Customer satisfaction is the number one indicator of long-term business success – but it can be difficult to measure and even harder to change. New technologies that automate some of the critical tasks in pharmacy can help you to improve this important metric.
How to measure
I’m not a fan of the survey questions that pop up on the Eftpos screen or on the back of printed receipts which are used to collect data on customer satisfaction.
While these have been widely used by retail chains to generate statistics such as Net Promoter Score, they are prone to a degree of bias because they are only filled in by a few customers, so they are not necessarily a representative sample.
There is also a phenomenon known as the Hawthorne effect which shows the act of carrying out a survey is likely to cause a skew in the results. For example, if your staff are told their customer service is being measured, they are likely to improve their efforts during the survey period.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
There are some simpler and more reliable measures which can be used as key indicators of your pharmacy’s service levels. These are useful because they can be continuously collected across all customers and therefore, they show valid trends and changes over time.
In addition to making these KPIs visible by displaying them on a scoreboard, they can be used to benchmark your pharmacy’s results against similar pharmacies to provide a qualitative assessment of how well your pharmacy is performing.
| Metric | What it measures | Goal |
| Products per customer | This reflects the time spent with customers and the expertise of the staff member | >1.5 PPC Customers who self-select in pharmacy typically purchase 1.25 products Skilled service and sales staff achieve 1.75 PPC or more |
| Percentage of sales to club customers | This shows whether your team is consistently engaging with your customers by asking if they are in your loyalty programme | >50% of total retail sales should be to club customers if your loyalty programme is being actively promoted |
| Percentage of out-of-stocks | This is a leading indicator of customer dissatisfaction | <10% out-of-stock of core products Being out-of-stock of core products undermines customer satisfaction |
Reducing out-of-stocks
Having what your customer wants, when they want it, is a critical success factor. When customers experience repeated out-of-stocks, 70% of them change to the competition for good, which is a customer service catastrophe.
Whether out-of-stocks occur in the dispensary or on the retail side of the business they are a sure sign that your pharmacy is neglecting a key customer satisfaction criteria.
Technology can help
There is a growing opportunity for pharmacies to embrace data-driven technologies that take care of repeatable tasks and do them better.
Automation of customer inventory management, loyalty programme messages, prescription reminders, and medicine interaction alerts are examples of smart technologies that improve key elements of customer care.
The adoption and use of intelligent systems and automation will become an important differentiator for pharmacies wanting to stay at the “high customer service” end of the market.
