Claire Lorman

Petco: Designing a support system

for the new pet parent

Project overview

Petco identified a gap in the market for new pet parents and turned to us for insights and innovative solutions. Recognizing the critical role their employees play as the first point of contact, they expanded the project to include staff perspectives.

For the portrayal of Callum Hayes I utilized a photograph by Justin Clark available on Unsplash. This image, captured on August 26, 2018, can be freely used for both personal and commercial purposes under Unsplash's license, which does not require attribution.

Role

Senior designer

Team

1 director

2 senior designers

1 strategist

Timing

8 weeks

Initial research & discovery

Since our brief included both pet parents and Petco employees, we visited Petco stores in person, speaking with different departments and types of employees (such as vets, groomers, and sales floor associates). Observing them interact with customers helped us better understand their pain points and begin ideating potential solutions to improve their day-to-day experience.

“If it wasn’t for my customers, I would have quit a long time ago; we just don’t get the support we need [from Petco]"

Vet technician, Sunset Park Petco

To better understand the mindset of new pet parents, we interviewed a group of owners with varying levels of experience. From these interviews, we began crafting our journeys.

We combined the pet parent and employee interviews into what we called a "new parent journey." This journey went through several iterations before we arrived at the final representations of both experiences.

Translating research

into a journey map

We designed concepts within each phase of the journey, which were then presented to the client for refinement. When storytelling, we ensured each concept stayed aligned with the phase it was addressing, as each phase had specific needs for both parents and employees.

The team at Petco then selected two concept directions to pursue —

the ones they found most applicable and innovative.

Allowing the pet parent’s community to support them even before their arrival — giving them some much-needed pre adoption confidence.

Pet parents feel more informed and empowered as they embark on their ownership journey through easier access to up-to-date information.

Meanwhile, employees gain a more transparent view of their customers when and where they need it.

As part of our deliverables, we created in-depth service blueprints to help the client better understand how to implement our solutions. Knowing that blueprints can often overwhelm non-designers, we broke them into more digestible pieces for the presentation.

Creating service

blueprints

Impact

Since our engagement, Petco has since launched a section of their website dedicated to the new pet parent and have included a more 'new parent' focused end cap in stores. Many of our suggestions were reflected, and our journey phases were illustrated as part of the page.