After-hours triage agent handles 80% of pet owner panic

The challenge

The vet network's after-hours line was perpetually busy. Pet owners panic easily, a dog that ate something odd, a cat acting strange, and they flooded the line over issues that were often minor, while genuine emergencies got buried in the same queue.

On-call vets were exhausted from triaging panic by phone at 2am, much of it resolvable with simple reassurance, and the lack of fast triage meant the truly urgent cases didn't always get prioritized.

Staffing a 24/7 triage desk with humans wasn't affordable for the network.

The solution

An AI triage agent now assesses urgency instantly and routes accordingly, so emergencies surface and panic is calmed:

• Symptom-based urgency assessment, the Triage Agent reads the symptom description and assesses urgency, separating true emergencies from minor worries in seconds.
• Evidence-based home guidance, for non-urgent issues, the Pet Care Knowledge Agent gives safe, evidence-based guidance from the Knowledge Base, calming owners without a 2am vet call.
• Emergencies escalated immediately, when symptoms indicate real danger, the agent escalates instantly to an on-call vet via Hand-off Control and Flight Control, so urgent cases jump the queue.
• On the channels owners reach for, it works over WhatsApp and Voice, available the moment panic strikes.
• Always-on triage, 24/7 availability means the after-hours line is never simply "busy" again.

The agent handled about 80% of after-hours pet-owner panic with calm, safe guidance, while real emergencies were instantly surfaced to exhausted on-call vets instead of buried.

What was deployed