Walgreens Medicare Part B Support Center: Hate Mail Wednesday

Due to some of the irate comments and e-mails we've gotten over the past couple days, we thought it would be fun to start a weekly segment called Hate Mail Wednesday. It appears that we've ruffled a few feathers out there and a couple people seem upset that we dared to publish information about Walgreens. Though we do value these outbursts for their comedic potential, I think a few of you have gotten the wrong idea about what we're about here. Have you ever had to read a book in school and then wrote a book report based on what you've read? That's pretty much what this is. We had some interesting experiences at Walgreens and learned some interesting things. It would be a shame to just forget everything without using it as a learning experience for everyone involved. And we thought it would be interesting for others to share as well so we can get a plethora of information from different perspectives. Who knows, maybe we'll end up writing a book together that you'll be reading to your grandchildren. The possibilities are endless. Now, I can understand if not everyone shares our enthusiasm but the hate is simply uncalled for. Take a deep breath and step away from the computer for a few minutes if you have to. If you're going to write us hate mail though, please keep in mind to make it creative and entertaining. This will increase your chances of it appearing on Hate Mail Wednesday.

Now on to the hate mail, this one comes from Walgreens employee Donyel Warden:

They did this to slow down sales ? The SALES center .. Slowing down sales.. Hmmm Nope u both are pathetic and wrong I've read some of your other bs post and again u are wrong grasping at straws.. Not even good straws, more like straws that were used in a cheap drink at a sleaze bar chewed on by a drunk w/his good tooth n thrown away ite useless but worse than that u r spewing outlies about a co. That u have a personal issue with. Inspector dipshit detective dunbass u should prob find something better to do with your time better than making up lies against a co. Ur mad at bc u simply just couldn't cut it put on your big boy pants and get over it

Donyel you owe us a new spellcheck because ours just exploded after pasting that! All kidding aside, you gotta respect an employee who goes out of her way to defend her company like that. You can tell she is very loyal to the company and is trying to do the right thing by defending it. So your heart's in the right place Ms. Warden. We are going to have to knock off a few points for calling us "dunbasses" though. But all in all it's a great start which is why we chose it for our first Hate Mail Wednesday.

A couple points here to address a few things you mentioned. The Sales Center...slowing down sales. Yes, that was our thought as well. WTF? Sales managers slowing down sales on purpose? No way. Unfortunately that is the truth as witnessed by everyone there, and the ridiculousness of it is why we thought it was worth mentioning. We wish we were kidding but I really think it's a symptom of a very small division within a gigantic corporation. If the Walgreens support center for diabetic supplies was a small business and all it did was sales, like how Liberty probably was when it first started, you can guarantee that things like that wouldn't happen, because everyone in small sales companies is focused on sales and the bottom line. With this small division within the huge company that Walgreens is, it no doubt ends up a bit off the radar of corporate executives who aren't even in the same building but are in another state.

Walgreens Medicare Part B Center: Billing the Govt for things customers don't need

With the Walgreens mail order program for diabetic supplies, their main source of revenue is the federal government through Medicare. And for many of the customers, they're paying nothing out of pocket because they have both Medicare and a supplemental insurance. This creates an interesting dynamic where customers don't really complain if they're getting supplies they don't need because they're not personally having to pay for it either way. If you were sent a bunch of stuff in the mail for free, you probably wouldn't go out of your way to dispute it or send it back.

A little background: Medicare will pay for a new glucose meter every 5 years, new test strips, lancets, and control solution every 90 days, a new battery every year, and a new lancing device (the thing that pricks your finger) every 6 months.

Walgreens has all of its reps pushing their Walgreens TRUE Result meter, a private label meter manufactured by Nipro Medical (who also makes Liberty's meter, which in fact is the same exact meter) which they offer complimentary at no cost to medicare or the customer. Offering free meters has become somewhat of an industry standard these days; it makes it much easier to entice customers to switch over and they make a big chunk of change back on the test strips, which must be compatible to the meter. It's very similar to Hewlett-Packard selling printers at a loss but then recouping big margins through ink cartridge sales.

Most customers who sign up with the Walgreens home delivery service do switch over to the TRUE Result meter since it's pushed and offered for free. It's a kit that includes a carrying case, control solution, 10 test strips, lancets, and a lancing device. Most kits by other manufacturers come with these same items as well, whether it's the One Touch Ultra, Ascensia Breeze, or Accu-chek Compact Plus. The problem is, Walgreens has its reps adding lancing devices on orders even though they're already included in the kit they're receiving, whether it's the TRUE Result kit or any other kit. So let's say a customer gets a TRUE Result meter. They'll end up with two lancing devices: the one included in the kit, and the added-on Reliamed lancing device that the government was charged for. Does anyone need to be sent two lancing devices? Of course not. Is the Reliamed lancing device better than the one included in the kit? No, in fact we've tried them both and prefer the one included in the kit. Also, the Reliamed lancets which Walgreens is pushing are compatible with the device within the kit. There's absolutely no reason to add another lancing device on the order, other than to bill the federal government for more items.

