Why customer engagement works

Customer engagement allows you to connect with your customers / patients and gain their interest in your offerings. Please remember your offerings is not just the products you sell or the services you offer but also the staff themselves. This includes their knowledge, skills, professionalism and ability to effectively communicate via different communication methods. You can build and maintain a large customer base by connecting with your customers and actively engaging them. This is the tipping point for creating a positive sentiment around your pharmacy. 

Engaging customers between and beyond purchases will strengthen their emotional connection with your pharmacy. Stronger emotional connections between your customer and the pharmacy will help you retain your hard-won customers. Successful customer engagement will keep your staff and your pharmacy at the top of the customer’s mind when it comes to the decision-making process. It’ll also make them more responsive to your marketing efforts e.g., health promotion, self-care, and link selling.

The website TechTarget has really useful information on customer engagement and how it works.

• Customer acquisition costs. Retention is a key demographic because the financial cost of acquiring new customers is often much higher than the cost of customer retention. Engaged customers often become repeat customers.

• Brand awareness. Customer engagement is important for your pharmacy and the internet can be used to effectively reach potential customers. Successful marketing and social media campaigns as well as responsive customer support on social media can increase the reach of your pharmacy's brand. For instance, customers that get responses to questions or problems through social media might shop more with those organisations in the future. Customers might also be more likely to recommend a more engaging pharmacy to their colleagues and friends.

• Loyal customers. Customer and brand loyalty is often increased through customer engagement that fosters emotional bonds. Loyal customers can also become promoters and brand ambassadors for companies. in this case the "brand" is "your community pharmacy".

• Strong customer experience. Customer engagement that extends the customer journey beyond one transaction can increase customer satisfaction and get customers to buy more e.g., through link selling. Strong customer experiences involve optimising every point of contact between a customer and an organisation. They includes websites with strong user experiences, the sharing of engaging content and quick customer service interactions e.g., dealing with queries.

• Anticipation of customer needs. Customer engagement that deploys strong, proactive customer service and actively monitors customer feedback deepens a company's insight into customer behaviour, needs and preferences. This insight can lead to new products e.g., self blood pressure monitoring and services e.g., "Pharmacy First"  that better meet customers' needs.

• Healthcare platforms. Customer engagement has also moved beyond the realm of retail or traditional product sales. Industries like community pharmacy are using technologies such as customer portals to engage patients in their health regimen and communication with doctors.
• Sellable wearables. When patients have been communicated with and are aware of new products e.g., blood glucose sensors and epilepsy seizure monitors, which are also a key tool in healthcare engagement, help patients measure various health indicators and track their progress. This in turn increases profit, loyalty, retention and improves patient outcomes. 

Please remmebr that counter staff are the most forward facing of all staff in the community pharmacy so customer engagement and all its associayed benefits is a major part of your role.