finding new ways to make you happy

Welcome to Part 2 of the Banfield blog’s conversation with Dr. Ari Zabell, Banfield’s head of client experience. (Check out Part 1 if you haven’t yet.) Here, Dr. Zabell talks about client-veterinarian communication tools and the importance of year-round preventive care with Banfield’s Optimum Wellness Plans®.

How can we continue to improve client experience at Banfield?

During COVID-19, while everybody's dealing with social distancing and COVID-19, one of the bigger challenges is that it’s more difficult – or not possible at all – to meet with our clients face to face in an exam room. It makes communication more challenging, and we’ve been looking at ways to fill the gaps.

One of the tools that makes things easier is our Pet Visit Summary, which every client receives after their pet’s appointment. The summary details three key aspects of the visit: What did we find while the pet was with us? What did we do about those things that we found? And what does our client need to be doing to keep their pet healthy?

This information helps give clients real peace of mind about the visit and their pet’s health and wellness. It’s been extremely valuable.

Tablets make appointments better

A lot of communication between our clients and our teams is now happening during curbside check-in and drop-off. We want these conversations to be easy, safe, and efficient, so we’re equipping our teams with digital tablets and a shared e-mail inbox.

Now we can take photos, share pet wellness materials, and connect with our clients to make sure we know their needs and their pet’s needs. It’s very exciting, and it’s going to get even cooler in the future.

Year-round wellness care helps pets stay healthy and happy

There’s an old saying: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There’s a lot of truth to that. People come to Banfield because they love their pets and know how important it is to keep them healthy.

We get it, because we’re all pet lovers here, too. It’s what brought us all to this profession. So a big part of a high quality client experience is high quality petcare that helps prevent disease and identifies problems before they become more serious, more painful, and frankly, more expensive.

At Banfield, we bundle the preventive care services that we, as veterinarians, know our pet patients are going to need, and deliver them year-round in an affordable way. We call these packages Optimum Wellness Plans, and if your pet doesn’t have one yet, you can start one today.