The Highest Quality Telephone Answering Service in the United States

Centratel

Telephone Answering Service

veterinary live answering service

Capturing Lost Business in Veterinary Clinics: Leveraging a Live Answering Service to Maximize Opportunities from Missed Calls

December 28, 2023
Veterinary
By Centratel

Capturing Lost Business with a Live Answering Service

With the relentless demands of a veterinary clinic, every call matters – from a concerned pet owner seeking advice to a critical emergency requiring immediate attention. The reality is, missed calls are missed opportunities. They represent potential clients lost, appointments unbooked, and crucial information undelivered. But what if there was a way to turn these missed calls into opportunities? Discover Centratel’s Veterinary Answering Service, a 24/7 live answering service that ensures no call goes unanswered. 

Our service is not just about answering calls; it’s about providing a seamless extension of your clinic, handling each call with the same level of care and professionalism you would. Our team is trained to manage a wide range of calls, ensuring your doctors receive the information they need when they need it. By turning missed calls into answered ones, we help you seize every opportunity to enhance animal health care, improve client satisfaction, and ultimately, grow your business.

Preventing Lost Business in Veterinary Clinics with a Live Answering Service

Preventing lost business in a veterinary clinic is a challenge that requires a strategic approach. The key lies in ensuring that every call is handled with precision and urgency, a feat that can be achieved with a 24/7 vet answering service. At Centratel, our live answering service is designed to be an extension of your clinic, providing reliable call handling and dispatch around the clock. 

Firstly, a live answering service guarantees that calls are answered promptly, even during peak hours or after the clinic has closed for the day. This immediate response is crucial for new clients seeking urgent care for their pets or existing clients requiring immediate response. By ensuring that someone is always available to take their call, clinics demonstrate their commitment to client service and care, fostering trust and loyalty.

Furthermore, in handling routine message relay and emergency dispatch, live answering services free up clinic staff to focus more on in-person client interactions and patient care. This optimization of staff time leads to improved service quality within the clinic, enhancing overall client satisfaction and retention.

Our commitment to accuracy is unparalleled, boasting the lowest error rate in the industry. This ensures that every call, whether it’s a routine check-up inquiry or an emergency requiring immediate attention, is handled with the utmost care and professionalism. 

How a Veterinary Answering Service Ensures No Call Goes Unanswered

At Centratel, we understand the unique challenges faced by veterinary clinics. Our veterinary answering service is designed to ensure that no call goes unanswered, even during peak times or after hours. We recognize that each call represents a pet in need, a concerned owner, or a potential business opportunity. 

One of the key strengths of a veterinary answering service is its round-the-clock availability. Pets don’t just need care during standard business hours; emergencies can happen at any time, day or night. By providing 24/7 answering services, veterinary clinics ensure that pet owners always have a reliable point of contact, regardless of the hour. This continuous availability is not only reassuring for pet owners but also crucial for the welfare of the pets. An essential feature of a veterinary answering service is the ability to efficiently relay messages to on-call veterinarians. When a call comes in that requires professional veterinary attention, the answering service can ensure that the message is promptly passed on to the appropriate on-call doctor. This rapid communication is vital in emergencies where every minute counts. It allows for swift action, potentially saving the lives of pets and ensuring that they receive the care they need without unnecessary delay.

Bridging Communication Gaps in Veterinary Care with a Live Answering Service

Miscommunication can occur when messages are passed through multiple channels or staff members. A live answering service can help reduce this by providing a consistent point of contact and ensuring that messages are relayed accurately to the veterinary team. This reduces the chances of miscommunication and ensures that clients’ concerns are addressed appropriately. Veterinary clinics often experience periods of high call volume, during which staff may be unable to attend to every incoming call due to being occupied with in-clinic patients. This can lead to missed calls and, subsequently, missed opportunities for providing care or guidance. A live answering service ensures that each call is answered promptly, providing clients with the attention they need and deserve. 

In the intricate sphere of veterinary care, bridging communication gaps is paramount. The experience and expertise of professionals at Centratel’s Veterinary Answering Service play a pivotal role in this endeavor. Our service is designed to adeptly navigate the labyrinth of industry terms and protocols, ensuring a smooth message relay between your clinic and your clients. Our service acts as a reliable bridge, filling the communication gap and ensuring that no call goes unanswered. By doing so, we help your clinic enhance its service delivery, improve client satisfaction, and ultimately, grow your business.

