practise door, put the wrong right. So here you can see that a promoter scoring 9 or 10 will actively push through to Google or Facebook or that help direct.

Or ask for a testimonial, and these are the really amazing things. And occasionally, and maybe it's one in 20 or even less than that when a client may not be happy, we can put the wrong right. But let's focus on the good, celebrate those successes, and use those testimonials to to actually go back to the practise in team meetings on a daily basis, or at least a weekly basis.

To be able to celebrate those. And then there are fantastic er organisations, rewards. The Koha exchange is specifically been put together for the veterinary profession and and for practises to be able to celebrate that internally.

And sometimes you may not be able to be there. Make a video, something like Loom because it speaks volumes. And ultimately, can we go to remote flexible working?

Well, some of us might be able to. Of course there is gonna be that face to face. A cloud practise management system will make that easier, as long as it links to a VoIP phone, to those sort of live chat or WhatsApp to your home delivery system, but maybe people could work at home, support staff.

And take away all of that onus from The team working in the practise. But you don't even need a cloud based practise management system. I don't currently have one.

I make use of TeamViewer, a remote viewing, so I can actually see it. But if it's all integrated, it really makes a massive difference. And I would say, here's my summary.

You don't need to see everybody face to face, all of the time. I think you just need to make sure that it's appropriate. Make sure that you're in control and that you bring your clients down that journey.

Reimagine it on there from them, ask them. Ask if and enable them to do more for themselves. As long as it's simple, it'll get done, and maybe you'll benefit from it.

I'd really urge you to automate as much of your process and demand generation as as possible. Product reordering on subscription means that you do it once and then it just continues in the background, being fulfilled. Those efficiencies, not having to deal with stock or having it tied up in the dispensary.

How do you reduce that administrative time in the consulting room? What can you do? And make sure at this time and going forwards, always to show everybody in your team that you care about them, show them some love.

And if you can automate things, it'll get done. And what's even better. Maybe make use of solutions or services that implement, manage and maintain, because then it absolutely will get done and you can focus on what you need to do face to face or on the telephone, be that with a colleague, be that with a client.

I now just want to share what I think is really, really exciting. It's called the near future. And I must declare the actual video was sort of filmed by my brother and his company.

It's not a plug for them, but for the company called Cable Labs that is gonna make. The future, a better place. And I would say it's almost just round the corner.

Cookie. I don't know how you're supposed to feel at '86, but I don't think I feel like I'm 86. People make my world go round.

I fear isolation and being cut off if I am alone somewhere and I had no one to talk to, no one to share anything with, I bet you I, I would just dry up and blow away. I, I call this my smart house. I got sensors in all the rooms.

I swallow them. I wear them. Doc knows what's going on with me.

I don't have to go to the clinic anymore. I just, I call him up and he's not back in the horse and buggy days. Looks like he had a pretty active week, huh, feeling of it too.

Guys How, how do you like your knowing I got eyes on me. Gives me the confidence to keep me being who I am. Doing what I want to do.

Freeze me up. Take some worry away. I don't have to worry about age my daughters.

Hey kiddo, what's up? I'm just checking in because I know she's not worried about me. She's always busy work and kids, but she can see exactly how I'm doing.

I love you Dad, that she knows how I feel before I do. Cookie has become my buddy. Time for your pill, Jim, my wingman.

Cookie, what time is that car going to be here? 2 minutes. It's cold out.

Might want to bring a coat. It's like he has a break. Now what are you doing, Cookie?

It's a quick. I have come to rely on him. I know I can trust him, and he's got my back.

I lost Ellen my wife 10 years ago. So many good times, so many memories. Losing her was really If we had had for her then what we have for me now, she would have been in a much better place.

I, I miss her so much. Here not too long ago, I was, I was experiencing those, dizzy spells. The doctor had had provided a scan for me at, at home, so I didn't have to go out to the clinic or anything.

They have those scans for that patient. Take a look, and that scans. I revealed that I had an aneurysm.

I saw this specialist, a surgeon, and she explained to me, we wouldn't have a messy operation. Inject these nanobots that they go into your system. In an army of And they, they find where the aneurysm is and they, they seal it off.

I, I get a kick out of thinking that I have a whole bunch of nanobots swimming around up here in my brain, doing what they're supposed to do. I wasn't in the hospital. I went back home.

Oh OK Back home where I want to be. Grab along. The help that I have allows me to stay here in my home.

Who is that? Do you remember that guy in the back? Who is that?

I have my friends here. That's Pete, my family. And I don't want to give that up.

I don't want to be in a nursing home. The, the quickest way to lose your independence is to go where you don't have any independence. Iromus.

So I Think it's amazing where the future is going to be. Round that corner, and we want to be absolutely part and parcel of that sort of partnership in looking after our clients animals. And I think there is going to be really, really exciting technology coming through that will almost and should make that sort of experience a reality.

But until then, We just need to make our lives as simple as possible, and as a result, every day will be that much easier. So thank you. Any questions?

That was wonderful, Jamie. Thank you so much. It was just engrossed that in that video thinking, wow, you know, how far we've come.

