Company: PetRays Veterinary Telemedicine Consultants, The Woodlands, TX
Company Description: PetRays is the recognized leader in veterinary telemedicine services. The telemedicine services offered by PetRays are specifically designed to help veterinarians improve the speed and quality of animal healthcare.
Nomination Category: Support Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Support Department of the Year

Nomination Title: PetRays Support Department

Tell the story about what this nominated department achieved since January 1 2011 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

PetRays Veterinary Telemedicine Consultants (PetRays) makes Board Certified Veterinary Specialists available to virtually every veterinary practice world wide. PetRays was founded in 2006 with the mission of providing high quality healthcare to animals and domestic pets in a timely manner and with a great sense of urgency.

The business of telemedicine requires a highly advanced IT infrastructure in order to provide seamless 24/7/365 service. PetRays has the most advanced and redundant IT infrastructure in the business with 99.99% uptime. All of PetRays data is hosted at a SAS70 data center. Because of the technical nature of telemedicine, referring clinics/clients often have difficulties actually transmitting the imaging studies to PetRays for evaluation. This frequent user difficulty, often from lack of clinic/client cross training, necessitates that PetRays maintains a competent support team that is available 24/7/365 to meet the customer needs. In fact, every client/customer reaches a live support person with every support call. Often times the clients are having difficulties with their PACS systems that were purchased from equipment vendors that simply are not available after hours or weekends to offer support to the customers. As a result, each PetRays support staff is trained and knowledgeable in the trouble shooting of a multitude of various PACS systems and equipment brands.

This high level of training of the PetRays support team has enabled PetRays to achieve some of the highest support and customer service ratings in the industry. Client retention rate in 2011 was 99.9%. The 7/24/365 availability and the “no phone call goes to voice mail” policy of PetRays is largely responsible for PetRays customer service department receiving winning the People’s Choice award an the Stevie’s for sales and customer service three years in a row.

On numerous occasions throughout 2011, PetRays was contacted by emergency animal clinics to open accounts urgently as they had critically ill domestic pets, livestock, thoroughbred racing horses, or even an ill stricken seeing guide dog for the blind that needed a specialist consult from PetRays. The unparalleled support and IT availability provided by the PetRays support team makes it possible for clinics with ill animals to sign up with PetRays at 3:00 a.m. on a holiday or weekend and get a specialist consult within the hour.

The PetRays support team is results driven. In 2011, the team faced many challenges, some old and some new, and delivered with outstanding results. One example:

OBSTACLE: Multiple new equipment/PACS vendors entered the market providing clients with unfamiliar software.

ACTION: All PetRays support team members get training on the new equipment and software since the team knows that these vendors will not be available to assist the clients at 3:00 a.m.

OUTCOME: PetRays interdisciplinary support and customer service training resulted in 100% customer satisfaction (based on anonymous exit surveys) and no unresolved support tickets in 2011.

In summary, the PetRays support team works behind the scenes 24/7/365 to ensure that PetRays clients and prospective clients treat their critically ill patients in real time.

Upload a collection of supporting files and web addresses to our server to provide more background information to the judges. You may upload any number of attachments and URLs through the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above. (Do not list your URLs below.)

PetRays wins the Support Department of the Year at the 2010 International Business Awards.
http://www.youtube.com/user/petraystelemedicine#p/u/1/t1MmTa_vig8

PetRays wins People's Choice Stevie Award for Favorite Customer Service (video)
http://www.youtube.com/user/petraystelemedicine#p/u/5/HPtlXNituDI

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:

Melissa Fields Tugwell: PetRays co-founder. Most recently, she was awarded Best Young Entrepreneur at the 2009 Stevie’s for Women in Business and 2010 Stevie winner for Sales Director of the Year and the 2010 Sales and Customer Service Awards.

Frank Powell, MD: PetRays board member and co-founder.

Anne Bahr , DVM: Chief Radiologist and Chief Medical Officer for PetRays.

Joe Casarez: IT manager, PetRays