A huge increase in customer loyalty and improved management of chronic conditions are two outcomes of LeapFrog’s project work with East Africa’s largest pharmacy chain.

LeapFrog’s customer experience experts joined staff at Goodlife Pharmacy to redesign its loyalty program, My Goodlife Club, and launch medicine-therapy program Wellness 360, with expectation both initiatives would boost impact and profit: from mid 2020 to early 2021, the results were substantial.

My Goodlife Club

LeapFrog and Goodlife understood the need for programs that build long term loyalty and increase medication adherence among customers and households. LeapFrog and Goodlife simplified accessibility to its customer-loyalty program and made its benefits clear by scrapping a complex points system, working with sales teams, reforming information technology systems and staff incentives, among other changes.

The program is open to all consumers and offers product discounts, conditional free delivery and a phone service to answer pharmaceutical questions. With a new easy sign-up process advertised online and through clear in-store signage, the customer reaction was significant.

Even in a year when COVID-19 affected customer interaction, Goodlife’s loyalty membership increased 608 per cent in the 12 months to March 2021. Their monthly transactions with Goodlife jumped four times in volume and three times in value, equating to 44 per cent of Goodlife’s total sales.

Such a customer-focused initiative works alongside other projects such as health webinars, its wellness program and direct connection to healthcare professionals to reinforce Goodlife’s expertise, its role as a regional health hub and helps attract East Africans who have a desire to improve their healthcare.

Wellness 360

As a part of the loyalty program, Goodlife launched an in-store medicine therapy service branded as ‘Wellness 360’, providing customer consultations on ‘lifestyle’ diseases such as diabetes. Lifestyle diseases, also known as non-communicable diseases, they are often chronic in nature, lasting more than 1 year and require ongoing medical attention and limit daily activities. This adversely impacts both the patient and the caretaker in the household and their ability to continue in the workforce.Goodlife and LeapFrog saw the loyalty program as a way to increase access to a major impact risk and opportunity (chronic care).

The program was promoted on social media and Goodlife’s website from its launch mid year. Under the program, staff are continuously trained by Phillips Pharmaceutical to give tailored health and wellness advice in areas including nutrition, heart health, diabetes and geriatrics, to promote healthy living.

With training by clinical nutritionists and medical doctors, staff conduct a broad health-risk assessment with customers and counsel them about their diet and lifestyle. About one fifth of loyalty program members are part of the wellness program with participation increasing ten times since it started.

The timely move came as the COVID-19 pandemic spiked in Kenya in July 2020 – with one third of all those who died suffering from hypertension and diabetes – conditions the Wellness program is designed to help with. Program enrolments increased steadily in 2020 and drove higher in 2021, when Kenya hit a peak of COVID cases in March.

Such a program exemplifies LeapFrog’s profit-with-purpose approach to investing, with the Wellness program increasing sales and improving health among customers. Chronic and non-communicable disease management is a core impact strategy for Goodlife: in 2019 such diseases accounted for 39 per cent of all deaths in Kenya (IHME Global Burden of Disease database). This has tremendous impact on the country and the ability of Kenyan emerging consumers to lead, quality productive lives.

“Lifestyle modification is highly recommended as one of the interventions in reducing NCDs [non-communicable diseases] related complications, Kenyans can now walk in any of our pharmacies and get necessary advice especially on nutrition and healthy living,” said Goodlife chief executive officer Amaan Khalfan.

These projects are further examples of how LeapFrog supports its portfolio companies to become more customer-centric to deliver relevant, affordable and quality products. Through its CX Launchpad

initiative, LeapFrog is building such capabilities in companies to enhance end-to-end customer experience.

“The results of the CX Launchpad loyalty and wellness projects in Goodlife Pharmacy objectively highlight LeapFrog’s ability to add value to its portfolio companies,” said LeapFrog global co-lead of healthcare Biju Mohandas.

Byron Smith