Oh, good evening, everybody. Thank you, Andy, for that. We've just been having a really good catch up about 30 years ago in Liverpool, which is, how long ago I qualified, so, I'm feeling rather old this evening.
Right, we've got, nearly an hour where I'm going to Hopefully, share some thoughts around the veterinary business and why we need to really focus our minds on, it is all about people. Ultimately, this is a business that only works in a sustainable, profitable way, if we get the people bit right, and that's your team and your customers. So, at the end of this session, I would hope that there are a few things that maybe you will reframe in your own mind, how you view both your team and your customers.
Because if we don't get the people bit right, then the, the business longer term is going to be more choppy and more, more challenging for you. So let's see how we can make this work a little bit better. So, declarations of interest, just prior to commencing, I, I'm a huge believer in people knowing who they're dealing with, and thanks to Andy for introducing me.
So I own this business on Switch, and I'm associate professor in business at the vet school in Nottingham. So we'll move swiftly on. Right.
Before I start, one of the big things about people, and the more you read around, you know, you, you read Pop Science, and you read in the press and about different generations want different things and different people want different things. Well, people want things. And one of the biggest threads running through.
All the research looking at what people want and recruitment, particularly, and what makes people feel comfortable or happy with their lot. It's feeling they're connected to some form of purpose. So if they're in a workplace, if you're connected with the, with the purpose.
And it's a thing that for some of us, it feels very superficial if it's not genuine, but when it's genuine, Knowing what your business's purpose is and how, what your value set is for your business, really helps people, both customers and team, align with you. And it makes, you know, the good days brilliant, and it makes the, the, the, the off days not as bad as they could be. So, on, on which we exist to inspire change, create customer centred practise of pets, horses, and livestock receive best care.
And that's the driving force of my team, you know, 15 of us in the UK, across Europe, and Australia, New Zealand. And when none of us cli clinically active anymore, and so by inspiring you, the listeners, the viewers to look at how you can help the patients, carers, keepers, owners, if we can change one or two things by helping. The human, then we ultimately receive better care for the patient downstream because without the human, these, these animals, whether they're pets, horses or livestock, just don't get the care, they don't get the meds administered, they don't get the rechecks, they don't get the surgery, they, they don't get the preventive care, they don't get the flock or herd health.
So we can't do good veterinary medicine unless we take people, the customers with us. So that's what this business is all about, is trying to inspire you guys to see the customer in a different way as a gatekeeper to care. And we do that with these five values.
We're incredibly passionate about the role of the human, the customer experience, patient experience. We like to inspire. We work collaboratively, so there are things that we know we don't do well.
So we help work with people who do do that. So we don't touch finance or legal or HR, but there are better, better skilled people for that. And we like to be innovative, but most of all, honesty.
Honesty is the evidence indicates, our experience indicates this is what's going on. So sometimes, honesty may not sit comfortably with people because sometimes it's hard to take. So.
This evening, I want to go through why we need to reframe how we view people, customers and team, and some of the things we can do to kind of help refine where your business might be going and, and embrace that. As somebody who was born in Yorkshire, and my home football team, Hull City, I've never been particularly great at at much. The Tigers roar occasionally, but usually it's a bit of a whimper.
I adopted a second team called Manchester United, some of you may have heard of. They've had a particularly rubbish season. But at least one more Premier League championships in this lot, who have just won a European championship.
So congratulations to Liverpool for winning. They're number 6, but it made me think about the last time they won that particular trophy was in 2005, and a hell of a lot has changed since then. And that just made me think, you know, when we go back to 2005, the last time Liverpool won this competition.
You know, these things just didn't even exist. Now, just, the reason I want to make this point is, 2005 iPhone didn't exist. Twitter didn't exist.
Instagram, iPads, Netflix, Spotify, Uber, Airbnb, hashtags. Can you imagine a world without hashtags? Fitbit, I can certainly imagine a world without Fitbit, and I've, I've managed quite happily without Fitbit in my life.
Dropbox, Pinterest, Bitcoin, you know, Angry Birds, these things just did not exist. So the world has phenomenally changed. And I would ask the question of you guys, if you've had your practise since 2005, is what's changed at your practise?
What are you doing fundamentally differently now compared to then? Have we Evolved at the rate and rapidity of change that that the humans, whether customers or team have evolved, because what we did in 205 was, it feels like light years away. So I wanted you to think about.
If you're listening to this now going, you know, I've got other fish to fry, you know, I'm, I'm the, the people bit, I'm OK, you know, I'll pay them on time and we're not a bad place to work. There may be some things you've missed. And certainly, when we look at what's changed, we need to really understand, particularly our customer, pool and our teams, because they have changed.
Their world has changed, out of sight completely. So, I want to introduce you to A customer journey and encourage you to look at this from the perspective of your own, practise, and think about, you know, if we start in the top, top left hand quadrant there where it says getting noticed. If you start with the brand new customer, which is the first little sort of square in that, getting noticed upper quadrant there on the customer journey.
You know, if you're a brand new customer, how would you ever find your practise? You know, how would they know you existed, you know, would they find you online, on social media? Would they drive by, meet you in a community event, you know, what, what would, how would they find you?
And once they have found you, what, what do they do? They, they ring you up. What happens?
How are you on the phone? They then come in. What's it like to, you know, sit and wait, you know, go into a consult room or, have a vet rock up on the yard?
You know, what's it like to pay? You know? And then, once they've left the building, you know, what is it like after they've left the building and what do they say about you?
So, we think about, reviews, net promoter score, who talks to who, word of mouth, and Then someone finds you, and then we're back up that they've found you, they've rung you, they've come in and they've talked about you. That, that customer journey has materially changed in the last, even the last 5 years. So if we want to always be looking at how our business remains, sustainable, profitable, and on top of its game, we need to understand where our customer journey may be out of date, or it may be lack lagging a little bit.
And so for you to think about your practise is to think, you know, what, which of these steps are we struggling and which of these steps are we maybe weakering? And the role of people in that customer journey, and the role of processes for those people in particular, is really important. And there's a, so many, articles, literature, research that show having great processes help everyday people deliver consistently good service.
And an observation from, you know, spending many, many years with veterinary practises all across Europe and the world, Is that we depend on brilliant people glueing together the day job. And most practises have good days when certain people are in the building, and most practises have bad days when those people aren't in the building. And you, you usually have a couple of stars amongst your, your team who, if they're around, things just tick.
It, it's like, you know, it just all works. You know, the ops board gets rattled off by 1:30. Patients are home by 3, place is cleaned and prepped and sorted, and evening surgery is a dream and everyone goes home on time.
