VMP 283: Colin Hebert From Chckup Reveals How To Unlock Your Practice's Secret Data Goldmine

Brandon 00:00:01  Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your vendor. Practice using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch or listen to today's episode. Today's episode we have Colin from checkup. Now, you probably heard, especially within marketing, that data is important, but have you ever actually sat down and considered why is data important? In today's episode, we dive into how you can use your data, specifically your practice management software data to grow your practice. Having control over your data and actually a good grasp and understanding of the segments of your client base that are going to be profitable, that are going to be needing additional services is incredibly important, especially as the market contracts and people are seeing, you know, typically fewer appointments in most markets. I think this is more important than ever. In today's episode, we talk about how checkup helps practices. It is a fantastic episode, and I think you're going to get a lot of really good ideas and insights.

Brandon 00:01:07  So I really appreciate Colin. And also Elliot has been on the podcast before, but I love this company. I love the commitment they have to the industry, but I also love that they're always willing to innovate. So, I think this is going to be a great episode for you. Be sure to listen all the way through. Before we begin, we have two sponsors for today's episode. Are you looking to get better SEO ranking for everyday practice? Probably everyone I know that runs a veterinary hospital would be benefited from having better local SEO, and that's why I want to give you some free tools from one of today's sponsor. It is White Sparkle. If you go to Veterinary Marketing podcast.com/seo, that's veterinary marketing podcast.com/seo. You can sign up to get a free account to give you some amazing SEO tools. White spark gives you everything that you need for better local SEO. If you haven't heard the episode I did with Darren Shaw. Be sure to go back and look at it. He is the founder and owner of this company.

Brandon 00:02:07  It is fantastic. They have Google business profile management, local rank tracking, local citation, founder, reputation builder. They even have professional SEO services if that's something that you're looking for. So go to Veterinary Marketing podcast.com/seo to check out White Spark and the free tools that they have available for you. You won't be disappointed. They're really cool. let me know what you think too. If you need help with any of that, please don't hesitate to reach out. But again, veterinary marketing podcast.com/seo. Have you ever said to yourself, I wish I knew where these clients were coming from? If you've ever been wondering, you know what is actually driving conversions in your practice, then I have something that I think will be great for you and that is called rail call. Real is a fantastic tool that allows you to measure and see where your conversions are coming from, and which of the calls and call sources are driving clients into your practice. Caldwell makes it really simple to not only see where your calls are coming from, but the AI tools that they have that track and record the conversation so that you can assign outcomes to the calls is amazing.

Brandon 00:03:20  I highly suggest all of the clients that I have used call Rail, and if you've ever wondered where my clients coming from, you can try call roll out for two weeks for free if you go to Veterinary Marketing podcast. Com forward slash call rail, you'll be able to try call rail for yourself and finally know where your clients are coming. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Colin, can you just give a quick backstory of who you are, how you got started, and how you entered into the veterinary market?

Colin 00:03:49  Sure thing. Yeah. so I'm Colin I started, checkup with, three of my good friends a few years ago. we actually started in a little bit of a different, kind of focus. We were doing kind of like a marketplace for, finding vets in your local area. and honestly, we, you know, while we're doing this, we spent a lot of time, with a lot of different vets and in a lot of different offices.

Colin 00:04:21  interacting with staff, just, you know, kind of understanding the processes that people had in place. And we realized that, you know, the, the current tools that exist, in the market for automating processes and putting in place operations that are, you know, repeatable. it's pretty weak. There's not a lot of tooling out there for it. So we ended up building a lot of tools to help offices streamline operations, take online bookings, you know, communicate with their clients. efficiently. And at this point, you know, we're building that connection between the client and the clinic in one, all in one solution.

Brandon 00:05:00  Very cool. That's super awesome. I'm a big fan of checkup in general, and a lot of practices that our clients that use it and they really like it. And so that's part of the reason why I wanted to get you on here to talk specifically about data, because I think that data is one of the bigger kind of missed opportunities when it comes to practices. So, and I think, too, that the bigger companies that are entering the market, like the chewy's of the world that are starting to open practices, they just have such a massive vault of data.

Brandon 00:05:33  So when it comes to data and marketing in particular, what do you think the kind of biggest missed opportunities that you see in the conversations that you're having with practices to, you know, really get more benefit out of?

