veterinary

Veterinary Answering Service: AI for Routine Calls, a Person for Emergencies

Pet parents panic, and the patient cannot describe anything. Callnovo lets AI book appointments, take refill requests and answer hours, and puts a person on every call where an animal might be in trouble — applying your clinic’s rules to decide between the on-call vet, the emergency hospital or the morning.

The short version: AI voice is US$0.15 a minute for appointments, refills and hours; live agents from US$300 a month for 500 minutes. A person handles every call where an animal might be in trouble, because the only question that matters after hours is whether this needs the emergency hospital now. English and Spanish share one queue.

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A veterinarian examining a small dog with a stethoscope

how it plays out

An owner who thinks their dog ate something.

Phone English

“My dog ate chocolate — what do I do?”

A possible poisoning goes to a person on sight, working from the clinic’s protocol.

A live agent takes the call — possible ingestion is never routed to AI
Records species, breed, weight, what was eaten, how much and how long ago
Applies the clinic’s go-now list and reaches the on-call vet or directs the owner to the emergency hospital the clinic has named
Logs what the owner was told and the time it was said

Urgent handoff started decision stays with the vet

Web Chat Spanish

“Is my cat due for vaccinations?”

Vaccine reminders drive preventive care revenue

AI pulled pet record by owner name and pet name
Identified that rabies and FVRCP boosters were overdue
Offered three available appointment slots this week
Owner booked Wednesday afternoon and received confirmation

Vaccines scheduled overdue pet brought current

SMS Mandarin

“How do I give my dog this ear medication?”

Medication questions go to the clinic team, not to an automated answer.

AI recognizes a medication question and does not answer it
Records the pet, the medication name the owner gives and the question in their words
Re-sends only the written discharge instructions the clinic has already issued, if the clinic allows it
Routes the question to the vet or technician queue with a callback time

Question routed no dosing advice given

WhatsApp Portuguese

“I need to board my dog next month”

Boarding inquiries require availability checks and vaccine verification

AI checked boarding availability for requested dates
Verified vaccination records were current for boarding requirements
Flagged that bordetella vaccine needed updating before stay
Booked boarding and scheduled vaccine appointment for the week before

Boarding reserved vaccine gap caught proactively

the team behind it

Who decides what goes to the emergency hospital.

real members of the global team

Human Escalation for Animal Health Calls

Your clinic’s go-now list applied as written, never improvised
Practice management software navigation and timestamped call notes
Medication, post-surgical and symptom questions routed to your vets without advice

65+ Languages

Native-speaking agents in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and 60+ more
Real-time AI translation for rare language pairs
Cultural context training for every market we serve

Follow-the-Sun Coverage

Operation centres in Canada, Bolivia, Nicaragua, the Philippines and China
Smooth handoff between time zones with shared context
Holiday and weekend coverage without overtime costs

the part nobody prices in

The caller is frightened, and the patient cannot tell you anything.

Veterinary triage has a problem human medicine does not: the patient gives no history. Everything you know comes from an owner who is upset, guessing, and often describing the wrong thing — "he seems off" is a real presenting complaint and sometimes it is bloat.

That makes the after-hours call unusually dependent on who is listening. A person hears the pause before "he ate something", asks what and how long ago, and knows that chocolate, xylitol, grapes and lilies each change the answer.

So we do not automate anything with an animal in it. AI takes appointments, refills, boarding questions and hours — high volume, right answers exist. Anything that might be a sick animal reaches a person working from your protocol, who either books it, tells the owner to go to the emergency hospital, or reaches your on-call vet.

what it costs

Published rates, so you can do the arithmetic first.

Most vendors in this category quote by form. These are our published packages — not a quote, since language mix, hours and volume all move the number. The per-minute figures are simply the monthly price divided by the included minutes.

Option	Published price	Per minute	What it's for
Live shared team	from US$300 / month	includes 500 min → ≈ US$0.60/min	Evenings and weekends, when worried owners actually call
AI voice	US$0.15	per minute	Appointments, vaccine reminders, refills, boarding and grooming questions
Web chat	US$0.15	per session	Website and portal requests that arrive after the clinic closes
Live shared team	from US$650 / month	includes 1,500 min → ≈ US$0.43/min	Post-holiday weeks and the days after a long weekend
Dedicated agent	from US$5.80	per hour, per agent	Your triage protocol, your escalation list, one team that knows your vets

Anything involving a person is a starting price. Two things move it: which languages you need, and how senior an agent the work actually requires — a bilingual agent handling refund authority is not the same hire as one taking bookings. AI voice and web chat are flat, because there is no hiring in them. And every model above is open to every business on this page: which one fits is a question about the shape of your volume, not about your industry.

Minimum engagement is half a seat — not a five-seat block. We also bill per resolved issue, from US$1, where you pay nothing if it is not resolved; that model fits businesses where a customer problem actually gets solved on the call, not businesses where the call is intake.

who takes which call

Route by the cost of getting it wrong.

