Is incompetence a "norm" in pharmacy service nowadays?

Sorry for the lack of updates to my blog recently. I have been spending literally too much time on Flickr and I think I might take a break from it soon =P It is kind of addictive, I mean in a good way because I have learnt so much by surfing through hundreds of photos everyday and I have met some brilliant photographers and great friends.

I feel compelled to complain something today to get it off my chest! We just updated our Point of Sale (POS) system in the pharmacy in hope that it will provide us with better inventory control and sales reports. And what did we get? A system that totally stuffed up our inventory during the conversion process, stocks level is out by miles and most of our sales figures are totally out of whack! According to our system, we have actually sold 350 boxes of Panadeine tablets (48) last month...what are we? A Chemist Warehouse? When we run into problems, the software company generally takes 2 - 3 days to response, and most of our queries/problems are tagged urgent response needed! I am not going to name and shame here just in case they get angry at us, then we might get no service at all in the future :)

Another thing that upsets me is the level of service offered by one of our pharmaceutical wholesaler, Sigma. They have appalling customer service and is getting worse by the day! On a typical phone call to their customer service, the average waiting time will be around 5-10 minutes and that's on a good day! "Your phone calls are important to us, please hold and our next available...." do I need to continue? :) Now they want us to pay $12 per month for the Pharmax ordering service that we don't use at all! We made numerous phone calls to query about the charge and to cancel it, we were directed back and forth at least 4 times between Perth and Melbourne customer services and no one seems to know what's going on. Then one of them said to us, that $12 is not the charge for the ordering service, it's the standard charge for using their customer service!! Pay while you wait for service...that's something new you don't hear everyday :) No wonder they are going broke, for your info, their share prices have plummeted more than 50% in the last 6 months! I wonder why.

Food for thought

While I was having a quick lunch yesterday at work, I skimmed across SWAPS August newsletter which is aptly titled "What's in a name?". If you work in a drug store, you are probably trying to push the sale of so called "home brand" or chemist own products through the roof and hopefully making lots of profit in return. If you are a consumer going to a chemist to buy a product, chances are you will probably be talked into buying one of those "home brand" alternative as well.

This is all well and good but one problem. The problem is when a customer comes in and asks for a branded line because they have used it successfully before, or they have seen it advertised on TV, and then they are "talked into" a different product, sometimes you can win and sometimes you can lose. You can win because you are probably making a much bigger margin on the sale, you can lose because the customer may not be satisfied with the results and guess what, they may not come back and tell you that. In fact, they may just not return at all.

Home brands and brand substitution when it comes to healthcare is a totally different ball game all together. Unlike supermarket where you have the option of choosing a home brand cookies and if they are no good, you just bin them. Healthcare is a very sensitive issue and consumers are aware of that and are taking it much more seriously than, let say, choosing a box of cookies.

Provide a "value" service, because at the end of the day, that's what matters to customers, not the cheapest, but the best perceived value. After all, those companies who own those big brand products are the ones who are spending big money advertising and driving consumers to your pharmacy. Don't try and beat the supermarkets at their own game!

Self-Annihilation: Pharmacy vs Woolworth and Coles? NO LONGER!

Came home from work earlier today and not feeling very well thanks for all the coughs and sneezes customers brought in from work. But that's ok, after all, they are the ones who pay my bills and mortgage and put food on my table at the end of the day. I reluctantly picked up an AJP, a monthly pharmacy magazine which I apparently subscribed to but never get around to read them. I got a pile of them stashed in a giant basket in my kitchen still in their plastic wrappers.

It was the April 07 issue and as I flicked through the first few pages, the headline on page 4 cought my eyes: "The enemy within: aggressive pharmacy competition reaches new depths". Pharmacy industry was faced with a grievious challenge couple years back when retail giants, Woolworth and Coles Myers were trying to get a slice of this multimillion-dollars pie. Every pharmacists (well, almost everyone) were united in their voice to fend off these Walmart-inspired, profit-driven greedy giants. At the meanwhile, a "cancer" is growing within the industry which has slipped under the radar of most of us: big discount pharmacies aka "warehouse pharmacies"!

"NEVER BEATEN ON PRICES!! If you find a cheaper price elsewhere, we will match it and give you 10% off the difference" Heard that before, seen it before, now the cancer is spreading even faster in Perth and is coming to a place near you! FEAR THEM!! Yes, if you are a owner-pharmacist, you should be very worried and so do all of us hard working pharmacists, who are trying to make a living out of serving our community with our knowledge.

Here I quote from the article: "A new player within the Liverpool market, Chemist Warehouse, has gone on the front foot in its competitive campaign to attact customers away from its more established rivals..offering discounts well below cost. These reportedly include Panamax 100tab pack selling 69c and 89c, free gifts with prescriptions and volume discounts on a host of analgesics." As unbelievable as it sounds, the Chemist Warehouse was also reportedly sending their girls to dish out their discount catalogues within and outside of rival pharmacies! Other examples include dispensing three and four packs at once and telling customers that they would only receive their OTC discounts if they had their prescriptions dispensed with them.

How bad can it be? Have you seen people from Big W distributing their catalogues in Kmart? How unprofessional and unethical can those warehouse pharmacy owners be? Can you trust your health with those unscrupulous greedy minority "pharmacists" who want nothing but their aim to close other stores? What is the price you put on your health? I feel sorry for those new pharmacy graduates who are trying to make a living out of this endangered profession...believe me, I feel sorry for myself too!

p/s sorry about the language tone I used in this blog, that's just because I AM ANGRY!!