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Pharmacy bill format for Customer Service

[Music] welcome to pharmacy operation basics i'm joey mattingly today we're going to be talking about the angry customer unhappy customers are inevitable in any pharmacy practice sometimes the patient's unhappy with the pharmacy sometimes the patient some sometimes the patient's unhappy for other reasons and sometimes both can be true today's learning objectives are to explain how customer expectations impact the customer's response to the service level we also want to be able to discuss a common mismatch between a pharmacy employee's expectation and a pharmacy customer's expectation and finally we want to develop strategies to enable your pharmacy staff to meet customer expectations more frequently so first let's talk about customer expectations providing excellent service requires understanding what the customer expects customers judge service by comparing perceptions and experiences with their pre-determined expectations so managing those expectations is just as important as the service provided research shows that with in terms of customer expectations they're really two levels of service expectations there's adequate and there's a desired desired service is what the customer believes it can or should be whereas adequate levels is what the customer finds is acceptable and in between we have sort of this tolerated zone or zone of tolerance that that as long as your service level falls between you know above what is adequate uh and and and somewhere between adequate and that desired ideal service that's going to be the period or the point where the customer thinks yeah they met what what i expected more experienced customers are likely to have higher expectations so you think about that desired service may creep up and up and up the number of perceived alternatives may change that zone of tolerance as well so if if you know you've got 18 different places you can get a service you know that you're you're it's easy for you to leave and you're going to say look if i don't get good service i'm going to go down the street to this other place right and also when the situation is urgent the customer may have even higher expectations so knowing when that desired service just goes above and above and beyond versus or continues to go up on the high side so how do we manage expectations the first piece of advice is to be fair take time to explain pharmacy policies and demonstrate to the customer that you're being fair by allowing you know two-way communication let them share their feelings with you as well what do they expect what do they what do they perceive as as the issue if they think that you're just back there counting pills and then again that's a common uh mis misconception with pharmacies you know why wouldn't the customer expect you to to to do something quickly because all you're doing is putting pills from the big bottles of little bottle right how do we do a better job demonstrating what we're you know what we're doing and being transparent the second piece is to be reliable let's build uh trust through consistency you know let's let's try to meet uh whatever that service level is frequently customers also learn what to expect so over time you know they they sort of start understanding what your uh what your time is going to be like what your service typically is and so they also sort of become used to you know that a certain level as well be very careful with promises so when you advertise that it's going to be a 15-minute wait on every prescription okay so what if your average wait time is 15 minutes that means there are some prescriptions that are going to get done in 10 minutes and some they're going to take 20 30 40 minutes because what happens is a lot of farm a lot of prescriptions are relatively straightforward maybe it's just a refill maybe you're you really are just you know taking something off the shelf labeling it double checking it you know making sure it's the right thing and and letting it get out the door those can take just a few minutes but we also have prescriptions where there they just get complicated uh you know maybe there's an issue we gotta call the doctor maybe there's an issue with it's out of refills whatever it may be there's a lot of issues that can keep a prescription from being a 15 minute prescription so if a patient hands off five prescriptions do they expect all five to be done in 15 is it you know is that the expectation and so i guess needing to understand like what if four of the five uh get done in 15 and one doesn't do we fail to meet that promise so really you know what does our advertising um look like and how do we market ourselves you know some companies under promise to kind of set those expectations expectations lower you know think of hearing about under promise and over deliver right but this may also hurt your competitive appeal in a market like retail pharmacy like who wants to hear that you know hey you can go to this pharmacy the service is going to be pretty bad but you know what's the trade-off right so i i think you just got to be careful like in terms of under promising what you can do you need to value your service process okay customers expect great outcomes but they really appreciate how the outcomes achieved as well and and that i just mean by good communication and friendliness try to be someone that's helpful you know try to be someone that is doing everything that you can or at least from the appearance standpoint the customer feels like you're doing everything you can because you're communicating and saying you know good and bad good bad or ugly you're going to tell them how it is build relationships strong relationships create a good will buffer and by that i mean you know when you when you build loyalty uh or when you when you really over time you've been reliable you've been fair you've been open you've been honest the customers know what to expect you go from being the pharmacist you know this was something i always loved i i loved it when i i sort of transformed at some point in my relationship with a customer from being the pharmacist to being joey and they were just like oh i would talk to joey joey said this and then and they just referred to me by name because we had that kind of connection you know and it was one of those things that that i knew with that customer if anything failed if there was ever a lapse in our service because there certainly were bad things that can happen i know that i could reach out to that customer apologize for whatever happened explain you know what the issue was promise it you know would do better next time whether