Blogs · July 2026

How do you stop the phone taking over a vet practice?

The phone rings while your team is in consult, and it does not care. Here is why the front desk is the pressure point, and what you can actually do about it.

The short answer: most practices have no spare phone cover, because the same people are in consult, in surgery, or holding a frightened dog still. The way out is not to work the phones harder. It is to let something else answer the calls that do not need a vet at all: opening hours, prices, repeat bookings, "can I move Thursday", "do you have anything sooner". Then your team gets the calls that genuinely need them.

Why the front desk is the pressure point

Look at what the profession says about its own working life. In the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons' 2024 survey of the profession, 49% of vets named stress as a top work-related issue, up from 47% in 2019. Client expectations were named by 54%, and that figure has barely moved since 2019, which tells you it is not a passing spike. It is the weather.

Sitting under that is the affordability question. 46% of vets named the affordability of veterinary care as a top issue, up from 30% in 2019, a sixteen point jump in five years. Those conversations land on the phone, at the desk, with whoever picked up.

None of this is a headcount problem you can hire your way out of overnight. It is a volume problem: too many enquiries, arriving at the worst possible moment, all needing an answer.

What the calls are actually about

Here is the uncomfortable part: a large share of the calls interrupting your day do not need a clinician at all. Prices, appointment times, directions, repeat bookings, when a booster is due, whether you are taking new registrations. They do not need a vet. They need an accurate answer.

Owners are hunting for exactly that information before they even choose you. In the Competition and Markets Authority's work on the veterinary market, fewer than 40% of practices published prices on their websites, and fewer than half of owners received pricing information ahead of treatment that was not a standard, fixed-price item. Only 29% of those who did got it in writing.

So owners ring. And ring. Because there is nowhere else to find out.

The cost of not answering

The CMA's research into how owners choose a practice makes it plain how little slack you have. 51% of owners considered only one practice when choosing a vet. They pick up the phone once. If nobody answers, you were not compared and rejected, you were simply never in the running.

Availability matters more than you might expect, too. When owners were asked why they would prefer a large group practice, appointment availability came top at 55%, ahead of range of services and well ahead of price. Being reachable and having a slot is, in the owner's mind, most of the offer.

What to do about it

1. Publish more than you think you should. Prices, opening hours, what a consult includes. Every question you answer on your site is a call you do not have to take, and the CMA has made this direction of travel clear anyway.
2. Separate the clinical from the administrative. Sort your call traffic honestly. If most of it is booking, hours, prices and repeat prescriptions, that is work that does not need a vet.
3. Put something on the line that can actually answer. Not a machine that takes a message, which just moves the work. Something that knows your services, your fees and your diary, and can book.

Where HealthCentre fits

It answers the calls, emails, chats and messages your team cannot get to, in your practice's voice, day and night. It knows your consult fees, your opening hours, your services and your policies, because it is trained on them. It books straight into the system you already run.

And it never gives clinical advice. It does not judge how urgent a case is, does not offer an opinion on symptoms, and does not guide medication. Anything clinical, and anything that sounds urgent, goes straight to a person on your team, immediately.

Your team keeps the animals. The phone stops owning the day.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, Surveys of the Professions 2024 (published November 2024). 49% of vets named stress as a top work-related issue (47% in 2019); 54% named client expectations (55% in 2019); 46% named affordability of veterinary care (30% in 2019). https://www.rcvs.org.uk/about-us/news-and-views/news/surveys-of-the-professions-2024-reports-published
• Competition and Markets Authority, How people purchase veterinary services (demand working paper), 2025. 51% of owners considered only one practice; appointment availability was the top reason (55%) owners gave for preferring a large group practice. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67a3e676567402152f553cc3/How_people_purchase_veterinary_services_-_Demand.pdf
• Competition and Markets Authority, final decision on the veterinary market investigation, March 2026. Fewer than 40% of practices publish prices on their websites; fewer than half of owners received pricing information in advance of non-routine treatment, and only 29% of those got it in writing. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-concludes-market-investigation-with-major-reforms-to-veterinary-sector