Happy patients are loyal patients, and they’re patients who leave your pharmacy excited to share their positive experiences with others. This kind of word-of-mouth advertising can help bring new patients into your pharmacy, and keep your regular patients coming back.
Keeping your patients happy with your pharmacy should be your customer experience goal. It may seem like a simple idea, but it can be difficult to know where to start. Here are five ways you can work to make your patients happier with your pharmacy.
1. Involve your staff
Keeping patients happy is a team effort, so you need to get your staff involved. Train your staff to treat every patient with courtesy and respect. Establish conflict resolution protocols that your staff can use to resolve a customer service issue.
Also, consider starting a weekly or monthly staff meeting to share stories of excellent customer service, and exchange feedback and compliments from patients about your pharmacy and staff as a motivational tool. With your staff’s help, you’ll be able to keep more patients happy.
2. Be indispensible
Become an indispensible part of your patients’ health care team by solving their problems. If a patient needs a prescription renewed, call their physician for them, or if the patient has a problem with her insurance company, offer to sort out the issue.
By solving patients’ problems, you’ll establish yourself as a key resource. If you can provide patients with a crucial service, useful assistance or an essential product, you’ll keep them happy and they’ll keep coming back to your pharmacy.
3. Find your niche
Define your pharmacy’s niche role in a way that differentiates you from other pharmacies. Your niche could be anything. Maybe your pharmacy features the area’s most complete diabetic product selection, or offers a delivery service for homebound patients. Once you decide on your pharmacy’s niche, make sure you promote it and provide it consistently.
For example, if your niche is that you carry a certain line of all-natural skin care products, then it’s important to make sure that you’re always well-stocked with those products. You’ll keep patients happy when they know they can rely on you to provide consistent expertise for your pharmacy’s niche product or service area.
4. Reward patients
Establishing a system to reward your pharmacy’s loyal patients will help keep them happy. If you don’t already offer a loyalty rewards program, considering starting one at your pharmacy. These programs help you track your most loyal patients’ purchasing trends, and they provide an avenue to help patients earn rewards.
You could also host a customer appreciation week or month where you give away small gifts, like a reusable water bottle branded with your pharmacy’s logo. Making patients feel like they’re getting something for nothing is a great way to build loyalty and keep patients happy.
5. Empower patients
Keep patients happy by empowering them to take control of their own health care. Educate patients about their specific health condition and what they can do to help themselves get and stay healthy.
Let them know that getting well and staying well starts with adhering to their medication, exercising and eating right. Setting health goals with patients can empower patients to take action.
For example, work with diabetic patients to create a healthy eating and exercising plan. By working together, you’ll get patients invested in their long-term care plan, build your relationship and keep patients happy.
These tips can help your pharmacy provide an excellent experience that will keep patients happy and coming back to your pharmacy.