it was or offer you know if there's anything i could offer you know that sort of thing allows them to know that you really value them it starts building that loyalty it really helps your marketing and that was one of the things i remember one of my i think the fourth pharmacy that i managed i had a competitor literally in my parking lot so we were a big grocery store chain and one of the smaller box chains were legit like in our parking lot taking prescriptions left and right when i first got there and over time as i built relationships with folks in that community many people you know that were at going to that other pharmacy started knowing because they all were you know they all knew each other as a small enough community like hey joey the pharmacist at you know kroger uh was you know will do this this and this and really takes care of you and yada yada and and that sort of relationship component um help market ourselves without having more commercials or billboards or whatever it's just word of mouth marketing let's walk through an example that i see with pharmacies that i think creates a lot of problems or it's just a a common common situation that happens that may just be around managing expectations so some pharmacies are open 24 hours a day but most have a fixed schedule you know maybe 8 a.m to 9 00 p.m or 9 a.m to 9 00 p.m something like that some you know a lot of independent pharmacies may even be like 9 a.m to 5 or 6 p.m one of the challenges we have is that the expectations around closing time are very different from for employees as they would be compared to customers so employees want to go home while customers still expect great service remember customers have that desired level of service and employees when they see that closing time coming around they're thinking hey i get to go home right so i'm going to talk about three major problems with closing times in in this example and one's a unclear definition two is a lack of employee training and the third is often a lack of service level enforcement at closing time and let's kind of go through each of these so first the definition of closing time often we you know we see that 9 pm is on the door you know it says we close at 9 right and then we as managers will sometimes schedule our employees up until nine pm and and they're ready to go home at nine so when a customer brings in a prescription at 8 55 they expect the same level of service as if it were 7 p.m right like they don't see 8 55 as being any different than 7 pm like there they made it before it closed is 9 p.m as terms of a closing time is that the last time of entry or is that the time that everyone must be out right i've been to a few restaurants where the closing time may be on the door at 11 pm but they'll say you know at 10 o'clock or 10 30 that they you know the kitchen's closed right so there's a bit of a you know some some places will be very clear and say hey we'll let you in but just know we're you know we close at this time and by close everyone's out at that time i think sometimes in pharmacy we're not as clear and so there's that kind of this um ambiguity and that causes stress both for employees and the customers so you got that person come in at 8 55 how many of you who've worked in a pharmacy have felt that like oh i can't believe there's someone rolling in at 8 55 and they want five prescriptions and a flu shot and counseling or whatever you know and then you're rolling your eyes you're upset you're like oh now i'm gonna be late you maybe were making plans to go see a movie at 9 30 and now that ain't happening right so you know that's one of the issues when we think about what's the definition of closing time and what about training training around the closing time practices so when if say that 9 pm is that time that we're closing and what does that mean for our pharmacists and technicians that are at the store often we have a list of chores or nightly duties that are typically done before we can close up how do we also provide high quality customer service in addition to finishing those nightly chores i mean it's really a challenge you know i've seen a lot of places where you know the technicians are pulling all the trash out of the trash bins and everything oh and then you know then they're going to stop midway of pulling out the trash to like start typing in a prescription and anyway you can kind of see just kind of juggling these chores with with providing high quality service so this extra stress the employee feels stressed because they're not getting their nightly duties done and the customer is feeling rushed because they're seeing the they're seeing the technician or the pharmacist do two or three things oh while they're ringing up the customer and it's kind of like you know shoeing them out the door and finally the service level enforcement at closing time you know the manager may not be available or maybe as busy running nightly reports or doing something else sometimes the unsupervised employees at closing may be may lead to inconsistent service and often you may even see pharmacists utilizing part-time help around closing time when maybe the more experienced technicians who have more seniority maybe they're scheduled earlier in the day from you know 8 am to 9 you know to 5 pm or something so and that was really common where i worked is that often your you know college students uh part-time help they often would pick up 4 p.m to 9 p.m little five-hour shifts here and there so your closing staff would often be very different than your morning staff well from the customer standpoint they want to see excellent service no matter when you're there you know again that's part of your brand like what it what do you want to provide from your pharmacy and so making sure that the employees across the board are you know equally trained and able to provide you know rockstar service all right let's pause for a little bit of active learning and and then wrap up so what do you call that zone between the customer's expectation of adequate and desired service is it the danger zone the zone of tolerance or the zone of adequacy all right if you were paying attention it was the zone of tolerance that's that point between an adequate service level expectation and a desired service level expectation [Music] that concludes our lecture if you have any questions bill feel free to email me any questions that could be good for open public discussion and debate feel free to engage on twitter and then if you're not in the course and you know wanted to comment on this video feel free to leave a comment down below and anything that's of value i might share with our students as well take care