How Pawland rebuilt customer trust after switching from WAPI to Gallabox

About Pawland

Pawland is a pet care company based in Dubai offering boarding, sitting, and walking services for dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, and other domestic pets. With over 350 pet sitters operating across the UAE and a 99.8% satisfaction rate reported as of 2023, Pawland operates at a scale that makes reliable, consistent communication with pet owners a core part of the service rather than a support function.

Pet owners who leave their animals with a service provider are extending a significant degree of trust. Regular updates, booking confirmations, and clear communication before and after a stay are not optional extras. They are the product.

When the tool fails, the trust goes with it

Before Gallabox, Pawland was using WAPI to manage WhatsApp communication. The problems were specific and compounding. The platform lacked features the team needed to build the communication workflows the business required. When those gaps became blockers, the support team at WAPI was not responsive enough to help resolve them. And critically, message delivery rates were poor.

In a pet care business, a message that does not arrive is not a minor inconvenience. It is a pet owner who did not receive confirmation that their animal was settled. It is a check-in update that never came. It is a booking reminder that did not land. The operational consequence of poor delivery rates is eroded trust, and in a business built on the assurance that someone is caring for something a customer loves, trust is the entire value proposition.

They needed a platform that had the feature depth to build proper workflows, the delivery reliability to ensure messages actually reached pet owners, and a support team that would be present when something went wrong.

Why Pawland chose Gallabox

Pawland evaluated WAPI before moving to Gallabox. The switch came down to two things stated directly in the team's own words: customer support and features. Gallabox offered the capabilities the team had been working around and the responsive support that WAPI had not provided.

How they use Gallabox

• Reaching pet owners with the right message at the right time
  WhatsApp Broadcast allows Pawland to communicate with segmented groups of pet owners at scale. Whether that is a seasonal availability update, a new service announcement, or a re-engagement message to owners who have not booked recently, the team can reach the right audience without manually managing individual conversations.
• Keeping pet owners informed across the booking journey
  WhatsApp Drip Marketing handles the communication sequence that surrounds every booking. Confirmation messages, pre-stay preparation reminders, and post-stay follow-ups run automatically. Pet owners receive the updates they expect without the team having to trigger each message manually. This is where the delivery rate improvement matters most. When a message is part of a sequence tied to a booking, it has to arrive.

Outcomes

• Message delivery is no longer a variable the team has to account for. Pet owners receive booking confirmations, pre-stay updates, and post-stay follow-ups reliably, which is the foundation the entire trust relationship is built on.
• The team is no longer manually triggering routine communications. Drip sequences handle the booking journey automatically, which frees up time for the interactions that genuinely need a person behind them.
• Re-engaging past customers no longer requires manual effort. Broadcast campaigns reach segmented groups of pet owners with relevant messages, bringing lapsed customers back into the booking cycle without the team having to identify and contact them individually.
• The switch from WAPI also resolved a structural dependency: the team can now build and adjust communication workflows themselves without waiting on vendor support that was previously slow to respond.

What other pet care and service businesses can do with WhatsApp and Instagram automation

Pet care is an emotionally high-stakes category. The communication standard pet owners expect is closer to hospitality than retail. Businesses in this space that get WhatsApp communication right build loyalty quickly because the bar set by most competitors is low.

Beyond broadcast and drip sequences, pet care businesses use WhatsApp Chatbots to handle booking enquiries and availability checks around the clock, so an owner looking for a sitter on a Sunday evening gets an immediate response rather than waiting until Monday. Instagram DM automation captures the enquiries that start when someone sees a photo of a well-cared-for dog and wonders if the service covers their area. WhatsApp Flows can collect pet information, vaccination status, and special care requirements before the first booking, reducing the back-and-forth that slows down the onboarding process.