When those people aren't in the building, everything just goes a bit peak to and by 7:30, 8 o'clock at night, you're still there doing cats spaces. There's something about having great processes that means everyday people can do a good job. And I would urge you to think about, could it be your practise that is glued together by good people, great people, or are you glued together by great processes?
And one thing I would strongly recommend you look at is people who have got great processes. You might not particularly like their product, but certainly McDonald's have got a cracking process. It's pretty consistent wherever you go, it kind of looks the same, it happens.
And they can take a 16 year old school leaver and turn them into a Customer facing process, you know, adhering, doing the job properly, person, relatively quickly. And I would strongly recommend anyone looking to recruit team members, see if anyone's ever worked in McDonald's. They are very, very well trained, and they're very, very customer focused.
So spot this on a CV because it's a real, a real positive. But what do they do? I mean, this is about having process, .
And in any business, when we're looking at process, we need a system, and there are several systems you could do. I would strongly again recommend you look at the balance scorecard. The balance scorecard was first proposed, by Ka and Norton back in the 80s as a just a business system that allowed you to focus on something other than numbers, e.g money.
It, it was a way of managing a business by making sure that all the different aspects of a business were equally focused on and given equal time and priority. And this is Something where when we're starting to look at the role of people is how do we measure or how do we assess or how do we look at what people do for our business, . If we don't have a metric or we don't have a KPI or we don't have a a platform by which we can look at what's happening with our people, whether they're team or customer.
And the balance scorecard is something which drives us to think about. Having a systematic approach to running the business, that means you dedicate time and energy to 4 key areas. And those 4 key areas are, yes, you do need to look at your finance.
So, you know, what, what your numbers doing, what's your revenue doing, what's your profit doing, what's your, you know, all of the, the core financial parameters. But you must also look at the core data around your customer, and you must also look at the core data around your team, and you must also look at the core data around how you do the job of being a veterinary practise, so your operational effectiveness. And this process brings into sharp focus.
The whole importance of these two groups of people, customer and team. It means we have to measure aspects of what's going on with customer and team, and we have to dedicate equal time to them in our monthly management meetings, in our quarterly review meetings, in our strategy meetings, rather than just saying, let's look at the numbers. So at your next meeting, where you feel you're going to sit down and go through, you know, last quarter's revenue, profit, etc.
Is to say, right, we just spent, you know, 2 hours talking about revenue and profit. We now need to dedicate the same amount of energy and data to these other three aspects of the balance scorecard. So, equal time for customer, equal time for team, and equal time for operational effectiveness.
And what you find is that you spend less time talking about finance, because you don't want to spend a whole day talking about this. So you, you, you allocate your time and resources as managers, into making sure you're looking at what's happening with your customer base. You start looking at customer metrics, you start asking for customer metrics that you don't currently have.
You start doing the same thing with your team, so. The Basco has a really good way of highlighting what's going on in your business, and the principles are very simple. Every business has a financial objective, you know, what, what is it?
You, you're in business, the business has a job to do, and that's to deliver a financial goal, which has been determined by the business owners, whether you're the owner or the manager or a supervisor, there's a job to be done. There's a, there's a financial plan that says, this business must deliver. You know, 3 million pounds worth of turnover or 200,000 pounds worth of net profit or whatever that number is as a goal.
And they, the balance scorecard approach to this would say that you need to establish, therefore, to reach those goals, how many customers do we need to deliver that given our business model and your business model may be, you know, being, maybe a dairy practise, so you, you know, you only maybe need, you know, 40, 50 herds of a particular type to hit those numbers. The question then is, is, who are they, where are they? And can we then deal with that group of people?
So, Here's our financial objectives, therefore, how many customers do we need doing what? And then the operational effectiveness is, well, how do we actually do that? How do we service these customers, and how many team members do we need to do that?
So these 4 areas are interconnected, and there's some quite jazzy software. If you, have a, a play on Google and look up Balance scorecard, there's some really interesting software out there, which can really help you. It can get very complicated.
But it's just the principle of saying, you know, at your next meetings, let's discuss people. Let's discuss these people call customers, and let's discuss these people called team. And then let's discuss how we interact.
With these customers, with these team members, so how do we do our day job to meet our financial goals rather than just saying how, you know, what the, what was the revenue last month and what was the profit. It forces you to look at your Your business slightly differently. Again, looking at other processes around how we engage with teams and, and customers to the people, how do we make the most of people, then.
From your perspective, there are helpful tools out there and the ISO process is certainly one that I would recommend to you. It's an international standards process and 9001 is a quality management process which just helps you find out. What processes you need to run, and you will get help from, ISO to get yourself sorted and figure out what your processes actually look like.
And then you're assessed on a, on a rolling basis. It's used by lots and lots of companies around the world, and it does work, on switches ISO 9001 and 1,4001, registered, and it just means there's, there's a A process map for those bits that need to be process mapped, which is basically the day job. And there's no reason why a veterinary practise couldn't actually go through this as well.
And this will help you hugely, particularly with your customer service, because it defines what it is the two groups of people need, e.g., what does the customer need and what your team need to do to deliver it.
So if you're dead serious about looking at how you make your business work better, then at some stage, you're going to have to embrace some form of process mapping, to make it work. Because relying on brilliant people to glue together the day job is gonna burn them out, because it, it's, you, you can't rely on just one or two brilliant people making the practise tick. You know, great processes enable everyday people to deliver great service.
So good processes with everyday people are sustainable. Brilliant people on their own with no processes is burnout. And we, we have enough problems in our profession with people, Finding it's a little bit too much.
There's too much to do in the available hours that if we can just get our processes right, we will help both our teams and our customers. So I, I really urge you to have a look at, the ISO process because it, it, it genuinely helps you and guides you. It's a, it'll take you 18 months to 2 years to get through it, unlike, if you're thinking of things like practise standards, which is more around you as a veterinary practise, this is about you delivering service quality.
And it's applicable to any business and it's certainly worth looking at. So ISO, it's, it genuinely, I'd have a look, see what you, what, see what you think. And we, our experience of going through ISO was, you know, it was 18 months, and we employed a project manager to help us do this, but the, the benefits downstream are significant.
You, you, you run a much more organised and Smoother, efficient kind of business, so I, I would give it a go. I would have a look at it because I think it will help you understand your customer and team interface. So going back to the, the balance scorecards of this session is around people.
So we're gonna look a little bit more customers, and then we're going to take a look at the team. We'll start with customers because without them, most businesses would struggle, . I know it's a bit of a cliche to say that, you know, if you haven't got any business, if you haven't got any customers, you haven't got a business, .
