The Challenge
This pharmaceutical company operates multiple pharmacy sites, on a national level, with hundreds of staff across the headquarters, retail outlets and the distribution center. Being a fast-paced operation, with customers needing advice, medication and supplies quickly, the pressure was often being exacerbated by additional customer footfall from struggling surgeries due to their own mounting operational pressure, and seasonal health trends. Store associates were often moving through the store at pace, addressing customer requirements in one area, and order fulfilment in another – as well as one-to-one consultative services elsewhere.
With on-site stock usually lean, the distribution center needed to work closely with stores, to remain agile, efficient, and effective in stock fulfilment. Missed calls, lengthy call waiting times and slow throughput of customers across multiple branches, was ultimately leading to a loss in sales revenue through a lack of efficiency.
A meaningful solution was required to drive efficiency across customer touchpoints, to maximize customer throughput, as agility is profitability.
The Results
Akixi Insights was trialled across 752 sites, with the solution working as a silent member of the team, monitoring inbound customer call traffic and then providing meaningful and actionable snapshot information, all in real time on a browser and mobile app.
Akixi highlighted that during the trial period, the company received 1.8 million calls into its pharmacies of which a staggering 68% were being missed.
The meaningful information that Akixi generated enabled the company’s IT service provider to open conversations with the pharmacy company, who in turn opened discussions with their store managers and regional managers. The feedback was that the store associates were simply unable to get to the telephone in time to answer, in most cases because of the store working model as outlined.
The solution that the service provider put forward to the customer, was to supply wearables, in the form of wireless headsets. These were deployed to around 200 of the branches. The insights gleaned from the Akixi solution led to overall improvement in customer experience – with speedier customer engagement and more efficient order fulfilment. Store associates and pharmacists were able to move more freely and increase the quantity of calls taken by using their headsets, mitigating lost revenue opportunities, and driving business efficiency, as well as enhancing the customer experience and brand value.
