As the final article in our coverage of the 5 P’s of Pet Licensing, we will be discussing Place, or in other terms how a pet license is bought and where it is bought. With over 28% of Pet Licensing Program Managers indicating that they believe pet owners do not license their pets due to a lack of convenience, it is extremely important to question what you can do to make the registration process easier for residents of your community.
In early 2019 we conducted our 2nd annual Pet Licensing Industry Research Report. We compiled data on over 600 pet licensing programs to obtain regional averages regarding a variety of program attributes, including the frequency of different licensing locations.
What We Learned:
Animal Shelters and Municipal Offices were the most frequently cited options, with almost 80% of organizations offering these methods, and that Online Licensing was one of the least selected options, with only 50% of Pet Licensing Organizations implementing it.
However, when we conducted the same research just a year prior, we saw that only 36% of pet licensing organizations in North America offered an option for their residents to license their pets online. That’s a whopping 39% increase year over year.
You might be wondering, “what’s changed?”, and the answer is the pet owner’s behavior as a consumer as well as their expectations. In the new digital age, where learning to Google something is a basic life-skill by the age of 6, customers expect to be able to license their pets easily online. Anything that obstructs them from this process, whether it be a complex policy, a lack of available licensing locations, or restricted hours, will immediately cause customer frustration or even worse, a sharp decline in license sales.
Food For Thought:
Remember when you wanted to book a trip somewhere and you would have to find a travel agent. You would need to schedule an appointment to go speak with them over a counter as they showed you their current options. They would use an old computer system to print off your tickets. You’d arrive at the airport 3 hours early and wait in line just to get your boarding pass before you could even think about going through security.
However, now you go online to an app, book your ticket, have your boarding pass ready to go before you even enter the airport and simply scan your phone. This level of service and convenience is expected in almost every industry today.
Therefore, when managing a pet licensing program it is essential to keep licensing as simple and convenient as possible. If not, you will experience customer frustration and they will put the task off for later, or perhaps never at all.
Pet owners expect a program that gives them a quick reminder each year, where they can click a link, confirm their details, and pay within 5-10 minutes. By catalyzing the process and removing the pain points, not only do you keep pet licensing up with the trends of today, but you offer the same standards that you, yourself expect as a customer.