Programme: PGPMHR 21

Course: Learning & Development

Term: III

L&D Project Report submitted to –

Prof. Smita Prashant Chattopadhyay

In

Improving Customer Service in Sunpharma Pharmacies

Submitted by

Team 4

Apoorva Agrawal - 2104028

Gourav Singhal -2104024

Pavithra Varshini V– 2104014

Uttarraj K – 2104023

Udita - 2104022

Introduction:

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While looking at the case through Strategic HRM perspective we Configurational approach
best suits the analysis of Sunpharma and their training program. To suit the internal fit of the
organisation extensive training with behavioural outcome based will work well. We need to
inculcate the behaviour change within our pharmacists to match the HR practices and the
employees can choose various ways to reach that but it is very important that they align their
behaviour with respect to the company’s mission statement. In this case, Pharmacists are an
employee of type “B position” because we believe they are our value players. By Lepak and
Snell’s framework we have categorised pharmacists as Strategic HC. This is because the
strategic value is high and based on internalisation, with respect to uniqueness we have rated
high because currently the pharmacists that exist in market have the technical knowledge but
as per sunpharma’s differentiation strategy in terms of providing higher customer satisfaction
and attention we believe that the we need to grow the employee and provide benefits based
on their performances. Additionally, we have taken the approach of ADDIE model to analyse
further and come up with a training plan for Sunpharma Group.

ANALYSE:
The andragogy we are planning to adopt is to focus on the behaviour aspect of the training.
We believe the general or technical training is already set as per the requirements and not
much of a change is needed. The training for improving the social and marketing skills of the
pharmacists should be treated separately and acted upon. According to Kolb’s learning cycle
a combination of Abstract conceptualisation and Active Experimentation could work best
for the pharmacists as they have to adopt the method of think and do to achieve the desired
outcome. This kind of learning can be best suited to the pharmacists best adept with the
converging style of learning.
Organizational Need Analysis: Sunpharma management wants to be the most popular
pharmacy in Slovakia. To achieve the goal, the strategy adopted by firm was based on the
bottle neck identified which was the level of customer services. To improve this they need to
develop pharmacists as per the firm’s job description which has all the skills and knowledge
prerequisites properly listed.
Person Analysis: All of the pharmacists have undergone good education and rigorous
training programmes every year so their technical knowledge seems to be adequate but their
knowledge level with respect to cross-selling and building customer relationships seems to be
an area of concern. When the firm conducted a mystery shopping to have the experience of
what experience customers are having and to uplift the current services to achieve the goals
the pharmacists were checked in certain parameters, like there appearance, Completion of
sales talk, offering additional services by the Sunpharma. Basically in this parameter
employee was rated on the basis of their hygiene factor and salesmanship. Here although
certain things results were satisfactory. But for most of the criteria there was a lacuna which
was directly or indirectly affecting the business. On analysing we realised that there were 5
pain points in which the pharmacist need training to upskill themselves:
 Proper Appearance
 The process of drug selection
 Completion of the sales talk
 Cross sale of the products.
 Having more personal approach towards customers in addition to professional
approach.
Task Analysis: From the task characteristic and competency gap this was evidently
important for the organisation and a difficult to train program based on the fact that this was
not a pharmacists preferred domain of expertise.
DESIGN:

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Integrated Course Design: As assessed earlier from the analysis, the pharmacist is needed to
be trained on their soft skills along with their early functional skills. “Excellent Pharmacy”
project can be continued to be used for imparting the functional skills as for the soft skills
new initiative has to be taken. Designing the new course by integrating pharmacists’
situational factors into the course's learning goals, activities, and assessments can be effective
for the pharmacists.
Situational factors: The Job descriptions are developed as a competency - based model and
hence the competency - based training is designed for the pharmacists. This ensures
employees are trained on their critical skills. A synchronous mode of delivery of the training
in a is designed. By combining the ‘on the job’ methods with ‘off the job’ training methods
the employees will be able to apply and receive feedback for the skills that they learn in the
training course. The pharmacist are required to develop a good communication skills and an
appealing personality towards the customers.
The nature of new course for soft skills are affective in nature and that requires the
pharmacist to receive, respond and value customer feedbacks organize and conceptualize
customer expectations and characterize them by values to improve the customer satisfaction
levels.
Learning Goals: The pharmacist should be flexible and adaptable to the changing market
trends and customer needs and exhibit an improved communication skills to ensure
competence & knowledge sharing.
Feedback and Assessment: Mystery shopping initiative is used for Assessing an employee
before and after the training
Teaching/Learning Activities: Active Learning are prescribed as the coaching model for the
pharmacist as in this model the pharmacist experience and do continuous reflection on their
learning. These activities helps the pharmacist in shaping their soft skills. In-depth Reflective
Dialogue opportunities for pharmacists enables them to think and reflect on their learning.

