Have you ever called a client who has asked for their records to find out why they're leaving? I strongly recommend that you begin doing this if you want to know where your clients are going and why, so that you can better serve them.
I made a series of calls to clients who had left over the proceeding 6 months for a hospital to answer exactly this question. The hospital had been seeing numbers drop (fewer visits, fewer clients, fewer dollars spent) and we were trying to get to the bottom of the problem.
Here is a sampling of why clients were leaving (or saying they were).
1. The technicians held the owner's dog down in the room for a nail trim.
2. The hospital had no time to see the client on emergency.
3. A hospital that was closer sent a coupon.
4. An emergency made the owner reconsider the distance to the hospital.
5. The hospital wanted to charge $14 to ship meds across town, so the client chose a closer hospital.
6. The owner felt that not enough was done to diagnose the problem.
7. An employee, telling a rescue organization that the hospital would reverse their discount policy and spay a rescue dog at a reduced cost told the client that they would "eat" the difference.
8. Savage dog that wanted to eat everyone; owner says the dog didn't like the vet.
9. Doctor would not go out to car to euthanize evil dog.
10. Hospital charged for an exam for a rabies shot on a dog seen 6 weeks prior.
11. Hospital would not stay after hours to see a HBC, referring instead to nearby emergency hospital.
As you can see from this (nowhere near) exhaustive list, the answers are both sane and insane. There has to be a certain level of clarity brought to an exercise such as this, after all, you are not (hopefully) going to start euthanizing pets in cars. Some things can, and must be addressed. Some show just how sensitive people can be to language and price.
Speaking of price, when I called this group of ex-clients, price almost never came up. Veterinarians focus on price because clients complain about price, but what clients are really complaining about is value.
Individual answers may not tell much, but trends will. There are things that can be fixed, things that should be fixed and things that we have no intention of fixing. But until we ask the questions, how will we ever know what is broken?
