When Roxy met Sam at Vets4Pets

Our dogs are as much a part of our family as the kids and myself and hubs. Erin (6) and Reggie are inseparable and can be found regularly snuggled up together on the sofa. Roxy, now at the ripe old age of 17 has been with me since I left home and we've been through a lot together. She is now deaf, arthritic and 90% blind with cataracts but she has a great appetite and a strong heart. Choosing a veterinary practice is an emotional decision, just like taking your child to the doctors - you trust in the extensively trained professionals before you. You trust that they will put the best interests of your pet at the heart of their practice. The whole experience can be quite overwhelming when your pet is old, needs emergency care or has something wrong.

When I moved to Leamington Spa 15 years ago I signed Roxy up to a lovely local veterinary practice and she had great care but recently they have sold-out to a national veterinary chain, Medivet. We took Roxy there in January for a routine check up and we were recommended that she undergoes some serious dental work at the pricey sum of ￡2k, my trust in their motivations was shaken. Would you have your 100yr old blind and deaf Granny put under for dental work? I think not.

Last month, we were abruptly told we needed to sign up to a new (more expensive) care plan or we couldn't have our medication, so we chose to leave. The personal side of a local veterinary practice has been replaced by income targets and internal process and procedure. Medivet's brand promise is 'Exceptional care, always there' - a brand promise is empty words without a well design customer experience to deliver how it manifests itself for the customer.

As a customer experience consultant I am over sensitive to poor experiences but in equal measures I am very aware when businesses really do put the customer at the heart of their thinking.

Let's talk about Vets4Pets

Pets at Home were struggling only a couple of years ago, they were a pet shop with a large retail footprint and a mediocre e-commerce offer. In a relatively short space of time they have shifted their vision from being the best pet supplies business to 'Be the Best Pet Care Business in the World'. The word care shows their customer understanding - as a pet owners, all the expenditure we outlay is to care for our pets - to feed them, make them happy, home them comfortably, groom them and keep them healthy. If you're a destination for three of those things - why not become a destination for all pet needs? 2019 has been a great commercial year so far with like for like growth and market share gains across all aspects of their offer. Their e-commerce game has been upped and their omni-channel growth is now thriving with customers who shop in store & online worth 2.3x more than a single channel customer.

The Vets4Pets proposition has a simple & resonant brand promise - Putting your pet first.

So, let me bring that to life to tell you about our first experience of our new veterinary practice.

1. Researching Local Veterinary Practices

We were recommended Vet4Pets by a family member who passed us a referral card.

77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends or family. – Nielsen.

A easy but incredibly effective tool to implement which also offered us & our family member a ￡5 reward for handing the card in at our first appointment.

I didn't notice any sponsored google ads but they were in the top three rankings for 'local vet'. Having never engaged with the Pets at Home VIP club I wasn't a target for e-marketing.

2. Making an Enquiry & Booking an Appointment

Vets typically still offer pet owners a single channel for enquiries and haven't been good at optimising the front end of the sales funnel (a vet is still a commercial organisation and must have regular acquisition to replace those pets who have left or died)

As a busy early millennial I like to be able to channel switch, I value a conversation when it adds value but for basic tasks I expect an organisation to offer digital solutions. There are almost seventeen million millennials in the UK, making up over a quarter of the total population and coming second in numbers only to the baby boomer generation. It's important to ensure digitisation is done right for the emerging generations - help millennials and start future-proofing now for GenZ who are becoming highly influential in their households, even before being a significant personal spender.

Vets4Pets created a simple online booking system which required no major tech savviness but allowed me to finish this simple task on mobile whilst lying in a dark room getting my son to sleep - top multi-tasking, well done me :).

What was a simple touch was getting a call back from the in store practices to find out a bit more about the dogs and to get permission to have their records transferred which demonstrated their desire to know about my dogs before treating them.

3. Getting to the Appointment

Simple but effective - SMS reminders were sent to me the day before. Reminding me about the appointment time but also with a phone number in the message to call if I needed to rearrange, which I did and the staff were very polite & friendly. It's so important to understand how you can make life a bit easier for your customer - reminders and helpful information that's relevant to getting off to a great start.

4. The Appointment

The reception staff were super friendly, it sounds basic but how many of us go to the vets or doctors and get faced with a stony-faced receptionist? Personal interactions are now more meaningful that ever - most customer centric organisations have digitised interactions and reduced back office tasks to allow customer facing staff to have more time to focus on the customer.

A few years ago, a survey by Genesys asked more than 9,000 consumers about what mattered to them most when it came to doing business with companies. What did the respondents mark as the improvement they’d like to see most among the companies they do business with?

40% of them – more than double the responses that the second place answer received – said “better human service”.

So whilst you're digitising and minimising personal interactions, don't forget about the ones that do happen in your customer's journey and make them as positive and personal as you can.

The vet, Sam was incredibly personable and caring, she demonstrated that she understood my emotion in relation to my 17 year old dog. She made recommendations but gauged my reaction/interest before moving onto the potential cost. The experience was conversational and empathetic rather than 'expert vs pet owner'. She offered advice to make my dog more comfortable but that had no direct financial benefit - it was in the best interest of Roxy. I subsequently spent in the Pets at Home store as a result of her recommendations / ideas so the one-stop-shop model was effective and made my ability to act on the advice easy. I could get home and instantly improve the comfort of my old dog.

5. After the Appointment.

I received an email to ask for feedback on the experience - there is a clear focus on the vet experience with questions on 'interest in your pet', 'awareness of your needs as an owner', 'able to explain things clearly'. Overall the survey was a bit long and repetitive plus it didn't capture much actionable feedback. You can use your customers to help you identify improvements and future-state experiences, don't focus too heavily on a score or set of scores, they are helpful to show progression and find strengths and weaknesses but they don't give you insights which you can act on - always ask the why / how / what.

There was google review integration at the end of the survey was simple and easy to do, with my my free text question feedback pre-populated. This is a great way to build reputation and trust.

86% of consumers read reviews for local businesses (including 95% of people aged 18-34). [Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey]

I have also started to receive personalised emails with pet care advice, they are highly personalised, easy to read, feature useful links and the tone of voice is friendly and caring, akin to the whole experience on and offline.

I'm still waiting for my new customer welcome pack, it's only been 6 days but that is an aspect that could have been more instant and digital but it's not a deal breaker.

The whole experience didn't happen by accident, it was designed. The brand promise 'Putting Your Pet First' has been brought to life throughout the customer journey with a well devised customer experience - clear tone of voice, staff training & education to understand what is important to their customer and what an important role they play, staff recognition, well crafted personalised communications and simple effective referral and recommendation tools are used.

Well done and thank you Vets4Pets.

Watch out Medivet.

Head over to instagram to see some examples of the experience @yakcx

Hannah Foley is a experienced CX consultant & author of #1 Best Selling book 'Customer Experience'. She helps organisations to understand their customer, plan and design great experiences. www.yak-cx.co.uk