[1] Principles of Good Customer Service

Types of Customers/Patients:

-Impulsive and friendly type
-Deliberate type
-Confident and decided acting customers
-Undecided and uncertain customers

Types of Customers/Patients

-Friendly and talkative customers
-Silent or talent customers
-Impatient, nervous or irritable customer -Suspicious customer -High-roller customer

RESPONSIVENESS

DESCRIPTION

Receiving help and promote service

Service criticality examples

-increasing service failure criticality,
-decrease in satisfaction ,
-decrease in commitment to the business by the customer and
-negative word of mouth can become that much more problematic (

Pharmacy Services with Direct Patient Interaction

-dispensing
-immunization
-patient counseling
-extended pharmacy services
-clinical pharamacy services
-pharmacovigilance

What is customer service?

-is the act of taking care of the customer's needs
-The agent's efforts greatly surpassed your expectations which left a positive impression of that company

customer service is the act of taking care of the customer's needs by:

-providing and delivering professional, helpful, high quality service and assistance
-before, during, and after the customer's requirements are met

No one universal definition of ____ customer service

"good" or "bad"

The key to good customer service is

building good relationships with your customers

how to build good relationships with your customers:

Thanking the customer and promoting a positive, helpful and friendly environment will ensure that they leave with a great impression.

A ____ will return often and is likely to spend more

happy customer

• providing good customer service is intricately tied to

patient care

good customer service gives an organization or business a

competitive advantage

Why is customer service important?

-good external customer relations are likely to mean regular repeat orders.
-increased customer loyalty results in bigger turnover and increased market shares.
-good publicity enhances the organization's reputation.
-all organization can benefit from good publicity.

customer

-most important person in the company.
-isn't dependent on us, we are dependent on him.
-is the purpose of our work, giving us the opportunity to serve him.

customer

-not someone to argue with.
-someone who brings us his wants, and it is our job to handle them profitably.
-a human being with emotions and feelings
-is the lifeblood of every business

• patient

-as being more reliant on a pharmacist
-more desiring of a personal relationship with a pharmacist than a customer

Customer

tends to be more autonomous, information driven, and self-confident.

Confident and decided acting customers

-Decided (pre-sold) customer
-Confident customer with a concerted (know-it-all) type.

Undecided and uncertain customers

-Conformist type
-Shopping type
-"casual lookers" or typical window shoppers.

Types of Customers/Patients

-Transactional customer
-Relationship customer
-Information customer
-Partnership customer

Company sales comes from two groups :

-New customer
-Repeat customer

Aim of the business:

to create customer

PRINCIPLES FOR ENSURING GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE

-Underpromise and overdeliver
-Do work right the first time
-Actively listen to patients and customers
-Make patients and customers feel important and appreciated
-Help patients and customers understand how your pharmacy works
-Always look for ways to help patients and customers

Effective Customer Relations -

"Business is People"

Customer Care Strategy:
- Ensures that the customer gets:

-What they want
-The product to the standard and specification that they want.
-With predictable quality or reliability
-At a price which suits their needs.

In judging how well a product or service meets their needs, customers/patients considers factors like:

-reliability
-responsiveness
-assurance
-empathy
-tangibles
-friendliness
-fairness
-control
-options
-information

RELIABILITY

DESCRIPTION

Receiving the promised service dependently and accurately

RELIABILITY

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Accurate prescription filling and patient counseling

RESPONSIVENESS

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Staff who are eager to help patients and customer any way they can

ASSURANCE

Knowledgeable and courteous employees who convey trust and confidence

ASSURANCE

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Staff who are knowledgeable about the location of products in the store and help customers find products

EMPATHY

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Acknowledging that patients may be sick, scared, confused, worried, and responding to their feeling

EMPATHY

Caring, individualized attention; appreciating a patient's or customer's circumstances and feeling without criticism or judgement

TANGIBLES

The appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials

FRIENDLINESS

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Friendly and upbeat staff; calling patients by their name; having packages ready as patients and customers walk to the counter

FAIRNESS

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Helping patients and customers in order of their arrival at the pharmacy

CONTROL

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Letting patients know that the remainder of a partial fill will not be available for two days

FRIENDLINESS

Polite and courteous treatment

OPTIONS

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Ordering products for patients and customers when necessary

INFORMATION

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Patient counseling and patient information to take home

INFORMATION

The patient's or customer's need to be educated and informed about products, policies, procedures

OPTIONS

The patients or customer's need to feel that other options are available

CONTROL

The patient's or customer's need to have an impact on the way things turn out

PHARMACY ISSUES THAT ARE IMPORTANT TO PATIENTS

-filling prescriptions accurately and efficiently,
-overall convenience
-pharmacy staff were most important to patients
-prescription pricing
-printed health information
-additional medical services

This requires pharmacies and their staff to achieve a balance between ensuring customer satisfaction by

being accurate, efficient, and convenient, and also focusing on patient care and expanding services to improve health outcomes.

