The clients who come back

Every new client costs you something: the enquiry, the meet-and-greet, learning an animal you have never met, the risk that it does not work out. A returning client costs none of that.

Rover publishes what its Star Sitter status needs, and it is worth reading whichever platform you came from. Alongside a high rating it asks for at least two repeat clients in six months and for 95% of requests answered inside 24 hours. Two of the five criteria are about answering people rather than about the care.

What makes somebody book you again

It is rarely the thing you think. Owners cannot see most of what you did well. They can see whether they felt informed, and whether their animal seemed happy when they got back.

• One unprompted photo a day beats a long message at the end. It answers the question they are actually asking.
• Say what happened, not that everything is fine. "Ate all her dinner, slept on the sofa" is specific. "All good!" tells them nothing and reads as filler.
• Tell them about problems first and early. Owners forgive things they were told about far more readily than things they discover.
• Leave the house the way you would want to find it. It is the last thing they see and it colors everything.

Ask, once, at the right moment

The moment somebody gets home and finds their animal happy is the moment they are most willing to book again. That is when to mention your next availability, not a month later out of nowhere.

One sentence is enough. "I have got the last week of April free if you are away again." No pressure, no follow-up if they do not reply.

Keep your own list

Whichever platform you use, the relationships are yours. Keep your own note of who has which animal, what they need, when they usually travel. A message in September saying "are you away at Christmas again this year?" is worth more than any amount of profile optimization.