with the skill
# Customer Interview Script: Vet Clinic Appointment Reminders
**Participants:** Independent veterinary clinic owners
**Duration:** 30 minutes
**Purpose:** Understand how clinics currently manage reminders, what happens when appointments are missed, and whether these problems warrant further exploration.
**For the interviewer:** This is discovery, not a pitch for a text-message tool. Use the questions as a guide, not a checklist. Prioritize concrete stories over covering every question.
## Research Objectives
Learn:
1. How reminders work today: people, tools, timing, channels, and exceptions.
2. What happens when clients miss or cancel appointments—and what evidence clinics have about the impact.
3. What clinics have already spent or tried to improve attendance.
4. Who handles reminders, chooses tools, and approves spending.
**Decision this research will inform:** Whether to pursue this problem, which clinics to focus on, and what to investigate next—not whether owners like the idea of a text-message tool.
**Assumptions to test, not assert:**
Show the rest (241 more lines)
- Missed appointments create meaningful problems for clinics.
- Current reminder workflows have unmet needs.
- Reminder delivery or client response contributes to missed appointments.
- Owners have sufficient visibility into the day-to-day workflow. If not, speak directly with the staff who do the work.
---
## 1. Opening — 2 minutes
> “Thanks for taking the time. We’re learning how independent vet clinics manage appointment reminders and what happens when appointments don’t go as planned. This isn’t a sales conversation—we want to understand your actual experience, including anything that works well.
>
> There are no right or wrong answers. We have 30 minutes; does that still work for you?”
**If recording:**
> “Would you be comfortable with me recording this for our research notes? It’s completely fine to say no.”
> “Please avoid sharing client names, contact details, or other identifying information.”
---
## 2. Warm-Up: Clinic Context — 4 minutes
1. **“Tell me a little about your clinic and your role in its day-to-day operations.”**
- Roughly how many vets and locations?
- What kinds of appointments make up most of the schedule?
2. **“What involvement do you personally have in scheduling and client reminders?”**
- Who handles that work most often?
3. **“Thinking about last week, roughly how many appointments did the clinic have?”**
- A rough range is fine.
- Was that a typical week?
**Interviewer note:** Distinguish what the owner directly observes from what they estimate or hear from staff.
---
## 3. Reconstruct the Current Reminder Workflow — 8 minutes
**Anchor on a real appointment:**
> **“Think of a recent appointment where your clinic sent a reminder. Walk me through what happened from booking until the client arrived—or didn’t.”**
Use only the probes needed to complete the story:
- “What triggered the reminder?”
- “How was it sent, and how far ahead of the appointment?”
- “What system or tools were involved?”
- “What did someone on your team have to do manually?”
- “What happened if the client responded—or didn’t respond?”
- “Who could see whether the appointment was confirmed?”
- “Did anything need correcting or chasing up?”
**Explore effort and variation:**
- **“Thinking about the last full day you were open, what reminder-related work did staff do?”**
- Who did it, and approximately how long did it take?
- **“Tell me about the last time this process didn’t go as expected.”**
- What happened next?
- What was the consequence?
- “When do you handle reminders differently—for example, for different appointment types or clients?”
**Optional, if convenient and permitted:**
> “Could you describe or show the reminder workflow using a blank or de-identified example? No client information is needed.”
**Listen for:** What already works well, manual work, duplicated effort, failed delivery, unanswered messages, and differences between the documented process and actual practice.
---
## 4. Missed Appointments: Frequency and Consequences — 8 minutes
> **“Tell me about the most recent appointment a client missed without enough notice to use the slot.”**
If they cannot recall one, ask about a recent late cancellation. If neither is a problem, explore what keeps attendance reliable rather than forcing a pain story.
**Reconstruct the incident:**
- “What kind of appointment was it?”
- “When did the team realize the client wasn’t coming?”
- “What reminders had been sent, if you know?”
- “Did you learn why they missed it?”
- “What did the team do next?”
- “Were you able to use that time for something else?”
**Establish impact without assuming lost revenue:**
- **“What impact, if any, did that missed appointment have?”**
- “Was there a financial effect? How did you work that out?”
- “Was any revenue recovered later—for example, through rebooking or filling the slot?”
- “Was there staff follow-up, preparation time, or another cost?”
- “Did it affect the animal’s care or the client relationship?”
