722: The Missing Link Between Employee Retention and Client Loyalty
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Pet Sitters Associates. Use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
Pet Perennials- Visit: https://petperennials.com/pages/register-for-a-business-account
What if the biggest reason clients and employees stay has nothing to do with pricing, pay, or perks? In this episode, we explore how understanding why each visit matters transforms ordinary pet care into meaningful service. We discuss the difference between simply completing tasks and delivering genuine care, and how giving your team client context changes the way they show up. We also share two practical systems that strengthen both employee engagement and client retention. Together, we’ll discover how purpose and feedback create a healthier business for everyone involved.
Main topics:
Finding purpose behind visits
Task quality versus care
Client context for teams
Feedback strengthens retention
Building meaningful systems
Main takeaway: “The walk is just the delivery mechanism. The freedom we give families is the product.”
We’re not simply walking dogs or scooping litter boxes. We’re giving someone the confidence to travel, attend a wedding, recover from surgery, work a long shift, or finally take the vacation they’ve been putting off. Every visit represents a person who is trusting us with something deeply important.
When our teams understand why they’re showing up—not just what they’re supposed to do—the quality of care naturally changes. And when we consistently share client feedback with the people who earned it, purpose becomes something they can see, not just hear about.
Purpose creates better care. Better care creates stronger relationships. And stronger relationships build businesses that last.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
Welcome to Pet Sitter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at Pet Sitters Associates and Pet Perennials. I was recently doing a one-year review with an employee, and as part of this process, we sit down and we spend 3045, minutes just talking about their time with the company, how they view their role expanding, and what they've liked and not liked about the job up until that point. And inevitably, I work my courage up and I work myself up to asking them the question that I hate the most. At this point, what would make you leave this job? I asked that recently, and the response back wasn't what I was expecting. He he basically said there is no reason that I would ever leave this job, and the reason for that is the sense of purpose that I get from this, I said, "Okay, well, great. What's the purpose? He said that he gets to give people freedom in their personal lives to step out and live as they want to, while he gets to be part of their family and connect with their pets and make a positive impact. And I. I didn't know how to respond. I've never had somebody connect so deeply with what we do and how we do it, or maybe just have never articulated it in such a wonderful way. This was this is exactly what we try and get across in all of our marketing tactics and all of our ad copy and website and email newsletters, and he pulled it off in so fast that I I had to write it down. And here's what I came back to: is that the reason that he stays with us is the same reason that our clients stay with us. the The reason he loves being here is the connection, is the purpose, is the help. It's the same reason the clients stay with us, the connection, the purpose, the help, just from the different side of the coin. I think this is the entire ball game. This is not a coincidence, and it's what I want to talk about today. First, we have to ask ourselves: What are clients actually buying? When clients reach out to us, what are they actually wanting to spend money on? I'll answer it for you. Clients do not hire us to walk their dog. They do not hire us to take care of their cat or scoop their litter. They hire us so that they can say yes to things: the work trip, the anniversary dinner, the vacation that they've been putting off for three years, the high school reunion. They say yes to those, and they need our help to do that. And what my employee described, right? Giving people freedom while becoming part of their family-that's the product. That is what we sell. The walk is just-it just so happens to be the perfect delivery mechanism for for for this. When and when a client feels seen and trusted with what matters most to them, price sensitivity kind of just drops away when they see a connection there. When they understand that we we get them. They move forward. That helps bridge that gap between where they are and actually using our services. That's what they want. They want to feel trusted. See, they're not comparison shopping. We often get into this discussion, don't we? Of who are my quote unquote competitors? And let me tell you right now that you have a lot more community than competition with where you are, and we want to be building and fostering that. We also have to be honest that clients are looking at other people, they're price shopping, they are comparing and looking from one to the other to see who can help and how they are going to fill their needs the best, and an app, a side gig, something like that-that's not becoming part of their family. Retention is not one at the invoice, and honestly, this is often where it's lost, because this is where the client takes their feelings and processes them and puts them down, and they see it in black and white in front of them, and they understand. Okay, now do my feelings match the cost in front of me?
