Walgreens Community Management Project
- 1. BY: Rajan, Sudev, and James Improving Customer Experience in Walgreens Pharmacy.
- 2. The Goal The goal for this project is to improve the customer experience in the pharmacy. We will begin with analyzing areas for improvement, and then offering possible solutions.
- 3. Introduction to Pharmacy Goal: Give people the best experience possible. Differentiate us from competitors Determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats Have customers leaving the store happy
- 4. SWOT Analysis - Walgreens’ Pharmacy Strengths ● Technology- Intercom plus ● Large retail network Weaknesses ● Lack of cross training front store employees’ Opportunities ● Alliance Boots Threats ● CVS’ purchase of Target Pharmacies ● Increased labor costs ● Changes in regulations ● Increase and spread of drug abuse
- 5. Walgreens Vs. Competition Competition CVS+Target Rite-Aid Walmart -Walgreens has more 24-hour stores than both CVS and RiteAid combined.
- 6. Reasons to improve customer service in the Pharmacy? It is hard to get a person to walk into your store. The pharmacy brings in 60% of normal sales in the store. It is easy for an upset customer to walk out and never come back.
- 7. How to Monitor Progress Delight Scores Surveys 1-800-Walgreens
- 8. Surveys: What do the customers think? How would you rate your overall pharmacy experience today on a scale of 1-5. 1 being poor and 5 being excellent? Why do you choose walgreens for your prescriptions? What suggestions do you have for improving customer service in the Pharmacy?
- 9. What we learned from speaking with customers Walgreens is a preferred pharmacy for certain insurance companies, meaning that patients are able to get medication for cheaper if they go to Walgreens Pharmacy One of the main reasons customers choose walgreens is for convenience and location. Customers are easily able to find alternative means of getting their medication, and having poor customer service can have a detrimental effect on sales. The drive through is convenient Friendly and helpful staff always make customers’ experience better Patients are being notified that medication is ready, and when arriving to pick it up they are having to wait. Several customers, after observing the pharmacy, said that they think there needs to be more people working.
- 11. Delight Scores Delight scores reflect how the store is doing in any given department Delight scores better help us understand where to improve on
- 12. Delight Scores
- 13. Problems that are causing poor customer satisfaction Customers want to be in and out. When they have to wait, they are unsatisfied. Pharmacy wait time correlates to customer satisfaction. What should be the maximum amount of time a customer should have to wait for their medication? Pharmacy wait time exceeds 15 minutes
- 14. Approaches to improving customer service Procure pharmacy externs who are looking to gain first hand experience We get extra help without having to pay more money, and in return the extern is trained and gains valuable experience develop relationship with pharmacy technician schools Push pharmacists to improve workflow management Bottleneck effect Cross train store clerks to work in the pharmacy Training Log
- 15. Extern Technicians Reach out to pharmacy tech schools.
- 17. Workflow Management Workflow management is very important to run a pharmacy efficiently. Without a proper balance, a bottleneck effect will occur and medication will not be ready in minimal time. Bottleneck effect: A point of congestion in a system where workloads arrive more quickly than that point can handle them. The inefficiencies caused by the bottleneck effect create a queue and longer overall cycle time.
- 18. Workflow Management The pharmacy can easily experience a bottleneck effect when there is an imbalance in the workflow. ie. There are significantly more prescriptions under data review. The technician cannot fill a medication until the pharmacist reviews the script. ie. There are too many product reviews the medication cant be sold until the pharmacist reviews the product in the final stage.
- 19. Workflow Management Clearly, managing workflow is extremely important. Pharmacists and technicians must work together to keep the workflow balanced. Poor workflow leads to excessive wait times, and thus unhappy customers.
- 20. Training log
Editor's Notes
- #5: Some of Walgreens’ strengths include being technologically advanced with Intercom Plus.
- #6: Walgreens
- #8: Conducting surveys essentially help us better understand where we as a store need to improve on: Whether it is customer service related, the wait times, or any other front store problems. We can target the exact problem we need to resolve by the surveys conducted.
- #9: Explain that we each talked to pharmacy customers in our stores and got their input on why their experience was good or bad. This gave us a much better idea of what customers expect, and what would make them happier. We were also able to identify reasons why customers were choosing walgreens, and thus able to determine what needs to be done to bring in new customers and keep existing ones.
- #11: As you can see, according to this chart, customers are not happy in the pharmacy. The main culprit for this problem is the wait times. We promise customers a wait time of 15 minutes. Often times, the 15 minutes is bumped up to 1 hour. If the wait times were more consistent within the 15 minute range, the overall customer experience should yield a higher score.
- #12: Delight
- #13: Overall Delight is directly affected by the following things: RX Greeting RX Time to Fill RX Help you Quickly -Every single employee should greet the customer in a friendly manner. This will not only help improve our delight scores, but also leave a good impression on our customers. -The estimated time given to customers that want to wait for their prescription should be low. If it isn’t low and the pharmacy is backed up, the time given should accurately represent how long the customer has to wait. -A way to improve the “RX Time to Fill” is by improving overall workflow. One Technician should be scanning, one should be filling, --------------------------- -The main way to improve on “RX Help You Quickly” times is to improve the overall workflow and efficiency as stated previously. Improving workflow and better training our technicians on the following three key ideas will have a great positive impact on our overall delight score.
- #14: Pharmacy wait times directly correlate to customer satisfaction in the following ways: The customer has better things to do besides picking up medication No one wants to spend all day in the pharmacy The maximum wait time a customer should have to wait for their medication is 15 minutes. Pharmacy wait time can often exceed the maximum for several reasons. Staff shortage Efficiency, better training, workflow
- #21: The purpose of this is not only to have employees to be able to provide back up for the pharmacy. This will allow them experience something new and gain more knowledge about the pharmacy. Maybe they will like working there and it could open up an opportunity for them. Also need to account for the schedule COACHING CARD