Clinic HQ offers the cheapest texting of all veterinary and texting-based software, period. You WILL NOT find a cheaper option.
The charge for text messages is 5¢ per segment. Each segment consists of up to 160 characters, including spaces. To reduce cost, shorten the message.
The charge for auto-calls/robo-calls is 5¢ per segment. Each segment consists of up to one minute, which includes about 800 characters including spaces. To reduce cost, shorten the message.
The monthly fee is $1.00 per month for the phone number (in addition to the .05 cents per segment).
Your clinic will be billed at the beginning of each month for the text and call add-on. This is separate from your clinic’s subscription.
Estimating Texting Costs
Appointment reminders
1. Look at the number of patients you had on your last open day. Let’s say it was 40.
2. Now, since multiple pets can belong to one client, it’s important to estimate how many unique clients you had. Let’s say you had 10 unique owners that combined had 30 animals total. Plus, you had 10 animals coming in from a volume client. That means 11 unique clients.
3. Now, multiply 11 times .05 cents. That equals 0.55 cents.
4. Now write down what this was for: appointment reminders (assuming they only get one appointment reminder by text). Email is free.
Okay, so it costs 0.55 cents to send reminders to 40 patients. If you only used text for this purpose, you would now look at how many days you are open in a week. Let’s say it’s five.
5. Next, you’d multiply 0.55 cents times 5, which equals $2.75 cents per week. Assuming four weeks in a month, that’s $11 per month to remind owners of 800 pets about their appointments. If you reduce ONE no-show, that covers the expense plus some!
Now, think about the next most common use of text messages: pick-up texts.
When you check patients out, HQ can text the owner that the pet is ready to be picked up. This is a massive time saver, improving safety and reducing stress because it staggers check-out. In this case, though, the text is per patient, so 30 of the patients are owned animals in this example. These are the ones you want to get the text. So 30 × 0.05 cents = $1.5 dollars x 5 days a week = $7.5 weekly x 4 weeks = $30.
If you just used texting for these circumstances, you’d pay $41 monthly. And you’d save hundreds of hours of staff time calling people to pick up their animals and reminding them of their appointments. If you have a bulk check-out, where they come at, say, 4 p.m., by enabling staggered checkout, you reduce stress for your staff, increase safety for pets and reduce the time pets stay in the clinic.
Note: Volume Client communication is free through the chat tool.
Now, let’s say you want to use it to communicate with owners via text about various issues. Realistically, you might get three text messages a day (which are free to receive), and your staff might reply to each of these. That’s .015 cents, which equates to $3 a month for the week.
Lastly, let’s say you want people to be able to look up their medical records online and text a copy to themselves. That might be another $3.00 per month.
So, around $45 to $50 per month to use ALL texting features is a reasonable estimate.
How We Save You Money
Bundling
We bundle text messages with the owner via integrated texting in every possible circumstance.
Example: Jax and Max are due for a rabies 1 year vaccine. You have the Item Reminders set to send the owner a text. The message is bundled into one text costing .05 cents that includes both animals, instead of two texts costing .10 cents, one for each animal. It’s possible you may not immediately recognize the complexity of this,nor its benefit for your clinic in terms of cost savings. But know this, it’s crucial. Text messaging costs will double or triple without it.
Character Counts
In all instances, we show you how many characters you are typing. That’s because phone carriers charge per segment. The segments can be 160 characters long. If it’s 161 characters, it counts as two text messages. We want you to spend as little as possible on these fees, so we intentionally give you the character counts on text messages as you type them.
No Monthly Fee
We do not charge any monthly fee for the texting service. You pay for what you use on the 2nd of each month.
All good points, but it still costs money
It’s true, a text message costs .05 cents to send. And when you see it in black and white like that, it’s easy to dismiss it and think – we can’t pay another cent for one more thing. We totally get that. But here comes the cold water. You still have to pay real money in the form of a wage to your staff. The money will be spent either way and requiring your staff to spend their precious time performing easily automated, mundane tasks is soul-numbing.
Let’s look at the example of medical record requests. Let’s say six clients call per week, and Jane, your Client Service Representative, handles those requests. Talking to the client, looking up the records and emailing a copy to each client, let’s say, takes ten minutes. So, one hour was spent doing a mundane task.
Instead, your clinic could put the Medical Records Request link on your website and have the clients use the automated system to get copies of their medical records. The time spent would be zero minutes, and your organization would pay .30 cents.
Let’s say Jane gets paid $15 per hour. For Jane to keep fulfilling the requests would cost $780 in wages and fifty two hours of staff time per year – a full work week just for completing this task. Texting would cost $15.80 for the year to automate this task.
You’ve saved money, and Jane’s partner is happy that she no longer comes home each night and complains about her job.