Collin 4:54
This is why we spend a lot of time thinking about how do I become the bill that you look. Forward to, or at least the bill that you are thankful to receive. How do we do that? We have to win at the visit. We have to win with the photos, with the report. We have to win with the client experience up to that point. We win in whether the person showing up understands why they are there, and that is a massive gap. We had built out all of the context in the world about every single one of our clients. I did. I had that. I had all of the history, the quirks, the reason that they book, the reason that they don't book, the backstory for the dog, why we were there in the first place, right? I understood the elderly client whose walker's visit is the highlight of her day. I knew that because she told me that, but I recognize we recognize that our team had none of that. All they knew this is what they knew about the client. They have a pet that needs to be cared for. Period. That was it, and they had an amazing SOP to go along with that. They had that context. They had the tasks to complete and execute. I was serving the family with this. They were checking off a to-do list. It was the same visit, but two completely different jobs were being done, and nobody knew about it for the longest time. And and here's really the danger with this, and it's a it's it doesn't sound like much, but it can make or break the difference in a client sticking around. A task executer, a dog walker, a pet sitter, can deliver task quality. A person who knows the why delivers care quality. Task quality versus care quality. They can really nail scooping the litter box, or sweeping the floor, or holding a leash; those are tasks to be done. But the care, the overarching, the whole purpose, the reason, the everything that we are there-that is what clients feel, and they feel the difference between that, even though they might not be able to name exactly what's going on. You can think of it this way: a coldly feelingless, perfectly executed checkbox, or a warm, welcoming, holistic understanding of that client's needs and the needs of their pet. And this this was my problem. This was Megan's problem. This was the owner's problem, not the team's problem. They didn't have any context. They didn't have any more context to go on than what we gave them. It all lived in again. It lived in my head because it was never built. I never built a way to get it out. And so, here's what matters to every single person. If you are listening to this, this really matters, because if you don't have a team right now, you might be checking out. You might be thinking, "Great, well, I have all that context, so this isn't important to me. Well, here's the thing: Everybody drifts into task mode. Everybody drifts into task mode, depending on your day, your mood, how you slept, how you ate or didn't. Did you have your coffee? Did you not have your coffee? Did you have too much coffee? Are you again? Are you really slammed that day? Are you really anxious and worried about what's coming up? We all drift into task mode. It's visit 40 of the month, and we're tired. It becomes repetitious. All we're doing is just showing up in checkbox, checkbox, checkbox, checkbox. The question for every single person who does this kind of work is the exact same. Do you know why you are showing up at each home, or are we just showing up? Showing up is definitely half the battle. It's one of the most important things. Just seriously, just show up to the client's house. But do we know why I'm there? Why am I am I walking the dog? Okay, that's some context. Who am I walking a dog for? Why did they call me? Why do they need me today at this time? Purpose drift across businesses, whether you're solo or you have a team, it all shows up in burnout first, and then client churn later. These two things. Are inseparable.
