Pets at Home’s transformation story is not a straight line from “legacy retail” to “digital-first.” It’s a longer, more complex shift from a collection of adjacent businesses spanning retail, veterinary services, grooming, and soon insurance, into a more unified pet care ecosystem, designed around continuity of experience and a stronger understanding of each customer relationship.
That relationship is also inherently multi-dimensional, Simon Ellis, Head of AI Transformation and Enterprise Architecture at Pets at Home, explained to CX Today in an interview at Salesforce's recent London AI center opening. Pets at Home doesn’t just serve “a shopper.”
“From a personalization perspective, you've got the personalized data about the pet—healthcare, what they want, what they eat—which you infer through what the pet parent buys. But there's also the service layers you've got to have around that pet parent… the consumer ultimately is the one that's doing the buying.”
Their needs can range from food and routine care to acute healthcare questions and financial protection. The transformation challenge, then, is about connecting data, service and empathy across channels and across lines of business smoothly without compromising trust, clinical integrity or regulatory requirements.
“What we’ve done over the last few years is effected a big digital transformation to bring everybody back together to get a single view of the customer,” Ellis said.
From Separate Units to a Connected Ecosystem
In the past, the organization operated less like a unified brand and more like a collection of distinct operations.
“If you go back at Pets at Home, probably five six years ago, it was almost like separate business units.”
That structure isn’t unusual for companies that have grown through expansion into new services, acquisitions or distinct operating models. But over time it can create friction: customers repeat themselves, teams hold different pieces of context and experiences vary depending on which doorway the customer chooses, whether a store, call center, website, app or vet practice.
Pets at Home’s transformation has aimed to reduce those seams. The goal is continuity as a customer outcome delivering better personalization, more consistent service and fewer handoffs that feel like starting again from scratch.
“The aspiration is always to create that seamless customer experience,” Ellis said.
In many retail transformations, physical stores become a cost center to rationalize, with digital channels expected to do the heavy lifting. Pets at Home’s model is different because its physical footprint includes “pet care centers.” More than a retail location serving as a distribution point, the store environment is often part of the service proposition.
That has consequences for omnichannel design. A pet parent might browse online, purchase in store, ask advice via customer service, book a grooming session, or visit a vet practice. Some points in that journey demand emotional intelligence and reassurance. The experience must feel cohesive even when the channel changes.
“Tone of voice, care, empathy, are absolutely critical to everything that we do. That authenticity, that empathy… that’s what AI can and should never replace.”
Pets at Home’s leadership has been explicit that the most valuable part of the brand, the authenticity of human interaction with pet parents and their animals, should not be eroded by automation.
The Technology Backbone: Salesforce, Service and a Regulated Future
Pets at Home has used Salesforce for several years, predominantly across customer service, retail and marketing. Over time, the company has expanded its use of the platform as its broader transformation ambitions have matured and as new business propositions, such as an upcoming insurance offering, have moved closer to launch.
“We’ve been using Salesforce for quite a few years, predominantly in customer service and retail and marketing, so that was our core,” Ellis explained.
Beyond its traditional customer service operations, which incorporate retail stores and online chat live, Pets at Home uses Salesforce’s Service Cloud for its veterinary business, which operates as a B2B model. The company provides a range of services to its more than 450 joint venture veterinary practices, for offering phone and live chat support. And in June, the company plans to roll out insurance services using Financial Services Cloud, incorporating claims management and service.
The use cases are straightforward but powerful: a better-connected service function, improved marketing relevance, and, crucially, shared context that can support more consistent experiences.
But what stands out is the architectural choice to avoid forcing everything into one monolithic setup. Instead, Pets at Home is designing for different operating models and constraints. "We’ve not gone for a big single instance… because the scenarios are very different… insurance is regulated. In terms of the business we've got vets, which is a B2B model, and then we've got a B2C model with marketing and Service Cloud,” Ellis explained.
“For a relatively small to medium organization, we’re quite a big user.”
This approach reflects a common reality in transformation programs, as “single view” does not always mean “single system.” It can mean a governed, joined-up view, delivered through integration and data design, while still respecting the reality of different business domains.
Reducing Friction With AI While Protecting the Human Moment
As AI becomes a default pillar in customer service transformation strategies, Pets at Home’s approach is notably careful. It is positioning AI as a way to reduce administrative burden and give colleagues better context rather than as a replacement for human care.
Ellis teased that the company is rolling out Salesforce’s Agentforce as part of its next phase, which introduce agentic capabilities into its service operations.
But the emphasis remains on guardrails, especially in healthcare contexts. For veterinary services, the prospect of ambient tools, such as digital scribe functionality that listens to a consultation and drafts notes, may promise time savings and a better clinician-patient interaction. Yet Ellis reinforced that clinical decisions require human accountability.
