It’s time, I believe, to take a little bit of pride in what we of the Pharmacy profession have been able to achieve. Millions of people have benefited from the easy access of Pharmacists to the community and no doubt countless lives have been improved and even saved. In my last lecture to the final year students at the University of Newcastle, I speak about being proud of your profession, but I also speak about being proud of where you work, and if you can’t be proud of your place of work, find somewhere that you can be proud of. Having made that statement now for a few years, I have begun to consider what it really means. I can’t count how many times I have spoken to Pharmacists that feel compromised in their place of work. Sometimes it’s because they work in the sort of place that focuses on price, but most often it’s because they don’t feel as though they can use the skills they have developed over what is now a very difficult degree. And why? Because they are given menial roles, because they are time poor and because time spent with a customer is considered a waste of time. Here’s a couple of things for business owners to consider.
1. Why on earth are Pharmacists given clerical roles? Why would you have the most expensive employees with the most knowledge clicking away at a computer? Get your Pharmacists out talking to customers. They are clearly your best sales people because they know the most!
2. How does it benefit a business to drive down the wages to such a point that customer service has to be brief or non-existent? Again, having your Pharmacist forward with the time to speak to customers can only increase your turnover and probably your customer numbers. What has happened to the customer comes first?
3. Counter-intuitively, have a look at your wages. I cannot tell you how many Pharmacy owners tell me they have above average wages bills because ‘we are different’. No, you’re not. What you are is inefficient, perhaps with your systems and processes or perhaps with your shop design and perhaps your staff aren’t ‘focused’. I have never met a Pharmacy owner that hasn’t said they have the ‘best staff’. We can’t all have the best staff.
The world of Pharmacy has changed. If you haven’t changed, you are at risk of being a relic, and being left behind. Customers now want a shed load more for a hell of a lot less. The reality is that our discounting competitors have changed that game forever. They have flogged price so much that it is now a consumer expectation. Ignore this at your peril. It doesn’t matter how immoral they are, how much bull-dust they spin (50% off Prescriptions??), how rubbish the customer service is and how bad their stores look, they have changed the world of Pharmacy forever. It’s too late to worry about it. The one thing they haven’t managed is to raise their level of service. They will struggle to do this for a number of reasons, including the pathetic wages they pay, but mostly because the ‘owners’ of these stores rarely if ever go into the stores. We all know that the best performing stores in our industry have a strong input, and visibility of their owners. This, people, is our competitive advantage! And yet great swathes of our profession are no better, either caught up with the discounting fever or behaving as if it is 20 years ago. The future of the Pharmacy profession is not in sales. Anything that can be distributed by a machine is at risk. Our future lies in providing solutions, and if Pharmacies is not gearing towards providing solutions, then they are holding back the whole profession. We are only as strong as our weakest link. To quote a classic Italian novelist, “everything needs to change, so everything can stay the same”. Get ourselves trained up, or make sure our team has the correct training, then make sure we have the processes and staff levels that allows our teams to offer services and solutions, not just product. It’s time to support our Pharmacists in their clinical role to provide solutions, not just stuff. Let Pharmacists be Pharmacists.
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