CitizenShipper Expands Pet Protection Program and Solidifies Place as Safest Pet Transportation Provider

Pet Protection Program Impact

When it comes to the impact of CitizenShipper's original program and now its expanded add-on program, three categories have been influenced: building a culture of innovation, using peace of mind as a differentiator, and influencing bottom-line growth.

Culture of Innovation & User Experience
Obousy, shares a story that transformed the way his company thinks about user experience - all stemming from the launch of their expanded protection program. When they initially launched their program, sales were slow to start. There were lots of options on the table to investigate why that might be. Most people would be quick to experiment with the price or the coverage itself but that isn’t where Obousy and his innovations and optimizations team began. 

They started with the customer experience, making small tweaks and changes to the UI/UX of how their protection offer was positioned. Through several meticulous tests and tracking results, they found they were able to significantly improve the program performance - without adjusting the price or coverage. 

“When we only had a few sales in the first week, instead of saying, ‘this is a failure’, we said, ‘Okay, let's start thinking about this’. We believed in the value proposition. So we deliberately and sequentially made consistent modifications to the UI/UX. 
We changed the placement, some of the language, and what was pre-selected or auto-selected. This diligence took us from one sale in two weeks to now a growing and healthy program.”

This commitment to user experience has driven success for the program and transformed the way CitizenShipper thinks about its platform as a whole. They’ve taken this experiment and expanded it over their full platform, reimagining a better experience for their customers from every angle. “The presentation impacts the way customers make their decisions and this one example rippled into other areas of the platform and how we evaluate the user experience.”

Peace of Mind as a Differentiator
CitizenShipper stands apart from the competition in more ways than one. They’ve always had a strong commitment to the health and well-being of the pets they transport. Their protection programs allow their entire team to feel they are concretely living up to their values as a company. At the same time, they have secured a key competitive advantage.

“With our protection program in place, we have a technology moat around us, in an area critical to our differentiation in the market. We’re the first and only marketplace in the country to offer this protection for pets and the technologically embedded nature of the program has enhanced our star standing as the country’s number one pet transportation marketplace.”

Their full protection suite which started with our Pet Protection Program with Tint and expanded into TeleVet services and driver verification reinforces for their team that the company is who it says it is, a company that cares about pets and does everything in their power to ensure their well-being. 

You might think that this benefit is only felt by the people who work at CitizenShipper or the pet owners looking to transport their pets but Obousy tells us a moving story about how the protection program influences their transportation providers. Some drivers that work with CitizenShipper also source work from other community-based platforms. 

One driver wrote to the team asking if they could put the job through CitizenShipper’s platform to be sure the Pet Protection Program was included for the route. “It was a huge compliment for us and is indicative of how popular this program is with the drivers as well. They seek us out. They want to use CitizenShipper, in part, because of this protection we’ve built with Tint.”

Bottom Line Growth

While the Pet Protection Program is a big hit with both sides of CitizenShipper’s two-sided marketplace, it is also driving significant bottom-line growth for the business. Obsousy says, “It's important for us to track key performance indicators for all of the upgrades we do. We're a very data-driven company. We make decisions based on what the data is telling us.”

So, what are the key performance indicators that CitizenShipper is tracking to determine the success of their program? At a very high level, it comes down to two key metrics:

Revenue 
Loss Ratio

Pet Protection Program Revenue
Revenue is generated per transaction for the add-on protection options offered to CitizenShipper customers. The team tracks the number of times a customer is presented with an additional protection offer. Each checkout experience represents an opportunity for conversion and revenue. By vigilantly tracking both, the team can measure the growth of the program over time. This may represent the top-line growth but with each embedded protection or insurance program, there are also losses. 

Loss Ratio Helps Define Ultimate Success

For each program, measuring the loss ratio helps determine the overall success of the program. The loss ratio, in assurance programs, takes into account the volume of cases (similar to claims) that are created and the number of payments made against those cases. If a program has a high loss ratio, the program may not be healthy or viable because it loses money. However, a loss ratio that is too low may not be providing the value or protection your customers truly need. 

Having a healthy loss ratio, like CitizenShipper, indicates that the program is generating revenue and is also providing a compelling benefit to those it was built to protect. 

Embedded Protection As a Long-Term Growth Strategy

While Obousy and his team started their journey with embedded protection over two years ago, they are continually looking for ways to leverage protection as a growth tool. By expanding their program earlier this year, they demonstrated the power that protection and peace of mind play in their business. Obousy continues to look for ways to increase the value it provides to its customers with additional protection and hopes to expand the program further in the coming years. When asked if he would consider Tint for the expansion of his program or recommend Tint to someone else looking to start a program, he replied immediately saying, “I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.”