This isn't just a problem with Walgreens either. I've heard from many customers of Liberty who say that they are sent a lot more supplies than they need, and there are some other companies out there sending meters and supplies without the patient's consent. People rarely complain about receiving free stuff, so the public is rarely alerted to the fact of this going on. The problem is, it's not actually free - the American people are all footing the bill.

Walgreens Medicare Part B Center: Purposefully slowing down sales

I witnessed some ridiculous things during my time at the Walgreens Support Center. One of them was that of management purposefully slowing down sales because of a backlog in the order audit department. For the support center, Walgreens uses software by Interactive Intelligence called Interaction Client which is hooked up to an auto-dialer that makes all the calls for the reps. With the autodialer, the sales reps make no manual calls and they have no say-so in who gets called. They simply sit and wait for the next call to come to them. Reps receive a new call about a minute after dispositioning the last call, on average. The autodialer has a useful purpose of screening out most garbage calls, such as no answer, disconnected lines, and voicemails. Such calls are never sent to the reps; the reps only receive the calls when the line is picked up by someone on the other line. This makes for a more productive work day for the sales rep, as he goes from one customer to the next, and not having to waste time with busy, disconnected lines or lines with no answer.

For a couple days at a time, this autodialer was turned off by management. Was there a malfunction in the software? No. With the autodialer turned off, the sales rep receives the customer profile and then manually dials. Which in other contexts wouldn't be a problem except in this case it resulted in reps spending all day long getting nothing but no answers, voicemails, and disconnected lines - all the garbage calls that the autodialer had been in effect screening out. Sales went down dramatically. Whereas before you'd see a bunch of tallies on the board from the day's sales, now there were only a few sales total from around 20 reps. You can't make sales to disconnected lines or when there's no answer. So why was the autodialer turned off? Specifically to stop sales. It turns out that the sales department was making too many sales and the order audit department couldn't keep up. Which made me wonder again, why are we hiring another 40 this week, and next week, when evidently we're already selling too much? If we're selling too much now how could we ever keep up with sales in later weeks?

During this time, reps were told not to worry. The decrease in sales won't count against them towards their "conversion percentage" - a ratio that shows sales productivity per calls made. But however you slice it, it did practically stop everyone's sales for a few days, and even if the conversion rate was unchanged, less sales certainly does effect commission checks that employees rely on. This is secondary though to how dumb of a business move it was. At any real sales company, to see sales drop to practically zero would have had any sales manager sweating, but here everyone walked around calmly with no concern at all that no one was selling anything. It was the result they intended.

What is The Walgreens Medicare Part B Support Center?

Hello everyone, this is our first post. We worked at the Walgreens support center for diabetic testing supplies a couple months ago and thought it would be kind of fun to make a blog about it and see if we can have some other employees and ex-employees coming to share things as well. Walgreens has some...interesting ways of doing things that make us go "hmmmm" so we'd like to hear from others to see if we can make sense of it all.

So what is the Walgreens medicare Part B Support Center? Ok, you've all seen those commercials with Wilford Brimley telling those with diabetes (pronounced "diabeetus") to test their blood sugar and check it often, right? Well that commercial is selling Liberty Medical's home delivery service for diabetic testing supplies. They've been in business for years now signing up people who see a convenience in having their test strips mailed out to them as opposed to them having to go to the store to get it. In the meantime, Walgreens, who sells diabetic testing supplies in their stores, has seen sales lost to mail order companies like Liberty because a good chunk of customers prefer to have it delivered.

So now Walgreens is in the mail order game and has a call center in West Chester (9025 Centre Point Dr in the Contech building) to get the word out and get people switching back from Liberty and other mail order companies to Walgreens. One funny thing is that Walgreens gets its prospecting list from its 8,000 local pharmacies so the majority of people they're calling are already getting their testing supplies from Walgreens. It appears that this has caused a bit of intracompany tension being that one division is stealing sales away from its core retail side. Store managers and pharmacists are wondering why people claiming to be Walgreens are calling all their customers and in effect encouraging them away from the store. Of course, the "official policy" of the support center is to not push the service to those who are currently getting their supplies from the local Walgreens stores, but that rule must be broken by any serious rep that wants to keep their job. Again, they're prospecting from their own customer database so 90% of them are already getting supplies from Walgreens.

More entries to come, stay tuned...