The art of asking questions promotes success

How Bofor was a part of Vetcare’s digital strategy by keeping the feedback loop active

Vetcare is a Finland-based group of professionals who help veterinarians succeed in their work and promote animal welfare across the entire value chain. The sales team needed a field application that would increase the quality and usability of customer data and make it instantly visible to everyone. The task itself was a straightforward one, but creating something the users actually wanted to use, demanded much more than just building a system. We needed to get deeper into the how and why to be able to provide the tools and processes that transition our team to a  data-driven sales team.

Show you care and people will work with you

”Bofor’s commitment to keeping the communication alive was quite impressive and probably the sole reason we made the initial breakthrough with our sales team. Bofor’s team really showed that they cared about us and the happiness of our team. When I realized that our people are taking genuine ownership of the process was a real moment of pride for me”, Mika Pyykkö from Vetcare states.

The process was well planned together and the project spanned over the summer holidays. This created some challenges in keeping the feedback loop active. ”Bofor’s team never stopped asking follow-up questions, that kept us going forward even though we thought we had already accomplished our initial goal”, Pyykkö concludes.

The core reveals itself to the one who makes the best follow-up questions

A lot of feedback can muddy up the waters quickly if there is not enough experience and insight to keep the development process on track. ”We made observations from the feedback stream and used qualitative and quantitative criteria to value the relevance of each idea. How many people would use this feature, how it will affect their work, how much it would cost to make it etc.”, Eeva Leskinen from Bofor says. ”It can get a little tiresome at times. But asking a lot of questions, listening closely to the answers, then making follow-up questions, and listening again helped us define what actually needs to be done. This is the true art of challenging the customer-even when things look good. By using this “coaching” methodology we ensure that the end result meets and exceeds the expectation-Eeva adds.

Vetcare wants to ensure that people have everything they need to take good care of animals. They sell, promote, export, and develop medicines and other products that increase animal welfare.