Should you let your dog walkers or pet sitters have free contact with your owners?

As you add employees or independent contractors to your pet service you need to consider what level of contact they will have with your owners. Will you allow them to have free contact with your clients? Or will you control the conversation and have all information go through the office? There are positives and negatives to each option.

Allowing direct contact between walkers/sitter and clients:

The Positives:

* allowing direct contact frees you up from having to do the scheduling, requests, complaints, etc.

* this will give you a few extra hours in the day to so what you want, that you wouldn't have normally had

* direct contact with the walkers/sitters will make the clients' experience even more personal

The negatives:

* you lose control of company message

* you are still responsible for walkers actions yet aren't part of conversation

* the client's connection becomes with walker and less with company

* clients and walkers/sitters will become less loyal to you and you might experience more walkers working behind your back

* some walkers are simply not good communicators and not good with people

* walkers should just concentrate on the walking dogs during the day (not billing, random questions and minutia)

NOT allowing direct contact between walkers/sitter and clients:

The Positives:

* you are able to better control the message of your company

* you can stay on top of the pulse of your company and better notice trends for better and worse

* you can centralize your billing, scheduling and training processes

* your clients will stay more loyal to you

* your clients will more appreciate the job you do for them

The negatives:

* there will be rare occasions where the client contacting you instead of the walker or sitter will not be ideal (but as I say while having contact only go through the office might not be perfect it's the best thing going)

* you or your office manager will have more work to do

* you or your office manager will become essential to the daily running of your business (days off will become difficult to take unless more than one person knows how to run the office)

* some clients will balk at this policy (make your contact policy clear in your application before they get started - I have clients initial my policies before getting started)

* some clients will never accept your policy (you should highly consider getting rid of clients like this - if you have made your policies clear to them ahead of time you have nothing to apologize for) wants tips on parting ways with a client? buy my book if you haven't already (^_^)

Special Note:

* I would only apply the policy of having all communication go through the office if you make your walkers and sitters employees. I would not use this method if you classify your walkers and sitters as independent contractors.