Using the customer journey as a tool to assess customer satisfaction of dairy farmers in a large animal veterinary practice

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 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.