Grow Your Pet Service Business Into an Empire
So how can you manage your pet services business more efficiently to scale and make more profit?
Cut Down on Time-Consuming Tasks
Make a list of all the tasks you perform on a daily basis for your business.
Include all the tasks related to the actual service, but make sure you include every other non-billable task, as minor as it may seem.
Next, write down an approximate amount of time you think you’re spending on each task on a weekly basis.
Calculate the total time you’re spending on non-billable tasks compared to billable services.
Now, imagine you could drastically cut down on that billable time – and reinvest this time into spending more time taking care of pets, or taking a well-deserved rest.
For instance, how much time do you spend on the phone with customers? In some cases, phone calls are unavoidable – some customers prefer this way of communication. However, your business doesn’t have to run completely by phone.
Tasks like pricing, booking, payment processing, quote creation, appointment reminders, and even employee dispatch (if you’re at that point in your growth) can be accomplished using modern technology.
Software platforms like PodiumIO can help you automate these tasks online. Instead of calling you directly, customers can go through your website or social profiles to:
- Browse through your list of services
- Select the services they want and view personalized live pricing
- View your availabilities in real-time
- Book your services and pay online
- Get automatic confirmations and reminders via email or SMS notifications
When you let technology handle these tasks, you place yourself in a position to spend more time on:
- Providing quality services to your customers
- Planning your business strategy to grow
- Finding, hiring, and training staff to scale further
We’ve broken this down in more detail on our post about saving time as a pet service business owner.
Improve the Customer Experience
You can manage your business as efficiently as you want, but in order to scale your pet services business, you need more customers.
And when you gain those customers, they need to come back – and tell their friends about you.
This means you need to provide top-of-the-line customer service, from the moment the client lands on your website to the time they pick up their pets after your services.
If you’re automating your business processes on your website and letting clients book and pay for your services themselves, you need to ensure your website is actually providing a positive experience – and not adding more frustration than it should.
Doing business with you should be easy and pain-free.
Hire and Manage Your Staff the Smart Way
At some point in your growth, even the best software won’t be able to replicate the services you provide to pet owners.
You can hire staff to perform those services, or help you in the back-end with admin tasks like bookkeeping, social media management, or phone calls.
But when managing your staff, take the same approach as you do in the rest of your business – automate what you can and streamline everyone’s workflow.
How is your team’s calendar managed? How does everyone know who should be where at what moment?
If you’re manually handling dispatching and scheduling for your staff, you’re setting yourself up for another bottleneck, which is why automation is your best bet in this case as well.