Pharmacy chains like Walgreens and CVS have gotten very good at automating the process of ordering and picking up prescriptions. But after receiving a recent message saying that a prescription was ready, I realized there is definitely room for improvement. Here is the information that I’d like to see in the automated phone messages or email reminders:

- Number of prescriptions that are ready
- Whether any more prescriptions are still being processed, and if so, when they’ll be done
- Total cost of the order
- Pharmacy hours
- Option to press a key to be connected to the pharmacy if you have questions

By providing this data, the store would be answering most of the common follow-up questions upfront. In turn, customers would save time, and the pharmacy staff would spend less time answering the same basic questions over and over again.