Veterinary Call Answering Solutions for Urgent Situations

When it comes to veterinary call answering solutions, Centratel’s Veterinary Answering Service is an indispensable ally in managing after-hour calls and emergency message relay. Our service is specifically designed to handle the unpredictable nature of veterinary emergencies, ensuring that your on-call doctors are promptly alerted to urgent situations. By ensuring that messages are relayed quickly and accurately, the live answering service plays a critical role in facilitating a rapid response from the veterinary team. This can be especially important in situations where the clinic is busy or after hours when staff may not be immediately available to take calls.

When a pet owner calls with an emergency, time is of the essence. A veterinary live answering service specializes in quickly identifying these urgent situations and promptly relaying these messages directly to the veterinary professionals. This swift communication allows veterinarians to respond as needed, whether it means preparing for an immediate consultation or guiding the client to the nearest emergency veterinary facility. We understand that in the world of veterinary medicine, every second counts. Our team is trained to handle each call with the same level of care and urgency that you would, ensuring that your clients feel heard and valued. 

Get a Free Quote: The First Step Towards Improved Call Management

Embarking on the journey towards improved call management begins with a simple step: getting a free quote from Centratel. As a trusted partner in the veterinary industry, our Veterinary Live Answering Service is designed to handle your clinic’s calls with precision and professionalism. Our commitment to accuracy is reflected in our industry-leading low error rate. We understand the importance associated with animal health care, and we ensure that every call is handled with the urgency it deserves. 

Our transparent billing system, which charges per call and not by time, provides a clear and predictable cost structure. We also offer a 30-day free trial, a testament to our confidence in the quality of our service. By choosing Centratel, you’re choosing a partner that understands the unique challenges of the veterinary field and is committed to helping your clinic thrive. So why wait? Get a Free Quote today and take the first step towards transforming your call management system.

Image by Freepik

A Telephone Answering Service Representative taking calls at Centratel

Centratel is an elite national telephone answering service located in Bend, Oregon. Centratel’s Veterinary Answering Service assists hundreds of veterinary businesses during and after-hours, throughout the United States and is, by a variety of statistics, the highest quality answering service available among the approximately 800 services nationwide.

Taking the Next Step

For more specifics on cost, to start the onboarding process, or if you have questions, fill out this form with your basic information and if it’s during regular working hours (M-F 8am to 8pm EST or 5am to 5pm PST), we’ll get back to you within minutes. Or, during the above hours, you can simply call us at 800-664-7159 or send us an email to inquiry@centratel.com.

(And note: for a quick orientation on how we operate, take a moment to review one or more of the key points listed below.)

For more specifics on cost, to start the onboarding process, or to just talk to us, fill out this form with your basic information and if it’s during regular working hours (M-F 8am to 8pm EST or 5am to 5pm PST), we’ll get back to you within minutes. Or, during the above hours, you can simply call us at 800-664-7159 or send us an email to inquiry@centratel.com.

(And note: for a quick orientation on how we operate, take a moment to review one or more of the key points listed on the right.)

 
Terms of Service

Why Choose Centratel

BY SAM CARPENTER
December 1, 2024

1.CENTRATEL’S UNIQUE 30-DAY FREE TRIAL

Why is this important? Because it will provide you a truly accurate estimate of cost (we bill monthly), it will demonstrate our quality, and it gives both sides of this equation—you and Centratel—the necessary time to refine and perfect operational details.

Here’s a testimonial from a new medical client that had just finished their 30-day trial: “Of course, I love the cost as it is close to the amount I was allowed by the president of the company. I told him that if we did not continue with Centratel, I would resign as the Director of Customer Service, and I meant it. It’s a great fit. We have had NOT ONE complaint from a patient or in-house which, as you know, we received daily with our former answering service. I love you, Centratel, and the price. I’m ready to sign whatever documents you require. Thanks for the great service, and the free month! To a great partnership! -KB, Phoenix“

2.STATISTICALLY, THE BEST IN THE U.S.?

