Auditing and understanding the practice customer base

HAVING A CLEAR understanding of its customer base is vital to the success of any veterinary practice.

Knowing the clients’ needs and desires will allow practices to make informed purchasing decisions that give the most choice to the customer and encourage them to purchase in practice.

Know your customer
In today’s climate, it is crucial for practices to be retail savvy and to know as much about their clients as possible. They need to know what services and products clients are looking for, in what way and at what price. Practices should consider what services they provide and just how useful or appealing they are to the client. Equally, knowing as much as possible about owners and their pets when they come in for a consult, really does add value – nothing beats the personal touch.

Tailoring the practice’s retailing offering will certainly help to keep clients loyal. Questionnaires are often a good way of understanding clients and what they want from a practice. Why second guess when you can get information straight from the people you are trying to understand and influence? A few simple, multiple choice questions will provide a snapshot and can be completed while clients sit in the waiting room (see Table).

Practices also need to know what clients purchase and when. Checking back through stock lists, till and client records will indicate purchasing habits. A quick analysis will show how open they might be to cross selling. Also, it will show whether they only purchase products when they see the vet, or if they come in regularly to, for example, pick up flea or worming treatments.

While going through the records, it is also worth making a note of the bestsellers in the practice, and bearing in mind why customers might buy a lot of a particular product. Is it well promoted by the front of house staff, well displayed, on offer or deemed a necessary purchase for the health of the pet? Considering the way clients think, feel, reason and even select a product or service will help purchasing decision makers to know what clients want and, therefore, choose the right products to retail in practice.

Clients are not simply pet owners and individuals require different selling techniques. Typically, clients can be split into four different selling categories and practices should be aware of these (see Table).

Results from the questionnaire can help identify which category the client falls into. For example, if they tick convenience as very important, come into the practice twice a year and buy additional health products when they come in, you can determine that they are a one-stop shopper.

Another important consideration is the lifestyle of each individual client and the pet in question. The healthcare requirements will vary considerably between pets living alone and multi-pet households. Children, location and living environments are also important factors when understanding the needs of the customer. This is potentially another question for the questionnaire.

Knowledge is power
Taking the time to audit clients will help establish a unique and extremely useful customer profile. By utilising the information already existing in practice, such as the client records and questionnaires, practices can identify where and when clients are likely to part with their cash. Use the results of the questionnaire to ascertain whether clients are concerned about convenience, whether money is an issue when it comes to the pets’ health and gather information about them and their preferences. This will naturally lead to categorising the clients.

Practices should encourage members of their front-of-house team to readily embrace the findings to adopt the appropriate selling technique. For example, a one-stop shopper could be sold worming products, flea treatments and pet food after bringing the pet in for a vaccination, whereas a bargain hunter would pay for the vaccination, but require a much harder sell on the other products. Staff should be able to identify these types of owner relatively easily, as they will already have a working knowledge of the owner and how he or she currently shops for products or services. It is also worthwhile asking the client how he or she is getting on with a particular product or preventive treatment and whether he or she needs any more information or advice about it.

Once you know your customer base, or just have a better understanding of it, you can capitalise on the selling opportunity and influence a greater spend per client per visit. A client leaving the practice with a comprehensive healthcare plan for his or her pet will feel as if he or she, and his or her pet, has been looked after. Customer satisfaction goes beyond the practice visit and the service must be continued through regular contact; for example, reminders for vaccinations and treatments.

Keep it up
Customer-focused selling will help you compete for the greatest share of a market that is rapidly being encroached on by supermarkets, pet superstores and online pharmacies. It is also important to remember the advantage that veterinary practices have over the larger retail outlets – knowledge.

A veterinary surgeon or nurse is the best conduit for professional advice and information about the health and welfare of people’s pets. Promoting the practice in this way, with the best products at competitive prices and value-added service, will keep customers coming back to the practice for their pets’ healthcare products.

Purchasing decision makers should be able to recognise the key products and bestsellers, as well as what clients look for when choosing a product, based on the information gathered from the questionnaires and practice records. Carefully selected products, such as POM-Vs, that are chiefly available through practices will ultimately keep clients loyal and help you boost practice revenue. However, in order to achieve this, products have to appeal to a customer’s needs and desires, be cost effective, efficacious, well known and convenient to use.

Client satisfaction surveys are a good way of measuring clients’ perception of the practice and its offering. It gives a chance for customers to feed back and say what they would like to see in the future, whether prices are competitive and what the service is like. This can help you to further understand the customer on an ongoing basis and remain competitive within the market. It can also influence purchasing decisions; for example, if a customer wants to buy his or her dog lead at the vet.

Client compliance, a buzz word in the veterinary industry, is the ultimate goal for practices. Keeping the customer base happy will encourage clients back to spend money in practice and benefit the business. This can be achieved with a thorough understanding of the people practices are selling to and boxing clever in a retailer’s world.