06 Jul Bothersome bottlenecks

Onswitch spend a fair amount of time on the road, and so we’re very accustomed to hearing the dulcet tones of the radio Traffic Information teams. So when, in the last week, we were twice advised about major hold-ups on the motorway ahead, we let off a couple of resigned expletives and prepared to catch up on the phone calls whilst we waited. And waited.

Accidents happen, and at least we were fortunate enough not be involved in the causes of the enormous jams that quickly began snaking back for miles. But what’s REALLY frustrating is when the authorities don’t appear to take any action to stop traffic from joining the affected road further back. In both cases we were on a motorway, so why weren’t the warning boards deployed with useful information to encourage those who could to turn off? And why, when one of the accidents was still being cleared up on our journey home late at night, hadn’t a diversion been set up to avoid us getting caught all over again?

We were quite annoyed. Can you tell?

And yet the same bottlenecks build up every week in most of the practices up and down the country. We know that more customers are going to try and call on Mondays after much reduced availability over the weekend (and if you are open over the weekend, well done you, the obvious avoidance of Manic Monday is slowly gaining momentum. Very slowly!).

Twice as many calls are made to practices on Mondays than on Wednesdays, yet the number of staff on duty and available phone lines remains the same throughout the week. If you’ve got call reporting software, then for goodness’ sake take a look at how many calls are lost on Mondays. It doesn’t take a maths genius to work out that the problem is much intensified after a Bank Holiday but again, the vast majority of practices staff up just the same as any other Tuesday.

We know there’s a bottleneck ahead – one that will cause frustration to staff and clients alike. So why don’t we do something about it? There are two solutions – extend your opening hours across the weekend so that pet owners can see their vet at a time convenient to them, and/or make more staff and phone lines available on Mondays.

Don’t let your customers’ journey end in a bottleneck. There are more than enough of them around already.