5 Ways to Make Your Pharmacy Customers Love You

Customers are paramount to the success of your pharmacy business. For this reason, going the extra mile to earn your customers’ devotion should be a top priority. Doing the extra work to make sure your customers love your business can set you apart from your competitors, increase loyalty, boost sales and build relationships that can last a lifetime. Follow these five tips and you will have customers buying from you again and again.

1. Create Opportunities That Benefit Customers

Create opportunities for the customer to buy, rather than opportunities for you to sell. The greatest compliment you can receive from your customers is “I just love coming in here.”  That will only happen if they feel like you are providing them with value, not tricking them into boosting your profits. An excellent way to do this is to develop a strong method of cross-selling and upselling for all of your products.

1. Have Meaningful Conversations

Do you take the time to have meaningful conversations with your customers? Make building the relationship more important than making the sale. Address your customers by name, and tell them your name at the very beginning of your interaction. Talk to your customers as you would a friend or family member, and they’ll treat you like one in return.

1. Treat Your Customers Right

Running a pharmacy that customers love doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a perfect operation. It means you will give customers a reason to stay if an honest mistake has been made. When you encounter an unhappy customer, deliver a sincere apology, describe how the issue will be corrected and then deliver what you promised. Studies show that happy customers who get their issue resolved tell 4 to 6 people about their experience and 58% of those people report telling their friends about bad experiences as well. Which type of word-of-mouth advertisement does your pharmacy need?

1. Send Thank You Notes

If your pharmacy has yet to set up a thank you note program, do so now. These can be sent for no other reason than to show your gratitude for their continued patronage. You can use handwritten cards as a personal way to send out congratulations on a new baby, check on someone when they’re released home from the hospital, or follow up with a customer who has not visited your store in a while.

1. Communicate Upcoming Changes

A major change can be disruptive to regular customers. Alert them ahead of time to large scale changes like a new billing system, different product availability, or new hours of operation. It is crucial to tread lightly when making changes to your products and services, because customers become accustomed to the status quo. If you receive a lot of negative feedback when you announce a change, make sure you listen.

Studies show that as many as 89% of consumers will take their business to a competitor following a poor customer experience. If your customers don’t love visiting your pharmacy, you risk losing them. Businesses are built around the customer experience, but it’s easy to forget that as you run your pharmacy’s daily operations. These five tactics will help improve your customer experience and build a pharmacy your customers simply love to visit.

Pharmacy ownership is constantly evolving and the best way to make sure you remain ahead of the curve is to attend the industry’s main event. You will network with like-minded industry professionals and learn about every significant change to pharmacy ownership at the PDS Together Toward Tomorrow conference.