Revolutionizing Pharmacy: How This VP Transformed Customer Experience by Meeting Patients Where They Are

Yeah, so, uh, so, so the most complex thing that we have had to do at blink is, um, take a transaction that for the vast majority of Americans who purchase medication, uh, is typically done in store. The vast majority of people when they're. When they're buying medication, are, are going to a local pharmacy, um, or are going to, um, a, a big chain pharmacy like a CVS or Walgreens. So their doctor is sending them a script, uh, to sending a script to the pharmacy, they're showing up and they're paying with their credit card. Um, the vast majority of pharmacy transactions happen that way today. Um, what we are aiming to do is to say, hey, you don't have to go into a, uh, a physical store anymore. Um, when your doctor sends a prescription to Blink to Blink Pharmacy, um, which is what we are, um, you can check out online 100%. You can purchase your medication online and have it home delivered to you. Um, or you can call in once you are notified that we have your prescription and complete a transaction over the phone. Yep. So the most challenging thing that we have to do is we have to be able to um meet the customer where they want to be, right? Meeting there are going to be certain customers who are gonna say, oh great, I'm very familiar with transacting online. This is awesome. Why didn't somebody think of this before? But there are going to be customers who are going to say. Wait a second, like, I want to talk to a person. I want to chat. I wanna, um, I want to maybe email them or I want to call them and speak to them. So really building in an end to end user experience, both in the experience itself and even other touch points throughout the patient journey that ensures that when a patient comes to blank Pharmacy, which is not a physical retail pharmacy, that they can have the experience that they need given where they're at and what they desire.

Um, how or why?

So how do we prioritize it? Sure. So we prioritize it through a few means. We, we prioritize it both um in our application directly when a patient is, uh, so, so here's the way our application works just to actually make sure that that that's clear, is when a prescription comes to Blink Pharmacy, once it is ready for you to purchase, we will send you a text message. And the text message will say, hey, Brandon, we've received your prescription, click here to purchase. A very low price.

Um, you will get a text message to say, hey Brandon, um, you are ready, uh, your, your medication is ready for purchase, and then that will take you through a series of steps where you will authenticate yourself. We will validate that you are indeed Brandon. Um, and then we will show your price and then we'll ask you, um, what address we should deliver the medication to. So that's our application. So how do we address it? We address it in two ways. So first, we thought of things outside of that experience, which is even before you get that text message, we actually have a call center like what we call a hub that will reach out to to Brandon and say, hey, Brandon, this is Ean calling from Blink Pharmacy, um. We received your medication, uh, and if you have any questions, happy to answer them. And actually at that point they can introduce themselves to blank. The patient, you know, has, has probably heard from their doctor, but that's one way we in terms of how we address it.

Right. Well, it's very possible that they were introduced to blink by their, by their provider. Oh, I see. OK. OK. So, so their doctor might have told them that and they got some bits and pieces of it, but they don't know the full story. They're like, OK, great, that sounds reasonable. Oh, they do home delivery. Oh, I need home delivery right now. I don't feel comfortable going into a pharmacy um at this point in time because of COVID. Um, so. That's how we address it. That, that's the first way we address it outside the patient, outside of the application. The second way inside the application that we address it is we just have, I mean, it's fairly straightforward. Well, actually, let's say two ways now. We, so first, we have a very clear, you know, call us, chat with us throughout the experience. Every single screen, it's very clear, um, it's, it's ever present in the experience. So people at any time can kind of hit the escape valve and call our chat. The third way we, we, we address it is that in the application, we spend a lot of time working on our copywriting, on communicating um pharmacy concepts in like short simple ways cause there's a lot of different things or exceptions that can happen. And so we work to explain to the patient along the way exactly why are they seeing the pressure that they're seeing. We might explain to them, hey, we couldn't find your insurance, call us. Um, to, because we have automated insurance look up, but we might not be able to find it, call us to give us your insurance. So those are the ways we, we ensure that we're, we're meeting the patient where they might be, whether that's they feel more comfortable having that phone call or they feel totally comfortable transacting online, but they need some guidance and pointers along the way.

Yeah, so we, so we met, so it's so, so we, we do a couple of things to measure them. So first off, we look at, um, so we, we at the highest level we measure overall patient conversion, right? So we're looking at the entire journey we're saying, OK, well, of all the scripts that we receive, what percentage of the patients? So we, we understand that and we understand what channels they're converting through they converting on the phone? Are they converting in the app? Or um the second thing that we do is we look at our support channels. So we look at when people call, call into support or they chat with us, um, what is, um, um, of those people who call in or chat with us, what percentage of those people are a based on the readouts that we have from support getting the help they need, and B, um. Um, at what rate are they converting, right? So that, that, that's a clear signal to us if, if people are getting support and converting at very high rates, equal, you know, at, at, at high, we, we have an internal OKRs that we have that gives us the confidence that they're getting the answers they need and they're converting at high rates. So that's,

Yeah, sure. So, uh, I mean, I'll, I'll share with you, um, a couple of things. So one is industry-wide, about half of medication that is sent to is never purchased. So you can think of like a typical pharmacy conversion that's out there in the wild, it's probably about 50%, maybe a tad bit higher, um, so right around there. So. Um, we have, um, ours has always been meaningfully higher than that, um, and has actually, as we have improved the patient journey along the way, has actually trended higher, um, so meaning from where we started, we have improved conversion from that from those already higher levels. I, I can't share the specific numbers, but, but we have used our toy, we've used the data that we have in terms of how patients are engaging to drive conversion higher.