DEVELOPMENT:
Here, we need to train the employees wholistically to achieve great productivity and high
customer excellence. Using the below stated parameters we develop the training program:
Improving the soft skills: Workshop on soft skills will be conducted by internal trainers to
equip employees with necessary soft skills like communication, Objection Handling,
Presentation Skills, Negotiation Skills.
Teaching the representatives on customer excellence: Workshop on customer experience
enrichment to be planned by external training vendors as a classroom training.
Time management and organizing skills: Workshop on daily work management with
productivity hacks from external vendors. Hands on workshop on 5S Workplace management
to keep the pharma store in a structured way to reduce the seek time.
Persuasion and being approachable and influencing with the customers: Training on
concepts “How to influence people and make friends” book to make employees more
friendly, influencing and persuasive skills to make sales deal and create customer loyalty.
Improving revenue: Classroom workshop on Cross-Selling sales concepts. Fostering the
sales employees with the knowledge of high commission brands to provide alternate brand
suggestion to improve revenue.

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IMPLEMENTATION:
As we are combining the ‘on the job’ methods with ‘off the job’ training methods we plan to
implement workshops for both separately so as to make the process easier to execute.
Sessions of 'on-the-job' training: These sessions should concentrate on enhancing the
following aspects: Salesperson's appearance, Greetings and Salutations and Completing the
sales talk.
The rationale behind on-the-job training for these areas is that they can only be improved
upon by practising in a real-world setting rather than in a classroom setting. Second, due to
time and financial restrictions, these issues can be addressed more effectively in order to
boost production. Salesperson's appearance can be enhanced by instituting an appropriate
dress code. The organisation might hire expert trainees to assess and improve pharmacists'
soft skills such as greeting, salutation, and sales talk completion.
Sessions of 'off-the-job' training: The following areas should be improved during these
sessions: Drug selection procedure and Information on the loyalty programme.
Sunpharma's open space pharmacies, which differed from traditional pharmacies, provided a
more comfortable environment in which pharmacists could assist customers in selecting both
prescribed and self-service products. To set oneself apart from other pharmacies, pharmacists
should be well-versed in a variety of health conditions, have appropriate medicine offerings
to recommend to consumers, and be adept at cross-selling. Practitioners should hold annual
workshops to educate pharmacists about healthcare issues and the drugs that are used to treat
them. Aside from the current training programme, newly hired staff with little or no
experience should be allocated mentors who are knowledgeable and have worked at each of
the pharmacies for a long time.
The relevance of a loyalty programme that provides customer discounts and promotes
Sunpharma's goods should be communicated to pharmacists. For this, experienced
pharmacists and the marketing department could hold lectures and seminars stressing the
benefits and advantages of providing consumer discounts. The sales and revenue numbers
should be presented to the pharmacy personnel so that they begin to believe in the loyalty
programme as a competitive strategy.

EVALUATION:
The schemes, workshops and training programmes suggested in the development part of the
model will be evaluated on the basis of the goals these programmes will be able to achieve.
The suggested training programmes aims to achieve flexibility and adaptability to the
changing market trends and customer needs and to exhibit improved communication skills to
ensure competence & knowledge sharing. Using the Kirkpatrick Evaluation model:
Reaction: This will be assessed immediately after the conclusion of the training modules.
The feedback and surveys will help us improvise our training program with a continuous
improvement.
Learning: The learning is subjective in this case so we plan to measure it using role play.
The chance to role play will highlight the benefits, effects and shortcomings of the training
program. This will help in practising as well as to recognize the effectiveness of the training
provided through workshops. The extent to which the pharmacists are able to understand and
grasp the skills can be evaluated using techniques like observation and feedback assessment
forms.
Behaviour: This will be assed in 'on-the-job' training through the mode of observation.
Peer’s ratings and customer feedbacks can also be used to gauge the behaviour aspect.

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Results: This will be measured after a substantial amount of time through a mystery survey
keeping the same parameters as before but seeing the increase in sub-index percentages
would be ideal.