Ask any dog owner and they will tell you that their dog is more than just a pet, they are a member of the family. From the moment they meet, owners create a lifetime bond, and care for their furry friends. Dog owners will go to great lengths to provide the best food, treats, toys, and especially health and wellness care.
Every owner wants to spend as much time as possible with their dog, but busy schedules and commitments can create gaps for hours, leaving dogs by themselves. Wag!, started in 2015, gives owners assistance in providing care to their dogs. This allows dogs to receive on-demand care with walks or in-home visits.
Wag! Walk, a service that connects owners with pre-screened and insured dog walkers, gives owners the peace of mind they need to safely let their dogs out for walks and exercise. After owners select a preferred date and time, a walker arrives and takes the dog out. These walks are trackable through the app and Walkers are able to send photos and videos to owners throughout the day.
Wag! expanded services to include overnight dog sitting, short and long term boarding, and daycare. These might be considered table-stakes for pet concierge services, but the difference with Wag! is that it provides all of this in the comfort of the dog’s own home. With Walkers and Sitters coming to owners’ homes, dogs experience less stress from new environments and experiences.
Customers can quickly schedule and coordinate all of these services inside the Wag! app, optimizing on-the-go convenience. This enables Wag! to securely keep a comprehensive customer history, and keeps a constant connection between the owner and their pet through a mobile device.
Looking for even more ways to help owners, Wag! released Wag! Tag in September 2019. This collar attachment contains a scannable QR code that links to pet descriptions and owner contact information. A Wag! Tag subscription allows owners to send a notification to walkers, notifying them that a dog may have gotten loose. Owners can use this data to mobilize and locate the missing pet. If the dog is found by a walker, they can scan the QR code, retrieve contact information, and let the owner know where the dog is located for pickup.
Challenges
As a mobile-only, app-based on-demand service, it’s essential that Wag! offers the entire customer experience through its mobile app. Making the mobile experience as efficient and functional as possible is a high priority for the company. Scheduling service, communicating with walkers, and contacting customer support must be native in-app and provide reliable tools for pet parents. This meant supporting both Android and iOS users, offering full feature parity between the two platforms to provide a seamless experience for every situation.
An intuitive, customer-centric experience was necessary because all of Wag! services are available in-app, including a fully integrated support experience and direct communication between the customer and walkers. Making support and help options easily accessible were key priorities in Wag!’s app development. This allows customers to spend less time searching for help, and more time ensuring their pets are taken care of.
Wag! needed customer support tools to match the dedication and passion its dog-centric team approaches each day with. This customer-first mentality extended to Wag!’s approach to customer support interactions. It helps that many Wag! support agents are also dog owners. It’s not uncommon to find dogs roaming the Wag! contact center or offices. As pet owners themselves, agents understand how important dogs are to owners and understand the responsibility they have in resolving issues quickly.
Solution
Since all services are in-app, Wag!’s support ecosystem integrated with UJET’s mobile SDK to provide the backbone for Wag!’s customer support experience. The mobile SDK supports Android and iOS so both device demographics receive the same support experience.
The Wag! experience offers voice (cellular and VoIP), voice IVR and visual IVR, and messaging (SMS and in-app chat). This enables customers to contact the channels they want instead of being forced into long queues.
Wag! and UJET worked together to optimize IVR trees and customize direct access points for custom, contextual support interactions. This has proven to be extremely valuable when coupled with the customer meta-data. When users reach out through the app, Wag! Is able to pass this data along to each support ticket allowing for a more personalized and efficient experience.
Wag! securely browses relevant data to create direct-toagent routing, focusing on optimal times to customize the user experience and eliminate the typical menu-selection flow. The UJET platform supports an unlimited number of customized queues and Wag! was able to create multiple queues that could be customized in real-time.
Wag! launched UJET’s mobile SDK and IVR support via UJET’s platform in April 2019. PSTN voice, in-app voice, and messaging (SMS and in-app chat) were released in May 2019.
Results
The UJET mobile SDK was fully implemented in just 30 days. The Wag! team experienced significant operational improvements right away. By natively integrating voice calls into the app, Wag! was able to make strides in supporting in-app users quickly and contextually.
Wag!’s in-app voice service level agreement (SLA) improved by 17 percent. In-app voice average wait times decreased by 50 percent, connecting customers to agents even faster through custom queues. These improvements helped decrease overall call abandonment by 7 percent.
Average wait times for PSTN callers decreased to under a minute with PSTN abandonment falling by 8 percent. This is a result of Wag! app support optimizations routing customers to solutions or agents more efficiently than in the past. Customers spend less time on hold and more time solving their issues.
UJET provides Wag! with mobile-only consumer experience supported by native in-app customer support for Android and iOS through a lean mobile SDK
The company continues to develop new strategies to optimize in-app customer support. It is moving towards implementing fully digital in-app messaging, reducing the need for SMS support. This will help Wag! serve its customers better by avoiding mobile carrier limitations.
Conclusion
Wag! is a perfect example of how an on-demand company is adopting technology that focuses on customer convenience. By integrating all services in-app, Wag! has a better understanding of their customers, provides high-quality in-app support, and iterates faster on updates and inclusion of new services.
The services provided offer excellent care options depending on what’s needed. Open scheduling ensures that dogs are receiving care while owners are busy with work and other necessities. Even though owners are busy, they are still connected to their dogs and know that loved ones are being properly cared for.
This is why Wag!’s customer support is world class. Wag!’s use of direct access points proves that intelligently routing incoming support communications can be achieved through data analysis and integration with the right tools. In this case, the UJET mobile SDK, natively integrated into Wag!’s mobile app, and usage of the UJET platform has unified agent experiences, proving that it’s possible to give terrific customer support to on-demand services at scale.
Wag! continues to improve support through the real-time and historic reporting that the UJET platform provides. When Wag! integrates messaging in-app, it will create a tighter support flow, giving agents even more relevant customer data, helping them resolve customer support issues even faster.
On-demand companies must adopt mobile as a primary platform for engaging with customers and include more than just the service in-app. It’s evident that when customer support is natively integrated operation metrics will improve and customer satisfaction will soar. Wag! has made this a priority and has already started to reap the benefits!
