The Talkative Customer

What sort of behaviours will they display?

They will talk to you about anything and or everything regardless of how busy the pharmacy is. They may ask lots of questions to prolong a conversation. They may be easily distracted and difficult to interrupt.

How can we manage with the customer that likes to talk?

These customers may be lonely and not have many social interactions in their day so will want to have personal as well as professional conversations with you. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it shows that customer is comfortable with your pharmacy team and feels able to have these conversations. It does cause problems when the pharmacy is busy, or you have a heavy workload to get through. Be polite and actively listen to their conversation but don’t be afraid to strike a balance between allowing the customer to talk and getting on with your job.

Some of these customers will start with a professional conversation and digress into a personal one in the middle. Politely give these customers a prompt to return to the professional conversation such as “is there anything else I can help you with about *original problem*”. You could preface this with interrupting effectively e.g. the customer is talking about their neighbour so you would say “that’s fascinating, my neighbour is the same, is there anything I can help you with about *original problem*?”.

Some of these customers will have finished their professional conversation and have started a personal one. Don’t be afraid to be honest with these customers that you have things to do. Be polite and feel free to use things they have said to end the conversation. Some examples of ways to end the conversation are:

“It’s been lovely to speak to you today, but I need to serve another customer now”.

“That story about your auntie’s next door neighbour’s dog was really interesting, I’d love to hear some more about it, but I have some many things to do today”.

“I know you said you had some shopping to do today, so I won’t keep you any longer, thank you for coming in”.

If those don’t work, then you may need to be firm with finishing the conversation. Be direct but remain professional. Finish your statement with an action for them e.g. “it’s been lovely to speak to you today, I’ll see you next week”. If that doesn’t work, you could also try physically going and doing something else. e.g. Make a phone call or send an email. Accompany this with a comment such as “I’m really sorry I’ve just realised I’ve forgotten to phone x and they close soon” or “I’m sorry I need to concentrate on this task, could we talk another time?”