Investment in technology and specifically its mobile pharmacy app has enabled CVS to re-position itself from a drug store chain to a provider of innovative health services.
What can an independent compounding pharmacy learn from CVS?
“Our goal is to create a personalized path to better health by creating a “connected” health experience that makes it radically easier for people to save time and money, and stay healthy.” Brian Tilzer, Chief Digital Officer at CVS Health
To achieve this connected health experience, CVS has 3 investment priorities to deliver on their integrated pharmacy and health care delivery model:
- An integrated front-store experience,
- Integrated pharmacy experience
- And integrated health tools and services.
CVS cites the investment in their Curbside initiative as an example of such an initiative. Curbside enables patients to pick up scripts ordered via an app at the curb side of a CVS store. It is grounded in the belief that consumers want more convenience in their life.
Success for CVS means solving real customer problems. A better customer experience for CVS has always meant stronger “Success related” numbers and metrics across all CVS touch points, including in-store, pharmacy, and digital (web, mobile, email, app, SMS, etc.).
So what is the CVS approach to improving the customer experience? They focus on how to
- Enable healthier lifestyles
- Save the customer money
- Save the customer time
When it comes to tech investment: if “cool” technologies and concepts don’t solve 1 of these 3 core challenges CVS won’t invest resources into it.
Which brings me to Beth……..
Beth, is a core customer of CVS. Beth has 2 kids and a husband. She and her husband work full-time, and Beth is the Chief Health Officer of the household. Beth’s son has a cold, her daughter has a chronic disease like Crohn’s, and her husband has diabetes.
But who is Beth and why does it matter?
Well in this instance, Beth is a CVS buyer persona. She is a fictional representations of one of CVS’s ideal customers. She represents a portion of CVS rx revenue
And it matters because if you don’t know what your ideal consumer buys, how they make purchasing decisions, or what they need to fill the gaps in their lives, you can’t effectively reach the people that are most likely to become your most loyal customers.
And this is particularly relevant in the context of marketing your business via digital activities where face to face conversations happen less and less.
CVS use Beth as an example of one of its ideal customers and base decision on Beth and other buyer personas.
Beth relies on:
- Push notifications via the CVS pharmacy app to alert her when her family’s prescriptions are ready (avoiding unnecessary trips or phone calls)
- An online portal to add, remove, or modify existing prescriptions, and even get price recommendations for generic brands to save money
- Scheduled prescription delivery for recurring needs
- utomatic ExtraCare rewards linking to purchases and mobile in-store experience (made seamless with CVS Pay)
- Message alerts for flu vaccinations
- Easy Minute Clinic appointment setup for her son
- Health follow-ups (like flu vaccinations)
But Beth is one of many Buyer Personas that CVS have created. And CVS has created other technologies for other personas.
- CVS Express – Curbside
- Digital Receipts program
- Mobile Prescription Pick Up
- Hold My Place in Line- MinuteClinic®
- Scan Paper Script:
- Insurance Card Scan:
Is it working, in short yes……….
- More than 50% of CVS’s digital prescription refills are from mobile devices
- 11.8 million patients have downloaded the CVS Health mobile app
- CVS sent 300 million reminder messages in 2015
And especially in the context of the bigger picture:
- $1,000B spend on chronic diseases every year
- 110m scripts abandoned pa
- $290B in preventable medical costs due to Rx non-adherence
What persona’s work for your compounding business and how can you leverage digital tools to improve your business operations and transform your pharmacy.
Maybe we can help……..
