In any business, one of the top ongoing priorities is expanding and strengthening your customer base. A community of loyal customers will keep your business growing and succeeding for years to come. For retail pharmacy owners, it can be tricky to know how to attract and earn the loyalty of your consumers. We’ll explore three key tips on how to improve the customer loyalty of your retail pharmacy, subsequently boosting your bottom line.
1. Boost Engagement
Just like personal relationships, customer relationships are a two-way street; you need to engage with your customers to get them to engage with you. Without an interactive relationship, your retail pharmacy customers might not feel a true connection to your business. In store, pharmacy owners should invest in the proper tools and technology that streamline their operations. If your day-to-day tasks are automated, your employees will have more time to interact with shoppers, building the crucial relationships needed for pharmacy customer loyalty.
Online, retail pharmacy owners can use social media to connect with their customers digitally. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter can be used to create a real brand community, allowing you and your customers to follow, like, comment, and share each other’s posts. To boost online engagement, try asking insightful questions, sharing real photos of your business and staff, and promoting local events.
When building your online presence, it’s important to make your efforts more human. Instead of worrying about perfection and sales promotions, use your social media to showcase who your pharmacy really is, and what makes it great. Your customers will love the opportunity to get to know you and your staff on a more personal level, and will feel less intimidated to engage with your business.
2. Show You Care
Pharmacy and healthcare aren’t like other businesses; they are intimate industries by nature. You know your customers’ health issues and needs, so it’s essential to emphasize your genuine level of care for your shoppers. To truly increase your retail pharmacy customer loyalty, your business needs to show your customers that they’re in good hands.
To start, personalize service whenever possible. Greet people by name when they come in, send handwritten thank you notes, or a small birthday treat. When training your employees, highlight the importance of above-and-beyond customer service. A small gesture of helping someone open complicated packaging or carrying heavy shopping bags to their car will have a meaningful impact to the customer.
3. Reward Your Customers
Universally, customers want to feel noticed and appreciated for their business– and the retail pharmacy industry is no exception. One of the best and most effective ways of increasing customer retention is to reward shoppers for their business. If you don’t have one already, your pharmacy can implement a customer loyalty program that will organize, track, and maintain your customer data for you.
The right loyalty program will offer incentives such as points, discounts, free health assessments, or gift cards to keep your customers coming back to your pharmacy–and away from your competition down the street.
Understanding your customers’ wants and needs, and delivering that to them, is key to running a successful retail pharmacy. To learn more on how to show your customers how much you value them, contact Auto-Star for more information on our retail pharmacy technology and customer loyalty program.
