Trust is a powerful way to capture the loyalty of a customer. It is also one of the hardest things for a business to earn, especially with younger customers. Millennials are more likely to trust people rather than companies, 73% of Millennials believe that consumers care more about their opinions than companies do. There are a lot of reasons why the Millennial generation has a hard time trusting businesses, but mainly it can be attributed to how they grew up.

Between events like, major oil spills, The Great Recession, and growing student debts, all taking place while still being very much impressionable, it is enough to make anyone lose trust in business. Millennials are going out of their way to get healthier, greener, socially conscious products and services. Products like Honest Tea, Warby Parker and Toms Shoes are becoming the norm because they are all very upfront with what they offer, and seem like the cleaner, more honest option.

If you’d like to dramatically increase the number of new customer referrals you get you may want to consider implementing a formal community relations program.

One way to start would be to find a person on your staff that is personable and trustworthy and ask them if they are interested taking the lead in a new initiative you are considering. I would suggest you not position this as a promotion but as an interesting new job related task that will let them get out of the store for a few hours each week. The idea would be to have this person get out for a few hours each week during slow times. I prefer a pharmacy technician wearing some other pharmacy related attire. This truly sets them apart as they visit with others outside your store.

I’m a bit obsessed with retail customer service. Few things can make or break a shopping experience like the courtesy and care you receive from a store employee. I’m also fascinated by factors that keep the front-line retail employee motivated and engaged to continually provide excellent service. There’s a lot of good stuff out there on the topic (a Google search of “how to keep retail employees motivated” produces 19,600,000 results!), much of it complex, because, well, people are complex. Yet there’s a simple approach we can all employ that I have no doubt will produce overwhelmingly positive results across all retail establishments.

If we want great customer service, we need to start by being great customers.

The quickest, easiest thing we can all do to raise the collective quality of customer service in retail is to recognize great service immediately when we receive it. The person you praise one day will be shopping in your store the next. I'm not talking about an online survey to be filled out later, which is still important. I'm talking real-time, face-to-face, when commending a person matters most and can have the most impact.

We all know that star ratings in pharmacy are tied to patient outcomes but the star ratings we are talking about are related to improving online reviews. We are clearly in an experience based economy right now, and the Millennial generation of consumers love to share those retail experiences online through social networks and online review sites like, Yelp. As a small business owner, you must be aware of your online reviews/ratings as this can make or break your reputation in your community.

Think about this for a second, 10-15 years ago you may have told 6-8 friends, family, & neighbors about a very positive or negative customer experience over a dinner party or on the sidelines of a youth soccer field. In today's world, each customer interaction has the potential to permanently be rated online for tens of thousands of people to see. Some of the more elaborate reviews such as "United Breaks Guitars" have gone viral with millions of views. 

According to the Institute of Medicine-Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, the definition of Patient-Centered Care (PCC) is “Healthcare that establishes a partnership among practitioners, patients, and their families (when appropriate) to ensure that decisions respect patients' wants, needs, and preferences and that patients have the education and support they need to make decisions and participate in their own care.”

Today, the concepts of patient-centered care, customer experience, and personalization have finally been linked together and collectively define the heart and mission of today’s pharmacy practice. This specific focus on the patient/customer experience is becoming a growing trend we are seeing across retail chains and independent pharmacies alike. Everyone is striving to figure out how they can better focus on the patients’ unique needs, how to ensure a more delightful customer experience, and how to promote a more personal touch at the pharmacy counter that will engage patients, encourage medication adherence, and inspire customer loyalty.