I remember when we first had dial up and we were like, oh, the world's become a smaller place and, and now, yeah, look where we are and. Things are developing so rapidly, and it can be scary sometimes. I think we think, you know, we see a lot of people walking with their heads down and just look at the mobiles and disconnected, but I think what kind of really struck me within that was.

That the, the convenience aspect and how we can actually build our bonds more strong with our clients because actually we're more attainable to them, you know, as as vets, you know, as the people that they want to be speaking to, you know, and then it frees everybody up to. To take over their own, their own responsibilities, freeze those phone lines up, you know, so that the reception team aren't as rushing around and, you know, they take the individual time with the customer service. I just think it's, it's better for everybody isn't it, and if you used in the right way.

And I think that is it, it's really important that it, it's appropriate, but it, it'll improve that customer experience, but it'll also make it more rewarding for the, the whole team in practise. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We've got a few questions that are coming through, so I'm just gonna start firing some of these at you if you're ready.

OK, so first one from Joshua. I've got, this is a brilliant lecture, thank you so much. Can you elaborate a little on some bottom line stats with how any of these tech changes affect some key metrics, for example, staff retention, revenue, profits, business growth, etc.

Any specific examples that you can elaborate on? I I wish I'd had that question beforehand to be able to sort of come back with some of those stats. I think, off the top of my head, probably the, the, the key element of how technology and I'd also include nutrition in there, is ultimately the overall outcome that pets are living longer.

That is significant. With regards to the, the compliance data, by making use of automated, communications, and OK, they are our recall communications, that we've increased those outcomes, for having more monthly, sort of prevention for both flea and wormers, more. Vaccines, more pets are being vaccinated and more regularly and more often, and ultimately more food is being acquired in practise.

With regards to staff retention, I think that's a fascinating one, and I think that's where something like the COA exchange really recognised that practises weren't, addressing that. The issue at hand with teams being sort of stretched, challenged and potentially stressed and unhappy, and being able to give real time feedback and support and give that appreciation, a koha is a Maori word for an appreciation. And if you do it at a timely, .

In a timely way, it's so well appreciated and recognised and as a result makes a significant improvement, even having feedback from our customers using review by giving daily. And at least weekly feedback, hearing and being able to read and have your name recognised by your owners. Sometimes you may think that consultation went really badly and how unhappy the client was, and it may bug you.

Chances are it'll affect our sleep, but having that information and act, oh gosh, you really did . She liked the fact that I was assertive or whatever. Gaining that feedback really, really helps.

But, I, it, it's certainly going to be a question, Joshua, I will read and, and I will endeavour to find some more information, but it's a great one because ultimately, outcomes and having the data to support it really makes a difference. Absolutely. It was a difficult first question to answer that, Jane.

I know I did put you on the spot because you didn't have that data there, but I think it was well answered, so thank you for that. Hopefully that's answered your questions, Joshua, and yeah, look forward to, to hearing more, I think as, as things develop and we get more of those kind of stats out, it'll be great. So moving on, I've got one from Peter here.

He says, how does home delivery and on-demand stock ordering benefit the environment? Surely it will generate more delivery journeys. Yeah, again, a great question.

It's one thing that we've been sort of looking at from a, and it's that balance between trying to improve compliance and the environment. So I think it's probably well recognised that if you were to send a parasiticide and it comes through the letterbox on a monthly sort of basis or a 3 monthly basis depending on the product, that if the owner understands it comes through the letterbox, I need to give it to my pet. It's more likely to get done.

But we already demonstrate that with good reminders. That you can also encourage owners to do what they need to do. So I think by consolidating, deliveries really makes a big difference and giving owners the opportunity to choose, they may decide, you know what, I want to subscribe to a 6 pack as long as you remind me when to give that, and as a result, instead of having 6 deliveries, it becomes 1 delivery.

What else can you add into that? Where some of the subscriptions are going, let's say for food, if you've got a, a large storage area, you might be able to store 3 months' worth of food, if that's appropriate with regarding freshness or whatever. So I think.

Need to look at ways to limit the number of deliveries and as I say, consolidating. 47, and actually I think it's now gone up because of COVID. As a nation, historically, let's say 1 in 2 households have more than one pet.

If you go to the US or to France, that goes up to 75% or more. So they need. More than one product for more than one pet, can you bring that into to one delivery?

But I think that's where the power of delivery going forward, it's not gonna stop, is how fulfilment and logistics bring those together to, to have the best impact. But a lot of the deliveries are going to use electric vehicles, high. Hydrogen, so there are better ways for achieving that.

But ultimately I would still bring back, for us as vets, you want to get the best compliance. How do you balance that with the environment, I think is working with your owners, working with the likes of us, or other home delivery and fulfilment services to go, OK, how can we reduce the packaging? How can we reduce that impact?

But still get and ideally the best outcomes possible. Yeah, brilliant. Always thinking about the, the green way, it's great.

I mean, we're all about that and it's great that everyone's on the same page really and always thinking about the best ways forward. But I do think, you know, when you think about if you've got 11 van going round delivering to multiple households, that takes 5 individual cars going to the vets to pick the products up off the road, you know, so it's that kind of dynamic as well, isn't it, just at that level, I think it can. It can assist, but as you say as well, by buying in bulk and having that six pack, you know, you save the customer money.

