How can you make your pharmacy “the most magical place on Earth,” ala Disney?
You can’t.
Unlike pharmacy professionals, Disney’s “Cast Members” (employees who work at a theme park or store) and “Imagineers” (designers, builders or engineers) don’t have to juggle low reimbursements, insurance mazes or controlled substances.
But you can learn from the best, incorporating the Magic Kingdom’s tenets of customer service throughout your community pharmacy, according to Mark Garofoli, PharmD, clinical assistant professor and director of experiential learning at West Virginia University School of Pharmacy.
“Disney has pretty much mastered customer service,” he said. “There are very few entities on this planet that can charge more for something and people will pay it. Then ask “Can I do that again?’ That’s not something that we experience in pharmacy often, if ever.”
How? Some thoughts include:
It starts with culture
Customer service starts with culture. But your culture starts with your customer, not you or your employees. Putting your patient at the center of your culture comes from truly understanding your patient’s needs and putting the right guidelines and standards in place to exceed their expectations. And to exceed those expectations consistently.
As Disney states, “When an organization puts the customer at its core—empowering its people and unifying its processes—outstanding customer service becomes possible on a constant basis.”
First greeting to final meeting
When a patient enters your pharmacy or approaches your counter, does someone say “Hello.” Or are they met with silence? Personal attention is the super power of community pharmacists, so amp that up!
Garofoli emphasized the importance of face-to-face check-ins with patients instead of just handing out a survey or asking them to fill out a form. Ask a patient or two if they have anything they’d like to share or how you might improve service. Then, take them to a quiet, private place so they can share their thoughts away from other customers or your employees. Underscore the fact that you and your team are available and ready to help.
Focus on details
Remembering a patient’s birthday or life events might offer a bit of surprise and delight. If a patient mentions an upcoming vacation, try to remember to ask how it was the next time they come in. If you know a birthday or special event is coming up, pop a quick note into the mail. You might even send out handwritten thank-you notes on an intermittent basis.
Finally, ask yourself as well as your team for customer service successes or failures examples in everyday life. Then, analyze that interaction and retrofit it to your own pharmacy. After all, you’re also customers or patients at one time or another.
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