Well, that's very true, as Boots and, Thomas Cook, and several other large, brand name big operators are finding, as if the customers choose to spend their money elsewhere, you're never too big to fail. And I do think that as a profession, we've perhaps. Expected that everybody needs a vet and the Brits love their pets, therefore, they'll always be a role for the vet practise.
Well, that's true. There'll always be a role for a vet practise. But unless you keep on top of your relevance and what's happening in your customer pool, it might not be your veterinary practise.
So practises do come and go, And I do think the more that we find a way of staying connected to our customers, the, the, the better our sustainability will be. So if we have a look at the, the customer experience, and one of the things about customer experience is people say, well, what do you actually mean by that? And it's a very interesting phrase, and it's one that, if you look at the human field, particularly the patient experience in, in human medicine, is one that, is hugely, researched and debated and discussed.
And it's something that we can say, well, can we learn from that? And can we, you know, can we take from what's been happening in human healthcare and take it into vent healthcare? And the answer is, yes, of course we can.
Because, you know, at the end of the day, it's a human having a healthcare experience either for themselves or for their child, . What bit of the, the difference going to the vets is it's a human having an experience, but the patient is now, you know, a cat, a dog, a horse, or it's a flock or a herd. Is there still a human response to how they've been made to feel.
So there's, there's something very similar, elements. So, the whole thing about the experience is it absolutely is multi-sensory, and, you know, as humans, we operate in different ways, but we do have senses that are picking up, nuanced behaviours or, well, We're seeing little subtle visual cues, and smell, smell in our profession is a nightmare. You know, we're quite a smelly sort of business, really.
And to the, the unfamiliar nose walking into a veterinary practise, if you've not been into, in one forever, or 5 or 6 years, you, you are bombarded with smell as, something we become nose blind, we don't notice it. Touch, Some of you, if you do recall Liverpool 30 years ago, there were certain dubious nightclubs in Liverpool, as students we used to go to, and you would stick to the floor. And you'd stick to the wall, and you'd, it was really sticky and tacky.
You just knew it was dirty and disgusting. But you never saw it with the lights on, so you didn't really worry about it. You, you know, when people touch your work surfaces or your chairs or they go to the loo or the, you know, that whole feeling of, this is all building part of your experience.
So the experience in your practise isn't just what happens in the consult room. It isn't just what happens at the front desk. It's a continuum of those individual touch points that creates a memory.
And that's what people judge you on, because clinically, they assume that you're competent. So this for many, Colleagues is, is slightly alarming that they may be judging you as a veterinary surgeon because of, you know, how you make them feel as opposed to how clinically competent you are, but that's the case for the vast majority of people, they assume you're competent until you do prove otherwise. And it's an interesting one, but often I'm, I'm one, I, I love Twitter.
Twitter's a great place. You can twitter away to yourself quite happily. And this popped up one day, and it just kind of reminded me that this deep relationship between a human and a creature, isn't a, a recent phenomena, or phenomenon, phenomena.
And this lady, Christina Wiederbach is a, an archaeologist, and she posted this picture of a a little, like a tombstone grave to a little dog from Roman times. And it, it just made me think that, you know, that long ago, somebody chose to put together a tombstone and get it carved with their little dog, and, and then get an inscription. And the inscription says, and I'll read it to you.
My eyes were wet with tears, our little dog, when I brought thee to the grave. So, Patricius, never again thou give me 1000 kisses, never can I be contentedly in my lap. That's a Roman epitaph for a dog.
Now, that's just a phenomenal reminder that. Pets, particularly, have huge emotional meaning to the people that live with them. And if we underestimate that, we miss something, because for the vast majority of people, the vast majority of times, they choose to have animals in their lives and they care deeply.
Farmers care very deeply about their livestock for lots of different reasons, but they care. They, you know, it's not a cold relationship. Same horses, same with pets.
There are rare people who don't, but they are certainly not in the majority, the, the exception. So, this just made me think, you know, even that long ago, people had such a caring and deep connection to the animals in their lives that when we think about customers, what we're talking about is family members. And I wanted to share this with you around the patient experience, which is some work that was done.
There's a huge amount of work done on the patient experience in the human field. And this was, from the Bell Institute last year. 2018, and they defined the patient experience as the sum of all interactions shaped by an organization's culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care.
And I do think the highlighted words there are the sum of all the interactions shaped by the culture that influences the perception across a continuum. So this is about perceptions of all the interactions across the continuum of care. If we think about what we mean by continuum of care in The, the human field, you can see that, you know, from getting an appointment, getting through to get an appointment, sitting, waiting, seeing a GP, getting moved to, a specialist, rocking up to an outpatients, there's a whole series of touch points, and then you get to see the person that you needed to see.
It's not just that moment in the consult room, or that moment in the imaging suite. That the whole patient experience is a sum of every single interaction with every single team member from the person who first meets them, greets them, helps them through to the doctor, the surgeon, you know, the radiographer, whoever it might be. And after that, who cares, a dispensary, pharmacy, follow-up phone calls, results reported.
And this whole continuum of care. It's really important because it's not one bit that makes a decision for people. It's all of those individual touch points glued together, and my.
I suppose my, my hypothesis, my proposal for you guys, is that why would it be any different for us? Why would the customer experience in a veterinary practise be anything other than the sum of all the interactions shaped by the practises culture that influenced the owner's perception across the continuum of care? Why would it be different?
And I don't think it is. I genuinely don't think it is. And in this particular study, they found that when the patients were asked how important it was that they had a good patient experience, you know, 9 out of 10 said it was important, very important, extremely important, and 1 out of 10 said it was somewhat, but, you know, whatever.
And they'll fix me. You know, I'm not that, that bothered one way or the other, how you make me, you know, personally feel, just fix a bit that's not working. And I think this is a really important kind of infographic to say that, you know, not everybody wants everything, and you'll never, you'll never have everybody wanting a particular style of service delivery.
And there'll always be some that are very much more pragmatic. But what this also says is, for a lot of people, e.g., the 6 out of 10 or the 9 out of 10, it actually matters a lot how you make them feel in that whole healthcare experience.
And these words are, for me, really fascinating. When these human patients were asked to describe, you know, a positive patient experience and a negative patient experience, they were given the, the opportunity to, freehand the words or phrases, and the bigger the words, the more times those words were, were used by these patients. And on the positive experience, it's, you know, the words that jump out very clearly are caring, helpful, friendly, professional.
The words that jump out on the negative experience a very clearly long wait, rude, rushed, and caring, frustrating. . All we have to do is change one word, describe a positive veterinary practise experience, or describe a negative veterinary practise experience, and those words apply.
