17th January 2024
6 Ways to Improve Client Engagement with Your Plan
One of the real challenges of running plans is making sure your clients continue to see value in them. Often, when we’ve spoken to pet owners about why they’ve cancelled their plan, the reason given is that they didn’t feel they were getting their money’s worth from it.
Evidence
We know from talking to pet owners that around 43% of cancellations are avoidable if they continue to see evidence of the benefits they signed up for*.
What can you do to improve client engagement?
So, how can you keep clients happy and your revenue growing? We ran plans when we owned practices and here’s what we learned; if you don’t regularly tell pet owners what they’re entitled to or keep plans relevant, they will cancel. Keeping plan members informed of their benefits can feel time-consuming and not the best use of staff’s valuable time, but consider that for every client that cancels, you need to sign two more to your plan to generate any kind of growth. So, let’s look at keeping these valued clients happy, engaged, and feeling that their pets are healthier.
- Tell your health plan clients how much money they’ve saved every time they visit for products, a vet consultation or procedure. Most practices offer some level of discount for certain services and products, so remind your clients they save money by being on plan!
- Assess whether your reception area is promoting your plans. You have a captive audience, so remind those that have already joined exactly what they get and let clients that haven’t signed up know what they’re missing.
- Review the content of your plan with your PVA business coach. Is it still relevant to today’s pet owner? There are changes you can make to improve uptake, reduce cancellations and make clients happy. Click here to request information on what changes you can make.
- Add a message to your vaccination reminders, informing all pet owners that if they are a member of your plan there will be nothing to pay when they come in. This, again, reminds plan members of the continued value of their membership and promotes plans to non-members too.
- Ask for training if you feel you could do with a refresher on how to promote your plans or have new staff members who are a little nervous about talking to clients about them. You can click here to request a coach contacts you to help.
- Be proud of your plans. Remember, your plans are of real benefit to your clients and their pets! They help pet owners to budget for gold standard preventative care, whilst providing discounts and helping keep their beloved pets healthier too. By talking about your plans regularly you are helping more clients to have a better customer experience, whilst saving money and having healthier, happier pets.
Conclusion
If you want to reduce your plan cancellations, stop revenue loss and improve compliance, the easiest way is to keep pets on your plan! Whilst signing new pets onto your plan is really important, keeping them on plan is the key to success. If you can maintain a steady number of new sign-ups and spend a little time focusing on existing members, your plan numbers and revenue will grow at a healthy pace. Give our tips a go and see how it positively affects plan numbers! Talk to one of our experts to get further help. Click here to request a call.
*PVA research carried out directly with clients who cancelled their plan in 43 clinics