Collin 10:01
The quality of our care is directly related to how many of our clients churn, and if I default to task checking off and check boxes, I will have more clients churn through my business because they don't have the care quality that they actually need. Something that you need is amazing pet business insurance. Part of being trusted like family is being protected like a professional. Pet Centers Associates has been helping pet care pros like you with pet care insurance since 1998. Whether you are solo or running a team, you get access to affordable liability coverage for your business. Visit petsitllc.com and use the code confessional at checkout. That's petsitllc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. Hopefully, I've convinced you that this is important and we should pay attention. But what do we actually do about this? How do we actually tactically change this in our business. If I want my employees or if I want myself to stay connected to the why, so that my clients can feel seen and have quality care and stick around, it's also true that when my team feel connected to the purpose, they also stick around as well, and it increases client and team retention. So, what did we do? How do we actually change this? Well, here's an idea for you. In your visit notes, in the scheduling details, start adding a purpose line. All it is is just one sentence that says, "Why do these visits exist? And and you can even say things like, "Hey, the purpose of this trip, the mom is recovering from surgery and can't do the morning walk right now, or or maybe it's families at their daughter's wedding this weekend, first trip away since they got the puppy, or client works 12-hour hospital shifts. This midday visit is the only bathroom break that Gus gets, and notice what's actually happening here: the sitter, the dog walker-they're no longer completing just a 30-minute visit. They're giving a recovering client her peace of mind, or they're protecting a wedding weekend. I really think that that changes how somebody shows up for that visit that changes without us having to say a single word to them, without us having to to bold or highlight anything else in the client notes or in the SOP or train any different in our onboarding process. It it changes how someone prepares, it changes their mindset around the entire visit because they know the why, they know the people that they're helping. It's such this it's this quality mechanism that you introduce a little bit of, and people run with this because they're gonna they're gonna self correct. They're gonna linger the extra couple minutes with the anxious dog. They're gonna craft a a little bit better of an update because they know the family at that wedding is refreshing their phone constantly because it's they haven't left the puppy in years. Again, this is so great because it's not me adding a checklist or a rule for them to follow or not follow. All I'm doing, all we do, is add meaning, and and it's the meaning that adds the enforcement to them. This becomes a self-governing rule because just saying we show up and we help people. It is so broad and it's so wonderful and it's beautifully what we do. But the added context that direct I help this person with this thing when I show up at 215 on Tuesday, it's so much more powerful, not just for me, but for my team as well. It's also a training shortcut. Being perfectly honest, you don't have to sit there because this is what I found myself doing. Is when we would train on a new client, I would give some of this background, I would give some of the history, I'd give some of this context, but as a new hire, it'd be completely lost on them because they're so worried and freaking out about did they remember to lock the door? Are they holding the leash right? Did they take the photo with good lighting? That that's what they're worried about on day one through 30.
Collin 14:37
Okay, they're they're not absorbing client back history and story time with with owner Collin are they no this allows them this allows every new hire that comes through our door that we train to absorb our client philosophy one visit at a time instead of trying to put all this down in a manual that they're going to skim. Once and they're never going to read or watch a video and then completely forget because they have 15 more videos that they have to watch. This is an in-your-face, constant, daily, multiple times a day reminder of the meaning of their work. So, what is? How do you actually do this? Well, you know who you have on your schedule for this week. So go ahead and look forward just one week. Maybe it's your 10 most active clients, or just who's on your schedule for this week, and write one purpose sentence for each one of them. And here's the thing that also happens: if you can't write one, it is also illuminating for how well you know that client, or your team knows that client, and so ask them, "Hey, we're watching Vaxter on Thursday. Does anyone know why? Ask your admin, ask your scheduling team, ask the people who are actually doing the visit because they may have some context clues. They see the writings that are on the fridge. They see the calendars that are out on the table. They may even be talking to the clients. This happens all the time. Oh, the client was home. They're so excited to be leaving for this weekend. They want to, you know, they told me about X, Y, Z. Great. Let's write that down. Let's give make sure that we are capturing that context. And once you have it, put it where the team is already looking. Whether that's in the visit notes, the client profile, your scheduling details. Do not go through and try and create an entire document dedicated to purpose of client visits that you have to just don't do that. That no one's going to open it anyway. You're never going to remember to refresh it or update as things change, and it's just going to go off into the dark recesses of your computer storage. Put it where people are already looking, and importantly here, make it part of onboarding new clients. It's just one question in the meet and greet. Hey, what does having us come in let you do? And you might not even have to ask this. A lot of people just tell you why they're talking to you, why they are reaching out. But if they don't, ask them. It's a real simple question. You're not going to be butting in, or you're not going to be making people feel bad. But hey, what does having us here help you do? Or or how are we helping you? And then keep it to one sentence. It's a compass, not a case file. It's going to be really, really tempting to start writing and going in and adding all of these extra details and all of the nitty gritty and all of the past history and everything, simplify it. There's one reason that you're here, maybe two. Put it in a sentence. And again, have this documented whether you have a team or not. Because what's wonderful is that you can read these on your hard days. This is far and away one of the fastest burnout antidotes that I know of. When I am feeling just destroyed from the week, and it is grueling to the core, and I'm on yet another 15-hour day, and I see that client profile that says our visits help the owner be in rehab and get the help that they need. Okay, we're showing up. We got this, we got this. Now maybe we can get in some help, get some fresh people in there, but we stay connected because it's not just the mission of the company. Okay, it's the mission for this client. It's the mission for this walk. It all comes together, and now I know why we are here. That's the first tactic that gets us the why and why we are showing up. But we've got to close this loop, and that's what we'll be doing right after I tell you about pet perennials being part of the family.