We know they certainly apply on the positive patient experience, because when we talk to people who utilise, veterinary services, and we ask them exactly the same, that the world is exactly the same, caring, helpful and friendly. So this is important to you, because, do you know what, at the end of the day, a event you practise today in most of the countries around the world, you're in a competitive footprint. It's unusual to be the only practise available for a target audience of, of owners, whether that's pet, horse, or farm.
So there will be choice. And where there is choice, owners have choice, they will start making decisions around how you're making them feel. And If you make them wait, if you're rude, if you're frustrating and caring, then the chances are they might look at changing to somebody else.
And again, one of the other things that came out of this, which again, I think is really important about we understand what customers are looking to do, is you all will have heard of, you know, the, the old apocryphal tale of, you know, an unhappy customer will tell 23 people, whereas a happy customer will only, only tell 3 people. Well, in today's digitally enabled world, you know, they'll tell people equally, you know. If they've had a bad experience, they'll, they'll tell 30, 40 people.
If they've had a good experience, they'll probably tell 30, 40 people. So it's kind of parity on that one now with the positive experience and the negative experience. You know, if it's a positive experience, the chances are they'll carry on using the same doctor.
The negative experience, There on the red bar there on the right hand side, you know, 43% decided not to go back to the same personal place and 37% decided to, you know, find use a different organisation. What it actually says then is about 60% just put up with it. So 60% putting up with a negative experience is probably what we've got in our profession is that people are.
Pragmatic, and it may not be that your experience was brilliant or great, but it just wasn't dreadful. And they go, Well, it was only once a year, so that'll do. So they may stick with you, even though their experience may not be positive.
And that, over time, means that it's not gonna be good for you. You need to find these people and help them have a better experience. So, always good to have a better experience than a poorer experience.
And again, just a couple of final things from this human healthcare and it is human healthcare remember and and my proposal to you guys is that why would it be materially different in the veterinary context is when we look at what the consumer priorities were for their experience is that they. They rated the, the, the people experience above the process experience, above the place experience. It is most important to folks came out on top, is how the people that they were interacting with, that was the, the biggest thing, then the process by which they could access that healthcare.
And then finally, the physicality of that building. Which is really quite a positive, because many veterinary practise buildings are compromised, they may be modified buildings, and they may not be what you would design from the, the ground up. .
But as long as you've got great people and the process works, and you can get by with a building that may not be perfect, the flip side of that is if you have a shiny sparkly brand new building, but you haven't got great people and you haven't got great process, then that's not going to be enough for some people. They would rather have a poorer building with better people in. So, if you are thinking of moving buildings or, have just moved buildings, make sure that your people and process is actually working well, because the building alone.
Isn't a strong enough pull for people. And this one is an interesting one, because we all hear a lot about, you know, millennials and Gen X and boomers, and, you know, Gen XYZ, or whatever the latest version of what people want. The beauty about this particular study was the number one priority for all of these generations was they wanted to be listened to.
So in a healthcare setting, all these humans wanted was someone to listen to them and take them seriously. Now, recent work in the veterinary field, Louise Cora has been doing a PhD on the optimal veterinary consult. And she's in write up phase at the moment, and that's exactly her finding.
3 years of, of, of talking to owners, talking, to vets, looking at consults, observing consults, is that when it works well, it's people are listening to each other, and when it doesn't work, the clinicians aren't listening to the customers. So, Listening is a big human requirement in healthcare. I, I know this, you know, I know my child, I know myself.
Hear me when I say this isn't normal. Likewise, when a human brings us a patient and goes, I know my dog, I know my cat, I know my horse. I know my herd, I, I know my flock.
This isn't right. This isn't what they normally do. Even though you can't find anything wrong with them, this is real, you know, for them, being heard is, is a start point of having a great experience, which means they're more likely to stick with your healthcare recommendations.
And that's what this is all about. If we can get this caring, helpful and friendly, which is the veterinary version of what we've just shown you, this is, ongoing research that we do looking at. When we speak to users of veterinary services, what they want from a veterinary practise.
And this is thousands of data points from face to face conversations on the street, you know, clipboard people in the olden days. It's now digital clipboard people, it's online, it's various other means, but it's the same question. Give us three words that best describe what it is you want from a veterinary practise, carrying help from friendly are the 3.
And that basically does Doesn't change, exactly the same as the Bow Institute stuff, . It's about people. You know, people are caring.
Buildings don't care. Physical bricks and mortar don't care. People care.
Buildings aren't inherently helpful. People are helpful. Buildings aren't inherently friendly.
People are friendly. So the role of the customer, the role of the human, the role of the team member, is if all our patients, keepers and carers want is for someone to be caring, helpful and friendly, we've got nail that. And that's why people make the difference.
People make the difference because we can do these three things. We can care, we can be helpful and we can be friendly. And to to put some more very recent findings here, this is a a joint paper that was pushing vet record back just before Christmas, I think it was September last year, which was some work done between Murdoch, Nottingham.
And Edinburgh vet schools looking at what Australian and UK consumers actually want, in terms of, you know, the capabilities that they, you know, they think are most important in their veterinary surgeons. And I love the title of this is Care about my animal, Know your stuff and Take me seriously. This is really important that we hear this kind of work, because this is saying very clearly, do you know what?
It's important that we take these owners seriously. You know, you, yes, you've got to know your stuff. But care about my animal and take me seriously.
When I say my dog's not right, or I say my horse isn't right, I live with them 365, they're not right. And this is this listening piece. So there's a thread coming through here about, if we want to create a, a sustainable business, we need to get the customers.
And if we want to get the customers, we need to look at their experience. And if we want to get their experience, what is it that they really want? But what they really want is for you to be caring, helpful and friendly, you know, care about my animal, know you stuff and take me seriously.
And this is now starting to be published in our domain, so we don't have to always borrow what the human healthcare finding has been, and I think this is very powerful that, you know, we're finally getting, veterinary sector specific findings, about the importance of this space. So that, you know, from the customer's point of view, . They're, they're not asking for very much.
They're, they're really not asking for very much. They're asking for you to, to listen, to really take them seriously. And that means also taking them seriously when you don't feel like taking them seriously.
So, you know, 10 to 7 on a Friday, you may have a moment when you wonder why they didn't come in on Wednesday. But they're in front of you. They're there now, and it's your opportunity to care.
It's our profession's opportunity to care for a patient who has been presented to a veterinary professional team. And I do think that, the more we go with our clients, the more we can build trust, so that they feel more inclined to ask us sooner in the disease process than later. And that's one of our big challenges, isn't it, that we, we aren't first port of call for much of the advice and We may be part of the reason why that's not happening.
