Customers will come into the pharmacy expressing some level of need. Sometimes this is not clear. Sometimes it is expressed in a simple way. Sometimes they have not thought about their needs. People often express their needs in terms of the symptoms they are experiencing. Customers may ask for something to treat their bad back, but there is a much more powerful level of need that we can look for. This is the desired outcome.

Outcomes are expressed in the things that these symptoms are stopping the customer doing
or the things they would like to do. When a person complains of back pain, in part what they
want to do is get rid of the pain, but probably more important motives will be to get back to
normal activity. They may have had to reduce exercise, limit their gardening or have difficulty driving even short distances. They may be going on holiday and want to be able to walk around.

When people think about the outcomes they want to achieve, then the perceived value of a
solution is much greater. When customers recognise the outcomes they want to achieve, they
are more likely to pay for more effective solutions that will meet their needs very effectively.
Asking a question such as, €What are these symptoms stopping you from doing?€ can quickly
lead you to the outcomes that a customer really wants.

Using open questions is important to obtain a clear understanding of the customer's needs.
Open questions allow people to give more information in a more honest way. Closed questions give very limited information and people often give the easiest rather than most correct answer. Summarising is important to confirm your understanding to both yourself and the patient.

When we identify these outcomes, we are able to think not only of the present but the future:
are there other solutions that may help to prevent the symptoms occurring in the future?
Good customer service would be to provide a solution to our current problem and also a
solution that meant the problem was less likely to return.

Choose an appropriate solution

When we understand the outcomes people want, and have used questioning techniques such as WWHAM to ensure a treatment is appropriate, choosing an effective treatment is the next step.

An effective treatment may not be a single product, but may consist of a number of products
that together meet both the short-term and long-term needs of the customer.

For example, a customer who asks for something for itchy eyes and sneezing for their hayfever might have their immediate symptoms alleviated with an antihistamine tablet and then prevented in the future by sodium cromoglicate eye drops and a nasal spray such as Beconase or Prevalin. There may also be other needs the customer has that we can meet in the pharmacy, such as tissues.

Make a recommendation

The next stage is to make a recommendation. Customers come to the pharmacy to ask for advice. Often I see team members in the pharmacy giving customers options rather than a recommendation.

When we think about the recommendations we make, we need to think about what customers buy. In community pharmacy, we often talk about the €features€ of a product. However, customers are not interested in features. They do not come into a pharmacy for a product that contains €an NSAID€ €“ they are looking for the benefits of a product or treatment. While the features are important to us, because they give us useful information, we need to interpret this information in terms of the benefits that the customer will understand and experience.

Our recommendation should be clear, unambiguous and given with confidence. Customers feel comfortable when they can understand why a recommendation has been made. Linking the recommendation to the outcomes you have already discovered will help customers accept the recommendation and this is done easily by ending your recommendation with the word €because€. An example might be, €I recommend these heat-pads and some ibuprofen tablets for your bad back, because by using them properly together, they will allow you to return to doing some gardening with limited pain, which should last for a shorter period than before€.