Your veterinary team just got yelled at by an angry pet owner. Your front desk was berated because the wait time was too long and the bill was too high. Your technicians were shouted down when a challenging nail trim led to a yelp, and your veterinarian was crushed when she was angrily blamed for the death of a patient she did everything possible to save.
Emotional explosions from pet owners take a toll on our teams. They make hard working people feel frustrated, unappreciated, burned out, and defensive. Angry clients, if not handled well, eat into our ability to recharge and enjoy our work. They also make us feel like our efforts and expertise do not matter.
It’s time to start training our teams on how to handle angry pet owners in our clinics and on the phones. We need to give them the tools that are required to handle angry or complainant clients with both empathy and healthy boundaries. We need to help them practice exactly what they will say, how they will say it, and what actions they will take.
We also need to engage our teams so that they develop the necessary skills. We can’t just talk at them or play a video for them to watch. We need fun, flexible, interesting training approaches that will not bore them, but will stimulate discussion and idea sharing on what approaches work best in YOUR specific veterinary practice.
If you agree, then welcome to Charming the Angry Client! This program is designed to be highly flexible, to give your team tools they can put into practice immediately, and to actively engage them so that they will learn and retain information for the long term.
Who is this for?
This course is designed for ANYONE who talks to veterinary clients.
What Do You Get?
One year of access to The Angry Client Course! This course contains three different programs that can all stand alone or be used to support each other for maximum staff engagement. The three programs are:
- Using Active Staff Training in Your Practice
The first section is a 1-hour modular course for practice leaders who want to run active training sessions in their practices. In this course, Dr. Andy Roark walks leaders step-by-step through how to draw their staff into active training sessions, make these sessions fun and memorable, and use the flexibility of this program to work with whatever time you have available.
- Charming the Angry Client
Dr. Andy Roark presents SIX TOOLS that make up an effective response to angry and complaining clients. Each tool is a separate 5-10 minute video. These videos can be shown in series, or each one can be used at a different staff meeting or training session. Discussion questions for each section are included to help you have positive, productive conversations with your veterinary team about what will work in YOUR clinic.
3. Case Examples
The Case Examples program includes 10 different video vignettes that show an angry veterinary client making a common and relatable complaint to the viewer. Each example comes with optional background information on the client that can be shared with the team to provide more context. These videos are all designed to give teams a chance to work together to decide what they would say and how they would say it. These examples are fantastic for group discussion, coach-the-coach exercises, or for role play!
Case Example videos include emergency situations, phone calls, a euthanasia complaint, and both dog and cat-specific complaints.