Success stories: Farmacia 1

Farmacia 1 was founded in 2014, a pioneer project for those years when shopping in the pharmaceutical sector was mainly done offline.

This shop, which also counts with six physical stores, has always stood out in the industry for the quality of service offered to its customers, which they have always focused on, both in the physical store and in the online shop.

Farmacia 1 has always had different clientele between online and offline, until this year when instead they decided to actively offer those who go to the pharmacy to make their purchases online and those who make their purchases online to be able to pick up the products purchased, in one of the pharmacies.

Mail, telephone, and WhatsApp were the channels used. A telephone-operated switchboard reached peaks of over 400 conversations, which were not manageable by the available staff.
They had a team of 7 people who obviously could not handle all the requests, especially since the customers of a pharmacy, where there are often fewer digital users, elderly people, etc require ample conversation time. “With the chat, therefore, we managed to optimize time and resources to cope with all requests for help”- comments Pierfrancesco.

The need of the shop therefore, when they turned to their trusted web Marketing agency, was to decrease the time in which the staff of Farmacia 1 was occupied in handling these requests. Implementing Oct8ne chatbot saved them a great deal of time if you consider that in a three-month period, out of a total of 12110 help requests, the bot was able to handle 8637, without the need to transfer the conversation to an agent.

Another benefit of the use of chat, in the pharmaceutic sector is related to the very nature of this tool, namely the ‘depersonalization of the chat, which, unlike the telephone, email, and social channels such as WhatsApp, offers the customer a totally anonymous tool and therefore more suitable to be able to easily expose even intimate or sensitive health issues.

Chat has been the main channel of customer service in recent years, explains Pierfrancesco Alvino -General Manager of the pharmacy- “In the past, we have used other chats, but Oct8ne´s chat is a complete tool, Oct8ne´s service gives a way to interact with the customer in 360 degrees, because viewing products with the customer, helping them finalize the order are additional pluses that make them convert more.” In fact, in a three-month period, out of 12110 help requests received, 2087 – 17.23% ended in sales.

The second channel of communication with the customer is the phone, but this channel does not allow them to answer 10/12 calls at a time, so they send text messages to their customers, inviting them to contact the pharmacy via chat, as the latter channel gives them the ability to handle even 4/5 conversations at the same time and thus be always present since the chat is operational from 8:30 am to 10:30 pm.

Farmacia 1 has a team of pharmacists in addition to customer service agents. They give the opportunity through the chatbot to book an appointment with the pharmacist, who will contact them back for a personalized consultation.
“Setting up the chatbot was easy, and customers’ interaction with it is easy, also because when they need to talk to an agent, the chatbot transfers the conversation.“

Oct8ne’s bot, offers the ability to automate responses related to order tracking, as much on the web bot as on the bot implemented on WhatsApp.

Due to privacy policy restrictions applied by WhatsApp to the medical sector, Farmacia 1 has decided to use this communication channel as a fast track for users who have already placed an order and want to access information regarding the shipment status. In a 3-month period, Farmacia 1 received 1795 requests related to order status that were automatically handled by the chatbot without the need for human intervention

Triggers, better known as automated messages, are normally implemented at strategic moments in the buying process, such as checkout, or when the customer is comparing different products etc to boost communication between customer and agent. Farmarcia 1, on the other hand, also uses them as a communication tool with the customer when they have flash deals to promote or massive communications from the brand to the outside such as weather problems that have an impact on shipping etc. In this way, those who access the website to make a purchase receive this kind of information in real-time.

So… Don’t wait any longer to offer your customers the visual and personalized service they deserve!

Try Oct8ne now for free for 14 days or contact our sales team to become the next success story and multiply your sales!