Collin 19:15
One of the hardest parts of this is the work when a client loses their pet. Pet Perennials makes it easy to show up for your clients in those moments with sympathy gifts shipped directly to them. And our absolute favorite part about these are the handwritten cards that come along with these. You type in what you'd like to have written, and the amazing people that Pet Perennials handwrite them onto a card, sign them for you, and then ship those off with the gift that you selected. And the best part about this is that they have a gifts perks program that has no fees and no minimums, designed specifically for small businesses like yours and like ours. Learn more and open a free gift perks account. At petperenials.com, the second tactic that we have to implement is closing the loop, and what this is all about is feedback, because feedback is the proof of the purpose. Remember, tactic one is the why. Well, this is what is going on. The why am I here? Tactic two is showing your team the impact that they're having. So yeah, client reviews. When you get a client review, even if it doesn't mention a specific employee by name, do you share that out? Do you blast that all over your internal communication systems? And if it does mention someone by name? Are you sending it to them directly, or maybe you get a thank you text? Sometimes it's not a review, but it could just be a hey, this really helped me a lot. I really appreciate you guys coming over here. Screenshot that, send that over to your team, or if you've ever gotten a note in the mail? I've actually enjoyed my vacation for the first time ever. Our tendency as business owners tends is to go great. I've got marketing assets now. I can take these. I can throw these on a cool photo and write a caption, and I can blast these all over social media. Okay, yes, you can do that, but first and foremost, just a huge step to the side here. This, these things that you get back, this feedback, those client reviews, the text, the notes, the phone calls. There are so many phone calls that we get from clients that I will kind of like write out as they are transcribe it, so I don't forget it. I send those to the client of my our team whenever I'm off the phone. These every single one of these are evidence that the purpose is real. Most of us hoard this stuff. It it hits our inbox. We smile. You maybe screenshot it for something else. I'll use this later, and the person who actually earned it never sees it. So we have to build in a routing habit. I've got to build in a system, and yeah, maybe some policies about how these things make it back out to the team. Every piece of client feedback gets forwarded to the sitter to whom it belongs, good and bad. And if you really want to make this amazing, you write a sentence or two that connects it to the purpose. Hey, remember this client? This was the wedding weekend. This is what your visits did. Hey, this is the client who had that back surgery and couldn't scoop their litter. This is the quality of life that he had because you showed up. This is what we did, team. This is what we did. Maybe it's a a wins channel in Slack, or a text thread that you have for the entire team. That the only purpose is for amazing shoutouts. If you do team meetings, I want to encourage you do team meetings. Keep them short. Keep them short and to the point and focused, and people show up and they love them. Read a review at every team meeting that you have. Start off with one. Oh my goodness, how wonderful would that be? Or include feedback in your reviews and your one-on-ones. Hey, Thomas, just wanted to sit down with you and read a couple of the feedback that we've gotten from clients since we last sat down, and man, these are amazing. Let me let me read these to you. This is awesome. I started off by talking about my employee's answer at his one-year review. It it didn't come out of nowhere.
