Wedgewood Pharmacy’s Mission: Improve the Customer Experience

Each year, Rob Oliver, director of information technology for Wedgewood Pharmacy, reviews the telephone usages reports for the company.  The main reason?  To take a look at trends and see if the volume of calls requires additional PRI lines.

However, this past year’s reports showed him something that another PRI line couldn’t resolve.  Rob, who has witnessed first-hand the pharmacy’s average 25% annual rate of growth during his three-year tenure, couldn’t believe what the reports were telling him.  A significant number of the calls into this firm that specializes in compound new, discontinued or unavailable drugs for human and animal patients were being dropped, and on-hold times exceeded eight minutes during peak hours, yet sales volumes continued to sky-rocket.  

Rob wondered: How many sales were being lost due to calls never connecting? How many were being lost due to long hold times?  How many customers were becoming frustrated and not filling their prescription or going elsewhere? How could this be turned around to improve the customer experience and reduce on-hold times?

He had to find out.

A six sigma survey of the firm’s stakeholders and in-bound callers detected the root cause of the issue.  The customer service department, which already doubled in size since Rob’s first day on the job, simply couldn’t handle the volume of calls it received during its extended hours of 8:00AM to 8:00PM eastern time.  The average hold time for a caller was eight-minutes, the primary factor leading to the high volume of dropped calls.

“Our core customer is the doctor and doctor’s office, and doctors that call into Wedgewood Pharmacy to place new prescriptions, refills, or to ask questions, simply can’t afford to wait that long,” remarked Rob.

The survey also indicated a very important fact: thirteen percent (13%) of call volume is for new prescriptions, while fifteen percent (15%) is for refills.  

“Honestly, we were out of room.  We simply couldn’t add another staff member to meet the customer demands,” explained Rob.  “I knew that technology was the answer, but was not sure whether the current system was up to the task.  I was contacted by ETA and we started to brainstorm ideas.”

Beth Mack, Wedgewood Pharmacy’s account representative from ETA, contacted Rob and began asking him questions.

“It wasn’t long before we figured out together that an IVR solution might be perfect for Wedgewood Pharmacy,” said Beth.  “It would alleviate some burden from their customer service staff, but more importantly, it would quickly and efficiently handle the needs of the Company’s physician callers.”

IVR, which stands for Interactive Voice Response, is used by many retail pharmacy chains, such as CVS.  However, no pharmacy serving Wedgewood’s market had such a solution.  There was a big risk and big opportunity at stake.

“I had to champion the solution to many of my business colleagues,” explained Rob. “We conducted a thorough ROI analysis, which later proved that the solution would pay for itself within nine months.  

“It also solved our growth challenges,” Rob went on to say.  “We could enhance customer service and the customer experience, without adding headcount.”

The IVR solution, scheduled to go live on January 2nd, 2008, is projected to reduce the duration of the call from a total average of double-digit minutes down to three.  A patient can place a refill quickly, within seconds, by following simple prompts.  A new prescription will take a bit longer, only because of the detailed information required to complete such an order, but will save the doctor from waiting on hold and will prevent prescription or dosage errors.

“Many of our physicians are calling us from their cars, as they travel from patient to patient,” remarked Rob.  “With IVR, the physicians are speaking their responses to prompts, instead of pressing touch tone keys.  Since they’re driving and talking on their mobile phones with us most of the time, this made IVR’s voice recognition technology critical.”  

What’s even better?  The solution’s endless capacity ensures that all calls are answered almost immediately.

“We’re extremely excited for the IVR solution to be in place and fully functional,” boasted Rob.  “Our customers lead very busy professional lives, and we expect they’ll be quite pleased with how IVR will make one necessary part of their day a whole lot easier.”

Learn more about IVR Solutions.

If IVR Can Save Your Company Big Money, Say "IVR"

If IVR - short for Interactive Voice Response - is increasingly used by more and more businesses to reduce the cost of common sales, service, collections, inquiry and support calls to and from their company.

Historically, IVR solutions have used pre-recorded voice prompts and menus to present information and options to callers, and touch-tone telephone keypad entry to gather responses. Modern IVR solutions also enable input and responses to be gathered via spoken words with voice recognition.

Would it be useful for your business?
IVR solutions enable users to retrieve information including bank balances, flight schedules, product details, order status, movie show times, and more from any telephone. Additionally, IVR solutions are increasingly used to place outbound calls to deliver or gather information for appointments, past due bills, and other time critical events and activities.

If your business relies on heavy calls in-bound or out-bound, such as regular service calls, outbound appointment, notification or confirmation calls, or if you currently have a cumbersome voice prompting system, IVR is worth looking into a bit further.

Can you afford IVR technology?
The cost analysis for IVR has take into consideration what you’re potentially saving with the implementation.

For example, are your customers hanging up because they’re frustrated with the experience they have when calling in to your organization? Do you even know if they are?

Are your customers waiting on hold to talk to a live person, when instead they could quickly get what they need or be routed to the correct person with an automated system?

Does your business require you to make numerous out-bound phone calls, that could potentially be automated?

ETA can help you determine if IVR is right for your business.

To speak with an IVR expert at ETA, call (610) 828-0800.

Or click here to contact us online.

Eileen Rush -- Project Leader

As Project Leader, Eileen Rush is responsible for implementing, documenting, programming and scheduling installations and upgrades for both new and current ETA clients.

Eileen balances and manages twelve projects at any given time – each with a team of a carrier rep, technician and trainer.  She enjoys meeting with the clients at their location about 70 percent of the time, with the rest of her day spent back at the office planning next steps, mitigating installation challenges and ensuring the entire installation is seamless for the client.

“A huge part of my job is working with the clients on their installations,” remarked Eileen.  “I enjoy managing my clients’ projects from beginning to end, and, of course, my favorite part is getting to the finish line with success and making my clients happy.”

Eileen has executed numerous VoIP installations, unified messaging upgrades, call and contact center installations, and more.  She boasts over twenty years of experience in the telecommunications industry, with ten as a Project Leader.  There are two other Project Leaders in the Operations department at ETA.

When Eileen isn’t busy orchestrating a dozen installations, she enjoys eating out, traveling, and watching basketball and football.  Of course, she’s a big fan of the Eagles and 76ers.

Contact Eileen here.

Tech Tip: How to keep your IP phone from going silent

The problem is because of Voice Activity Detection (VAD).  If the IP phone user is listening to background music or if the IP phone user mutes the call, the IP phone microphone is silent.  With VAD enabled, the IP phone will no longer send these silent audio packets to the IPRC/IPRA; however, the IPRC/IPRA continues to try and send the non-silent audio packets to the IP phone.  Eventually, most firewalls will block this unsolicited IP audio stream from the IPRC/IPRA to the IP phone.  

The solution is to disable the VAD, or to occasionally un-mute the call.  

Still experiencing difficulty?  Contact Technical Support at: helpdesk@expertta.com