Colin 00:05:46  Well, I think I think the, the number one thing you, you have to focus on and what a lot of practices it kind of ends up on the wayside. It's not their primary focus because, you know, managing the health of of pets and, you know, just managing the people that are coming in every day. That's the primary focus. But the reality is if you don't measure it, you can't improve it. Right? So analytics are super important for improving your practices in the in the practice in the way that you want to. and it's not a, it's, it's not a quick, you know, fix. It's not a super quick implement, thing that you can just turn a switch on. You have to be paying attention to it and know what, needs to be, you know, a change or updated in order to see those changes in your practice.

Colin 00:06:30  But, it is always doable, and there's always something that that can kind of be made better. So a lot of practices like let's say, you know, and there's plenty of things that you may want to optimize, whether it's revenue or your, your fill rate, whatever the case may be. But, if it's something like revenue, then if you're not tracking the ways in which you are producing, revenue, if you're not tracking the most, let's say lucrative, appointment types or, even client types, people that are coming in that may produce the most revenue. then it's gonna be very difficult for you to know how to increase that, that number, just as an example. and so it's super important and it's very difficult with the tools that exist today. you know, a lot of the PIMs have something that you can use, but they're not usually geared towards the most geared towards reports rather than, you know, trends or how you can, improve those, those metrics.

Brandon 00:07:27  Definitely. So when you're talking to practices, how often should they be looking at this kind of benchmark data? Because I think that it's really important.

Brandon 00:07:34  Like when I'm talking to clients, I'm saying you need to know your your general traffic numbers. And usually it's like 5 to 7 KPIs that you should be checking on a weekly basis. Because if you know your baselines and all of a sudden you know your your traffic drops by 20%. You can say, okay, this is going to be a problem this week. Let's see what's going on. Is it something that's seasonal or just a weird outlier, or should we fix it? So what? How often do you think people should be looking at their data in their practice?

Colin 00:08:02  Yeah. So I mean it definitely depends on what your goals are. So for, you know, multi-location practices you may be looking at, you know, every month, you know, just because there's a lot more variance with, you know, several practices. But as a practice manager, you know, we recommend looking every day. We built something called the Daily Huddle, which is essentially a snapshot of your data, on a day to day basis to see how you did yesterday versus today and, and what you can prepare for tomorrow that just gives you, you know, it keeps your finger on the pulse of what's really going on in your practice.

Colin 00:08:35  and if, you know, usually you're supposed to bring in a certain amount of money on, let's say, a Monday and your revenue is down. Okay. Well, you know, let's figure out what that that problem is and how we can fix it for for next week. but then like you mentioned, you know, you don't have to be looking at every metric every single day, you know, just have an idea of it on a daily basis. Once a week is plenty enough to really understand what the trends are doing. And, you know, obviously there are times, times of the year where there's not going to be as many appointments or, there may be more. So just keeping that in mind, knowing what those trends are and what you can expect for the future. we'll let you prepare for it a little better. If you're going into a time where there's going to be, you know, fewer appointments, then maybe ramp up your marketing or, you know, or start doing some, some kind of promotions.

Colin 00:09:26  and on the flip side, if you're expecting an influx of appointments, then making sure you're fully staffed and you have, you know, other doctors from able to pick up extra slack, super important to just, you know, be prepared for those situations.

Brandon 00:09:40  Definitely. So when it comes to data specifically with checkup and how you're you're looking at things. how does checkup work in terms of pulling data that's going to be actually useful versus just like having it available? Because I think that's a big a big distinction. I mean, all of your data is in your practice management software, but pulling it is usually tedious and things like that. So what kind of stuff can you pull that's really valuable for driving more appointments and more revenue and things like that?

Colin 00:10:07  Yeah, absolutely. So, and like I mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of the PIMs have something where you can pull some kind of reports, but what they lack is, is exactly what you're saying, you know, that really juicy data that you can actually, you know, act on and build, you know, some kind of campaigns or initiatives around.

Colin 00:10:24  And so, you know, we try to make that super easy, you know, one of the most important ones that a lot of people can't track or, you know, it's very, very difficult to track is, is fill rate. so that's the percentage of time that the doctors are, are seeing appointments. versus the amount of time that they could see an appointment but don't have anything, filled. So, you know, in general, a practice, should have some roughly like a 90% fill rate. That's a that's a good fill rate. 70 to 90% is a solid, though. and, you know, obviously not including the times that would be taken out, like luncheon and all of that. So that's something that's very difficult to find without doing it manually. every day for, you know, going through your PIMs and just combing through what times were not available, what could have been available, who cancelled. so we deliver that, you know, just automatically we pull that every single day.

