Do you have a store that you would consider yourself loyal too? Your “go-to” stores? When you run your typical weekly errands, you probably have a go-to grocery store, go to dry cleaners, and a go-to pharmacy. But, why are you loyal to those places? Maybe you started to go to a particular place because of a good review, out convenience, or good prices, but if you think about what keeps you going back instead of continuing your search for “your go-to”, you will probably think of a specific instance of something good happening at that place.

Smartphones are becoming more popular as more people are becoming smartphone dependent, which is why it is incredibly important that your pharmacy is smartphone compatible. What do I mean by smartphone compatible, you may wonder?

Smartphones aren’t just for calling and texting, people are using it for other reasons like surfing the internet, playing games, getting directions and shopping. Smartphones and mobile devices, generally, are the newspapers for the modern era, serving as the primary conduit for in-store retail deals, coupons and savings. According to the Pew Research Center’s study on Mobile Technology, 64% of American adults own a smartphone and that percentage is only going to increase. Majority of users are people within the millennial generation and research shows that 85% of millennial parents use their mobile devices for in-store shopping specifically, dads use their devices to check reviews, and moms are searching for deals. How can you make sure your pharmacy is smart phone compatible?

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.