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Listen to your customers

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Listen to your customers

Real-time learning from Warman-Freed Pharmacy, London

All pharmacies face the somewhat daunting task of assessing patient satisfaction. However, patient surveys, such as the community pharmacy patient questionnaire (CPPQ), can be a valuable tool for developing pharmacy operations. Warman-Freed Pharmacy has just finished analysing its 2015 results

Securing quality feedback

Having recently completed the survey process, Joanna Mills, research specialist at Warman-Freed pharmacy, comments that getting the questionnaires completed is a hard task for staff and customers. ‘The overwhelming challenge at Warman-Freed was getting 100 questionnaires completed in a reasonable period of time. In all, it took us four weeks, with the key setback being incomplete responses which couldn’t be counted,’ she says.

The 13-part questionnaire, which can be found on the PSNC website (psnc.org.uk/contract-it/essential-service-clinicalgovernance/cppq/), has the option to add up to three bespoke pharmacy-related questions.

Interpreting the results

Warman-Freed set up a spreadsheet template to collate and compare all answers – that others might find it useful to download: http://bit.ly/1zWpqUl. The analysis picked up a degree of ambiguity in some responses, where the same option had been repeatedly ticked. So to make the analysis more beneficial, the team introduced their own measurement scale (see the chart below), weighting positive and negative answers to create an average score. ‘Paying attention to the extremes of a scale question can often be more revealing,’ suggests Ms Mills.

An example of what a weighted scale could reveal

Supporting customer needs

Customers commended many of Warman-Freed’s ways of working, and the newly created identity resonated with customers, with 95 per cent of those questioned saying that long opening hours are important and 93 per cent agreeing that the pharmacy is an important part of the community. However, it transpired that the pharmacy could do more to support the core customer needs of comfort and privacy. A customer arriving at a pharmacy may feel unwell, tired, anxious or even embarrassed, so it is important that a pharmacy offers the appropriate environment and facilities to cater for the associated needs.

‘Only 50 per cent of our customers rated the comfort of our waiting area as “very good” with a similar number stating the privacy within the pharmacy could be improved,’ explains Ms Mills. ‘This feedback has helped us prioritise our objectives for our forthcoming refit to ensure that we fully meet these fundamental needs. We plan to double our private consultation rooms and create a comfortable waiting area.

‘Feedback also indicated that we could do a better job of managing expectations around prescription waiting times, important when customers aren’t feeling at their best,’ she notes. ‘To address this, we have implemented a tracking system (via our PMR) to better understand current waiting times and follow this over time as we work to improve.’

Embracing digital

One of the greatest challenges of the process was engaging customers to complete the survey. ‘We plan to create more interactive ways of securing feedback in future, moving away from clipboards and introducing a tablet,’ concludes Ms Mills. ‘Free software tools such as Survey Monkey are easy to use and also analyse results automatically. This also gives you the option to email a link directly to customers to complete from the comfort of their own home.’

 

Our CPPQ top tips 

  • Ensure that customers understand the benefits of the survey to them and help staff understand why it is important, too 
  • Keep it simple – ensure questions are clearly worded and easy to understand. Don’t add questions just for the sake of it. More questions mean a greater risk of an incomplete questionnaire 
  • Make every questionnaire count – ensure a member of staff quickly checks the questionnaire is complete 
  • Strive to be ‘very good’ – separate the ‘very good’ and ‘fairly good’ responses so you get a better idea of how you are performing. Do you want to exceed expectations or just get by?

 

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