So if we look at the team, and this is a great book if you've not read it. I do think reading helps us think about, the bigger picture for our profession. And certainly if you haven't read, Simonson next start with why, it's certainly a good place to start with what makes people tick.
Going back to those values and purpose again is in any employed team or employed group of people in any business. We give them what they've got to do, you know, like, this is your list of things you have to do. So here's your task list or here's what's in your job role outline.
Here's some stuff you have to do. But we rarely define how, how we do that, and we rarely define why we're doing it. And so, starting with why is a different way of looking at it going, you know, this is why we do what we do around here.
You know, we're, we're on a mission to make sure that Not a single dog ever diesparro in our town. You know, how do we do that? Well, you know, we do outreach, you know, vaccination programmes for all puppies, and what do we do?
Well, we vaccinate puppies. The what is what we all do day in day out, or practises do that what very similarly, the why and the how may be very different. So if you haven't thought about this stuff, this is quite a good place to start.
But certainly, you know, starting with why. Starts determining why you're a little bit different, and that's why people might want to work with you, because you have a different approach. And this is backed up by some really interesting stuff from the Gallup organization's employee engagement, survey, and the, these guys have been doing, employee engagement work forever, for as long as people thought that they wanted to do employee engagement stuff, and Gallop had been doing it.
And the beauty about this is they've got a very large set of data that gives us some really good guidance about what makes people tick and therefore why people are engaged in the workplace. And they refer. Team engagement, they try and compare team engagement to a, a model that some of us will be familiar with, Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
And I, I learned recently that it probably isn't Maslow's hierarchy of needs. He probably nicked it from somebody else, but we kind of know what it is. So, essentially, for those of you I'm familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it basically says it's kind of this pyramid here, and at the bottom, our primary instinct is just to survive, you know, at the entry level for humans is, I just want to wake up alive every day.
Then I move up to a little bit more secure. Like, I, I do wake up alive, and I've got my own home, and I've got, you know, a roof over my head, and then I move up to belonging, which is, I feel part of some community or I have some purpose. And then importance is, you know, people value me, I'm respected, and then at the top of this kind of hierarchy is, you know, I, I know where I am and I'm in a kind of a self-actualized space.
And for most of us, we kind of bumble around between belonging and important and for some parts of the world, a daily, on a daily basis, it is survival. Andy and I were just talking about, there are parts of the world where, you know, waking up alive is, is a primary objective. You know, we haven't got time to worry about self-actualization when someone's bombing us or there's a war on.
So, that's the idea of Mao's hierarchy of need is like, you start at the bottom on basics and you move up to a, a higher state. What the Gallop guys have said is, this is the same for team engagement. There are people who are basically disengaged right at the bottom.
They just rock up to work. They're not very happy with it, and they'd rather do something else. Then there are people who are in a security space, which is, I just do what's expected and I get paid.
And then the blogging is, I'm kind of good at my job, but I'm not really quite sure why I'm here, but I'm OK, I'm good. And then we move up. So, the, the idea behind this team engagement is, where are your team?
And the questions that Gallup have around employee employee engagement are these 12 questions. And they, they're correlated down at the bottom here with the questions 12. 3 are around basic needs and then 456 around management support and working up to kind of personal growth.
This matters because of the following, . If you were to ask your team, and again, you can find, sample questions and surveys online, if you just Google Gallup 12, you'll, you'll get templates for this. Question one is, I know what's expected of me at work.
Now, if your team don't know what they're meant to do when they rock up to work on a daily basis, there's a problem with team engagement. If, second question, I have the materials and equipment to do my job properly. If they can't say yes to that, again, you've got a material basic needs problem.
So your team will not be engaged because they don't know what they're meant to be doing. They haven't got the job, the kit to do the job. And as you go up this hierarchy, you'll find that people caring about me, being recognised, someone's interested in my development, my opinions count.
I'm aligned to the purpose of the, of the business. I can do quality work every day. My colleagues and co-workers and I can do quality work every day.
I have a best friend or good friend at work, or I have opportunities to learn and grow. If your team are aligned at the top of this pyramid, the chances are they're engaged, and the chances are they'll stay in your business because they feel that they belong and they can grow. And therefore, they won't stay forever because people move.
There's we're in a, a very large. Community of opportunities, you know, as a, a veterinary professional today, whether you're a, a nurse or a vet or a manager or a customer service, person with veterinary experience, you, you could work anywhere, you know, you, you can travel the world and do this job. So, people won't stay forever in one place, but they're more likely to stay longer if they're at the top of this pyramid that someone values them, that they can learn and grow, that they're, they're aligned to the mission and purpose.
They know what the why is. Their opinions count. If most of your team are at the bottom, just rocking up to work to get the paycheck, and they kind of have to be told what to do on a daily basis, the chances are they're fairly low down on the pyramid.
And this is why it matters, you know, if, if we want to. Have people who stay in the workplace with you longer. You know, they're not gonna stay forever because that's not how the world works.
If they're gonna stay longer, then to make that environment more engaging, we have to do, you know, anything from kind of question. You know, 56, upwards. We have to basically get questions 12345, as entry level.
You know, we're we're talking now about getting teams engaged, about mission, purpose, opinions counting, feeling that there's some alignment to a bigger purpose, that there's some learning and growth opportunities, there's some training opportunities. And if we choose not to do the top half of this pyramid, then the people will just keep churning through your business. And if that's where you are at the moment, then, you know, taking a moment to pause and reflect on, you know, why people are leaving, you know, do some exit interviews and find out what's actually going on.
And it may just be that it's a great place to work on one level, but they just don't feel that they fit or that they are part of the, the bigger picture. They don't understand how they fit or they, they don't seem to have any, you know, progress or pathway. And that's, I know it, you know, people talk a lot about recruitment and retention, but it's pretty simple stuff.
People won't stay forever, but they'll stay longer if they feel they're fit and they can contribute and they're aligned to some wider, you know, wider purpose in the work. So if we throw this all together back onto that customer journey that we started with, is, you know, people are gonna find you call, you come in and talk about you, . Then this means a human has got to find your practise and then contact the practise and speak to another human.
So this is, this is this human to human piece. And I wanted to share this with you because I think it brings into sharp focus why at times, we seem to miss. What our customer pool are doing, and perhaps we don't help them come in.
The reality of today is that the vast majority of people, if they've got an issue or a problem or a challenge in their life, they'll just reach for their mobile, and they'll Google it. And this is called the zeroo Moment of Truth, where people just Google, the ZO zero moment of Truth is, a, a thing that Google have done again. So Google, Zero Moments of Truth, and you'll find more about this.