Colin 00:11:23  and try to make sure, you know, the clinics that are, that are using us are aware of where those revenue opportunities are. So once, you know, let's say you have a fill rate of 60%, every day. Well, you know that that you have extra time or sorry, extra appointment slots that could be filled. let's, let's say maybe start a new marketing initiative to get those times filled, because that's just empty revenue space that that could be producing for the clinic.

Brandon 00:11:51  Definitely. That's a question that I asked my clients is how many appointments are open right now. And then they say, well, we could usually do like another 12 or something if it's like a six doctor practice. And I mean, they don't really know necessarily. I just was thinking of a practice at six doctors and they could do an extra 12 appointments and so we can back out what our cost per conversion is if we're doing phone conversions, for example, and say, okay, like cost for appointment is $22, they need 12 more appointments.

Brandon 00:12:19  Okay. Are you okay with this increase in spend. And because you have all the same fixed costs, you know, you want to get that that fill rate as high as possible. I think that's a really good way to look at it from a marketing perspective. And that's usually how I suggest that people are thinking about that, because, you know, you have your doctor sitting there, you know, not using the time and resources to to make the practice revenue. And then also you could look at it too from another perspective and see, is it the problem of you don't have enough traffic and appointments or is it that you're just not efficiently scheduling people? I know that there's so many times where people are not scheduling because they want to give more of a break, and it's interesting to we can compare the data for marketing where we'll see they say we need appointments and I say, okay, let's get same day appointments coming in. And then I listened to the phone calls and the the CSRs are like, yeah, we can't fit you in until next, you know, Wednesday.

Brandon 00:13:14  And it's like you said, we had appointments available today. You're scheduling for next week, like what's going on. But that lets you figure out where the problem is. And sometimes you don't need more traffic. You just need better scheduling to make sure that everybody's being used as efficiently as possible and getting stuff done. Definitely.

Colin 00:13:31  Yeah, yeah. An important metric that a lot of people kind of end up overlooking. And it's also one of those things that you may not know that there's a problem until you start looking into the data and realize that, you know, hey, we could do things a little bit more optimally. So yeah, definitely.

Brandon 00:13:45  Totally makes sense. I love that, when it comes to like, mining your own data, what kind of things can you be looking at? I know that especially as practices are more slow right now, that's I'm, I'm sure biased because people contact me for help with ads, so they want more clients, but what kind of, data points can you pull? And, like insights and reports and things that help to, you know, find segments and procedures and all kinds of stuff like that?

Colin 00:14:12  Yeah.

Colin 00:14:12  So, I mean, really having a grasp on I think the most important thing is having a grasp on what's really driving revenue, is one of the first things you just need to have kind of in the back of your mind at all times. So, you know, and whether that is a specific service, or if you have, you know, certain clients who come in that, that produce a significant portion of your revenue. let's say grooming services, are, you know, 30% of the appointments that that come through your clinic and you have a groomer who does those. Well, if that's taking up a ton of, you know, people's times, time during the day at the office, but it's only producing 5% of your revenue, then. Okay, now you realize that you may need to, you know, cut some of those grooming appointments so that, you know, you can you can focus more resources on other things. just just a random example. But that's kind of the idea of, once you have a grasp of, you know, what's really driving revenue, then you can make decisions towards how to grow those, those revenue streams.

Colin 00:15:16  So, on the same kind of token, if you realize that, I don't know, nail trims are actually crushing for your, your, client.

Brandon 00:15:26  Well, maybe as, like, an acquisition source, like, maybe free nail trim is, like, you could look at, average lifetime value of clients that come in. Exactly.

Colin 00:15:35  And that's a huge, thing as well, is that a lot of people don't realize that or sorry. I think one of the major things that a lot of clinics are not looking at is a client as a, you know, multiyear investment, right. an appointment is not $170, right? An appointment is a potential for, you know, a $3,000 lifetime value, or more, you know, depending on, on species and all. So, I think that's a really.

Brandon 00:16:03  Really a lot more.

Colin 00:16:04  Yeah. Right. so I think that's a very important, distinction to make at your practice is understanding that, you know, certain while certain, procedures or services may not be producing as much revenue if you don't have the data to back up whether or not they're producing long term, then you're not going to be able to make the right decision there on you know how many are taking on average day.

