Smart Marketing – What Chewy Does When a Pet Passes

Losing a pet is one of the hardest things a family can go through.

Chewy knows that better than most brands.

The pet food delivery service has a response for customers who lose a pet that sets a high bar for customer service and compassion.

When a pet dies, most people’s first thought isn’t to cancel their food subscription. When that recurring delivery shows up, it creates a new wave of emotions for pet owners.

When owners contact Chewy, the company refunds the delivery. It can’t take the food back, so it encourages the owner to keep or donate the food to a local shelter.

Then, it goes the extra mile: It sends a sympathy card, and sometimes flowers or memorial stones, to the owner.

You can guess how people react when they receive sympathies from Chewy. They tell their friends. They post about it on social media. They feel a little bit better and think fondly of Chewy.

Forging Deeper Connections

Chewy’s outreach when a pet passes away isn’t a guaranteed policy. But it’s a regular undertaking from the company’s “Wow team” which works to surprise and delight pets and pet parents.  

Chewy understands the power of connection, even in the hardest moments of pet ownership. Here’s Chewy’s Shiv Menon, Vice President, Chief Customer Care Officer, on the outsized impact the Wow team has on customers:

“They talk about how we made them feel, not just about the problems we helped solve.”

The sad reality is, for a company like Chewy, the passing of a pet is an expected and frequent step in the sales cycle. By forging deeper connections with customers, especially at that point, it imparts goodwill that makes them more likely to restart their subscription when they welcome a new pet into their home.