The Next Level’s first audit of Amcal Fairfield Townsville identified that:
- 21% of script customers stayed in store
- Script customers were engaged by dispensary staff for 2m 29s
- Script customers received 25s of proactive health & medicines counsel
- 28% of script customers received proactive medicines counsel
- Each script item took 4m 23s to process
- OTC customers were engaged by dispensary staff for 2m 0s
- OTC customers received 25s of proactive health & medicines counsel
- Pharmacists spent 31% of time forward of the script processing function of the dispensary
NB all values are averages
The Next Level and Amcal Fairfield Townsville embarked on a 3-year journey to implement the opportunities identified in the baseline scores via:
- Structural solutions, including setting a clear vision of their desired service model
- Strategic solutions, including cultural change of the team and re-education of customer regarding the new service model
- Upskilling staff to host total engagement: complete solution conversations more often
Subsequent audits throughout this journey have shown:
- A 167% improvement in customers staying in the store (to 57%)
- A 54% improvement in script customer engagement duration (to 3m 49s)
- A 100% improvement in proactive health & medicines counsel duration per script customer (to 50s)
- A 183% improvement in the proportion of script customers receiving proactive medicines counsel (to 79%)
- A 31% improvement in script processing efficiency (to 3m 2s)
- A 3% improvement in OTC customer engagement duration (to 2m 4s)
- A 167% improvement in proactive health & medicines counsel duration per OTC customer (to 46s)
- A 82% improvement in Pharmacist forward orientation (to 56%)
Key commercial outcomes include:
- An 8% increase in total health dollar sales
- A 14% increase in total health sales profit, indicating that although fewer items were sold, the items sold were higher value AND higher margin products.
- A 10% increase in total health dollars per script
- A further 20% increase in total health dollars per script is now targeted for next year.
The old saying is true; you can’t manage what you can’t measure. The commercial benefits of measuring dispensary team customer engagement, and proactively implementing the changes accordingly, cannot be disputed.