Staying ahead of the curve when it comes to patient and consumer care isn’t easy in the healthcare landscape. Consumer expectations are evolving, and demand is growing as the population continues to expand. However, as many organisations discover, prioritising CX is the only way to ensure consistent brand loyalty and growth for the future of a business.
Pharmacy2U is an innovator in the healthcare landscape, committed to helping consumers across the UK access the medications they need as conveniently as possible. The first internet-based pharmacy operating in the country, the business introduced an entire community to a more affordable and fast-paced way to have medications delivered to their homes.
Today, more than 600,000 consumers rely on Pharmacy2U to maintain their supply of crucial medication. However, to preserve strong relationships with its audience, the company knew they needed the right CX technology in place. Turning to RingCentral allowed Pharmacy2U to combine UC and CCaaS technology solutions, to ensure they could effectively serve their audience.
Here’s what happened when Pharmacy2U connected with RingCentral.
Overcoming Communications Challenges
Pharmacy2U is no stranger to technology innovation. The company is constantly investing in new solutions to serve its clients, from tools for requesting repeat prescriptions automatically, to mobile apps. Unfortunately, the organisation didn’t always have the best communications tools in place to empower teams, and streamline customer service.
According to Andy Williams, the Director of Clinical and Customer Care for Pharmacy2U, the company receives inquiries from around 40% of consumers every month. Managing these queries without the right communications platform quickly became challenging as the business started to scale. Support advisors were distributed across various platforms, data was siloed, and some team members were still faxing order requests to doctors.
Moving in and out of various communication systems throughout the day created significant inefficiencies for the customer care team. What’s more, the disconnected tools made it difficult to track traffic across the ecosystem, so managers couldn’t allocate resources effectively. The brand found itself simply “reacting” to consumer events, rather than pursuing the proactive and strategic workflows capable of initiating growth.
RingCentral, with its ability to combine Unified Communications and Contact Centre technologies in one platform, appeared as the ideal solution. The RingCentral ecosystem provided Pharmacy2U with a synchronised environment where every employee could connect and serve customers.
Innovating for Better Customer Care
Implementing RingCentral’s streamlined and cloud-based technology had a significant influence on the productivity and efficiency levels of team members. The UC services boosted employee performance and collaboration, while the contact centre tools solved a multitude of customer care issues.
According to Andy, the most significant improvement the company saw when implementing RingCentral, was the ability to pull all of the traffic from different communication platforms into one channel. RingCentral allowed all advisors in the Pharmacy2U team to leverage a single tool for phone calls, emails, online chat, and even fax. The Contact Centre technology gave the business exceptional control and flexibility, and even allowed advisors to engage in multiple chats simultaneously.
RingCentral’s technology even allows Pharmacy2U to prioritise certain chats and messages based on their urgency. What’s more, the reporting and analytics tools built into the platform have helped to drive optimisation efforts and reduce costs. Managers can monitor everything happening in the communication stack in real-time, or look at historical data.
The visibility into the communication environment offered by RingCentral has given managers the clarity they need to focus on the core reasons behind customer contact. The team has even been able to automate and reduce the need for agent/consumer interactions in some places. This ensures human employees have more time to focus on the most important interactions.
In fact, only around 10% of consumers need to contact Pharmacy2U on a monthly basis, thanks to the company’s new self-service strategies. This is a massive 30% reduction on previous contact levels. Andy noted without RingCentral’s assistance, the company would likely have needed double the contact centre support they have today. Instead, they’re handling three to four times as many interactions with the same number of employees.
Surviving and Thriving in the Pandemic
While the decision to implement RingCentral’s Contact Centre technology proved to be a good one before the pandemic, it was absolutely crucial when COVID hit. The cloud-based solution allowed the team’s advisors to connect to call queues and answer queries using any device, anywhere. Andy’s team was able to move to remote work without any issues or hesitation.
According to Andy, around 90% of the customer care staff members shifted to home-based work during the pandemic. The migration was simple and streamlined because of RingCentral, even though many of the employees had no prior experience with distributed work. RingCentral even made it easy to adapt to the new age of remote work.
Initially, Pharmacy2U sent employees home with both laptops and desktop phones purchased from RingCentral. However, when the company discovered many employees didn’t need their desk phone, RingCentral allowed the brand to return the physical phones immediately.
Following the success of the contact centre implementation, Pharmacy2U have decided to maintain a flexible working approach going forward. Although the brand did welcome some of its staff back into the office, they were able to implement a “hybrid” model, so some employees could continue to work from home a few days each week.
Staying Ahead of the Healthcare Industry
Notably, as Pharmacy2U started to become a crucial part of the vaccination drive within the UK, RingCentral also assisted the company in keeping up with demand for vaccine services too. The vaccination sites deployed by the organisation are temporary and mobile. A cloud-based communications system means the staff can continue to remain connected, and deliver exceptional customer service, without the need for complex set-up and hardware.
Going forward, Pharmacy2U plans to continue its partnership with RingCentral to ensure it can stay one step ahead of the ever-evolving healthcare landscape. The company has even embraced RingCentral’s auto-dialler functionality to broadcast important messages to thousands of clients at the same time.
