Shooting for the Stars – Pet Benefits listed on the Inc. 5000. Again!

From company expansions to launching new products, we are proud to announce that our company is growing and not stopping anytime soon. Synergy Pet Group is on the Inc. 5000 for the third year in a row!

It's the Academy Awards of the business world.

Okay, the Inc. 5000 may not be quite as glitzy, but it is full of rising stars. Back in 1982, Inc. Magazine started its list, ranking the country's fastest-growing privately held companies. Over the years, the Inc. 5000 recognized many companies that are now household names: Zappos, Zipcar, Pandora, Microsoft, and more.

And we're excited to announce that Synergy Pet Group (Pet Assure Corp) is on the Inc. 5000 for the third year in a row!

Inc. determines eligibility by the percentage of revenue growth over the last three years. This year, Synergy Pet Group earned its spot with 148% 3-year growth!

It's a huge honor to be on the Inc. 5000 list. But our real award? Our clients' trust when they partner with us.

We're working harder than ever to earn that trust with industry-leading products and customer service.

It's a huge honor to be on the Inc. 5000 list. But our real award? Our clients' trust when they partner with us.

We're working harder than ever to earn that trust with industry-leading products and customer service.

Starring Wishbone-and Astro

We’ve recently launched one of our most exciting products yet! Have you heard about Wishbone Pet Health Insurance? Wishbone is our new pet health insurance offering, designed exclusively for employee benefits groups.

Group administration is typically a deterrent for offering pet insurance, and we were determined to fix that. We rethought every step in the benefits process to make it as smooth and simple as possible. Using our voluntary benefits expertise, we make benefits administration easier for HR:

• Custom employee education materials
• Simple benefit management with our group administrator portal
• Dedicated Account Manager offering group support
• Optimized payroll deduct process with customizable file feeds

Wishbone isn’t only simple for HR administrators, it’s a best-in-class pet health insurance policy for employees and their pets. In additional to accident and illness coverage at competitive rates, Wishbone includes:

• Easy-to-use member portal
• 24/7 pet telehealth chat from AskVet
• Lost pet recovery service from ThePetTag
• Optimized payroll deduct process with customizable file feeds

Wishbone met and surpassed our expectations. “Companies are excited about a pet insurance product that isn't a hassle to administer and offers employees competitive premiums and high reimbursement rates.” says Becky Schaen, PBS Marketing Manager.

But the star of the new show is Astro, a spunky German Shepherd puppy. His parents filed Wishbone’s first claim for Astro’s rabies and Bordetella vaccines, covered under his routine care rider.

And here’s what we’re most proud of: Astro’s parents got their Wishbone payout in four business days! That’s waaaay below the industry average of 30 days.

Shepherd 2.0 Launch and Features Highlight

The original version of Shepherd was much-loved by users for its clean design and intuitive user experience. These principles were further refined with the launch of Shepherd 2.0, which debuted in beta in November 2020.

The launch of Shepherd 2.0 provided our users with a solid framework from which we would add more robust features.

2021 has been a year of refinement. We dove into what makes Shepherd true to itself (and ourselves) and with user feedback, narrowed our focus to bringing vets the most joy through design, relationships, and innovation.

Some of Shepherds most notable achievements and integrations this year include:

• IDEXX integration: our first lab integration
• Global search allowing users to quickly search for products, patients, clients, and bundles
• Pet Assure integration to automatically apply the Pet Assure pricing to all members in an affiliated clinic’s database
• ZRL integration: our second lab integration
• Advanced whiteboard so users can administer treatments from Whiteboard
• Inventory management tool launched to simplify product and prescription management right from your PMS
• SMS messaging center allowing clinics to communicate directly with clients in Shepherd

Get excited about some of our upcoming releases!

• Integrations with Antech, Phoenix, and CareCredit
• Upgrades to our simple and secure Messaging Center
• And so much more!

Five-Star Service

None of this would be possible without the hard work of our star-studded team. They’re committed to quickly and professionally meeting the needs of each and every client, member, and partner.

Take our PBS account management team, for example. In the past two years, they’ve more than doubled in size! More account managers mean we respond faster to client inquiries and better support brokers and their groups.

“For our clients, we set up the file feeds and integrations for a turnkey implementation,” says Dena McGrath, PBS Client Relationship Manager. “For their employees, we give communication materials and run webinars and virtual benefit fairs. Core benefits can be complicated, but we make voluntary pet benefits easy, and clients love it!”

Our Shepherd customer care team of vets and vet techs has a wide range of support hours available. Not only can our users email or call our support team, but they can chat with us directly through the software. With a response rate below 2 minutes on average, we’re able to answer client questions more efficiently.

“I love working at Shepherd! For many years I worked in practices, and we all hated the software, and now I’m able to give software to my fellow veterinary professionals that they enjoy working with.” said Shepherd Account Manager, Megan Blaksee. “I’m forever grateful to Shepherd for letting me be part of this revolution!”

Our star is rising! Join us as we continue to revolutionize the pet care industry.