“Gun for hire. Also terrapins for sale. Confused but fully-booked Bradford cowboy-cum-terrarium zoo gardener WLTM quick-fire Calamity Jane to 50 with no small amount of expertise in rearing amphibious reptiles. Whip-crack-away at box no. 1006 “
Communication is a wonderful thing. Even in a stylised form and with all the emotional baggage underlying a personal ad. we all know exactly what the message is. Hopefully, the advertiser found his own Magnificent Seven responses. Come to think of it, Ken Livingstone is something of an expert on the humble newt..... Perhaps he’s moved north.
Actually, communication – or the lack of effective communication – is a serious subject and one which affects us all. Over time, people have come to accept what other people say with something of a pinch of salt and are already conditioned to be disappointed or otherwise let down. That’s the nature of politics; we all understand that electoral manifestos are the selling document for an attractive idea but, by the time the aspirant has been elected, the idea will almost always be watered down - if it appears at all - and yet, while we know that this will invariably happen, we invariably become disenchanted. Why do our spirits rise at election time when we all have a firm grasp of reality? Perhaps it is because hope is such a powerful emotion, it drives so many of our actions and lies like a bubbling spring at the base of our everyday lives. It’s almost autonomic, we cannot control it and if we harness it at work it becomes ambition whereas we use it elsewhere as a filter to measure people’s performance in countless ways. It is slightly worrying that when people actually do what they say, this often seems sufficiently rare an occurrence to be worthy of comment.
Hope also lies at the base of the relationship we have with our clients in our professional lives and characterises almost every transaction from the pressured, distress visits where an animal may be sick or injured to the expectation of a satisfactory result from a herd health visit to the farm or to a flea treatment to eradicate an infestation or prevent a further problem. We all know that, in veterinary practice, a client who feels let down rapidly becomes somebody else’s client.
In a business sense it manifests as expectation that a certain result will emanate from a certain action and this, too, is a constant in the professional world in which we live. Consumer expectation – whether in a farm client or in a cat owner – pays little respect to the vagaries of science and a commercial transaction will inevitably lead to an expectation of success however hard we try to explain that no outcome is 100% certain. Here the commercial expectation rapidly reverts to hope when the outcome is uncertain but the two can be seen as a continuum if we try to understand consumer behaviour.
In a business sense it manifests as expectation that a certain result will emanate from a certain action and this, too, is a constant in the professional world in which we live. Consumer expectation – whether in a farm client or in a cat owner – pays little respect to the vagaries of science and a commercial transaction will inevitably lead to an expectation of success however hard we try to explain that no outcome is 100% certain. Here the commercial expectation rapidly reverts to hope when the outcome is uncertain but the two can be seen as a continuum if we try to understand consumer behaviour.
Cats are not natural travellers and most will object to the process of confinement in a basket, travel in a car and transport into a place which smells strange andwhich intrinsically generates fear. Cat owners know their pets better than anyone and to gloss over the difficulties which this situation causes them is simply counter productive. While that cat remains stressed, so will the owner and much, if not all, of the information we aim to convey in the consultation will be lost. If they cannot understand the information or cannot retain the instructions they are given, how can we expect a satisfactory clinical outcome? If we enter into the business relationship unable to expect a satisfactory outcome, doesn’t this make it difficult to justify the professional fee to be charged? Why would that cat owner repeatedly revisit the practice if little or nothing we do together seems to work?
The same lack of retention can reasonably be expected in those clients who have sat up all night with their sick dog, those who have brought children into the practice with them and anyone who may have, that morning, received a worrying letter from their GP, a bank statement written in unexpected levels of red ink, a repossession notice for their car or fridge - in fact almost anyone who has other worries going on in their lives. Those slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan might say that this is simply a natural part of doing business and that clients will be just as distracted in Tesco or when buying petrol but that, rather conveniently, misses the point. Little of what modern veterinary practice does is so straightforward that it can be done with minimal engagement by the client and, if it were so, surely Tesco and the other retailers would be doing it already. It’s no coincidence that where client and retailer engagement can be minimalised, other retail channels are already successfully selling products like flea and worm treatments which have now become commoditised. Veterinary practice is distinguished from other retail channels because the decisions required and the information given and received are more challenging. If we settle for an incomplete process in the communication between ourselves and our clients we cannot complain when the footfall in general practice continues to decline.
So, if we want to develop our businesses, retain clients, foster loyalty to our practice brands and attempt to ensure that the professional information we give and the products we sell are effective and successful in their application, surely we need to pay far more attention to the way our clients are feeling when we talk to them. We’re not here to be social workers but, as any social worker will tell you, how people appear on the surface may be a far cry from how they actually feel.
Unless the people we are talking to are receptive to what we’re saying, we cannot expect them to come back to us when things don’t work. Progressively, I am coming to the uncomfortable conclusion that the current business model for veterinary practice no longer works and that we need to take a very hard look at what skills the practice needs to make it more effective and financially successful. A different charging model for cat consults which allows time for the owner and the patient to settle down and be less stressed would be a clear and obvious step forward and, without doubt, we are going to have to develop our communication skills to build a different rapport with clients.
As seen in The Evening Standard:
“The low-resolution personal ad. When viewed from a distance, it looks amazing but, up close, it’s pretty poor. Man 35 Gwent. Box no. 7863”