Brandon 00:16:32  Yeah, absolutely. And that's that's very cool. there's a software that I use called heroes or a couple of my clients that are doing e-commerce and, it has all of that broken down by lifetime value per channel and things like that. So you can see cost per lead. immediate last click return on investment, which is like would be the equivalent of first visit return and then also lifetime value of different segments. And so even if you're like not necessarily making a huge amount of money on the first visit, the lifetime value is so much more profitable. And if you can reduce your cost per acquisition by, you know, testing out different offers and things like that, where you're going to be maybe doing a free exam versus a free nail trim versus $20 off, you know, trying all of these different things because it's going to attract different clientele. Right. and so being able to say, okay, this segment that came in for the nail trim their first year visits are $700, the $20 off was $900, and you can figure out what you can spend to acquire more of those customers.

Brandon 00:17:38  I think that's that's really cool. So do you have like, reports for different segments of opportunities or like high value type clientele that you should be reaching out to and things like that that are made with that?

Colin 00:17:51  Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we kind of have this concept of, of client segments. so you can segment out your customers by, you know, certain aspects, you know, any aspect that you can really think of that at least as long as it's tracked in the PIMs and, you know, that's, you know, some else we could get into for another hours keeping clean data. But, yeah, as long as you're tracking the PIMs, you know, we allow you to to, you know, pare that down into what is really making a valuable client for you. and, you know, one of those, one of the simplest ones is zip code. You know, where you're where your best clients coming from. And I'm sure, I'm sure that's super important for you to know, because that's where you can direct, where your marketing dollars are going.

Colin 00:18:35  and, you know, so that's one of the, one of the things, that, you know, you really need to be able to get specific on, because if you don't know where your best customers are coming from, you don't know where to get new ones, right?

Brandon 00:18:49  absolutely. And that's one thing I get all the time is when we're setting up campaigns. I'll ask them how far out we should go, and they'll be like, well, we have at least one client from this place, and it's like 20 miles away. And it's like, okay, that's great, but we don't want to be, you know, targeting there. We're going to get way more conversion. If we go to your primary zip codes. Right. And 80% of their clients are going to come from, you know, 2 or 3. That's right around the practice. depends on how you know, the services and things. But obviously you want to target as closely as possible, so that'll make sense. so in addition to just having great data, you also have online booking.

Brandon 00:19:22  What in your opinion, are some of the most important things when it comes to online booking? Because I have a lot of opinions on this as well, and I'm interested to see what you think. So when it comes to online booking, what is online booking in your opinion?

Colin 00:19:35  I mean, we've talked ad nauseum about this, but I mean, not offering online booking is is a little bit, you know, shooting yourself in the foot on just, you know, free appointments essentially, you know, from an anecdotal kind of perspective, you know, most pet owners at this point are going to be looking online anyway, you know, so being where your customer is going is going to look for you, is super important. So having that as an option for them, is, is really going to open up your ability to, you know, produce a lot of those appointments that otherwise, you know, might, might end up going to to a competitor who does offer online booking. but along with that, online booking offers an immense amount of tractability that you may lose elsewhere.

Colin 00:20:24  you know, the analytics. I mean, like, we've been talking this whole time, the data that you can pull from online booking, is so important, being able to track someone's journey, to your clinic and, and through that, that entire process is super, super important and really can feed your, understanding of where you're getting your clients, how you're getting your clients and where you need to be investing in order to be producing more and better ones. and, you know, I think in general, also, it's honestly the most important part of, of having online booking at your practice is just that you're keeping that process, super streamlined. You only have so many, you know, staff members. You can only have so many people on the phone at any given time while you have, you know, a couple of dogs walking through the front door that that you know, you need to be you need to have someone there talking to your, you know, your clients who you want to build that relationship with as well.

Colin 00:21:25  And if someone is, you know, someone's on the phone not able to, really grow their relationship. you know, that's that's half this industry, you know, just making making sure the people that come in your clinic are, you know, feel welcomed and, and want to come back. So, you know, being able to streamline that process and have everyone, you know, kind of on the same page there, I think is also super important.

Brandon 00:21:48  I totally agree, and I think it's just, it needs to be something that doesn't require multiple steps if possible. but I do think that it shouldn't be completely automated, especially, I'd say over the past month or so. A lot of clients that I'm working with, they're seeing more no shows than ever. But then ask them, are they doing any follow up? And they're not doing any follow ups, so they don't have reminders going out to them. They're not doing phone calls to confirm. And they just people aren't showing up and they're like, you know, they're not showing up.

