If you run a pet-care business, you already know that making dogs happy with a tasty treat or scrubbing muddy paws is intuitive, but providing great service to pet parents and building a loyal client base takes time. Time is the one thing most teams don’t have enough of. Phones ring during check-in, messages come in during playgroups, and teams are focused on the wagging tongues and tails in front of them.
That reality was at the heart of Gingr’s recent webinar with our partner, Broadly by Vendasta, where the conversation focused on how pet businesses can protect customer relationships without adding more work to already-full days.
Rather than pitching more marketing efforts, hiring more staff, or extending your already busy teams, the session explored a simpler idea: What would improve when every inquiry gets a response, every time, through tools that a reported 62% of the population are already using?
Pet-care businesses are often small teams doing a lot. Front-desk staff juggle check-ins, phone calls, tours, payments, and questions (often all at once). It’s not that inquiries aren’t important; it’s that they arrive at the worst possible moments.
During the webinar, the Broadly team shared what they consistently hear from pet businesses:
Can you relate? If so, you might be missing out on potential opportunities that don’t always feel obvious in the moment.
One stat shared during the session stood out: Most potential clients who don’t get a response from a pet business they reach out to don’t try again. They simply move on, and often without leaving any feedback. From the business’s perspective, nothing seems “broken,” but growth quietly stalls.
Today’s pet parents don’t always call first. Many start with a website chat, a text, or a DM often after hours. They’re usually looking for quick answers to questions like:
If those questions go unanswered for too long, they keep searching. Not because your business isn’t a good fit, but because responsiveness has become part of trust. Not only that, but from a practical perspective, those leads may be in a hurry to make an appointment before a vacation, back-to-school season, or right after welcoming a new puppy to the family.
This mismatch between modern customer expectations and real-world staffing limitations is where many pet businesses get stuck.
The webinar introduced the potential for artificial intelligence tools to help pet-care businesses in important and realistic ways.
AI is not a replacement for staff, but it can act as additional support in the moments humans can’t always cover. Think of it less as “technology” and more as a backup teammate. With built-in AI tools offered through your pet-care software, this bonus support can:
As Gunnar Johnson from Broadly put it during the session, great service alone doesn’t scale, but great service supported by AI can.
One of the most useful parts of the webinar was a walkthrough of how an AI "receptionist" works in a real pet-business scenario. Instead of a traditional contact form on your website, AI-powered chat invites conversation.
It can:
This matters because customers are far more likely to share their information after they’ve received value.
Once that information is collected, you don’t get a vague notification — you receive a clear summary of:
No guessing. No starting from scratch.
Another takeway from the webinar focused on missed phone calls — a reality for nearly every pet facility during peak hours, even in 2026! Instead of a voicemail that may never get returned, AI can automatically follow up with a text message, continue the conversation, answer questions, and collect contact details.
In practical terms:
All of this happens quietly in the background, while your team focuses on pets, safety, and in-person care.
Between website forms, texts, emails, social messages, and calls, conversations can easily scatter. The webinar highlighted the benefit of bringing all customer communication into one central inbox.
That means:
For busy pet businesses, this kind of organization is all about consistency, efficiency, and peace of mind.
The session also touched on reputation management, an area many Gingr users already know Broadly for.
Automated review requests help capture feedback from pet parents while the experience is still fresh. Imagine a new puppy mom picks up her pooch with a fresh cut, smelling nice, and a sweet little bowtie, giving her lots of happy kisses as she walks through the door. Her payment method is stored on file, so she doesn't have to fumble around to check out and can be on her way, happy and smiling, ready to give your business the five gold stars it deserves.
On the flip side, but just as importantly, unhappy customers are given a private channel to share concerns (often before they turn into public reviews).
Over time, this creates:
One of the clearest messages from the webinar was this: Many pet businesses don’t actually need more leads... they need fewer missed moments.
When inquiries from pet parents are answered quickly, follow-ups are consistent, and conversations don’t fall through the cracks, growth becomes less about doing more and more about letting existing effort work harder.
If you’d like to see the full presentation and hear the discussion firsthand, the webinar recording is available to watch anytime.
AI tools from Broadly by Vendasta are available to Gingr users at special discounted pricing. Book time with Broadly to get the details!