Putting customers at the heart of business is key for Sebastiaan

Veterinarian Dr Sebastiaan Theuns is passionate about diagnosing infectious diseases. In 2020, he co-founded PathoSense – an app that allows vets to collect samples and diagnose infectious diseases quickly and easily. In 2022, Sebastiaan participated in the Scale-up Masterclass at Vlerick. Here are the insights he gained…

insights-Sebastiaan-Theuns

The importance of the customer journey

“The first thing the programme does is trigger your critical thinking,” he says. “We explored how our customers – and indeed, future customers – interact with the company, and their touchpoints along the way. To map out our existing customer journey, I had to critically examine it.

“This was a very useful exercise for us. We realised that although we had a high-quality product, we weren’t paying enough attention to customer experience. We learned we needed to create a certain type of experience – and a ‘wow moment’ for the customer as quickly as possible. Because if they see our customer service and onboarding as ‘wow’ – they’re more likely to use our services.

“We knew we had to improve our customer journey to meet our sales targets and win new customers.”

After identifying the weaknesses in the PathoSense customer journey, Sebastiaan and his team implemented two practical changes.

Developing a consistent marketing strategy

“Our aim is to make sure veterinary practitioners get a consistent experience when they interact with the PathoSense brand,” he says. “So our first step was to set up our social media presence and make sure we communicate consistently through different channels.”

Providing a real onboarding process

“One of our challenges was that our customers weren’t getting a warm welcome when they registered. So we decided we needed to give them a proper introduction to our product – and provide a real onboarding process. We now have a clear welcome page and a customer success team. A key KPI is that new customers actually use our services a month after registration.

“To help our customers get as much from our services as possible, we plan to offer further support – including webinars and live events to share practical tips and tricks to help them get started.”

Taking his organisation to the next level

Sebastiaan says: “The Scale-up Masterclass really highlighted that improving customer experience can enhance the entire customer journey. We’re now implementing a strategy to boost awareness of our brand – and make sure our customers interact with our brand more frequently.”

The Scale-up Masterclass is a three-month, online learning experience for founders and C-level executives of fast-growing companies. 

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Sylien Kesteleyn

Sylien Kesteleyn

Portfolio Manager