Pharmacy waiting areas

Pharmacy waiting areas have a transformative effect on customer experience. The feelings of wasted time while waiting to be served can make customers feel frustrated. Providing customers with seating furniture or a pleasant waiting area is therefore essential. It can help customers relax and puts them at ease. At the same time, it speaks volumes about the welcome and service they are about to receive.

Pharmacy waiting
areas for an increased
client satisfaction

Several factors influence the experience your customers get while visiting your pharmacy. Apart from the quality of services offered, the time they spend waiting is amongst the most important ones. The more customers have to wait, the more dissatisfied they become. But it is not just the actual minutes that count. Customers’ perception of waiting time is a lot more crucial.

Waiting time always leads to frustration and anxiety. There are many things you can do to reduce patient waiting times. But it is almost impossible to eliminate queuing altogether. You can expect lines to form, especially around busy times. A study from software advice shows that waiting for even as little as 15 minutes can make customers frustrated.

Having an attractive and pleasant area where customers can wait and feel relaxed is essential under these circumstances. It can completely change how customers perceive your business and your services. Professionally designed and fitted pharmacy waiting areas can completely transform your business.

Design principles for
pharmacy waiting areas

Waiting rooms in healthcare tend to be dull and evoke negative feelings. Pharmacy waiting areas or some forms of seating for patients is vital. But it is not nearly enough.

Research shows that the physical attractiveness of a waiting room affects anxiety and overall satisfaction with services more than the actual waiting time. So what if, instead of focusing on reducing waiting time, you concentrated on making it more enjoyable? To do so, it is worth keeping a few principles in mind:

Make sure the furniture is suited for all your customers.Customers who visit your pharmacy will have different expectations, body shapes and needs. Ensure that the design of the pharmacy waiting area is suitable for people of all ages and sizes.
Strive for comfort. It is essential to make waiting time as comfortable for customers as possible. The seats should not only be ergonomically designed. They need to allow for different postures as well.
Create a warm, aesthetic and pleasant environment.Paying attention to aesthetics is a crucial part of making customers feel comfortable. Displaying artworks, choosing calming colours can all help to create a welcoming ambience. At the same time, make sure that the seating furniture can withstand high-traffic, without showing signs of wear and tear.
Allow customers to spend their time how they want. People prefer to kill time in different ways. Customers sitting in pharmacy waiting areas are no different. They might wish to get up from time to time and move around. Some might surf the web, look at brochures, chat with other patients or enjoy some privacy. The design should cater to all these needs.
Let customers know how long they will have to wait. Customers are often afraid of being forgotten. They might also become frustrated if they do not see signs of progression. Allowing people to see how long they will have to wait will ease some of their frustrations. Displaying waiting time, installing proper signage and placing the waiting area near the dispensary or the consultation room can all help.

Seating furniture and waiting
area fit-out with Vision Shopfitters

Providing pharmacy waiting areas or some form of seating if space is at a premium is essential. It speaks volumes about the welcome and services your customers receive. Having a properly fitted waiting area for customers’ use helps alleviate congestion during busy times. At the same time, it can significantly increase customer satisfaction.

As experienced pharmacy shopfitters we are aware of the need to create these areas. Our pharmacy shopfitters and design consultants will, therefore, incorporate the design and fit-out of these areas into the overall shopfitting scheme.

Our experience in pharmacy fit out allowed us to develop a deep understanding of the entire sector. With this understanding in mind, we create pharmacy waiting areas to suit every customers’ need. We manufacture and supply bespoke, made-to-measure seating furniture. Our creative and innovative approach to design allows us to create areas that are not only functional but also have a high visual impact.