Brandon 00:22:17  You have to remind people they're busy and stuff, right? I think that goes with any type of marketing funnel. You have to keep people in top of mind, and it doesn't matter if you're, you know, selling anything. If you want people to show up, you got to remind them.

Colin 00:22:30  Yeah, absolutely. and the beautiful thing about online booking is that, you know, you're giving the, the control to the consumer saying, hey, you pick the time that works best for you, right? We don't have to go through this back and forth. And, you know, we're not picking a time that's good for us. You're picking your own time. So the likelihood is they can and will come to that appointment. They just need to know that it's that it's coming up. If you're not reminding, you know, that's going to be the number one reason that you're going to end up with with no shows if you're not, you know, letting them know that their appointments coming up, confirming with them, etc..

Brandon 00:23:04  Yeah. And I do think, too, that those touchpoints that are like an actual reason to show up and engage with them and solidify a marketing channel for like most of the time, if you think about marketing messages, it's, you know, you think of spam email or something, right? But if you have something that you're showing up providing value and they asked you to send them something, it's a great point to like they say, it takes seven touch points to convert somebody if you want them to come back, like make it a memorable experience the whole way through. And like that's an easy thing. In e-commerce, for example, when you're selling stuff online, if you add a promo code to the confirmation and shipping email, because everybody checks the shipping email, they want to know when the thing that they bought is getting there. So you add a promo code as an upsell. So same thing reminders and appointments, you know, ask for reviews or like it's a really good way to get your audience captured attention and then give them value there.

Brandon 00:24:00  And I think that that is something that's really cool and that's cool too. That not check up does all of the reminders. So it's like very integrated and everything really, you know, works, works well together because all of these pieces, if you're segmenting them, it just is a lot of systems and difficulty to set up 100%.

Colin 00:24:19  And I think you kind of hit it right on the, you know, on the head there with, you know, making sure you're getting, reviews as well. and, you know, we built out this whole review system just because it's so important, especially for, you know, small businesses and especially for service businesses to get, genuine, you know, feedback from the people that are that are going there. you know, I think it's something it's funny, once I understood that several years ago, every time I'm, you know, looking online for something, I, I noticed myself looking at reviews before anything else. The only thing I care about, especially for a service business, is, is me looking through reviews or looking for, you know, real customer feedback.

Colin 00:25:00  I don't I don't care about, you know, a lot of the other stuff I'll be drawn in with the marketing. But what I want to know is, is, you know, are people having a good experience? So.

Brandon 00:25:09  Absolutely. And, I've seen a few, especially for private practices that you have to get on to the review. Train with how many clients you're seeing each week. I think everybody should be shooting for at least three reviews a week. I don't think that's a hard goal to hit at all. And, you know, places like vege veg is a monster at collecting, reviews. I don't know what software they're using to do that. I've never been to a veg, but like, I admire their their workflow. I don't know what they're using, but they open a spot and then two months later have 600 reviews. and they're all positive, which is very unheard of for emergency medicine because, you know, you show up, it's expensive billed. It's not prepared for generally speaking.

Brandon 00:25:51  Right. So whatever they're doing is killing it. And, I think that practices just need a system in place so that they don't have to think about it or manually work on it. Right. And, you know, anytime you can take your marketing activities and turn it into a system, it's just going to pay you back. And that's the other thing, too. It's the biggest factor when it comes to your Google Business profile ranking is number of reviews and also frequency. Because you can't just get like go out and get 300 and then not get any more. Seems a natural to Google, right? They have to keep that going so that that system got to have it in place. And yeah, absolutely. Definitely. So what other kind of reminders and and things you guys have.

Colin 00:26:32  Yeah. So we built out our entire binary system essentially to be, as you know, customizable and tailored to, what people, really want to build. so, you know, like I mentioned, those client segments, you know, being able to to pare down your list of clients to the specific, you know, attributes that they have.

Colin 00:26:54  We used that technology to build out our notification system as well. So, you know, whenever you're sending a specific notification, you can be sure that it's going out to a very specific subset of clients. Like, let's say you have a wellness exam for, you know, a cat versus a dog might be a different experience. So you need to remind them of different things. so, you know, you can build that out as custom as you want, as deep as, you know, deeply detailed as you really need to. along with, you know, you know, rich text editor, just to make sure that, you know, they're getting that information presented in a pleasant way. you know, you can use it for your own marketing as well. since we built out, you know, this bulk messaging system, essentially mass communication to all of your clients if you want to build out a newsletter. I think that's something that a lot of clinics don't do. But, you know, me as just kind of a consumer, I think is such a killer opportunity to stay connected, especially when it's, you know, when I don't need to bring my dog in for, for anything for a while every month, at least getting some kind of touchpoint to, like you mentioned, you know, take seven touchpoints.

