HappyOrNot global study: Thursday is the best day to visit neighborhood pharmacies

Patient satisfaction is particularly high between 9 am to 11 am

HappyOrNot^Ⓡ, the global leader in instant customer and employee satisfaction reporting, has collected over 5.2 million patient satisfaction feedbacks in retail pharmacy, and is used by 136 pharmacy locations worldwide. The data collected with the HappyOrNot feedback terminals shows that patient satisfaction is the highest on Thursday and lowest on Sunday. Looking at the hour of the day, coming in between 9am and 11am would give patients the best experience.

HappyOrNot has been utilized in many of retail organizations across the globe since 2009. In retail alone, over 230 million feedbacks have been collected and the current customer satisfaction benchmark is 85.0%. Pharmacy, a subtier of retail, has a much higher satisfaction level, 94.6%. This goes to show the level of customer expectation and competitiveness that pharmacy chain stores, independent pharmacy owners, mass merchandisers, and supermarkets with an in-store pharmacy face in today’s market.

Weekly and monthly satisfaction trends

HappyOrNot analyzed its 2016 data on a weekly and monthly basis to help pharmacy owners understand the patterns of customer satisfaction in order to strategize improvements in performance. The following trends were observed:

Fridays and Sundays are key days for observation. Overall satisfaction is very high from Monday to Fridays, and drops by approximately 4 percentage points by Sunday. While Thursday holds the highest satisfaction level, in terms of overall performance Friday takes first place as it maintains a nearly on-par satisfaction benchmark while serving the most number of customers. By contrast, Sunday performs worst with the least number of customers, indicating that there may be issues pertaining to inadequate staffing levels.

The study also reveals that from January 2016 pharmacies were on a constant increase in overall satisfaction, but experienced a hiccup that started in May and lasted two months. Recovery commenced in July, and held a steady climb to year end (with just a brief downturn during September. HappyOrNot’s data for the first two months of 2017 shows that the high satisfaction level is continuing to hold in the 94-percentile range.

What can pharmacy managers and owners learn from this? “Many of our clients acknowledge that measuring, tracking, and improving customer experiences is a worthy goal as it boosts loyalty, drives higher conversions and, ultimately, increases revenue,” Founder and CEO of HappyOrNot, Heikki Väänänen said. “They also realize that in order to improve quality, increase market share, optimize service, they must align all aspects of the organization in an effort to improve and manage performance.”

Building strong relationships with satisfied customers

Healthcare systems have undergone tremendous changes in recent years and more changes are likely to come. Despite of this, pharmacies can keep its focus on important drivers of satisfaction to continuously earn their customer’s business and loyalty. Drivers such as:

• Staff friendliness
• Wait time
• Having knowledgeable and informative staff
• Readiness of medication or its generic brand
• Ease of refill
• Cost competitiveness
• Wellness center or preventive care options

Engaging employees in the customer experience journey

For pharmacies, engaged pharmacists and staff can arguably be the most influential force in the customer experience journey. “Engaged employees create engaged customers,” Rhett Majoria, Co-owner and Chief Pharmacist of Majoria Drugs said. “At the store level, the presence of feedback terminals made everyone more aware of their interactions with customers, especially since we post the weekly results on our staff board and discuss results in our meetings. Also, anytime we hit 100% in customer satisfaction we email the staff and it serves as a ‘great job’ dopamine hit! The feedback device and the reporting service is the best, yet one of the smallest, investments we have made in our pharmacy.”

About HappyOrNot

HappyOrNot^® is the global leader in instant customer and employee satisfaction reporting. Our innovative feedback collecting smileys and intelligent data analytics reporting service help our clients to improve their customer experience, relationships, and employee engagement. We serve over 2,500 companies across 98 countries and have collected and reported on over a quarter billion feedbacks. 

For more information, visit: www.happy-or-not.

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