Seems like everyone in pharmacy retail is on a mission to provide their customers with the best shopping experience possible. As it should be. You don’t earn loyalty these days simply by satisfying your customers. Taking it to the next level with one-to-one engagement, surprise, delight, and a unique experience are where today’s shoppers are won (and lost). With innovative products, unique store layouts, expansive in-stock selection, personalized deals, in-store clinics, etc., retail pharmacy is clearly taking the customer experience seriously.

What we don’t often hear about though is the employee experience and just how important that can be to the long-term viability of your customer focused strategy. The best laid plans to surprise and delight customers will be quickly laid to waste by unmotivated, disengaged, and possibly even, vindictive staff. Equally, people who love their job and the company they work for can’t help but show it. These folks can cover up more than a few blemishes as you perfect other aspects of your customer experience strategy.

When you were a kid, there were two universal childhood traumas that almost everyone could relate to. Going to the dentist, and wrestling your parents to avoid bad tasting medicine.

Apparently the pediatric dentists in this country figured out how to remove themselves from the list. I recently took my apprehensive son to the dentist for the first time and did my best to sugar coat (no pun intended) what kind of experience he could expect. His first question which was innocently asked to me was if he'd get a lollipop if he was good? I had to break the news that dentists aren't big fans of sugar on a stick. Next I put my over the top game show voice on to explain that being good could result in...... A NEW TOOTHBRUSH!!!

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…

Food for thought:  "A Taste of Your Own Medicine" may be a popular English idiom, but why not actually get to choose “a taste of your own medicine?”  The answer is that there is no real reason not to; in fact choosing the taste of your medicine is actually a more than reasonable request in today’s world.

I wanted to share an excerpt from a recent article I read titled "Letting Consumers Design Their Own Experiences: Case for the Mass Customization Model."l  Ted Mininni, President of Design Force, Inc. said something that really got me thinking. 

Are you looking for ways to improve your pharmacy services and provide your customers with a more personalized experience? Want to make your FLAVORx service better than ever? We're sharing ten handy ways to help your pharmacy succeed with the FLAVORx service!