Any patient who walks through your pharmacy’s doors is worth celebrating, but there may be a few who stand out.
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Whether they are long-time supporters or new to your pharmacy, some patients go out of their way to do business with you. They come to you for routine appointments, tests, vaccinations, and supplies 一 relying on you to help meet all of their health needs.
After they have made a few trips to the pharmacy, you may have started to recognize their face, gotten to know them, and developed a rapport with them. Over time, you may have even created a strong patient-provider relationship and been able to face challenges together as a team.
The Value of Loyalty
In any case, your most loyal patients are foundational to the success of your pharmacy.
You can count on them to keep coming back, and you can trust that they will share the word about your pharmacy with their friends and family. Your loyal patients stick beside you, and they enable you to keep your business growing.
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For all that loyal patients do, take the time to show your appreciation.
A simple “thank you” or an act of kindness can do the trick, but for more powerful results, recruit the help of your pharmacy software system.
Among its other capabilities, your software system can give you the tools you need to thank (and reward) your top patients 一 using a robust loyalty program. In the software, you can manage transactions, track your top patients, and get the tools you need to implement rewards.
Loyalty programs are nothing to skip out on. They can increase your sales by 20% and grow your business 2.5 times faster than traditional methods. It’s no surprise, then, that over 90% of companies use loyalty programs, and that your pharmacy should do the same.
Use Insights to Your Advantage
Your pharmacy software system already enables you to keep track of each of your patients, whether they have visited your pharmacy one time or one hundred times.
In your software, you can easily record patient information, health needs, and goals.
If your software system supports eCare Plans, you can get these insights in a simple, streamlined way. In addition, you can keep up with each patients’ transactions via your Point-of-Sale system: documenting each prescription they fill, each service they use, or each OTC or retail item they buy.
Already, your pharmacy software system gives you detailed insights about each patient and their buying behaviors.
Depending on the vendor you use, though, you may be able to go even further and separate your top patients 一 your loyal customers 一 from the crowd.
The best software systems allow you to find out who your top patients are and reward them accordingly.
Review, Reward, Report
To help you kickstart your loyalty program, your software system can do several things.
First, it can determine which of your patients shop and spend the most in your pharmacy (the scale for determining loyalty). Using your POS transactions, it can compare sales from all of your patients, then determine who does business with you most frequently.
Depending on your system, you can set a specific time frame to track transactions, so as to give more patients an opportunity to get to the top, or you can make transactions ongoing so that cumulative sales affect loyalty status.
Using the same POS transactions, your software can then distinguish your top patients from others. It can assign them a loyalty ID 一 either by using a numeric value (like #1 patient, #2 patient, #3, and so on), or by placing them in tiers (like gold, silver, and bronze patients).
Either way, when you look up a patient in your system, you can easily see their status. Or, for an easier approach, you can filter out top patients specifically, then get to implementing your rewards.
What Rewards Will You Offer?
All pharmacies do rewards differently, so your pharmacy will have to decide what works best for you.
Some offer special discounts, some offer giveaways, and some allow early access to new products, services, or sales items for their top patients. However you choose to do rewards, though, you can easily integrate them into your software system.
Depending on the system you choose, you can set flags or reminders that prompt you to reward patients as soon as they reach a specified dollar amount. Some systems may even automatically apply certain rewards for you, like special discounts, if you set them up to do so.
As you start implementing rewards, your software system can allow you to track how effective your loyalty program is, using loyalty reports. These reports can give you insight into how many loyal patients you currently have and help you strategize how to get those numbers up.
In any new program or project, it is important to constantly review and evaluate your work ㅡ and your pharmacy software system can help you do it more efficiently.
Conclusion
Loyalty programs are one of the most practical ways that you can show appreciation to your top patients. With the help of your pharmacy software system, these programs can be easy to implement and even easier to maintain.
When you start the search for your next software system, keep loyalty programs (and customer appreciation) in mind. Visit vendors, schedule demos, and find out if the technology will support your patients.
Patients deserve appreciation and the right software can help you show yours.
