Retail Pharmacy Chain Increases Prescription Refills With Proactive Voice Reminders

A major U.S. retail pharmacy chain focused on making prescription refills easier and more convenient for the patients it serves.

For many patients, refilling a prescription is a routine part of managing their health. That made the refill experience an important, high-frequency interaction for the pharmacy chain. Automated refill reminders looked like the right path, but the company didn’t want convenience to come at the expense of the patient experience.

It needed a way to remind patients when refills were due, make the process easy to complete, and reduce unnecessary strain on the call center. It also needed to avoid duplicate refills and invalid requests, which meant the experience had to be connected to real-time prescription and inventory checks.

The pharmacy deployed CSG Xponent, giving patients an easy way to refill prescriptions through automated voice interactions.

The outbound interactive voice response (IVR) system called patients when refills were due and let them refill on the spot, even if they didn’t have their prescription or payment information handy. The process took about one minute to complete.

Patients could also call in and use the automated system to navigate their own refills in a few simple steps. CSG handled both the caller ID and callback number through its IVR, which helped reduce callbacks to the pharmacy’s call center.

To protect the experience, CSG also implemented a real-time web services interface to confirm inventory was available and that the prescription hadn’t already been refilled before placing a call. That reduced invalid requests, prevented duplicate refills, and helped ensure each interaction was useful for both the patient and the business.

The result was a refill experience that was easier for patients to use, more efficient for the business to run, and impactful enough to bring measurable gains in refill volume, satisfaction, and ROI.