It's a vast majority of people will Google, they'll do a search, they'll read something, they'll talk to somebody, they'll watch a video, they'll go round and round and round and round several times, and eventually someone will say, I think you should call a vet, or I think you should go to a vet. And we will have had these situations where someone's maybe spent 2 or 3 days googling, you know, my dog's been having a fit, or the cat's got diarrhoea, or, or whatever it is. And they've asked everybody, they've seen a lot of stuff.
That behaviour is not going to change. However much we as a profession, think we will change that, we won't. The behaviour of Googling will not be changed by what we want.
The bit we need to change is us. We need to put ourselves into the ZMOT. We need to be in when they're searching and Googling and reading and speaking.
We need to be there. We need to be where our customer pool are. We're not going to stop them doing this.
And I think once you start understanding the customer behaviour here is, is entirely normal for us in our lives to Google how do I get the sky box to work, or, you know, my microwaves stopped working, or there's a bit hanging off the back of my car, what do I do? You know, we, we Google, we watch YouTube clips of trying to fix your car or your telly or rebooting the skybox or whatever it is. That is a fundamental human behaviour, and we, we as a profession won't change that.
We have to embrace it, go with it and be where they are looking, so that they find us sooner. And then when they do come out of the zero moment of truth and they access our, our practise, we need to see that as an opportunity to care. So the moment they come out of the Google space and end up on the phone and walking in, regardless of what time of day that is, we need to go, we're here, it's an opportunity to care.
And sometimes we can be quite judgmental. And that, I think, is pushing people back into the Google space. So, I know at times that for some of you, it's 10 to 7 on a Friday, may not be the ideal time to be ringing up when they could have come in on Wednesday.
I think we need to reframe that and go, Do you know what? They're here now, care is an opportunity to care. And the more we do that, then they'll come to us on Wednesday rather than going round the Google cycle.
And this er moment of truth is really important in that sense, because it then impacts on operational effectiveness, which says, you know, yes, they have found us, and they have now come out of the Google space. We now need to do something, and they're now going to call us. I, I have this thing about, you know, the traditional veterinary model, the business model, which is, you know, make the phone ring, convert that phone call to an appointment, convert that consultation into good medicine, diagnostics, charge for the work that you did, and then get recommended and it goes around in a circle.
I think those days are really numbered, because the evolving business model is make contact happen. And that contact could be, you know, it, it could be just as simple as, an online, a web chat. It could be online booking, it could be a web chat, it could be something on social media, it could be an app, or it could be the phone.
But the days of us. Having our primary practise footfall coming through via phone, I think, are limited. I mean, we're still hugely important, and we've probably still got, you know, a good 80, 85% of our primary contact by phone in most countries.
Some parts of the world now, a good 40 or 50% of all appointments will be booked online, because online booking is where people are when they're googling. So if you currently don't have an online, option on your website that's easy to use and actually is genuinely online, not send an email and request an appointment, but is a pure play, book an appointment now. If we can take people whilst they're in the Google space straight into an appointment without them having to ring or walk in, then that's just that we have to do that.
That's, you know, just making it so much easier for the much more easy for the customer. And that's why things like apps, I think, have got to be a way forward. So the evolving business model will be make contact happen, because that contact, if we, you know, if we go back to the zero moment of truth, is that this is where, for the vast majority of people, that's where they're finding out about what to do next.
So while they're in that kind of Google space, we can signpost them to book online or we can signpost them into some form of a web chat, then great. So the evolving business model would be make contact happen, you know, contact conversion into some form of consult, and, you know, longer term, that consult may well be a remote consult as well as a physical consult, charge for the work you did get recommended, so that then goes around again. So the model is evolving.
In the meantime, the phone is important, and we've probably got more data on what happens on the phone than anybody else in the world, to be fair. And this was presented at Southern European Conference in 2016. Which was a series, I think about 40,000 phone calls, from, I think these were vaccine scenarios.
And people who measure their phone performance offer more appointments and the people who don't measure their phone performance. So we, we run a mystery shopping programme, and those people who are on the index, which is the purple bar chart, you'll see on the purple line chart here. Those guys know that someone will be ringing and that they will have the opportunity to hear that performance.
They offer appointments 3 times more often than people who don't measure. And it's, it's just a little piece of simple what gets measured gets better. So if you have a key touch point in your practise, we do need to measure it.
Data presented at BSABA again, for your, from your team's point of view is, if, if, you know, if you know you're being measured, you offer more appointments to the same scenario than if you don't know you've been measured. And This is just human nature, and, if we want our patients to connect to our practises, we need to do that. I want to share this with you, because this is just some interesting data from Australia that just shows, knowing your team's performance and what to measure.
Calls answered, if we look at the left-hand side here, this is data from, I think it's March 2018 through to March 2019. So this is a series of calls made to practises across Australia. And remembering that Australia is Southern Hemisphere, so their hot weather is around Christmas time.
So if you look at October, November, December, January, February, March, you can kind of see the calls answered drops dramatically around Christmas and the hot weather, and it starts picking up again when it goes cooler, and it's basically a sine wave. So what happens in Australia every Christmas and summer, their summer, our winter, Northern Hemisphere winter, Southern Hemisphere summer. Is it gets very, very busy.
And everyone's on school holidays, and it's Christmas, so the phone just doesn't get answered. So sometimes data is as simple as if someone did ring in, did they ever get through to a human, or did the phone just ring out? And if you knew that your phone call answering drops from 95% answered by a human down to, you know, 75%, 70% answered by a human, on a very predictable seasonal basis, you would change it.
So when we start looking for customer KPIs and team KPIs, these are the kind of things we need to look at is, you know, primary contact conversion. Does it happen or does it not happen? And I'm gonna skip those ones, go to this one.
So if we look at the right hand side on here, which again, this is Australian data for the last year, the orange line and the lower green line, the average appointment offer rate in Australia to a standard set of scenarios is about 40% of all the calls we make are offered an appointment. So this would be primary vaccines, boosters, desexing, those kind of scenarios. So that means 60% aren't invited in to see a very professional.
The green line at the bottom there is a group of practises are not on a call programme. So they're rocking around 20% appointment offer rate. So for the average to be 40, that means the ones who are on the call programme are offering appointments about, you know, 60% of the time.
Why am I showing you this? I'm just showing you this because if we want to make our practises connect with customers, is when they ring up, it would be good if we offer to see them. And this is a KPI, you know, what is your call conversion?
All the calls into the business versus number of appointments, calls, inquiry calls around everyday scenarios, you know, vaccines, the sects, dentals, in equine practise. How many of those are ever offered the opportunity to be seen by the practise, and that's just a critical number, . This is an interesting one, And of all of those calls, there is a pattern that shows for the same scenarios, the likelihood of being offered an appointment diminishes Monday through Friday.
