FLAVORx can fuel retail pharmacy growth. By customizing the taste of pediatric medications, pharmacies demonstrate genuine customer care, create memorable in-store experiences and gain an edge on the competition. But to enjoy the advantages of offering this valuable service, your pharmacy staff must believe in the program and actively promote it to customers.Getting the most out of FLAVORx begins with getting buy-in from your pharmacy staff. Pharmacists will never give children the option to choose the taste of their medicine unless leadership first discusses the benefits to consumers and train the pharmacy staff to deliver the service confidently. Encourage your staff to view custom-flavored medicine as a tool to deliver better care to patients, not just a way for the pharmacy to make more money. Pharmacists need to understand that if kids struggle to take their medicine, they will likely fail to comply with their prescriptions and parent will get increasingly stressed out. In that way, flavoring is beneficial to parents and children alike.Here are four ways pharmacy leaders can communicate the value of FLAVORx to their pharmacists:
Often, pharmacists resist discussing FLAVORx with customers because the staff member doesn’t want to be seen as “salesy”. They feel like they are taking advantage of a sick patient or they simply hate rejection and fear being told “no”. Pharmacy managers should position FLAVORx as a solution, not a product. A pharmacist’s job is to solve their patients’ problems. Period. Some medicines - especially children's medications - taste bad. Even if the medicine doesn’t taste bad, there is a negative stigma about taking medicine in the minds of children and parents. When people get worried about their medication, they tend not to take it. Making medicine time less scary is a problem worth solving. Letting a child choose their favorite flavor is a solution to that problem. When a parent comes into the pharmacy with a sick child, both the parent and the child are anxious. Encouraging a sick kid to choose their favorite flavor is a genuine way to reduce that anxiety. Train your pharmacy staff to discuss the benefits of flavored medicine with the patient. Make it fun. Doing so will put the customer at ease and allow the pharmacist to their job: educating patients on their medication regimen and helping them get better.
Flavored medicine can turn patients into raving fans. In a blog post on pharmacy customer service, Pharmacy Development Services quoted Bob Farrell’s mantra “Give ‘em the Pickle!” Farrell once received a letter from a loyal customer who vowed to never return to his ice cream parlor, because the server refused to give out an extra pickle for free. In this sense, “Pickles” are those extra, special things that keep customers coming back. Giving away "pickles" is a way for any business to keep their customers happy. FLAVORx can be your pharmacy’s “pickle.” Help your pharmacists and technicians understand that the extra effort they put into telling patients about medicine flavoring will make the customer feel valued and respected. Flavored medicine allows your pharmacy to go a step above standard customer service, by giving customers something that improves their life on a regular basis. Whether that means putting a smile on the face of a sick kid, making the day of a stressed-out parent just a little easier, or even taking the guesswork out of medicine time, pharmacies should be chiefly concerned with delighting customers and exceeding their expectations.
It’s clear that letting kids choose the taste of their medicine is beneficial to patients,but does it add unnecessary stress to your staff? Some pharmacists might push-back against any service which makes their job harder. Through our partnership with Fillmaster Systems, we now offer fully automated units that completely eliminate the time it takes to flavor medications. All the pharmacist needs to do is scan the medication’s barcode and select the patient’s desired flavoring. The unit automatically delivers the exact amount of purified water with the chosen flavor. Because the unit selects and delivers the water and flavor automatically, it cuts the time required to reconstitute and flavor a prescription from a minute or more to about 15 seconds. How simple is that?
Filling and flavoring an antibiotic is an opportunity to offer patients additional over-the-counter services that can improve their lives. Once you’ve trained your staff to discuss flavored medicine with patients, they will become more comfortable offering patients services like immunizations, medication synchronization, or nutritional support. Since medication flavoring is one of the easiest over the counter services for customers to understand, it’s a non-threatening entry point for promoting other enhanced care services.
FLAVORx is a simple, yet proven strategy pharmacy managers use to deliver an unparalleled in-store experience. But the service is only useful if the pharmacist is willing to discuss it with patients. Pharmacy managers should remind their pharmacists and other staff members that it’s their responsibility to elevate the customer experience by anticipating their needs and talking to customers about what matters most to them. FLAVORx can fuel pharmacy growth, but only if your pharmacy staff has bought into providing superior customer care.