In a recent webinar hosted by Otto, industry experts Shawna Castillo, director of the Care membership program, and Stephanie Thomas, senior director of client experience at United Veterinary Care, shared invaluable insights on client engagement strategies, particularly concerning wellness plans. Their discussion revealed important trends shaping client relations in veterinary care and ways to use Care Memberships to improve pet owner loyalty and client compliance with recommended care plans.

Watch the full webinar here

Stephanie Thomas has extensive experience in emergency and primary veterinary care and has always focused on enhancing client relationships through strategic engagement. “It’s so exciting whenever we get to talk about topics we’re super passionate about,” Stephanie remarked, highlighting her journey from emergency to primary care, driven by a desire to intervene earlier in a pet’s health journey to avoid potential emergency situations. Stephanie oversees 114 hospitals in the United Veterinary Care network.

As part of her role, Stephanie is responsible for driving client engagement, loyalty, and retention across the entire hospital network. Shawna and Stephanie talked about how Otto is helping overcome economic factors like increased costs and lower customer loyalty to drive access to quality care.

Shawna commented, “I think it’s no surprise to anyone who’s here that we are dealing with kind of low everything. Low visits, low compliance, low client loyalty.” Stephanie noted that it’s been an interesting time in veterinary medicine. Despite fewer cases, her team went from feeling overwhelmed by a caseload they didn’t feel prepared to handle to still feeling really overwhelmed today.

Stephanie attributes this continued fatigue to a revolving door of clients that can feel a bit like speed dating, a higher level of anxiety from clients, and eroded trust resulting from price increases. Price increases have been a way of life for all veterinary clinics, and everyone is feeling the friction. Stephanie shares, “And we made some boo-boos, we increased too much, we decreased some not too much. We discounted too much. And so, we’re navigating that at the same time as we are noticing a decrease in visits and loyalty. And that’s, honestly, what I feel every day I still work as a CSR. And I feel that there as well is that we are seeing less clients, and honestly, less of them say yes to our recommendations, which is hard.

Shawna chimed in that historically year-over-year price increases have been around 4%, but recently it’s been reported that veterinary care is experiencing on average an 8% year-over-year price increase. A recent study from the Access to Veterinary Care Coalition shows that millennials are the highest pet owning demographic, and also the generation most financially challenged to comply with recommended care. Despite the generationally stronger pet-owner bond that millennials share with pets that they often consider as starter or replacements for children, they are struggling to pay for pet care.

Stephanie shared, “We have two barriers right now. We have lots of barriers. But one is that educational level of our clients, just because they don’t know the…not educational level as in there, not got bachelor’s degree, but they don’t know what preventive care is. Because during COVID, we saw so many urgent cares and we weren’t able to get in preventive care. So, then we started seeing a trickle-down of people coming in for just wellness care. And then we increased prices. And then we didn’t need to only see urgent care, we could fit in everybody. And then these clients that want to provide care don’t know the value of it. So, that’s one issue. And then the second is pricing. And when we increased prices as a whole, what we didn’t do well enough as an industry is say, ‘How can we help clients afford the same level of care that they got when we didn’t have all these price increases or the level of medicine we have?”

Prices have increased not just because of economic forces, but because more advanced care is now available and pet owner education just hasn’t caught up. That’s where Care Memberships came in as a potential solution to helping pet owners say yes to the care that their pets need.

“I wanted to help clients say yes to the medical recommendations that we were giving, be that a full lab panel or, you know, a quick in-and-out visit, like, being able to say yes to all of the recommendations that we have.”
– Stephanie

Stephanie had a clearly defined goal for Care Membership plans: to have more clients, to increase the loyalty of those clients, and to help pet parents have the financial security to say yes to care, both preventive and emergency. Based on her goals, Stephanie knew that traditional wellness plans were not a fit, she explained, “When I see traditional wellness plans, and those that don’t know what traditional wellness plans are, is that typically, you have certain things that are included in those plans. It depends on which company you work for and which plans that you’re offering, but there’s always buckets that you get to choose what is included in your plan. And so, typically, there’s a puppy, adult, and senior package. And in those packages, there’s specific things that are included. Sometimes you can add on like nail trims or dental, but you’ve gotta choose it, you gotta put it in there so that when a client signs up, they put their age, their breed, whatever, and it tells you which plan that they need for their pet.”

These rigid plans didn’t account for real life. Not all 7-year-old dogs need the same things, and pet parents were saying yes to services their pets didn’t need just to avoid leaving money on the table. These traditional plans were also difficult for staff to navigate.

“We have to understand that our pet parents require comprehensive care for their pets and we shouldn’t make them live in that same box where we’re like, ‘Well, we’re gonna help you but only for wellness.’”
– Stephanie

In response, Shawna shared “we wanted to do something differently at Otto, and to kind of embrace the fact that pets needs change over time. And we didn’t wanna create one more program that created a massive amount of friction because like you said, if a doctor is recommending blood work that’s outside of that traditional wellness plan model, clients don’t understand that there are 300 panels of blood work in a book and that the Chem 10 that’s included in their traditional plan is likely not gonna be a diagnostic panel that the doctor is recommending. So, we really wanted to get away from that. And so, I love this concept of complete or comprehensive care instead of talking about just that really hyper-focused wellness idea.”

Stepanie agreed and shared that her reason for adopting Otto Care was that her team wasn’t going to stop talking about what pets need, the focus was on providing the best care with a flexible membership program. Stephanie shared the biggest benefits of Otto Care:
Care seamlessly fits into CSR workflows and empowers people-pleasing CSRs to provide clients with options that are easy to understand and accept.

• Otto Care takes selling out of the equation. Instead it provides the team with an easy way to talk to clients and create value without selling.
• Care meets clients where they are and provides the flexibility to say yes to care.
• Flow and Care go hand-in-hand automating pet owner communications so pet owners come in asking how they can enroll in Care plans.
• Care plans are helping to drive new clients. Shawna shared that 41% of the total Care memberships come from new clients. Therefore Care is helping with new client conversion and retention in a single step.
• Care is driving loyalty and increasing spend. Shawna pulled up data from a single patient the year before they got a Care membership and the year after. During the year where the pet was covered by Care their spending increased by 95%.

“This is your membership plan, this is what you get unlimited exams and then you get this instant access credit, and then here’s your bonus discount.”
– Stephanie

Pet owners love Care and shared their feedback, too, “Our Care membership helps me spread out expenses while my pet insurance helps reduce overall expenses. We use both, and it’s worth it.”