Colin 00:28:05  at least get some in while, services not. Do I think that's super important. you know, it's something we built out because, you know, our main goal here essentially is to enable your business to run on autopilot for a lot of those, you know, processes that, you know, you can have in place that, you know, a lot of clinics don't.

Brandon 00:28:27  Definitely. I think that's incredibly important to you. And it's like one of the easiest things that's been around forever. And people just don't do it with their email newsletter in particular. and I think the way that practice is kind of approach it, I don't think they realize they're doing this. They're like, I don't want to bug them. I'm not going to send them anything, you know? But then the alternative is that like they they're slow and they're like, okay, we need appointments. What should we do? Let's send out an email. So they're only sending out emails when it's transactional. And that's like the equivalent of being the guy who's like, hey, I gotta move this weekend.

Brandon 00:29:00  Can I borrow your truck? You can come help me move. And like, you won't hear back till there's leases up next year.

Colin 00:29:05  I'll buy you a pizza.

Brandon 00:29:06  Exactly. You're always just asking for stuff rather than keeping in touch and treating it like an actual relationship where you're going to like, how's it going? Here's some cool stuff that I think you'd like in that segmentation is very, very important. Like you mentioned, to, want to dive a little bit deeper. What segmentation pieces do you think most practices have that is really, really valuable? But what's another piece that you think that they should be adding in? Because keeping data clean like you mentioned. Like what are maybe let's start there. What are some segments that you think that people should have that they don't? If you can think of any.

Colin 00:29:39  I think an interesting one that, you know, it may not be the most informative, but I think it's always very interesting. One is, your top lifetime value clients. so just looking, you know, being able to look at your, you know, top, let's say 100 top lifetime value clients, whether they're old clients or new clients or whatever, you know, just being able to see that and pattern matching what made them, you know, high value clients.

Colin 00:30:09  we'll let you, we'll it'll at least inform you, maybe subconsciously, but it'll inform you on what's really producing and, and maybe some things that you can focus on that you wouldn't have thought of. and it usually illuminates some things that are, maybe not quite as, obvious to you. And you can start putting maybe some resources towards, you know, pushing those things a little bit more. So maybe some services that you offer that you don't, you know, really recognize as super valuable, but, you know, perhaps. so I think that's one that I really like that I think is always very interesting to see.

Brandon 00:30:50  Absolutely. I think that's really, really interesting. And then also you can kind of identify those people when they're coming into because you don't know necessarily who's going to be the best client in general. Right. And so you can see there's these commonalities between these types of pet owners. They have, you know, three dogs and they, you know, do these different things. And it helps you to understand.

Brandon 00:31:11  Definitely. and and then also, I think, you know, in general, being able to give extra service for those types of people where you can like just give a little bit more, you know, special experience or calls or just detailed attention. and seeing those people too, who've been around for a long time, just being appreciative and, you know, reaching out or sending them a note or something, I'm sure it would be very, very helpful and a long way to.

Colin 00:31:38  Yeah, kind of gives you an idea of, you know, you're not necessarily getting special treatment, but, you know, just knowing who to who to give that extra little nod to, when they come in or, you know. definitely. Yeah. Always good to keep track. And I think that's also an important one that a lot of people aren't really able to pull very easily. and we've spent a lot of time with our data analytics tools trying to make everything super easy to pull. one very exciting feature at least.

Colin 00:32:09  it's in beta right now, but, that I'm, I'm at least very excited about is an AI reports feature basically, you know, tell the AI what you're looking for or what you're curious about, and it'll be able to pull it using your data, and generate a report for you, which, super helpful, especially for a little bit more, anomalous queries, things that you're not exactly sure what you're looking for, but you have an idea. so that's very exciting.

Brandon 00:32:37  I love that idea. That's one of the tools that heroes has, which is, that, that e-commerce tracking is that that gives you projected lifetime value per segment as you're doing campaigns. And so it looks at all of the data points for these users and then tells you what they think it'll be worth. That would be really cool if you had that. But I don't know how they do that or how that works.

Colin 00:32:56  Very interesting.

Brandon 00:32:58  I'm sure there's. I don't know. I'll make a note of it. Interesting. I'll look at you.