So, imagine this is just a puppy vaccine scenario. Same scenario, but if you ring on a Friday, you're off the likelihood of you being offered an appointment is about 40% of those calls are offered an appointment. And if you ring on a Monday, it's 50%, and it tails down, but Saturday pops up again.
Again, why does this matter? It shows you something. It just, it shows you your teams are getting tired Thursday, Friday, so change your rotas.
It's exactly the same scenario. Why am I offered an appointment on a Monday at a higher rate than if I ring on a Friday? And Saturday is, you know, it's fresh teams usually, weekend workers, students, somebody else is taking those phone calls.
So these kind of numbers just show you that your team's opportunity to care is diminished because they're getting tired by the end of the week. When we start thinking about We've now got the, the human connected to the business, and we need to look at what happens in the, in the consult rooms, and I would encourage you to look at the Calgary model. It's the, the granddaddy of all consulting models used by the medical professions and 71 point guide to a veterinary interview, and we, we've kind of model.
I this just 7 step version of Calgary, and basically, we have to build report, create structure, and then have a beginning and a middle and end to the consults. And this is something again that can be measured. And it must be a core part of the whole experience for your customers in the practise.
Because if we Finally, they've found you. They came out of the Google, you know, cycle of zero moments of truth. They rang up, they were offered an appointment and they rock up in the consult room, and this doesn't happen.
We've missed the opportunity to care for the patient. And, and certainly this is a process of making sure that, you know, preparation and rapport, you know, clarifying the agenda, open questions, clear, obvious some patient exam, making some recommendations, checking and signposting, and then, you know, the forward rebook. So it's not, you know, it's not goodbye, so we see you again.
This can again be scored and measured, and it's an evolving space for where if we can connect clinicians to their own performance so they can see themselves, it makes a huge difference. And, and that certainly has been, the basis of the, the PhD I mentioned earlier, that Louise, Cora's been doing is looking at how can we find a way of helping clinicians self-evaluate and, and look at where we're missing things in the consult, and that the clear feedback from that is that we need to listen. Owners don't feel they are being listened to, and that means that they don't then follow through because the rapport and the, the trust isn't built.
So listening in the consult room is something that really matters. Just in the last kind of few minutes here, I just, finance is something that I'm, you're probably pretty familiar with and on the balance scorecard, it was. It's one of the sections, and you will have data and KPIs probably coming out of your ears.
They are important, but let's not forget that they only happen because your team did something for a human who was a customer. And I would urge you to think about measuring the, the team staff, looking at their engagement levels, looking at reasons to leave, measuring your customer, you know, looking at things like, you know, your call conversion rates, How your customers are feelings, post event with some form of customer surveying, whether that's that promote scores or similar, . You will be doing finance KPIs, but you need to add to that, you need to add customer KPIs and team KPIs, into that, otherwise you're gonna be missing a bit, .
I have this thing called Lambert's law, which is a rule of thumb is that, you know, across the world, eventary practise can get to 20% net profit. You have to put a lot of effort in, but you can get there. So and it's, it's made up of the, you know, your revenue after tax is making sure that you've got your, you know, cost of people bets, cost of people, everybody else, cost of business and cost of goods.
It's in my, the rule of thumb of 2020, 2020. The only way we can do that is being completely on top of people, customers and team. You won't get to net profit by just looking at pricing.
It won't work. You've got to see how your customers are delivering, how your team are delivering to service quality to your customer base, . Spotline is just something I'm, I'm familiar with, which I quite like because it's a balance scorecard set of KPIs and some of you may well have this.
If not, then have a look at it. It's a very useful measure, and the kind of things it's showing you is, you know, your, your patient adherence, your customer adherence to certain things, whether it's, you know, in this example here, you know, 7 7.2% of the patients on the database have had dentistry, which kind of is, is pitifully low for the, this is, some, UK data.
Whereas, you know, 93% of them are in some form of, regular healthcare or 44% on parasiticides. I mean, this is the kind of numbers that you're probably looking at. Looking at transactions and average average transaction values, this is Australian data.
It's just seeing where your trends and patterns are by, by volume of activities, because it's a number of activities you do versus the price you put against those activities is your revenue. So you've probably got this data and you can get lost in this and miss the, you know, what's happening at our call conversion or what's happening in our consult conversion or what's happening with our customer feelings and feedback and how is our team engagement. You need to add these into this.
And customer retention, massive, massive, massive, massively important that, you know, customers do disappear, patients disappear, and we need to make sure that customer retention, that we're getting more than we're losing. Otherwise, we're gonna run out of database eventually. And customers don't stay with us.
And again, average life, average lifespan of, of, a customer here is 6.8, 6.9 years.
You know, we haven't got them forever, that, you know, their activity, there's the window of opportunity, so we certainly need new customers. So, as we've come up to the end there, again, I just want to remind you of, this work that was done by Murdoch, Edinburgh and Nottingham around, you know, what people want from vets, and this is UK and Australian clients. But it's simple, you know, care about my animal, know your stuff, and take me seriously.
And the only way we can do that is when your team care about the animal, know their stuff, and take the patient, the owners seriously. And the customers are gonna go, yeah, well, if they do that, then I'm more likely to go back to them. So, and I'm more likely to tell my friends about them, and I'm more likely to do what they think I should do to keep my animal well.
So this interplay between the team and the customer is all about people, and we just need to start looking and focusing in, in that space. So, they find you, they call you, they come in, they talk about you on your customer journey, is have a look at in your practise, see where you think you may be falling down, start measuring some things maybe you've never thought about before. Particularly around, you know, that first contact.
So, you know, the moment they, they spin out of the Google spin cycle of asking everybody else, you know, they may, they may message you, they may try an online book, they may call you, what happens? How do we convert that into the opportunity to care in a consult room. So, hopefully, that's been useful to you.
I think, that it's kind of be summed up by, you know, first impressions certainly do count, but The last impression endures, and, you know, their memory of what happened when the vet was on their yard, or they were in your consult room is, you know, how they made you feel with that last impression is the one that sticks with them. So, hopefully, that was useful. And I'm sure Andy's around there somewhere if there's any questions.
Yeah, brilliant. Thank you, Alison. Yeah, so if anybody's got any questions, please use the Q&A function or, or the chat function.
We don't have any at the moment. So I'll, I'll come up with a few myself. You've touched on two of my favourite subjects, which is the balance scorecard and also, the NHS, the former I use in my CPD courses, in my consultancy business, and, and the latter, I do a lot of work with NHS, managers.