Collin 24:00
It came from an entire year of seeing his impact on families in our community, and the smiles on people's faces, and the letters, and the reviews, and the comments, and the phone calls every time that we show up, and he was so thrilled to be part of a team that was doing that, that was making that kind of was making that kind of change. He celebrated the feedback that maybe he didn't get, but other people got too. It's all a giant circle. I mentioned that we have to share out the feedback regardless. If I only pass along the glowing stuff, the the hoorah, the yay yay stuff, our team, your team, will begin to learn that feedback is a trophy instead of a tool. And this is the danger that we can all fall into: is if we only pay attention to the good stuff and ignore the stuff that maybe I would rather not read. Well, then feedback is just stuff that I collect, right? We have to have the critical feedback, the feedback that actually tells us what we didn't do the best. We have to tell our team when the client mentions that the notes felt rushed this week. This has to move through the same loop as we telling them that the client felt peace at the first time that they had ever left. The same loop, delivered with the same purpose and the same framing. Hey, the client said that the notes felt rushed this week. Just as a reminder, this client trusts us a lot. Here is where we did not meet that. You want to talk about upholding standards? Point to the standards that your clients are helping you set by showing them the purpose of why I'm there. Purpose actually makes hard conversations a lot easier. We shy away from so many hard conversations that we should be having every single day. Because when I give feedback on the notes felt rushed this week, or remember you need to be focusing on spell checking these, and that is not the pet's name. Okay, I'm not saying you broke a rule. I'm saying, hey, here's the family we let down, and here's how we're going to make it right. Here's the steps that we're going to do so this doesn't happen again, and and again, it is easy to hear this episode as things to do for your team, more things for other people to do. But remember, you are not the dispatcher of purpose. You are not just we as the owners, as the business owners and leaders. We are not just hucking out edicts down for other people to do. We ourselves are a participant. We are part of this as well. As you grow your business, if your business grows, if that's what you want, you will get further and further from the visits. This feedback loop that we are talking about, both tactic one and tactic two, write the purpose, get feedback on the purpose. That feedback loop is how we stay connected to the actual business, not the spreadsheet version of it. Here, how do we make money as a dog walking and pet sitting business? Is it by running a spreadsheet on the business, or is it by actually doing dog walks and pet sitting visits? If that's how we generate revenue, if that's the purpose of our business, we better have feedback on that, and it means that we, the owners, the leaders, have to take feedback too, for better or for worse. So when a client churns, we have to ask why, and we have to listen. Did the service meet the purpose? And when a review praises a sitter, a question that I'd like for you to start asking is, what is that person on my team doing that my systems didn't teach them? What are they doing that makes them so awesome, and then we need to teach it to other people. That review that I sat down with my employee. This was feedback to me, to Megan and I, that we have to have; otherwise, we will be completely lost. We will not know how to instruct the next person, and then the next person. He told me what the job actually is to him. My job was to hear it, and now I need to build a system around it.
Collin 29:14
And again, if you are a solo, you are both ends of this loop. Reread your reviews quarterly, and let them tell you what your clients think you sell, because it's probably not what your website says. We look for purpose in and feedback out, and in the middle, in the middle of those two things, the client gets served better and better, and better service is retention. Everything else is just a discount strategy. Put a purpose line on every visit so your team knows why they are showing up, and then route client feedback, good and bad, back to the people. Who earned it, and make sure that you are reading it too. Because when we don't have those things, my team members don't feel connected to their work, and they churn. The more churn I have on that side, the more the decrease I get-a decrease in the quality of service that my clients experience, and then they turn. If my team members aren't connected to the purpose, the quality suffers, and my clients churn. The connection there is tight, and when we get it right, it really undercuts a lot of the problems that we think we have. So your challenge this week, again, I mentioned this already, but your challenge this week is to pick your top 10 clients and write out a purpose line for every single one of them, and then the very next piece of feedback that you get, good or bad, forward it on to someone who has not seen it? My employee said that the best part of the job is giving people their freedom while becoming part of their family. That is not a perk that I put on the hiring ad. He was describing the entirety of our business. Our job as owners is to make sure that everyone doing the work, including us, gets to see that. We want to thank our sponsors today, Petsitters Associates and Pet Perennials, for making this show possible, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. If this episode was beneficial or helpful for you in any way, please share it with a friend or someone who you think needs to hear it this week. We will talk to you soon. Bye.
