Abstract
Customer satisfaction and loyalty are crucial for veterinary practices to sustain. Especially in times when
veterinarians’ turnovers are increasingly based on consultancy, rather than on the sale of medicines.
Large animal veterinary practices are working actively on improving the quality of their services.
However, existing customer satisfaction surveys have many limitations according to
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the literature.
Firstly, this technique only measures customer satisfaction during actual contact with the veterinarian,
while before and after a customer comes in contact with the service, he or she surpassed several other
contact moments. Secondly, mainly closed survey questions are inquired in customer satisfaction
surveys and they are more likely to have shortcomings in obtaining details and depth on the topic.
Thirdly, this technique is vulnerable to selection bias which may result in a sample of respondents which
does not represent the desired population. In this pilot study a new methodology is used: the customer
journey. The aims of the study were: a) to provide insight whether the customer journey methodology
is suitable to apply to dairy farmers in large animal veterinary practices as a new method of measuring
customer satisfaction b) to determine whether using the customer journey methodology, as a tool to
assess customer satisfaction, adds value to the customer satisfaction survey carried out by large animal
veterinary practices.
Twelve randomly selected dairy farmers from one large animal veterinary practice in the Netherlands
were interviewed in October 2016. The quality of the three main services provided by the large animal
veterinary practice, were assessed in three different customer journeys: ‘veterinary herd health
management visits’, the ‘sale of products’ and ‘visits other than veterinary herd health management
visits’ (e.g. emergency care visits). For each service the so-called touchpoints were assessed, being all
steps taken between first interest in the service and aftersales. Farmers graded their perceived quality of
each touchpoint on a visual analogue scale. In addition, they reported an explanation for their perceived
quality and were asked to propose points of improvement.
We consider that this methodology could be suitable to conduct as a new method to measure customer
satisfaction of dairy farmers in large animal veterinary practices, although the current customer journey
methodology was regarded as a time-consuming process. Further research is needed to investigate what
alterations would be suitable to apply, to customize the customer journey methodology to a less timeconsuming process. The customer journey as compared to the customer satisfaction survey, provides
better insight in touchpoints which seem outside of the scope of veterinarians, in many points of
improvement, in the underlying thoughts and feelings due to rich information gathered on each
touchpoint and might be less vulnerable to selection bias. In addition, the curve of the customer journey
graphs determines in which phase customer experiences can be improved, to significantly increase
customer satisfaction. Although the customer journey methodology provides more information on
customer satisfaction, conducting a customer satisfaction survey is less time consuming and therefore is
able to obtain information on customer satisfaction of many people. Both methodologies have their
strengths and weaknesses, and therefore might be conducted simultaneously in large animal veterinary
practices.
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