Customer Engagement for Pharmacy Retail Businesses

RedBook
RedBook
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Life has become so easy. Today if you need grocery, just go online, you desire a dress, just go to an online store, you urgently require medicine, your pharmacist is at the tip of your finger. In today’s digital times, many customers have a 24/7 access to all brands of medicines right from websites, to an apps or just a cell phone call away.

The pharmacy business fuelled by health care reform, shrinking profits from increasing competition (online and others). In such a scenario what happens to a brick and mortar store? How does a physical store keep from its business being eaten by online activity?

Retailers are faced with the reality that their business needs to consider and adapt to the changing landscape to expand their services. As consumers are getting to be more aware and proactive in their health care, a physical store needs to be more than just basic prescription dispensing.

Take a scenario where a buyer is walking through the aisles of your retail store. Just at that time, your buyer is also reading reviews or searching for lower prices. At that time, if he lays eyes on an interesting advert from a competitor that captures his attention then your business is likely to go downhill.

With buyers turning to pharmacies for advice and guidance, the key to retaining your buyer and bring them back to the shop is customer engagement through an understanding of your buyer.

To be able to engage customers in retail is today seen as an art. For retailers with physical stores, has to now play around with a combination of interpersonal, in-store experiences and cross-channel marketing.

But for online retailers, cross-channel marketing is one of the only ways to stay relevant with growing business.

Steps for customer engagement in pharmacy retail store:

Building loyalty: Create a personalized shopping experience for your customers. Make them feel welcome by sharing a bit of yourself and your employees.

Create memorable experiences: Good design and an easy-to-use interface for outstanding promotional activities.

Cross channel marketing:

The pharmacy needs to have an in-depth understanding of which channel applies best to the customer. Create an engaging platform. Have loyalty program to drive up the conversion rates. Procure cross-channel and other customer information like customer profile, purchase history, buying behaviour etc., to send relevant and personalized messages to customers and potential customers. The information also provides demographic, returns, exchanges and response to promotions. Have exciting ‘Know-your-customer’ email schemes.

Marketing solutions:

A retail store can cultivate loyalty by adopting customer oriented marketing tools. The processes allow you to capture data from various sources, give a comprehensive view of your customer database to help you glean information to offer personalized services. With cross channel visibility a necessity, the retailer needs to integrate his business with Omni- channel experience. This will maximize purchase by influencing customers.

Buyer first:

A successful marketer focuses on consumers’ needs. Keeping consumer preferences as a top of the line approach is essential for buyer first marketing. So, instead of the product, focusing on the needs of the customer is far more meaningful and relevant. Moreover, this demonstrates integrity and respect for the customer making way for long-standing loyalty over short term goals.

Whether your business is a physical store or solely online, or even a combination of both, employing cross-channel marketing is becoming necessary to buyer retention.

Provide more than just of health and wellness services:

The increased engagement of a chemist / pharmacist with his customer can impact customer loyalty and increase business. As a retailer, a chemist can provide expand his offer of services by promoting awareness of wellness and medicines, by adhering to laws and regulations and creating awareness of the same, and promote cost-efficiency for the overall health care system.

RedBook

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RedBook

A one-stop software solution for pharmacy retail businesses

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