Leading pharmacy
distribution company of south India

Customer Experience management

Opportunity

The pharmaceutical distribution business differs from other similar businesses in one way, no distribution company is a sole distributor for any manufacturer. As a result a retail medical shop can choose to buy from any distributor. This results in needless price cutting affecting the profitability of the distributor. A distributor who can deliver a better customer experience to his retail customers, therefore, has an opportunity to avoid needless discounting.

Outcome

A CX Management infrastructure and framework was put in place to help the company manage its customer relations.

Background

The Client was a well-established pharmaceutical distribution company based in Cochin. The issues that they were facing was that their customers, retail pharmacies, were reaching out to distributors in neighbouring districts to get better discounts. This in turn lead to a price-war between distributors in the district affecting all of them. Retail pharmacies also have high competition amongst themselves and if a customer asks for a particular medication then the pharmacist will even make arrangements to send it to the customer if he doesn’t have it immediately

Objective

To improve the customer experience for the retail pharmacies so that they prefer to buy from our client even if the rate is a little higher.

Action

We conducted a small sample research amongst customers of the client and those who have ordered in the past and then discontinued. Some of the issues that came up were that phones were not reachable or not answered, some deliveries had wrong products and credit notes were issued late. We conducted interviews with the customer service representatives and the sales staff. We developed a customer journey map including a process flow for orders and put together the technical part of the tele-caller software and the CRM software.

Result

Customer complaints have reduced, there are lesser returned orders and credit notes are being issued faster. Overall, pending another survey we can assume that customer experience and satisfaction have improved..