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5 Essential Customer Retention Strategies for Pet Businesses

Owning a pet business is super rewarding, but it also requires a ton of dedication, time invested in your relationships with your customer, and personalizing your service for them and your local or online community.

Around one in three households in the United States owns a pet cat or dog - and lots of those pet owners also keep birds, reptiles, bunnies, fish and other small critters. While no two pet parents are totally alike - you can bet that anyone looking to book services like yours, prefers to establish solid relationships with their groomer, trainer, walker and pet food store. You are an essential resource in their pets’ life and your relationship will likely evolve and become more personal over time.

Trust is a such a huge factor here, both in that first impression which encourages pet parents to buy from you in the first place, as well as ongoing as they come back again and again.

When people keep buying from you over time we call that ‘customer retention’. It’s obvious to see why pet owners come back over and over to someone they trust - but do you know how and why customer retention is important to your pet business bottomline?

 

Did you know?

Check out these customer retention stats from Outbound Engine:

    • Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.
    • Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%.
    • The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
    • One customer experience agency found loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering.

And this little nugget from Forbes:

    • A 2% increase in customer retention is the same to profits as cutting costs by 10%.

Whoa!

It’s safe to say that whether you’re building a business to sell, or you simply want to make a decent living - keeping customer retention is crucial to achieving your short and long term goals.

 

Customer Retention Strategies for Pet Businesses

So then, what are the best strategies for pet businesses to thrive and retain customers for the foreseeable future?

Basically it call comes down to prioritizing the satisfaction of your customers by creating solid connections with them (locally and online). Focusing on keeping your customers happy helps increase customer retention.

But let’s take a closer look at how to improve customer retention for your pet business.

 

1. Establish Personalized Relationships With Customers Straight-Away

“80% of customers say they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences.” - Forbes

When new customers experience you and your services for the first time, they will quickly assess (in 90 seconds in person, more like 8-15 seconds online) you, your brand and the services you offer. This first impression is your first chance to win (or lose) them over - in some cases - forever. No pressure.

If you do get that all-important inquiry, initial consultation or in-person chat  (much easier if you get that Book Your Pet ‘book now’ button in-place) - the moment you begin a conversation with your new client about their pet, their name, preferences, and their individual needs, you begin to establish a connection. This connection will instantly give your client a sense of familiarity, fondness and comfort, which gives you an advantage over competing services providers they’ve not met yet.

For most people, the fact that they’ve invested this far with you - is a great start to getting them to become a loyal, returning client.

But the more personal the customer experience you can provide (whether it’s you offering it or a team member) will leave a lasting impression. Pets give us a great opportunity to do this, simply by remembering (or documenting in software like Book Your Pet) little things about their pet’s preferences, needs or history , you can offer meaningful recommendations for services with their best interests in mind.

 

2. Capitalize on Social Media Interactions

Like it or not, in our digital world, social media is a vital tool for interacting with new and existing customers. Not just for marketing but for customer retention strategies including providing your client with photos and videos of their own pets. As well as engaging posts with heartwarming stories about the other furry companions you care for.

If your current customer retention efforts don’t include social media platforms, you are missing out on a valuable resource that could be helping you create and keep loyal customers.

When you post regular content on social media it’s most likely to be your existing customer base who sees it. By keeping active with updates and brand and authority building content, you can keep your existing customers engaged. Live videos, online surveys, and helpful discussions about pet care and the things you and your brand values (cute puppy photos are great - but don’t forget the deeper stuff too)- will also improve your customer retention rate.

 

3. Establish Customer Loyalty Programs or Reward Incentives

Customer loyalty is the ultimate goal if you’re looking to improve retention rates. When introducing loyalty programs that provide incentives for frequent purchases, you’ll improve the chances of repeat customers, even in a highly competitive market.

This is so important we’ve built it right in to Book Your Pet, through simple package options where you can easily bundle several of your services together with or without a discount.  This means your customer is essentially committing to come back - and you’re well on your way to true loyalty!

As customers search for both the best care AND the best deals for their pets, creating incentives like packages, punch cards and repeating client discounts can boost your clients’ purchase frequency, as well as their satisfaction. If they need to use your services regularly anyway - getting rewarded for it makes them feel great. Anytime they’re feeling great - not only customer retention is likely - but so are those juicy referrals!

 

4. Encourage Customer Feedback

Do your customers have suggestions? Try to capture and implement them when you can. Online survey platforms and customer data provide insight into what customers want and how they evaluate your company’s service.

Not only is this information great to constantly improve your customers’ satisfaction - but it’s also a great way to get ‘social proof’ (testimonials) you can use to make it easier for new customers to say yes to you.

Getting customer feedback provides you with a clear idea of which services bring your customer back and whether there are opportunities available to you to serve them in better, easier ways. Because as pet businesses we always want to be not just making our businesses to run, but making them easier for customers to do business with as well.

 

5. Focus on Excellent Customer Service

One of the top reasons customers return to a business is their interaction with you and your team. Your knowledge and care is worth way more than you think when it comes to creating a profitable, sustainable business.

Every time a customer returns to buy from you again, you’re adding that much more value to their life and the life of their pet - but value to your business as well (one of the key metrics of a sellable business is ‘lifetime value’ of your clients!) - so customer service REALLY IS a win/win.

Annoyingly that can mean that the negative feedback can sometimes matter most. You’ll want to address customer complaints quickly, either online, over the phone, or in person. Even though you may not love being on the phone - it’s often best to discuss tricky things live (because so much can get lost or mis-interpreted via text or email).  While you’ll occasionally stumble upon a situation that may be challenging to resolve - if you stick with an attentive, caring approach - every disappointment is an opportunity to turn a regular customer into a mega fan. Things do go wrong in business -they just do - so we can’t focus on being perfect, but instead handling the sticky stuff with grace, generosity and a cool head. If you can do that, you’re likely to have the best customer retention around!

 

Summary

There are so many aspects of building customer relationships that will improve your pet business, including getting and acting on feedback, offfering loyalty programs and repeat-purchase incentives, plus that continuous engagement online.

Whether or not you implement a sophisticated software like Book Your Pet to help you collect, report, update and analyze your customers’ data-  establishing a personalized approach with local clients and your online community will be an essential part of your success.

When you start focusing on adding in or improving customer retention strategies in your pet business, you’ll definitely enjoy improved sales and profits over the short and long-term.