Brandon 00:33:01  Can make that. That'd be great. Well, that's one thing. I really appreciate you. And that's, you know, major reason why I wanted to have you on this. People don't know this about you guys, but, like, you're very open to building out cool features and doing things that most people just don't do. And the difficult part that I have are that the PIMs don't communicate with any marketing features and functions, and that is a big problem. And you know what else drives me crazy too, is that people that do offer online booking, they act just like the pimps. So everybody's got walls around their data. They don't offer any analytics, they don't offer any anything that's valuable. It's just like, we built this. Here's how it works. This is what you get, basically. And drives me crazy because especially tools that are more marketing centric and marketing focused for online booking, they're not great at doing that. And I think it is so important because you have to compare your booking not to other vet med, but rather like buying a pizza on Domino's, like it has to be that level right of experience or, you know, buying something on Amazon.

Brandon 00:34:14  Right? Because that's people are expecting a lot more with those types of companies, and that's who they're going to compare you to versus like, oh, well, it's better than, you know, ABC Animal Hospital down the street. Don't care. They don't know about that. They know that they just bought their groceries on like vons.com. And they just, you know, placed online order at Amazon. And then they just did like nail trims, chiropractic dentists, other service industries are really good at it. And the vet med industry just needs to catch up. It drives me crazy.

Colin 00:34:45  Yeah. No, that was, you know, one of the major drivers of of, you know what? Why we built this, this solution in the first place is that, you know, the experience from the clinic perspective was kind of a good enough situation. You know, it it worked. I would.

Brandon 00:35:05  Say not even good enough. Like it has to function like that was it? It works. You can do it.

Brandon 00:35:09  But really, most of it till probably a year and a half ago was like it would send a request and then you'd confirm. So it was in like longer funnel call funnel basically like, okay, we have to call. Anyways, let's add four steps to this process, which is going to kill your conversion. And it makes more time and it just doesn't work well.

Colin 00:35:28  Right. and so, you know, we set out to really build the kind of most seamless, you know, appointment scheduling solution. And as we did that, you know, that's where a lot of these features came from. we have spent essentially the entire, kind of development time of this, of this product, just doing a feedback loop with all of the vets that were talking to all clinics that we're talking to every time, you know, we rule something out, you know, if they've got suggestions, features, that's where our product has gone. And I think at this point is why we have such a, clean and, you know, well-designed product from the scheduling point of view.

Colin 00:36:10  and why track ability is so important to us? Because it's important to our clients. and, you know, it's made it so that the entire product is it's at a point of customization where there is no, situation that we can't handle in terms of, you know, specific scheduling rules and things like that. That's something we spent a lot of time on, is we don't want to make, our clinics have to change their processes. They they have operations in place. And so we want to live inside of that. And, you know, we don't want to have to make our clinics do extra work in order to do less work. Right? Yeah. So, But, yeah. No, I mean, I think you're exactly right. I think it took some time, for a lot of clinics to realize that, you know, they need to be providing, a truly seamless experience. And that's why we tell clinics that all the time is, your customers are buying from Amazon, you know, once a week.

Colin 00:37:12  And their, their experience there is one.

Brandon 00:37:16  You're not married. Colin was saying, hey.

Brandon 00:37:20  At least at least know.

Brandon 00:37:23  I'm their biggest customer.

Colin 00:37:25  That was once great. I mean, I have a problem, but I was, you know, saying once a week at a minimum. Come on. Yeah. no. So, you know, the experience that they're expecting is, is very seamless. And, you know, the full process has a, you know, very defined kind of set of rules. and that's what your clients will want from you. And, and it's super important to be able to serve them that at the same time on the back side for the for the office. Being able to get those analytics into your your booking, being able to use booking as a online booking as a marketing tool as well. Super important.

Brandon 00:38:03  Absolutely.

Brandon 00:38:04  Totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. And that's absolutely why I think it's it's important to get this set up. I think it's only going to get more important to you.

Brandon 00:38:13  And I think right now just some anecdotal kind of data, most practices that are using online booking, which, you know, there's a bunch of systems out there, but, just from conversation, I'd, I'd say that most online bookings right now, our current clients, and so especially if you have those, you know, reminders and automations for keeping in touch, set up, having that online booking that is built in seamlessly works really, really well. And if you think about freeing up your phones for people that are potentially new clients, you're going to have even, you know, more effective. Like that's the worst thing is getting a new client call, putting them on hold because you're on the phone with other people. So. Right. Bring it up for new clients. But we are seeing more and more new clients that are just booking online. I think there's a huge segment of people who don't want to talk on the phone anymore. I think it's only getting more and more like people want to text, or they want to just book online and they don't want to talk to anybody.

