Since March last year, as a direct consequence of the Covid 19 pandemic, footfall in pharmacy increased by as much as 400%. The McLernons team endeavoured to help our customers meet the increasing number of demands being put upon them. Training new staff  – both ours and yours – has taken longer and been more cumbersome, as staff ‘bubbles’ and homeworking mean that an experienced colleague is not always on hand to quickly answer a query.

In recognition of this, we have been welcoming new members of staff to McLernons, across all our teams. The numbers on our Service Desk staff have doubled, and we hope to train up these new team members as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

In order to deal with the massive increase in phone calls to our Service Desk in the last year, we have put in place new ways to help our customers and deal with their queries as quickly as we can.

We understand that waiting on a return call can be frustrating, especially if the issue is urgent and your pharmacy is busy. The volume of calls has increased by 200% in the last 12-15 months, and at particularly busy times such as claims at the beginning of the month, there can be a number of calls waiting to be answered.

We have revised our website www.mclernons.com so that customers can contact us through that – just click on https://mclernons.ie/contact-us/ and complete the ‘Ask A Question’ section. You will be asked for your name, pharmacy name and telephone number, and will be asked to give details of the issue you are experiencing and an indication of how critical it is to your business. We have assigned members of our Service Desk to monitor these emails constantly every day and by contacting us in this way you can be sure that the right person has the right answers for you.

Should you wish to call the Service Desk, we thought it might be helpful to share with you how these calls are answered. If there is no-one available to answer your call immediately, you will have three options: 1) you can hit a button, request a ringback, and hang up; 2) you can leave a voicemail with your pharmacy name and number, and hang up; or 3) you can continue to hold to speak to a member of staff. After every two minutes, you will hear the message giving you the three options noted above. If you have had to hold for ten minutes, then you will be asked to request a call back, and the phone call will end.

Keith McLernon, MD, said, “We would ask customers ‘phoning in to please leave a message if their call isn’t answered. These messages are monitored and checked throughout the day, and someone will call you back.”

“I would strongly urge customers to contact us by email – we know you are extremely busy and don’t want staff members waiting on the phone. We can triage your emails, and someone will get back to you. We will constantly review our ways of working and if something can be improved, we will do it.”

He added, “We see ourselves not a software suppliers, but as your IT business partners. We understand the tremendous pressures and difficulties that you have faced since March of last year and, indeed, these have been mirrored in every business including our own.”

“We are doing our best to support our customers as we have always done – with  friendly, efficient, dedicated and professional teams, who know you by name and know your business inside out.”

“Hopefully, with the rollout of the vaccination programme there are brighter days ahead and we can all look forward to some of restrictions on our professional and personal lives being lifted and the chance to meet up again soon.”

In addition, please note that the Irish regulator, ComReg, has announced that all ‘1890’ numbers will no longer be in use after 1^st January 2022, so please make sure that you have a note of our new service desk details.

Service desk details

ROI Customers

Email: s[email protected]

Phone: 01 450 1915

NI Customers

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 028 9081 1000