Most vendors sell you either an AI receptionist or a live answering service and leave the allocation to you. Since we run both, here is the split we would actually recommend — including the calls we think should never touch automation.

The call	Route to	Cost of getting it wrong
Booking, moving or cancelling an appointment	AI	An annoyed client
Prescription refills and food orders	AI	A slower refill
Hours, directions, boarding availability, pricing	AI	A lost new client
"I think he ate something"	Human	A reassurance that turns out to be wrong
Breathing trouble, collapse, seizure, bloat	Human	An emergency measured in hours
An old animal that has stopped eating	Human	The hardest conversation of a client's year, handled by a script

setup

Five days to put the right person on it.

Five days is our normal window to staff a live account — that is five days to find and place an agent who fits your business, not five days of software setup. AI voice can go live sooner because there is no hiring step.

your existing software

It goes into your system, with a record of who said what.

We work inside the CRM, practice system or case tool you already run, rather than handing you a second inbox to check. Every contact leaves a timestamped record — who called, what was asked, what was said back, what was promised — because in your line of work the question six months later is not "did someone call" but "what exactly did we tell them". Tell us what you run and we will say straight whether we connect to it today.

what comes off the call

What your on-call vet gets at 10pm.

The owner cannot examine their animal and neither can we. What we can do is collect the things that change the answer, every time:

Owner name, callback number, and whether they are an existing client
Species, breed, age and rough weight — weight matters for every toxicity question
What is wrong, in the owner's own words, and when it started
For possible ingestion: what, how much, how long ago, and whether packaging is available

Vomiting or diarrhoea — how many times, and whether there is blood
Breathing, gum colour, collapse, seizure, or a distended abdomen — the escalate-now list
Current medications, and whether the animal is on anything long-term
Whether they can get to the emergency hospital, and how far it is

It reaches you by SMS and into your practice system where we connect. We do not give dosages, do not tell anyone to induce vomiting, and do not say an animal is fine — we follow your protocol and route.

where AI should not be

The calls we will not put a bot on.

Any possible poisoning

Chocolate, xylitol, grapes, rodenticide, antifreeze, lilies with cats. Weight, quantity and time elapsed all change the answer, and a wrong reassurance is fatal. A person collects the facts and follows your protocol, including telling the owner to call a poison line where you want that.

Breathing, collapse, seizure or bloat

A deep-chested dog with a distended abdomen and unproductive retching is a surgical emergency measured in hours. These go to a person working from your go-now list, who reaches your on-call vet or sends the owner to the emergency hospital you name — not a system that offers the next available appointment.

Euthanasia and end-of-life calls

An owner calling about an old animal that has stopped eating is having the hardest conversation of their year. That call gets a person who can be gentle, take the details, and get them to you — never a script.

Anything after a procedure

Post-surgical bleeding, a swollen incision, an animal that has not woken up properly. These are yours to hear about immediately, and they are yours to judge.

when we're the wrong choice

Three cases where you should hire someone else.

You need licensed veterinary triage on the phone. We follow your protocol and escalate. We do not assess clinically, give dosages or advise treatment. If your clinic requires a credentialed technician triaging every after-hours call, that is a veterinary triage service and it is a different purchase.
You want us to decide between your clinic and the ER. We can apply your rules — you tell us which presentations always go to the emergency hospital and which can wait for morning. We will not improvise that boundary, because getting it wrong once is not a service problem.
You are a single-vet practice with quiet evenings. If after-hours calls are rare and your local emergency hospital already covers nights, an answering service may be solving a problem your referral arrangement already handles. Check a month of call logs first.

questions

What buyers ask before they sign.

How much does it cost?

AI voice is US$0.15 per minute and web chat is US$0.15 per session. Live agents start at US$300 per month including 500 minutes — about US$0.60 per minute — or from US$5.80 per hour for a dedicated agent working only your account. The minimum engagement is half a seat, not a five-seat block.

How fast can you start answering our phones?

Do you answer in Spanish?

Yes, on the same number, with agents in our Bolivia and Nicaragua operation centres — native Spanish, not machine translation. English and Spanish share one queue, and we cover 60+ more languages if you need them.

Can I mix AI and live agents on one number?

That is the normal setup. You decide which call types go to AI and which reach a person, and you can change the split as your volume changes. Nothing about that decision is locked in at signup.

Will your agents tell an owner to induce vomiting?

No. We do not give dosages, do not advise home treatment, and do not tell an owner an animal is fine. We collect species, weight, substance, quantity and time elapsed, follow your protocol, and route — to your on-call vet, to the emergency hospital, or to a poison line where you have told us to.

Can you decide whether something goes to the emergency hospital?

We apply your rules, not our judgment. You tell us which presentations always go to the ER, which can wait for morning, and what the owner should be told in each case. We follow that list and document what was said and when.

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