And it's, it's more frequent, more convenient. That's, that's the key with all of this, isn't it? It's that convenience, convenience is king, that's what your slide said, doesn't it?

And the other thing about it that I'm very proud to be a member of Zooettis. Zoettis has just been voted, and I think it's the only animal health company in in the top 100 for ESG environmental sustainability, and I always struggle with the the G whether that's governance. So as a company, they're looking at.

Those ways, packaging, how best to deliver sort of products to make sure that they're used in the appropriate way. So I think it is something that is really, really important. And as a profession and as an animal health industry, we are really sort of key to it, and I think, I know, and it's funny bringing.

It back to Anthony. Anthony wanted to be one of those people to go and speak at COP 26. Sadly, he didn't get the, the, the job, but that interest and the desire to make a difference is there, and I, yeah, we should all, at the end of the day, celebrate and commend ourselves.

But yeah, we need to do more and continuously look to improve things. Yeah. And always asking these questions.

So thank you Peter, for that question. Hopefully we've we've answered that one for you. And we've got just a couple more coming through.

It's just, just a few comments saying thank you, really enjoyed it, lots to think about. That's always good. One saying, hi, this was a wonderful webinar and nice info provided.

Can we use this in India? Is that one of your areas, Jamie? I don't know.

It's. Well, all of these sorts of sort of technologies probably would be available and, and certainly the companies I'm sure would be interested. I know as a.

Becoming part of Zoettis and why we went down this pathway was to become a truly global company. And we've got a really rapid and extensive sort of geo expansion sort of project. And India currently.

Not on that plan, but ironically, only yesterday there was interest from Zoeta's colleagues in India. So, maybe from the, the virtual recall solution. It may not be too far off.

I watch this space. Wonderful. OK, I've got an anonymous one here.

So what proportion of your sales are through your home delivery? How has it changed your business? Great question.

I have, it is a small, percentage if I was really good with my maths, it's single digit at this stage. We only. Actually started the company, our vet.

Shop. We're immensely proud. We managed to roll it out, within 7 weeks, of deciding to do it after the 28th of March last year during COVID.

So to create the technology, the partnerships and the integrations, the virtual recall team really pulled. Out all the stops. The one thing that is really fascinating about it, and hopefully a lot of people will appreciate this, there may be a lot of interest from practises, but it's almost, you can take a horse to water.

They may not have the time or the headspace because everything else is, is happening because they're they're so short staffed. So that That is why as a company, we try to do as much as we can to help facilitate that, but of course we need people to eventually say yes, go live. So small steps at this stage, but I think, and hopefully everybody will agree, it's not gonna be going away.

So if we can make sure that . As a, as a profession and each practise is still in control of it, it's own, I suppose, prescribing. At the moment we haven't decoupled.

There is talk about only having the right to prescribe but not dispense. I think until then, and to avoid suddenly the likes of Amazon coming and taking away all of that business and a practise is left thinking all I can do is now just prescribe. I think it is jumping on, on board, but being prepared that it it.

There is some work that is needed to get it up and running, and then with us we can help your clients understand that and bring them on the journey, in order to do more. Brilliant. Thank you.

I've just got one comment here from Mark saying the Khat Exchange is on a break at the moment and we'll relaunch soon. Oh, OK. That, that's probably COVID related, but I, I think the, the whole concept of, the Kohare exchange is, is a brilliant one.

But you may be able to just sort of take those ideas initially until. It does come back online and just think, OK, anybody who gets a mention gets a box of chocolates or or whatever, you can decide that in practise, but it's getting that feedback from clients to the team to know that they're appreciated and do it in a timely way. Mm.

Wonderful. So yeah, there's a few, a few more comments, but generally everyone's just saying how much they've enjoyed today, Jamie, and, lots of information to take away, so really, really positive feedback. Well, that's lovely.

I would love to be able to see everybody. This is not literally just speaking to a. The screen is is not ideal, but it is amazing what, Anthony and and you guys at the webinar there help us, sort of be able to get this information out there, but yeah, we love it in person.

Oh, wouldn't we all, wouldn't we? But it's all about convenience. This is what, this is the, the word of the day, really, isn't it?

And I think, you know, that's what we're certainly about and hopefully everybody that's joined today has found it convenient. We've found the time to, to join, and I hope you have enjoyed it. So to everyone that has joined, thank you so so much for your time.

I hope you have enjoyed the session as much as I have. It certainly seems that you have from the comments that are coming through. Thank you again, obviously to our sponsor Virtual Recall.

Thank you to Dawn. Controller behind the scenes, the hostess for the Moses, he's been making sure everything runs smoothly and most importantly, of course, a huge thank you to Dr. Jamie Crittle for a fantastic webinar.

I hope you all have a steady afternoon. Get that automation going, make everybody's life stress free. I won't use the key words and jinx anybody, but I hope everybody has a great afternoon and we look forward to seeing you again soon on another webinar.

Thank you, Jamie. Thanks very much, Jackie. Thanks very much, everybody.

Thanks, Dawn, bye bye.