**Establish frequency and evidence:**
- **“Looking at the last month, about how often did this happen?”**
- “Do you track no-shows and late cancellations separately, or is that an estimate?”
- “Was last month typical?”
- “When did you last review those numbers, and what did you do as a result?”
**Interviewer note:** Keep these separate in your notes:
- Scheduled appointment value
- Revenue actually lost or recovered
- Staff effort and other consequences
Do not treat the full appointment price as the cost of a no-show.
---
## 5. Existing Solutions, Spending, and Priority — 5 minutes
1. **“What have you changed or tried to improve attendance or reduce reminder work?”**
- What prompted that change?
- What happened afterward?
- If nothing: “What has kept the current approach in place?”
2. **“What do you currently spend on reminders, if anything?”**
- Software or messaging charges?
- Included in another system?
- Staff time?
- If bundled, is the reminder cost known separately?
3. **“Tell me about the last time you evaluated or changed a scheduling or client-communication tool.”**
- Who was involved in choosing and approving it?
- What mattered in the decision?
- What made switching easy or difficult?
4. **“Where has this issue ranked against other clinic problems recently?”**
- “What have you put time or budget toward instead?”
**If time permits:**
> “When you last checked whether your reminder process was working well, what did you look at?”
**Avoid:** “Would you pay for our tool?” or “Would text reminders solve this?” Existing spending and actions provide stronger evidence than hypothetical interest.
---
## 6. Wrap-Up — 3 minutes
1. **“What haven’t I asked that matters to understanding reminders or missed appointments at your clinic?”**
2. **“Who on your team would give us the clearest picture of the day-to-day reminder work?”**
3. **“Would you be open to a short follow-up if we need to clarify something?”**
> “Thank you—this helps us understand how clinics actually operate. We’re comparing experiences across clinics before deciding what, if anything, to build.”
If appropriate, request permission for a separate conversation with the receptionist or practice manager. Do not rely solely on the owner’s account of work they do not perform.
---
## Interviewer Reminders
- **Listen roughly 80% of the time.** Let pauses work.
- Use neutral probes: “Tell me more,” “Can you give me an example?” and “What happened next?”
- Ask “What led to that?” rather than repeatedly asking “Why?”
- If someone generalizes, return to a recent event.
- Do not introduce texting as the preferred answer. If they use it today, explore it as part of their existing workflow.
- Capture strong reactions and exact quotes, then ask what happened to cause them.
- Record estimates as estimates, not measured facts.
- If possible, have a designer or engineer join as a quiet note-taker, with the participant’s knowledge.
# Note-Taking Template
```markdown
## Participant
Participant ID:
Date:
Interviewer / note-taker:
Recording consent:
Clinic profile: [Locations, vets, appointment mix, approximate volume]
Owner’s role in reminders:
Firsthand knowledge vs. secondhand account:
## Key Jobs
What are they trying to accomplish?
What does a successful reminder process look like to them?
## Current Solution
Tools / systems:
Channels and timing:
People involved:
Manual steps and exceptions:
How confirmations, replies, and rescheduling are handled:
What works well:
## Recent Workflow Example
Appointment type:
Sequence from booking to outcome:
Staff effort:
Exact quotes:
## Biggest Pain
Specific incident:
What happened:
Consequence:
How often it occurs:
Evidence: [Observed / reported / estimated]
## Missed-Appointment Impact
Recent example:
No-show / late cancellation:
Known reason, if any:
Reminders sent:
Slot filled or otherwise used?
Appointment rebooked?
Scheduled appointment value:
Revenue actually lost or recovered: [Known / estimated / unknown]
Staff time / other costs:
Care or client-relationship impact:
Frequency and source of figures:
## Desired Outcome
Success criteria in the participant’s words:
Metrics currently reviewed, if any:
## Spending and Priority
Current software / messaging spend:
Bundled or separately identifiable?
Staff time:
Past attempts to improve the process:
Results:
Other priorities receiving time or budget:
Decision-maker / approver:
Switching constraints:
## Surprise Finding
What challenged our assumptions?
What remains unclear?
## Follow-Up
Staff member to interview directly:
De-identified artifact or aggregate data offered:
Permission to follow up:
Next steps:
## Researcher Interpretation — Keep Separate from Evidence
What this interview suggests:
Alternative explanations:
Assumptions still untested:
```