I wrote this blog a month or two ago, then shelved it after re-reading, wondering whether I might just be being a little petty. After a second complaint from another client on exactly the same issue I reconsidered. Publish and be damned!
Yesterday I received a complaint. Now for any of us working in the customer service field - and veterinary medicine is very much a customer service profession - we become accustomed to receiving complaints. Sometimes clients do not agree with things that we do, sometimes there is a breakdown in communication, sometimes people have differing ideas of what constitues a successful outcome. Occasionally we make a genuine error whilst treating a horse. All of these situations, and many more, will probably happen to every vet during the course of their career. However the single factor that drives more complaints than any other is money, and more specifically whether someone feels they have had value for money.
Yesterday's complaint really left me flabbergasted. I had driven out to a client's yard, administered a flu vaccination, and driven back to the practice. The yard was about 25mins away and I was probably there for about 15 minutes. Whilst we don't often carry out a full clinical exam at the time of vaccination we do listen to each horse's heart and ask the owner if there is anything they are concerned about or anything specific they'd like us to have a look at. We also offer to check the horse's teeth. So for the price charged the owner gets nearly an hour of driving time, the vaccination itself, a quick health check and the opportunity to discuss any problems that may have arisen over the past year. The price that I charged for all of the above? The 'gross overcharging' that led to the written complaint? £54.
It started me wondering what the client would have considered a reasonable cost for this service. £45? £25? £10?? It also made me wonder when veterinary medicine became quite so devalued. We are highly trained professionals. We have all spent a minimum of five years studying for our degrees. Many of us also have post-graduate qualifications and every single one of us carries out a bare minimum of 35 hours of CPD every single year, at no inconsiderable cost. We all have cars to run, facilities to maintain, heat and light, drugs and equipment to pay for, a myriad of miscellaneous everyday costs and overheads; and then we have to have enough left over to actually pay wages, not just for the vet that drove out to perform your vaccination, but for the receptionist and the nurses back at the practice. And none of us is even close to being rich!
So, does £54 look like value for money yet? If you took a taxi for that 50min round trip the fare alone would be more than £54. It costs more than £54 to take your cat to a small animal vet for a vaccination. £54 would pay for an hour's individual tuition with a well-known dressage instructor - but not if they had to come to you. £54 is less money than it costs to enter any British Eventing event. It is considerably less than the amount the client will hand over to their farrier every 6 weeks, year after year.
Somehow it seems ironic than the £250 bill for the emergency colic is rarely quibbled, but the £54 bill for the once yearly injection (that is a requirement to be able to compete the horse) is the cause of so much drama. We have plenty of clients who appreciate our efforts to keep routine costs down. Why should we be expected to lower those costs to a point where we are making a loss? Both clients said that the cost was 'extortionate' and that they'd be using another practice in future. Frankly, I wish them, and probably even more so their new vets, the best of luck.
Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time I asked my chaffeur to polish the Bentley...
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