The pharmacy phone rings all day, and most of the calls are the same five questions: is it ready, do you do this, when are you open, do you deliver to me, how do I move my prescriptions to you. Each one pulls a dispenser off the bench. This guide is about cutting the interruptions without cutting the service — by answering the questions before they are asked, giving patients a better route than the phone for the rest, and keeping the phone for the calls that need a human.
First, count the calls
For one week, keep a tally sheet by the phone with the categories below and a tick for each call. Most pharmacies that do this find that between half and three-quarters of calls fall into categories a website, a message or a form would have handled. The tally is also the business case: multiply the ticks by the two or three minutes each call costs and you have the hours a week the phone is taking from dispensing.
The five questions and the fix for each
1. “Is my prescription ready?”
Usually the largest category. The fix is not on the website; it is a “ready to collect” message sent when the bag is shelved, by text, email or app notification. Pair it with a status the patient can see if they have an account. When patients trust the message will come, they stop ringing to ask. Keeping patients informed covers the message set.
2. “Do you do…?”
Pharmacy First, flu jabs, travel vaccines, blood pressure checks, ear wax removal, emergency contraception. Each needs its own page on the website with eligibility and how to access it, and each needs listing on your Google Business Profile, because that is where the question is asked first. A services index with a card per service handles the “what do you do at all” version. See what a pharmacy website should include.
3. “What time are you open?” / “Are you open on the bank holiday?”
Hours in text on every page of the website, bank holiday hours added as soon as they are known, and the same hours on the Google profile with special hours set. This category should go to near zero.
4. “Do you deliver to…?” / “Where is my delivery?”
A delivery page with the areas and days, ideally a postcode checker that answers yes or no, and for delivery patients the “on its way” and “delivered” messages. Live tracking in the pharmacy means the team can answer the residual calls without ringing the driver; Routly is built around exactly that.
5. “How do I order my repeat?” / “Can I move my prescriptions to you?”
A repeat request form and a nomination request form, one tap from the homepage, that work on a phone and land in a dashboard with a status. The patient who used to ring in their list now sends it at 9pm. Online repeat prescription ordering and the EPS nomination form cover both.
The calls to keep
Clinical questions, worried patients, carers who need to talk something through, GP surgeries, the wholesaler. The point of removing the routine calls is that these get answered by someone who is not rushing. Make the phone number easy to find and easy to tap on the website; the aim is fewer interruptions, not a pharmacy that hides.
The website as an answering machine
A pharmacy website earns its keep when a patient can answer their own question in a few seconds on a phone. That means:
- Hours, address and phone visible without scrolling
- “Order a repeat”, “Nominate us” and “Book a service” as the first three buttons
- A page per service with eligibility and price
- A delivery page with areas, days and a postcode checker
- An FAQ for the questions your tally sheet surfaced that do not fit elsewhere
Every one of those is also what Google needs to rank the site for the same questions, which is why the phone-call project and the local SEO project are the same project.
The dashboard is the other half
Forms that go to an inbox create calls rather than removing them: the patient submits, hears nothing, and rings. Submissions need a status the team updates as work happens, and the status change should send the message. That loop — submit, acknowledge, action, notify — is what actually silences the phone.
Answerphone and hold message
While the changes bed in, use the answerphone and any hold message to redirect: “To order a repeat or check whether we deliver to you, visit [website]. If your prescription is ready we will have sent you a text.” It is cheap and it trains the habit.
What good looks like after three months
Repeat the tally. Pharmacies that put the pieces in place typically see the routine categories fall sharply while clinical and carer calls stay the same or rise slightly because they are now answered properly. The bench is quieter, and the patients who need a conversation get one.
A PharmGrowth website is built around this loop — forms into a dashboard, status changes into messages — and the free website check will show whether your current site is doing any of it.