Customer journey mapping and online self-service’s impact on call volume, donations, and time between finding an animal and admission at wildlife hospitals

A sudden, unprecedented 67 percent increase in call volume over a single year resulted in slower response times for customers seeking accurate advice regarding injured, orphaned, or nuisance wildlife issues. These delays not only impacted customer service standards but also delayed animal admissions into the hospital, increasing the potential for inappropriate care, undue suffering, kidnapping, less effective treatment for critical conditions and poor outcomes. Donations simultaneously declined by 21 percent, despite helping a record number of individuals through phone counsel, limiting the ability to increase staff or employ other costly solutions to help with call volume and subsequent delays to advice. PAWS (Progressive Animal Welfare Society) Wildlife Center employed concepts of customer journey mapping to create a low-cost, user-friendly module for comprehensive, situation-specific, online self-service. To expand solicitation to all customers rather than the ones who arrive onsite, the module included a request for donation when the user reached their answer. The launch of online self-service technology correlated to a significant reduction in call volume but did not significantly influence the donations received or time between finding an animal and presenting them for care.