The call that decides whether it can wait until morning
In short. Most of what comes in after the practice closes is an owner trying to work out whether tonight matters: a dog that has eaten something, a cat off food since Sunday, a limp, a lump that has appeared. Enquiry 360 is an AI receptionist that answers on your own number, asks the questions your practice would ask, sorts urgent from routine against criteria you set, and puts the caller through to the vet on call where you have given it a number. Every call becomes a structured record in your own Microsoft Dataverse. From £99 + VAT a month, whether the night brings two calls or twenty. You can ring 01905 918444 and hear the assistant take a call.
The vet on call is asleep, or already out. The owner has a dog that ate a bar of chocolate an hour ago and wants to know whether to get in the car.
After the last consult of the day
A handful of things, over and over. Something eaten that should not have been, at eleven at night. Vomiting since teatime. Off food for two days. A limp after a walk. A lump the owner has only just noticed. A cat straining in the tray. Worry after a procedure, and the post-operative check nobody wrote down.
Then everything that is no emergency at all and still has to be handled: repeat prescriptions, flea and worm treatment, vaccination, neutering and dental bookings, a new client registering a pet after moving into the area, insurance forms and estimates, and owners ringing for the bloods or the x-ray they were told about that afternoon.
There are also the calls about putting an animal to sleep. Those belong with a person. Where you have given the line a number, that is where they go; where you have not, it takes what is needed, briefly, and flags the enquiry for the first person in.
Whether it comes in tonight
Which presentations count as urgent, for which species, at what hour, is your policy and stays your policy. The questions follow the test you already apply on a Saturday. A suspected bloat, a blocked cat or a dog that has been at the grapes takes the short path and goes out; an estimate query or a booking takes the long one and waits for Monday. Where an answer comes back unclearly, it is asked again rather than guessed at.
The line settles how fast a call moves and who hears it. Whether the animal is seen tonight is settled by the vet who picks it up, and they pick it up with the history in front of them instead of a name and a number. Most owners ringing at that hour aren’t being difficult; they are frightened, and the assistant says plainly at the start that it is automated, which is the only decent way to open a call like that.
The history the duty vet gets before ringing back
The owner, the animal, species, breed and age, whether they are registered with you, what has happened and when it started, and a number to ring back on. Each value is checked against the rule your form declares for that field, and where the form asks for it the details are read back before the call ends. A mobile number heard wrongly is put right while the owner is still on the line, and not at seven the next morning when the practice cannot reach them.
Reaching the vet who is actually on tonight
Where a route has a number configured, it transfers the caller. That might be the duty vet's mobile, a rota shared with two neighbouring surgeries, or the number your out of hours provider gave you. Cover in this trade moves about: your own vets in the week, a neighbour taking some weekends, the provider over Christmas and the bank holidays. Where each kind of call goes is yours to set and yours to change, so a change of cover is an edit, not a rebuild.
Requests that finish inside your practice system
Prescriptions, boosters, neutering and dental bookings all end up somewhere you already run. It captures the request in full, so what reaches your team is a complete instruction: which animal, which medication and strength, what was last dispensed, when the owner can come in. Your people then put it into the practice management system, because the diary and the dispensing records live there and a booking made without sight of them is a booking somebody has to unpick.
Volumes, timings and the insurance question
Every call lands as a row in your own Microsoft Dataverse, so the numbers are there without anybody building anything first. Out of hours volume by month, what share of it genuinely needed a vet that night, the gap between the call arriving and the duty vet being told, which branch it came through, and, where you pay a provider for the nights, what you are getting for it. Power BI and Excel read it like any other table, and the built-in views and charts are there already.
Power Automate carries it onward: to the dispensary, a shared inbox, the duty vet's phone, a Teams channel the nursing team already sits in, or the accounting package when a call ends in something chargeable. It reaches over a thousand connectors, so most of what a practice runs is within reach. The same record opens on a phone for whoever is out on farm.
And when an insurer asks in March when a condition was first reported, the call is on file with the date and what the owner said at the time.
The same questions at the front desk
Reception fields most of these enquiries again between nine and six, generally with a queue behind the person and a carrier on the counter. The same process runs on screen, question by question, in the same order, so what a nurse reads back on Monday matches what the duty vet was sent on Saturday.
That part is the application, and it is sold separately from the answering.
Frequently asked
Can it tell an emergency from something that can wait until morning?
It sorts calls against the criteria your practice sets: which presentations, which species, at what hour, whatever test your out of hours policy already applies. The urgent ones take a short path through the questions and go straight out to the vet on call. The rest are waiting as a complete record when the practice opens. What the line decides is where a call goes and how fast; what is wrong with the animal is decided by your vet, with the details already in front of them.
Can it put an owner straight through to the vet on call?
Where you have configured a number for that route, yes, it transfers the caller. That number can be your duty vet, a shared rota with neighbouring practices, or the provider you contract the nights to. Where a route has no number, it takes the details in full and sends them to whoever is covering, so the call back starts from something usable.
Will it tell an owner what to do about the animal?
Clinical judgement stays with your vets. The line asks the questions you have written, records the answers and gets the call to the right person, and it gives no advice of its own. Callers are told at the start that they are speaking to an automated assistant, which matters at eleven at night when somebody is frightened.
What happens with repeat prescription and flea treatment requests?
It takes the request properly: which animal, which medication and strength, what was last dispensed and when, and who is collecting. That reaches the dispensary as a structured record with the same fields filled in every time, so nobody has to ring the owner back to find out what they actually wanted. Authorising the repeat stays with a vet, as it has to.
Can it book appointments into our practice management system?
It captures the booking request in full and your team confirms it, which is the honest way round when consult length, which vet, and theatre time all sit in there. Either way the owner has been asked everything you would have asked.
Can it answer on our existing out of hours number?
Yes. It answers on your own number, around the clock, so clients carry on ringing the one on their vaccination card and the practice door. It answers in 66 languages and still writes the record in English.
Can it replace the answering service we use overnight?
The out of hours line is the usual place to start, and the fair test is what the duty vet is holding when the phone goes. A bureau hands over a message, and your vet then rings the owner back and takes the history from the beginning at two in the morning, which is the expensive part of the night. This asks your triage questions in your order while the owner is still on the line, keeps the same fields on every call in your own Dataverse, and puts the caller through where your rules say it should go. Bonfire Night costs what a wet Tuesday costs, because the price is flat from £99 + VAT a month and does not move with the volume.
Could it replace the IVR on our out of hours number?
Yes, and it is a kinder thing to reach at midnight. An IVR asks an owner in a panic to work out which option a swallowed sock belongs to. This asks what has happened, triages on your criteria, and puts a genuine emergency through to the vet on call.
Hear it handle one. Ring 01905 918444. It is a live line, not a recording, and it takes about a minute.
From £99 + VAT a month. Free setup, cancel anytime. Or read where your call data lives and how it compares to an answering service.