Letting children choose the taste of their medicine is an untapped marketing strategy for retail pharmacies. Not only does flavor selection resonate powerfully with customers, but it can also improve word-of-mouth referrals from delighted moms and dads. A successful flavoring strategy has less to do with additional fees and everything to do with keeping patients happy. Here are five ways offering FLAVORx in your pharmacy earns long-lasting customer loyalty
Improve the in-store experience for your customers
Convenience communicates customer care. To keep customers coming back, focus on ways to make their lives easier. Often this involves anticipating routine customer behaviors with services like auto-billing, automatic orders, refills, and reminders. All of those little things make it easier for customers to enjoy what they’re paying for: a no-stress trip to the pharmacy. Letting kids choose the taste of their medicine creates a memorable pharmacy experience like few other services can. Parents expect a struggle when it comes time to give their children liquid antibiotics or antivirals. By offering to make that experience much better, your pharmacists and technicians take on the role of solution provider and trusted advisor, which truly sets them apart.
But flavoring takes time, and as a rule of thumb, your customers should spend the least amount of time possible in line. That’s why FLAVORx partnered with Fillmaster to develop flavoring automation so pharmacy teams don’t have to spend an extra second on the process. Savvy pharmacy leaders know that implementing a service like Fillmaster makes their pharmacist’s job behind the counter as efficient as possible. Improving efficiency empowers pharmacists to focus on customer experience rather than the time-consuming task of reconstituting and flavoring medicine.
Demonstrate how much your staff cares about its customers
FLAVORx can fuel pharmacy growth. But only if your pharmacists, technicians, and staff buy-in to the program. District managers must train their staff to view flavored medication as helping their patients find solutions, not just a way of boosting revenue for the business. It’s a pharmacist’s job to take care of their patients - that’s why they got into this business in the first place. Whether that means putting a smile on the face of a sick kid, making the life 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. To that point, it’s the pharmacist’s responsibility to elevate the customer experience by anticipating their needs and talking to customers about what matters most to them. In that way, FLAVORx can fuel pharmacy growth and help you accomplish your goals, but only if your pharmacy staff has bought into the value of the service.
Offer your customers something your competitors don’t
When pharmacies give kids the option of choosing the taste of their medicine, they’re offering customers something their rivals aren’t. Discounts or loyalty programs only go so far. But when your pharmacy builds innovation into its everyday culture, you’ll begin to delight your customers in unexpected ways. Pinpointing your customer’s specific pain points allows you to anticipate their needs. Demonstrating customer care earns loyalty. As a service, FLAVORx is an irresistible novelty. But more than that, it’s an opportunity for genuinely delightful customer service. There are multiple pharmacies in any given town, but yours can be the one that remembers a customer’s favorite flavor. Medicine flavoring is the extra effort that keeps customers coming back.
Solve a real problem for your customers
Customizing and personalizing your customer’s pharmacy experience are the keys to demonstrating genuine customer care. But creating an in-pharmacy experience tailored to the unique demands of each consumer isn’t just right for the patient’s health, it’s good for the pharmacy’s bottom line. FLAVORx allows your pharmacy to go a step above standard customer service, by giving customers something that improves their life on a regular basis. Offering FLAVORx gives your pharmacy team a chance to understand your customer, figure out what would make their life more comfortable, and deliver on that promise. When you can pull this off right, you make your customers rely on you for more than just your product or service, and that makes you almost irreplaceable.
FLAVORx is something your patients didn’t know they wanted but can’t live without
A quick look at your customer’s social accounts will reveal the experiences they enjoy. Surprise your patients, and they’ll use social media to spread the word. More importantly, they’ll talk about their fantastic pharmacy experience in-person with their friends, family, colleagues, and anyone else who will listen. Delight them with a memorable in-store experience, and you’ve won their loyalty. Once you’ve earned your customers trust, they’ll look to your pharmacy for other recommendations. In that way, custom-flavoring antibiotics opens the door to other enhanced care services. Train your pharmacists and technicians to talk about FLAVORx, and soon they’ll be discussing immunizations, medication management, nutritional support and more.
FLAVORx demonstrates customer care and benefits customer wellness. Successful retail pharmacies consistently deliver an unrivaled in-store experience, and surprise customers - promoting the FLAVORx service is one overlooked strategy to do just that. If you routinely anticipate their problems and delight them in unexpected ways, your customers will rave about their experience and remain loyal to your pharmacy.
