You said it about right Wiz. I used to work for express scripts, it wasn't always so bad. But then they didn't have call times...at first... So the reps were able to take their time, go through everything, answer any and all questions, conference calls with Drs and pharmacists. Sure I'd still get the odd "WTF?" Calls where a previous rep was... Well to put it nicely... A complete imbecile... But it was like maybe one a week or less.

Then, even though I was in a position to tell them my thoughts on the matter, they decided they'd increase productivity by having call times and holding reps responsible for maintaining an average call time. Last I heard it was down to 5 minutes. It started out at fifteen minutes, then there was an instant increase in callbacks and screwed up notes from previous calls, I quit. I couldn't deal with it, I was livid when my supervisor urged me to 'get them off the phone' when someone called wanting to know what to do with the medication after their son committed suicide earlier that day, mostly because she was still in shock and honestly just needed someone to listen to her pain for a bit. It was a twenty minute call, my average for that day was 3.2 minutes... Basically my supervisor could kiss my... You know what.

Excuse me?! They're the ones who gave us the moniker of "customer care advocate" but don't advocate the patients, don't care about them, 15 minutes is what your average needs to be, but we're going to start hounding you to hang up if it surpasses 5. Like it's not stressful enough dealing with terminally ill patients, children who can only function if they have their meds, the little old ladies with their laundry list of medication who now doesn't know what her nitro pills look like because the pharmacy changed their appearance. But let's get threatened with termination, because an eighty year old feels the need to describe every pill she is taking so she can figure out which one is the new one when to her all of them look the same.

And yes, most all mail-order pharmacies are the same way, likely to all be outsourced to foreign countries soon too, won't that be fun.. NOT, well unless you're well versed in foreign languages I guess. About the only thing you can do is skip long questions or background, keep it simple 'why wasn't x filled,' always start with why, 'what needs to be done to fix this', 'who needs to contact you', 'how long will this take.' If at any point you don't like the answers ask for supervisor. If you get disconnected call right back and say nothing more than "supervisor"... Oh they'll try to get you to confirm your information, verify your acct and any number of things to avoid calling their supervisor over. Don't give them the information, "Supervisor... I hear you, I understand what you are saying, now hear me and understand, I will only speak with a supervisor." Yeah, they'll hate you for it, but if they're good little people and get their supervisor it looks good for their call time.