How to be Your Customers’ Biggest Champion

By Hana Mandapat, Director of Marketing, Desk.com

When you run a small business, you’re always looking for ways to do things better. What do you need to scale your team through rapid growth? How do you use customer data to deliver a better product roadmap? When is the right time to implement a new product or process?

And when it comes to your customer service strategy, having an agile approach for evaluating processes and adjusting them quickly is key to making sure you keep your customers happy for the long run. We recently spoke to Christopher O’Keefe, Chief Operating Officer at Irmat, about how the company has optimized its approach to customer service to keep customers at the center of its business.

How have you refined your approach to service at Irmat to put customers first?

Irmat is a different kind of pharmacy. We offer an easy, convenient, and hassle-free way for customers to get their dermatology prescriptions filled. To deliver on these promises, we need to have a stellar customer service system in place from start to finish. And we do. We work with doctors and insurance providers so our customers don’t have to. We eliminate aggravating steps and streamline processes so our customers get the prescriptions they need delivered to their doorsteps quickly and efficiently.

What are the unique customer needs that make seamless service so critical at Irmat?

When your product is medical prescriptions, you don’t have the luxury of being late. We always keep in mind there’s a customer on the other end of each order, waiting for an important medicine to arrive. There’s no room for error, which is why we take so much care with the entire process. As soon as a doctor submits a prescription to us, we get to work — communicating with insurance, getting it filled, and sending it on its way to the patient.

How has Desk.com helped you achieve these things?

Desk.com is the motor that keeps us running behind the scenes. When a new order comes through, it opens a Desk.com ticket automatically and makes it easy for our customer service team to keep track of all activity. Desk.com walks us through a checklist of steps — insurance, processing, payment, quality assurance, fulfillment, tracking, and delivery — so we always know where a prescription is in the process of making its way to a patient. Desk.com also makes it easy for us to keep our customers apprised of their order status through calls and emails.

What advice can you offer companies just beginning a customer service strategy?

Start from a place of empathy. You want to be your customers’ biggest advocate, their champion. If you train yourself to view your company through a customer-centric lens, you’ll always make the right decisions. Because, at the end of the day, making your customers happy will lead to referrals and repeat business, which is what all companies strive for.