HOW TO TREAT A CUSTOMER

-Treat them courteously
-Ethical treatment
-Listening to complains

Added customer services are:

-free parking with adequate security
-extension of credit
-free delivery service
-order filled up through phone
-gift wrapping service
-return and exchange privilege
-warranty

Added customer services in Pharmacy setting

-medication therapy management (MTM),
-medication adherence programs, and
-disease state management initiatives (Simone, 2014).

examples of service failure

-Failing to meet the expectations of a patient or customer is called service failure
-patients and customers not getting what they expected or were promised;
-having to wait longer than they expected or were promised;
-rude, patronizing, or indifferent treatment from a pharmacy staff member
-a "can't do" attitude
-a "sorry, it's our policy" response

Service criticality

the magnitude of the consequences of a potential service failure to the patient or customer

• service failures in the pharmacy can range

-inconvenient
-very serious

inconvenient

(a long wait for a prescription, or a partial fill due to limited stock)

very serious

(giving a patient the wrong drug or wrong dose)

High-criticality service failures also known as

catastrophic prescription errors in the pharmacy

High-criticality service failures

-causing severe harm that is irreversible (Tipton et al.,2003)
-are emotionally disturbing in addition to being potentially or actually life-threatening

High-criticality service failures implications

include loss of trust in the pharmacist and/or pharmacy, injured public image, spread of negative word-ofmouth, legal action, board of pharmacy action, as well as loss of customers and profit

Service recovery

-RIGHTING THE WRONG
-the way in which a service provider responds to a failure is critical

Service recovery is the attempt to

correct the service failure and make things right for the patient or customer

Service recovery example

- effort to "alter the negative perceptions of dissatisfied customers"
-to ultimately maintain a business relationship with these customers"
-requires more than correcting the error and making things right, but
-requires going above and beyond to satisfy the patient or customer

Suggested recovery efforts for these types of failures

-Apology (Bell and Zemke 1987)
-Urgent reinstatement
-Empathy
-Symbolic atonement
-Follow-up
-Provide information about the problem (Johnston,1995)
-Provide information about what is being done

Suggested recovery efforts for these types of failures

-Action in response to customer (but preferably without being asked)
-Staff appearing to go out of their way to help
-Involving the customer in decision making

Suggested recovery efforts for these types of failures

-discount
-connection,replacement
-Compensation for substantial financial losses
-Explanation of how the mistake was made

• Effective recovery from a service failure can potentially result

-To a more satisfied patient than if no service failure ever happened (for low to mid critical service failure)
-service recovery paradox

recommendations for response to a victim after a catastrophic event

-Tell the truth about what happened.
-Attempt to compensate for emotional costs with an apology.
-Attempt to compensate for psychological costs with assurances the system will be fixed.
-Attempt to compensate for costs related to time, money, and inconvenience through financial settlements

PHARMACY PRINCIPLES

-Personalized Care
-Helpful information
-Active listening
-Respect Privacy
-Medication Expertise
-Accessibility
-Customer Centric Approach -Your feedback

How to provide a good Customer Service?

-Provide customers your complete attention
-Use eye contact and avoid other activities
-Sincerely apologize to a patient or customer if a mistake was made by you or the pharmacy
-Convey interest and concern when speaking over phone

Both ____ are entitled to high-quality service in a pharmacy

patients and customers

PRINCIPLES FOR ENSURING GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE

-Golden rule of customer service
-Anticipate patients' and customers' needs and wants
-Solve patient and customer problems without hassle
-Solve patient and customer problems promptly
-Treat patients and customers with dignity, empathy, and respect
-correct mistakes when they are made -Apologize for mistakes when they are made

TANGIBLES

HOW STANDARD CAN BE MET

Using spare minutes in the day to wipe shelves or counters; providing medication information that is easy to understand and read

FAIRNESS

Fair treatment from service providers

SERVICE FAILURE

customer service goes wrong