What we've learned about maximizing productivity from the Time To Pet Users caring for more than 300,000 pets.
As we've all experienced over the last few months, life can be unpredictable — like seriously unpredictable! This has been especially true for the pet care industry. Working closely with well over 2,000 professional pet care businesses in sixteen different countries, we here at Time To Pet feel qualified to comment on what's currently happening in the pet care industry and where we think it's heading.
Let's start with the enormous, dancing elephant in the room. Things are not business as usual right now, and they haven't been since before COVID-19 came into our lives. We have seen how this global pandemic has impacted friends, family, and small businesses worldwide. For an industry that mainly relies on people heading to work and leaving their homes, pet care pros have definitely felt the effects. That said, we have seen things starting to improve for pet care pros month over month as businesses have safely started getting back into the swing of things. And that brings us to the bright future ahead for pet sitting, dog walking, and pet care businesses!
We've read dozens of news stories about shelters with empty cages from all the new adoptions. Woohoo! According to Vox, Petfinder reported a web traffic increase of 43% and an increase of adoption inquires by 116% in the second half of March. It seems like the secret is out about pets being pretty much the greatest thing ever! With more families adopting and fostering new pets this year, we do not doubt that professional, reliable pet care will always be in high demand — especially with the recent surge of first-time pet parents.
With old clients returning and new clients booking pet care services for the first time, now more than ever, your business must be running like a well-oiled machine.
So how can you turbocharge your efficiency, streamline your organization, save bucketloads of time, and take your business to the next level? We're happy you asked because this just happens to be a subject we love to talk about. And yes, we're talking about pet sitting software, of course! We've pulled all our data from 2019 to look at five ways pet care software can help you maximize productivity and take your business to the next level.
Five ways pet sitting software can up your game and improve your business:
1. Manage and Strengthen Customer Relationships
Creating, maintaining, and growing customer relationships is an essential part of running a successful pet care business. Besides actually caring for all those awesome pets, keeping your clients happy is probably your top priority. And the best way to keep them happy is by providing the best service and customer experience possible. Being friendly, trustworthy, and providing excellent care is a great start. Another way to improve the customer experience is to make things as easy as possible regarding booking services, making payments, and monitoring their pet care.
In 2019, pet care businesses using Time To Pet scheduled over 8.5 million events with ~200,000 clients and ~300,000 different pets. With an easy to use online client portal and mobile app, independent pet care companies can provide the same (and often better) features that the giant "Uber of dog walking" companies offer. With so many choices available to pet parents, it's nice to give them the same convenience and features that much larger pet tech companies provide. Our users' clients downloaded the Client App on around 80,000 mobile devices last year. Give your clients the best user experience possible with the ability to easily book services, receive visit report cards, and even track walks live with GPS.
2. Save Time
In 2019, pet care pros using Time To Pet sent over 50 million emails. That’s right, 50,000,000. If each email took only one second to send manually, that would still be over 578 days spent sending emails — that's just the pet care businesses we work with. And it often takes a lot longer than one second to send an email. Those are just the emails; think about the additional phone calls, text messages, and pictures you exchange with your clients daily. Having all your clients in one place and being able to send bulk emails quickly will save you not only time but likely some sanity!
Last year, the pet care providers we work with sent 15 million in-app messages and over 16 million adorable pet pictures. When you have to search through your contacts every time you wanted to send a client a message or pet pic, you lose valuable time that could be spent caring for pets and working on growing your business.
Good software should make your business tasks and life easier by taking many small but time-consuming tasks off your plate. It should also make life easier for your clients. Giving clients the ability to schedule events on their own will instantly save you tons of time when it comes to scheduling. In addition to the time saved making bookings and sending client communications, there is also a considerable benefit to automation when getting paid.
3. Make the Payment Process Easier
The total business revenue for companies using Time To Pet in 2019 was $175,000,000. That means that the average payment received for an event was somewhere around $20. And when you consider that getting paid involves a lot more than just receiving money, those 8.5 million transactions really add up to a lot of time and resources. Best case scenario, your client prepays for services, or you send an invoice, and your client pays it immediately. Worst case, well, we've all probably been there. There's nothing worse than having to hound a customer for payment — pun intended.
Using a pet care software solution makes it easy to generate invoices and receive payments automatically. It also gives you the ability to automatically keep a credit card on file and charge payments with your clients' consent. Imagine completing a walk, marking it as completed, and then having everything involved with payments taken care of instantly. That dream can be a reality! Make your dreams come true — said in a Shia LaBeouf motivation speech voice.
4. Make Fewer Mistakes
Mistakes happen for sure, but when you let software do most of the heavy lifting, mistakes are much less frequent. Pet sitting software helps you easily keep track of all your client and staff schedules, helping you avoid annoying double bookings or forgotten appointments. Having detailed records of schedules and invoices can also come in handy when a customer wants to dispute a charge or says you never showed up for a scheduled event.
Having documentation of services and appointments is especially handy if you have a few members on your team. The Staff App makes it easy for staff members to track their schedules and communicate with clients. It also gives you the ability to make sure that your staff performs the tasks they are supposed to.
5. Increase Productivity
All of the items above directly help you to increase productivity. When you have less logistical and administrative duties to worry about, you have more time to focus on growing your business and creating new opportunities — you'll also have more time to play with cute pets! When you have time to focus on marketing and improving your business, you start implementing some of the stellar tips you've learned from Pet Marketing Unleashed!
When it comes to pet sitting software, increased productivity is directly related to the amount of time you save on billing, invoicing, approving events, sending emails, etc. With an online client portal for businesses and clients, mobile apps for staff and clients, and integrations with Quickbooks and third party calendars, you'll instantly have all the ingredients for taking your business to the next level.
Looking Forward
As the pet care industry returns to some semblance of normalcy, we are excited about the future and look forward to meeting all the new pets adopted over the past few months!
One thing that is definitely true about pet care professionals; they are experts at thinking on their tippy-toes and quickly adapting. Having a few tried and true tools at the ready doesn't hurt either! Make sure to check out the Time To Pet Blog and Academy for more great pet care business-related resources. We've also just released a new website called Local Pet Care to help connect pet parents with independent, professional pet care providers. We believe that pet care pros provide the best and most reliable care to pets. We love our pets, and they deserve the best!
TTP Bio:
Trusted by over 2,000 of the world’s most successful pet care companies and thousands of their pet sitters and dog walkers, Time To Pet is modern pet sitting software.
