As a business owner in the pet industry, you’ve likely spent countless hours working on and thinking about ways to maintain your customer satisfaction. As business evolves, it is necessary to gauge what is needed and change accordingly. If you provide services to your customers at their property or are thinking about diversifying your existing business to include outbound efforts, it is important to understand how communication is different between working from a virtual or brick and mortar location and working at someone’s home.
With new forms of security and different systems expanding into every neighborhood, your customers aren’t just monitoring deliveries. They are watching how deliveries are placed, how services are being performed, the amount of time spent by the service agent, and the employees’ professional behavior.
This new surveillance is just the start. What you do as a business owner to address this “new norm” in the customer relationship needs to begin with the customer. Managing the customer’s expectation starts with understanding the customer, their needs, and their preference for communication. Phone calls, emails, texts, door hangers, app alerts, and old-fashioned knocks on the door are all methods of business communication. The more touches you can provide, the more accessible you are and the more opportunities for you to connect. This is where you can activate technology to help.
- Routing software may make your stops predictable allowing for phone calls and the custom printing of detailed invoices and door hangers for your service agents to distribute.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can oftentimes be automated to provide outbound alerts, such as emails, app alerts, and texts to manage the expectation of service.
- Field service professional training can include how to knock on the door and review the service that was provided to make sure you met the customer’s needs.
Things to consider: Are you set up to adapt your sales and service delivery process to meet your customers’ needs? Do you have the infrastructure and labor in place to support the programs? Have you identified the costs associated with the technology to perform the communication?
It is also important to evaluate your current level of customer satisfaction and styles of communication. Is there an opportunity for improvement? How will the improvement affect your bottom line?
Pet Butler’s national support center not only provides local Business Owners the technology and resources for outstanding customer communication but through the back-office support team, including an on-campus call center, provides most of the communication for you.
If you are considering the diversification of your pet-based business, explore Pet Butler today.