And, and it's interesting all that patient experience, you touched on it, but now very much in the NHS the focus has shifted towards person centred care rather than patient centred care. And I think that correlates very nicely. With the fact obviously we've got that slight separation between our patients and the people, and it's that what the animal means to that person and there was that lovely Roman quote.
Oh, it's brilliant, isn't it? We don't call our dogs Patricius or whatever it was anymore, but but I found that fascinating. You know, the big thing I don't know if you've come across.
In the NHS, have you heard of Kate Granger? Yes, yeah, and that was a big thing around communication. Yeah, my name is, yes, you know, she was a, a doctor and suffering from cancer and people were just treating her like a lump of meat, not even introducing themselves to again showing the importance of communication, and what have you.
And that, that's one of, one of my team members, had a riding accident. She's OK, but she broke her leg. And she's had surgery, and 5 surgeons spoke to her prior to her surgery, not one of them introduced themselves.
And that's recent. Yep, that's 2 weeks ago. Yeah.
OK. 2 weeks ago. So, yeah, it, it is, it's amazing.
I have the same with my son at an ophthalmology appointment. The guy just sat with his back to me the whole time. I examined him and and then said right he's fine, go, and that was it.
And I still to this day I don't know his name. One question that did spring to mind, you talked about, you know, you do the mystery shopper, and when people are being measured, they, their behaviour changes and, and obviously, you know, it goes right back to, you know, the Hawthorn effect was one of the first descriptions, . And without wishing to do you out of business, how do you make that behavioural change in people when they're not being measured?
Have you got any hints and tips there? Yeah, it's a, it's a really good question. And bizarrely, I had a very intriguing meeting with .
A collaborative colleague, Professor Liz Stoker from the University of Lift yesterday, and, and she does a lot of conversational analysis, and we're looking at how we can look at, you know, measuring real, rather than having to use mystery shopping methodology to get to a learning outcome frame. So, To answer your question in a kind of a roundabout way, is in an ideal world, what we would do is we do, you know, talk analysis, conversation analysis and feedback on actual events. So actual consults, actual phone calls.
The problem is in, in the current climate, very few people are willing to do that, but they are happy to put simulated calls into or have, you know, simulated client experiences like challenge purchase experiences. If we can gather data, we can change experience. If we don't have any, any evidence of this is what you did, we did some training interventions, this is what you're doing ongoing and ongoing, we're going to, you know, once a month, someone will come in and try and buy, I don't know, a flea worm treatment, or someone will ring up and ask about a desex.
If we don't do the continuation, a challenge, if you like, the, the learning disappears, and people don't think it's real, and people don't think it matters, so they don't do it. And you can keep training, but you have to measure. You have to give people the opportunity to say, I did it brilliantly, and then get praise.
And I think that's a bit we don't see. We see all these, you know, methodologies, whether it's ethnographic or mystery shopping or, or whatever, we see it as a reason to catch people out. It's not.
It's a reason to find a reason to say, well done. And I, you can try doing it without a feedback loop, because that's all it is. It's a feedback loop.
But if people don't get feedback, they just give up because they don't think you care. And it's cultural. I'm sure it's cultural, and, you know, over a beer, we could discuss this further.
But certainly, if you can look at real interactions and, and get a feedback loop, which is easier in some countries than others, it's until you can say, I saw you doing that, and it was brilliant, people don't get the feedback loop. It's back to feedback. You've gotta, you've got to have a feedback loop.
I, I, I would quite happily use real calls and real consults, and real, you know, reception interactions, but, you know, most jurisdictions, you can do it, but it's, it requires a bit of admin by the practise, and that's an admin step too far for many. Yeah, yeah, and that extent of everybody involved as well. Yeah, yeah, I mean then human healthcare have, have, you know, they use .
Telemetry feedback loops for many things now. And people, you know, the debate around, care homes now having CCTV to make sure people do their jobs properly. It's like, why do we have to do that?
Well, do you know what? I, if it changes the care, then I'm all for that. I don't think that's an issue, because sometimes people just don't want to do it.
And that's, that's a tough gig. That's a A different conversation for a different day, I suspect I was gonna say and lots of other things we could talk about with that basic rates of pay, so we have come through, a comment to start with if we did not introduce ourselves to our patients, we'd probably be bitten. But again, reiterates that that later if we're good to our patients, the clients do like this, and that's, you know, part of the seven step thing you mentioned, isn't it?
Do an obvious clinical exam. Yeah, but you know, that's a really, thank you for the comment from whoever it was, you know, if we don't introduce ourselves to our patients, we. Hillary, you're, you're so right.
If we don't introduce ourselves, we either get bitten or kicked. But, but every day, vets get bitten and kicked because they didn't do it. Every day it happens because we rush.
We, we, we're rushing or we're thinking, or we're trying to multitask. And it happens all the time where we, you know, approach a horse from the wrong side and we spooked it, or we come at a dog, which is maybe, you know, it, it's, it's fear aggressive or it's, it's guarding its kennel. And the reason these things do happen, your point's absolutely valid, is that, It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does happen, it's because we failed to do a bit.
There was a thing, the thing we didn't do, and we need to do the same care, conscious care of introduction, both the patient, but a conscious introduction of ourselves to the owner as well. Because without the owner, the patient doesn't get the meds, the outcomes of the surgery. So Hillary's point is very valid, but, we do get bitten and kicked pretty frequently.
So, just see if any more questions come through whilst we're waiting, for those of you that aren't keen on reading, I, I like Alison. I'm a keen reader, but, Simon Sinet, you can get his TED Talk video. Ted, I mean, the best thing about, Marriott Hotels at the moment is they run, they're running a TED channel.
Yeah, Marriott have gone into, cahoots with Ted, and so you can sit in a Marriott hotel and watch TED channels all day. You can tell who travels too much. Yeah, Ted's great.
Simon's the next stuff's great. I mean, we should just have a book club, a veterinary book club. That would be good.
Well, the vets they go diversify on Facebook. They did start that I've not seen much posted recently, but, . I think the books I would suggest would probably be non-veterinary, so no, this was nonveterary.
This was all about, I think somebody did recommend Star actually is one of them. So it's a good book. We could chat all night.
There are no more questions to come through, so just to say thanks again, Alison, that was a real tour de force of. And customer experience, the balance scorecard, and everything else, really appreciated that. So thank you very much.
And just to thank again as well, our sponsors, Simply Health and MWI Animal Health, and I hope to see you on the next practise management webinar. Thanks again, Alison. Cheers.
Thank you. Now, everybody. Take care.
Bye bye. Bye.
