PetGroomBossPro Blog — Pet Grooming Software

The Customer App and Live Map: Letting Pet Owners See the Grooming Van Coming

Pet owners like to know what is happening with their pets, and they like to know when the van is coming. A customer app gives them both without a single phone call to your office. It also gives them a place to pay, tip and book again, which is good for you.

One Step Past the Text

Texts and Reminders for Mobile Pet Grooming: Night Before, On the Way and Arrived covered the alerts that go out on their own. The customer app is where an owner goes when they want to see more than a text can say.

The Live Map

On grooming day, the customer app shows today's route on a live map. The owner sees where they are in line, in plain words: “You're stop 12 of 20 — the groomer is 5 stops away.”

For a mobile groomer, that sentence does a lot of work. The owner who is working from home knows when to step away from the desk. The owner with a dog that gets excited at the door knows when to put the harness on. And the office phone does not ring with “Is the groomer still coming today?”

The live map is privacy-friendly: the owner sees their own place in line and the van's progress, not the names or addresses of the other stops.

Alerts They Choose

The customer app is also where owners set their alert preferences: the night before, when they are next, and when the groomer arrives. Each owner picks what suits them, and you do not have to manage that list by hand.

Requesting Service and Signing Up

Owners can request service from the app, whether that is an extra bath before a holiday or a first groom for a new puppy. Those requests come to the office to be scheduled, the same way a booking page request does.

Owners can also sign up for services and see pricing in the app. A client who has been booking one-off grooms can look at a repeat schedule and sign up for it without a back-and-forth.

Invoices, Cards and Payments

Every invoice shows in the customer app. Owners can see what they were charged for, pay an open invoice online, and update their card when it expires or they switch banks. That last one matters more than it sounds. An expired card is one of the most common reasons an invoice goes unpaid, and letting the owner fix it themselves saves a call. Card-on-file billing is covered in Card on File for Mobile Pet Grooming: Paid Before the Van Pulls Away.

Tips on Paid Invoices

Once an invoice is paid, the owner can leave a tip from the app: $10, $20, $30 or another amount. Some owners never carry cash, and a tip button on the paid invoice gives them an easy way to thank the groomer. The tips side is covered in the next guide, Tips in Pet Grooming Software: Letting Customers Tip the Groomer on a Paid Invoice.

Rate and Refer

Owners can rate their visit and refer friends from the app. For a mobile groomer, word of mouth in a neighborhood is often how a route fills in, and giving happy owners an easy way to pass your name along helps that happen.

What It Means for the Office

Add it up and the customer app takes a lot of small calls and texts off the office's plate:

• “When will the groomer get here?” — the live map
• “Can I get a reminder the night before?” — alert preferences
• “Can you send me my invoice?” — invoices in the app
• “My card expired.” — update card
• “Can I add a bath next week?” — request service

None of those questions are hard. They are just constant, and every one answered by the app is one fewer interruption for a groomer or office manager.

Installed Like an App, No Store Needed

Like the groomer app, the customer app runs in the browser on iPhone and Android, and customers can add it to their home screen so it opens like any other app. There is no app store listing to find and nothing large to download. For a pet owner who just wants to see when the van is coming, that matters: they tap a link once, and from then on it is one tap from their home screen on grooming day.

Telling Clients About It

The customer app is only useful if owners know it exists. Mention it when you book a new client, include it in your welcome message, and point people to it when they text with a question it can answer. Owners who start using it tend to keep using it, especially on grooming day.

For more on how the customer side fits with the rest of PetGroomBossPro, go back to the pet grooming software page.