Leaders at Muddy Creek at Animal Hospital in West River, Maryland, know modern clinics can no longer rely on traditional communication methods to engage with clients.

“In this day and age — with where vet med is — you need something to help streamline client communications,” says Tessa Giannini, Manager at Muddy Creek.

But as part of a five-doctor practice, Tessa and her team can’t rely on just any client communication technology.

“We had been using PetDesk before, but we weren’t getting everything we needed from it,” Tessa explains. “Then, our digital communications grew to the point that we needed something that has certain capabilities. We needed something easy to use for our clients and staff, reduced call volume, and something that worked well with our practice management system.”

After a recommendation from the corporate office at United Veterinary Care (UVC) — a fast-growing national group of veterinary practices, including Muddy Creek — the team found the solution they were looking for in Otto Flow.

And the switch paid off.

Data in Flow shows that Muddy Creek has seen a 15% increase in appointment volume over the first year since implementation. The clinic has also generated an estimated $1,063,920 in revenue from service reminders over a period of seven months.

Here’s how Flow empowered Muddy Creek to streamline their client communication:

Implementing and learning a new tool can seem overwhelming for many veterinary professionals.

Fortunately, Otto makes the process as easy as possible — as Tessa can attest.

“Our Customer Success Manager was great to work with, super responsible, and always made herself available,” she explains. “So, the onboarding process was great.

“Even now — two years later — she’s responsive and available to troubleshoot when needed,” Tessa adds.

Flow’s ease of use also ensured learning how to use Flow didn’t distract from the necessary work of running the clinic and treating patients.

“It’s straightforward to use,” Tessa says. “It’s not hard to train someone who’s never used it before.”

And because Flow is designed to grow with clinics, Tessa and her team improved client communication over time — without introducing unnecessary complexity.

“The nice thing was we had the option to try out pieces of Flow before we went all the way in,” Tessa says. “You can try little bits at a time and adjust as you go.”

She went on to add that this allowed them to integrate Flow into the clinic’s operations rather than the other way around.

“It’s not like there’s one way to use it and that’s it,” Tessa says. “It’s all very adjustable as you go. If one thing doesn’t work, you can change it to make it work for your hospital.”

Flow’s two-way texting capabilities empower Muddy Creek to easily manage client communications.

“It definitely decreased call volume,” Tessa says. “I did track our phone calls for a period of time, and after using Flow, we cut incoming calls by about a third.”

Handling those communications through text, rather than calls, allows the Muddy Creek team to respond to urgent requests more quickly.

“We’re still a busy practice, but Flow rerouted some of those communications that aren’t as urgent,” Tessa says. “It gives us the time and space to address the urgent communications, while ensuring all of our clients still have their needs met.”

It also allows greater flexibility for Muddy Creek’s clients.

“It’s been great for our clients to have an additional, convenient way to communicate with us,” Tessa explains.

Flow’s board feature, which organizes client conversations by status, gives Muddy Creek an easy way to keep track of outstanding questions and requests.

“We use the board feature to quickly see what needs to be taken care of,” Tessa says. “We have a lot of statuses we can then sort by urgency level and who needs to take care of what. That makes it a lot easier when you have a big hospital and you’re trying to monitor everything.”

The ability to email clients also makes large-scale communication more straightforward..

“When we have a communication we need everyone to know — like there a change in our doctor staffing or we changed our hours — the email feature is nice to have,” Tessa says.

Flow’s integration with AVImark — Muddy Creek’s practice management information system (PIMS) — is a time-saving boon for Tessa and her team, relieving them from tedious, manual tasks.

“If our clients fill out a patient history form, that auto-exports into the patient chart, so the staff doesn’t have to go into each conversation and export individually,” Tessa says. “And being able to pull the client’s info and pet’s info makes conversations a lot simpler.”

The integration also empowers Otto-mated communications based on appointment type.

“When we make an appointment in our PIMS, it communicates that information quickly back and forth with Otto, so we can send out reminders and messages like that.”

With Otto Pay — the payment processing solution that works within Flow — Muddy Creek can use the Flow and AVImark integration to make life easier for their team.

“We just opted into Otto Pay, and it’s been working really great with how it’s integrated,” Tessa says. “The write-back works really quickly.”

One of the biggest benefits of using Flow is that it allows Muddy Creek to work within one solution, rather than trying to do everything through multiple, disparate solutions.

“Otto is nice in that you can consolidate a lot of things into it,” Tessa says. “It’s great having everything integrated into one application so we’re not having to pay for multiple different services.”