Debt Collection Case Study 

With Amy Crawford, Deputy Hospital Manager

Streatham Hill Veterinary Surgery is a multi award-winning hospital, part of the London Veterinary Surgeries group and a 24hr, 12 vet site committed to excellent pet care. 

When Amy Crawford rejoined the flagship clinic as Deputy Hospital Manager in September 2023, she was excited for a new challenge. However a significant portion of that challenge was going to be simply tackling the hospital’s huge amount of growing client debt.

This is an all too familiar problem for many veterinary practices across the UK. Handling bad client debt is notoriously difficult, time-consuming and often emotionally charged - it’s no mean feat.

How was client debt managed until now?

Beforehand, Streatham Hill would ask for money to be paid over the phone or for people to visit the practice to pay in person - and an in person payment would be the protocol for large amounts of money owed due to lack of security over the phone.  

As you can imagine, these were huge barriers for people to pay. Not only does it often feel confrontational and embarrassing for people to be called up and asked to pay, it’s even harder to persuade someone to call you back when they’ve got their card, and harder still to persuade them to make the trip to the vets within opening hours to pay too. 

Using this method of individually calling people up, Amy admits it would have taken her several months to make her way through the client debt list just once.

Digital Practice to the rescue!

Well what a relief when she found that Streatham had just started using Digital Practice for all their digital client communication and she could send payment links via WhatsApp from it!

With her main priority making a massive dent on their debt, they started chasing clients using a proper plan on Digital Practice from the get-go.

She would text and email each client letting them know they’ve got money outstanding, what it’s for and that a payment link on WhatsApp will follow. If a payment hasn’t been made after all 3 touch points with the client, they’re called up with a final demand for payment followed by a letter. 

So how effective has it been?

Significantly. Amy estimates that in just one month their total debt has reduced by nearly 50%, and she knows she can still easily reduce it by more. 

What would have taken her multiple months to do beforehand, has taken her just over one. She says, ‘It’s reduced my workload by at least 50%. Where before, getting through a bunch of clients would have taken a day and a half - I can now speed through them in a couple of hours at most!”

Payments taken on Digital Practice automatically reconcile with their PMS so after she’d clicked ‘send’, it’s job done and she can quickly move onto the next client.

What does this mean for the practice?

Having the client debt reduced so significantly so quickly means that Amy can now focus on other, vital work as part of her role as Deputy Hospital Manager. 

Sending payment links out to clients can take up such a small amount of her day now, that she can spend more time on improving operational efficiencies elsewhere in the hospital and concentrate on her team of fantastic vets, nurses and receptionists.  

With this better cash flow, comes also greater financial cushioning when something like the CT machine breaks or some x-ray equipment needs replacing. They can get things fixed quickly and properly, thus allowing them to maintain excellent clinical standards all the while. 

How do they prevent it increasing all over again?

Amy is now able to hand over the task to a receptionist she is training up. She agrees that it has to be the right sort of person to take on the role, not just anyone can keep on top of client debt.

They’ve always had a pay at time policy for medication, consults standard elective procedures i.e. spay and castrates. However, in addition to this Streatham Hill have also put in place a ‘Walkout Book’ now. If a client walks out of a consult and straight out the door without paying, a receptionist will immediately jot down their name and will hand the book to Amy. Amy then pings them a WhatsApp the next day telling them about their owed money followed by a payment link. 

She says this has also been really effective at keeping it down while she’s been chipping away at the more longstanding debt. 

Now the list of debtors has dramatically decreased, it’s short work to go through the remaining list and send payment links.

The Bottom Line

The dual benefit of increased payment compliance as well as reduced workload for vet staff really consolidates digital payments over WhatsApp and SMS as the future of client transactions with vet practices. 

If you want to explore how you could also take advantage of incredible rates of payment as well as saving yourself time, let us know and we’d love to show you how it could work for you and your team.

Just click here to book a call to find out more!