Answering service quality is 100% dependent on human action and reaction, and in the course of a single day a multitude of human decisions are made by the people who process the calls: Telephone Service Representatives, or TSRs. (Some answering services refer to them as “agents.” Others, “operators.”)

Like any other answering service, at Centratel we’re dealing with real live human beings and so human errors occur. But within this labor intensive service industry that is historically known for marginal quality, Centratel’s error rate is light years ahead of established standards. Our most recent Customer Reported Error Rate (July through September, 2024) was 1 customer-reported error for every 6,077 message transactions processed. That statistic is unmatched.

There’s no artificial intelligence manipulation, we do not offshore calls, and we were founded and have always operated within the United States. (Note that since early 2020, the COVID six-foot social distancing mandate drove thousands of small-to-medium sized answering services out of business. Large, foreign-owned multi-nationals, often disguised by the name of the local answering services they acquired, now thoroughly dominate the industry. Hence, an even further decline in general service quality. See this analysis.)

3.CUSTOMER SERVICE EXTRAORDINAIRE

Your concerns and requests will be instantly acted upon. It’s a work ethic that stands out in stark contrast from the general quality decline in human-to-human business-customer communications. You’ve seen it yourself, all around. At Centratel you will know the customer service people you’re working with by name, appreciating their special listening abilities as well as their take-action-now comportments i.e. see the testimonial in point #1 above. ‘Nuff said!

4.GETTING STARTED: IT’S SIMPLE AND FAST

Getting your new Centratel answering service 30-day free trial started is accomplished within 24-48 hours. From the start, your “onboarding” customer service representative will be with you every step of the way, listening carefully to your concerns, answering questions, and offering suggestions.

5.NEW TO USING AN ANSWERING SERVICE?

A majority of our current answering service accounts switched to us from another service because of quality problems. However, if you have not used a service before, you are not familiar with the options, benefits, and pitfalls. As noted, our 30-day free trial provides you—and us—plenty of time to precisely refine your desired message-taking and delivery protocols; to get things exactly the way you want them to be without any financial risk, undue pressure, or obligation. 

6.PRICING

Starting at $89 per month, our rates rank in the mid-range of the industry. For call processing, we charge by the “transaction unit” rather than the duration of time spent handling calls. Large “mega-services” operating in the U.S. prefer time billing because it ensures the company is compensated for lower-paid/high-turnover — and thus slower — agents. No matter the quality or how long they keep your callers on hold, they still make a profit. And yes, it can get expensive.

In any answering service, it takes a long time for a new agent to become fast, efficient, and stable. At Centratel, we pamper and reward experienced agents (via higher pay and great benefits) and therefore have extremely low staff turnover. Needless to say, experienced agents make fewer errors than trainees who learn on-the-job.

7.ACCURATELY COMPARING ANSWERING SERVICE PRICING IS COMPLICATED

It’s apples and oranges. There isn’t an industry standard for billing, and each answering service has its own formula. Also, as noted above, some services charge by agent “time” while others charge by “work units.” Some others combine the two. At Centratel, we charge for the work we do, not by the time we spend. The raw truth is that the only reliable way to determine monthly cost for a new service is to use that service for a solid month. Most answering services offer a 7-day free trial or no trial at all.

8.BEWARE: MONTHLY OR 28-DAY BILLING?

Important! At Centratel, we use a “monthly” billing cycle in which invoices are compiled from the first day of a month to the last day of that month. When soliciting quotes from other services, be sure to ask if the base-rate charges are billed monthly or on a “28-day billing cycle.” There is no good reason for a 28-day billing cycle! It’s bait-and-switch: customers billed on a 28-day cycle actually receive thirteen billings per year and therefore the overall cost is higher.

9.NO CONTRACT AND SIMPLE TERMS OF SERVICE

We do not require a yearly contract for service because we believe you should have the opportunity to evaluate us real-time, without restraint. Our terms of service are simple and straight-forward.

10.VALUABLE FREE GIFT FOR CONTACTING US

If you take the time to discuss answering service with us, on the same day we will ship you a hardcover copy of Sam Carpenter’s bestselling book, Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less, now in its 5th edition. We’ll send you a copy just for contacting us. (Sam is the founder and President of Centratel. December 1st 2024 marks his fortieth year of ownership.)