Brandon 00:39:11  And yeah, I think that's a part of the the pandemic where people kind of got less social in general.

Colin 00:39:18  Oh, yeah. I don't have the exact date on it, but I think a good percentage of the appointments through us are our new clients. and I think that percentage is going to continue to rise, especially as, you know, we've just rolled out our client forms, so, you know, a new client. But one of the one of the biggest pains that a lot of clinics have is if a new client books, they need them to fill out a few forms. You know, there's just some information that they need to be able to collect. so we've just built out a way where they're forced to fill out those forms before they can even book. You know, they'll get through the booking process, but, you know, before they can actually be set on the schedule, you know, they're going to have these forms that they need to get that information done. and so I think that's that's one of the big hold backs for a lot of clinics, is that they want to make sure they have all that information.

Colin 00:40:08  So, you know, we're making sure that that gets to the clinic before that. That client has, fully gotten through, while still trying to keep that, that conversion rate as high as possible for those, those clients that just don't want to talk on the phone.

Brandon 00:40:22  Definitely, totally makes sense. Well, how can people get in touch with you? What's the best way to see what first off, if it would work with their practice and then, what it looks like and you guys are super easy going. You're not high pressure used car salesman. and you're really nice to work with. So I definitely suggest people, you know, check you out, book a demo, see how it works. You guys are not going to knock down the door and then bug them forever. So go check it out for sure. But how do people get in touch with you?

Colin 00:40:52  yeah. Easiest way is probably just check out our website where, we're checkup app with no HK update app. and you can check out a lot of our, features there and everything, and then you can book an eight minute demo.

Colin 00:41:09  super quick, just kind of overview of the, of the product. And, you know, you can see if, if it's really something that could benefit your practice. I think it, you know, almost guaranteed can actually.

Brandon 00:41:21  definitely.

Brandon 00:41:21  Assuming it works with the pins that you've got and you guys work with a lot.

Colin 00:41:24  Yes, we should work with about 85%. so, but yeah, that and then, you know, you'll you'll definitely hear from me at that point. So.

Brandon 00:41:35  Absolutely. So last bit here, what's your biggest, I think opportunity right now that you see for practices that they are missing as we wrap up here from your perspective?

Colin 00:41:47  Biggest opportunity? I really think I mean, online booking is not a super new tool. but I believe that a lot of offices are under utilizing it and under utilizing the data that they can get from it. So being able to combine online booking with, you know, whether that's paid marketing or, you know, making sure it's on your socials, people are using the internet to find your practice.

Colin 00:42:15  That's that's just a guarantee. Most of the people that are coming in are not going to be there because they saw, they saw, you know, they might have seen a sign on the side of the road, but they probably looked you up before. Yeah. so being able to have that digital presence and have a way for them to, book that appointment at your practice without taking up any time for your staff is super important. and then being able to get the data about how that, how that booking happened is going to be critical for, you know, scaling your your practice and scaling the revenue that you're being you're able to generate with the same amount of resources that you have now. So, you know, I don't think it's, you know, super crazy, you know, like a mind blowing idea, but I really think trackable online booking is, is going to be it's still going to be a huge thing for a lot of a lot of practices.

Brandon 00:43:10  I totally agree. And, I think that most people aren't doing the fundamentals, which is like email and text.

Brandon 00:43:18  Both of those things are game changers. and there's no reason not to be doing those. And I would say 90% of practices are not not doing two things. they definitely have some, some set of reminders in place, but like stuff that's just not transactional and keeping in touch. So few practices do it. It's easy way to stand out and build a relationship. So that's definitely and then online booking that actually works in books. Those two things. It's like the simple things are simple but foundational for a reason. and, you know, everybody tries to add all of these difficult strategies and tactics that sound cool.

Brandon 00:43:57  But yeah.

Brandon 00:43:58  You just can get so much more done and have that foundation.

Brandon 00:44:02  Absolutely. If you optimize.

Colin 00:44:03  What you have already. Yeah, 100%.

Brandon 00:44:04  Exactly. Well, I really appreciate your time today and all of your insights, Colin. Thanks again. Everybody. Go check out checkup app. That check up app. Thank you so much Colin.

Colin 00:44:16  Thanks, Brandon.

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