I’m fascinated by the shopper mindset, what drives brand loyalty, and in particular, the customer experience. But before we get into all that, I thought it would be valuable to provide a peek behind the curtain at FLAVORx, a little inside baseball to who we are, what got us to where we are, and our unique value proposition to retail pharmacy. So without further ado, here’s some recent FLAVORx history…
About this time last year we found ourselves at a crossroads. A sizeable customer had just announced they were pulling support for the flavoring service within their pharmacies. They weren’t pulling the program entirely, which was a relief, but they had decided it wasn’t a focus. Not on the radar. Didn’t matter. After almost 20 years of steady growth as a company, this was a huge blow.
We were given a few practical reasons why the decision was made. They all boiled down to the customer not feeling the flavoring service was strategically important. It felt like a punch to the gut. As it turns out, their decision was the best thing to ever happen to FLAVORx.
Instead of wallowing in self-pity, doubt and accepting our fate, we immediately set out to discover what IS considered strategic in retail pharmacy and how we could adapt our business to better fit the needs of ALL our customers. As we immersed ourselves like never before into the business of retail pharmacy, we had a revelation. We quickly discovered that our business model wasn’t systemically flawed and doomed to failure. We’d just been telling the wrong story.
In interviews, speeches, roundtables, and one-on-one discussions, pharmacy leaders consistently said they were focusing on customer engagement, personalization, and shopper delight to drive a more extraordinary customer experience. Learning this was a “wow” moment for us. FLAVORx could be that. Actually, we always had been. We just never thought or talked about ourselves and our product in these terms because it never seemed important to our customers. It was an exciting discovery, one that crafted our new value proposition to retail pharmacy.
The FLAVORx Value Proposition
1. We Engage - the custom-flavoring service helps pharmacy team members have meaningful, relevant conversations with customers, which develops deeper relationships and ultimately drives greater customer loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing.
2. We Personalize – customizing the taste of children’s medicine to a favorite flavor is the epitome of personalization. The power of choice when it comes to the taste of medicine is, in many ways, more impactful on the customer experience than improving the taste of the medicine itself.
3. We Delight – going from a stressed out medicine-time experience for mom and child, to a much more pleasant one, is truly delightful. Plus, there’s a certain element of surprise in being offered 20+ different ways for a child’s medicine to taste. It’s the cherry on top!
So, in a crazy, unexpected, roundabout way, having someone tell us we didn’t matter, made us realize we actually do, more than ever before. As you can imagine, changing people’s long held beliefs about who you are, what you stand for, and why you matter isn’t easy. We’re on that journey now. Stay tuned to hear more.