Holistic Pharma Customer Experience: Creating Value Beyond Outstanding Engagement

Welcome to the second edition of #Pharma_Customer_Parrot Newsletter!

Last week in our inaugural edition, we highlighted the many challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry on both ends of: 1- delivering the right medication to the right patient and 2- achieving continuous growth in an increasingly challenging landscape. We emphasized the need for companies to provide added value to healthcare professionals by focusing on customer experience and differentiating between holistic CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE and CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT. Finally, we introduced a formula to break down what it takes to deliver an optimized holistic customer experience.

In this issue, we explore the customer experience formula in more depth, discussing its thought process, the importance of distinguishing between holistic customer experience and customer engagement, and its connection to customer centricity. We also examine how evolving our approach to holistic customer experience will impact the role of sales representatives and field teams in ensuring the quality of the overall customer experience, as well as how their roles will develop in the near future using essential tools like data and artificial intelligence.

Let's start by revisiting the holistic customer experience formula:

Last week, I had the opportunity to present to a fantastic group of pharmaceutical customer experience professionals at the 2023 #PharmaCx summit in Princeton, New Jersey. The formula piqued their interest, prompting questions about the thought process behind it and its applications for daily customer experience activities.

To answer the questions, this formula is derived from the widely accepted definition of customer experience used by leading global companies like Amazon and others.

“Customer experience is the customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off- and cumulative effect of interaction with a company’s employees, services, channels or products”. - Gartner

By examining the components of this definition, we can integrate our services with our employees, specifically field teams like sales representatives, account managers, medical liaisons, reimbursement managers, and patient services coordinators, to create a CUSTOMER SERVICE experience that ensures answering customers calls, providing training, alerting field force team of customer queries/needs in case of vacant territories, etc. I customer service is such an opportunity in the pharma industry.

Additionally, by combining employees with other communication channels (digital), we achieve an impactful data-driven CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT model that addresses the individual HCPs educational needs.

As for the product experience, it is represented by the clinical needs of both healthcare professionals and patients – which consequently falls under the bigger umbrella of total CUSTOMER NEEDS.

Finally, the PATIENT EXPERIENCE must be fully integrated under the healthcare professional experience, as the medical practitioner may be convinced of the medication's effectiveness but can only confirm their decision through their patients' affirmation that their experience was good enough to warrant repeated trials with other patients.

?P.S. note how employees (in our case Field Force) fall right in the middle of everything with a critical role within a holistic Cx strategy. They gather some of the most relevant insights about the CUSTOMER NEEDS. They deliver CUSTOMER SERVICE and could co-own it, which may boost their value in a time they are seriously challenged to prove value in every encounter. They also deliver CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT independently and in an orchestrated manner within other touchpoints.

The point of this formula lies in the need for Pharma Cx teams to adopt a holistic customer experience model vs. a narrow customer engagement one. By not addressing customer experience from a holistic perspective, silos in our efforts along the customer journey can lead to friction and churn. Here is a real example on this (true story).

A few years ago, when I worked as a Medical Science Liaison in New York State, I encountered a customer, Dr. Hard Worker, who had an excellent impression of our company and demonstrated exceptional engagement. He consistently answered phone calls, welcomed face-to-face interactions, responded to emails, provided feedback, and shared valuable insights. Meaning, in terms of customer engagement, everything appeared fantastic. However, despite his high level of engagement, Dr. Hard Worker struggled to initiate a good number of his patients on our newly launched product, due to confusion surrounding a required pre-first-dose initiation blood test. As a result, he eventually opted to use a competitor's product for all these patients. This experience underscored the fact that while customer engagement is crucial to drive a new script decision, it alone is insufficient in turning the decision into a reality.

I contemplate this insight as I observe the majority of pharmaceutical customer experience teams, particularly in the wake of COVID-19, prioritizing the optimization of engagement over experience. While emphasizing essential aspects such as modular content, automation, channel optimization, and data hubs is undoubtedly crucial for customer engagement, it should not come at the cost of genuine customer centricity. A comprehensive and holistic customer experience approach serves as the ultimate vehicle for achieving true customer-focused success.

If you are still wondering what do I get if I shift to this strategy? here's some of the benefits:

1. Customer Centricity and genuine partnership: By focusing on the customer's problem without any silos, reflecting on the Dr. Hard Worker's example, we could have worked on a temporary, fast, and exceptional solution , ensuring that communication with the customer is centered on their issue and providing all the information they need rather than presenting irrelevant information. We could have been more sensitive of time. Think of a CRM alert that is visible to ALL teams, and ALL teams are working to figure it out.
2. Eliminating silos and unifying efforts: A holistic customer experience approach allows various departments and teams such as patient services, sales, marketing, reimbursement, etc. to work together towards the same goal, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.
3. Ensuring a unified vision for the customer and supporting their team, ultimately benefiting their patients: When all parties involved in the customer experience work together with a shared understanding of the customer's needs, it results in a seamless experience that fosters trust, loyalty, and positive patient outcomes. It also creates a 360-well kept trail of data that can be used by FF to anticipate customer needs, achieve partnership, and add value at every encounter.
4. Evolving the role of the field force: In a holistic customer experience setting, the field force can be empowered to better understand and address the needs of healthcare professionals and patients. This includes leveraging data and artificial intelligence to identify trends, opportunities, and potential challenges, as well as fostering strong relationships through empathetic and informed communication. By taking on a more consultative and decision-making role, the field force can contribute to a cohesive customer experience that not only meets the expectations of healthcare professionals but also improves patient outcomes. In other words, FF can become consultants vs. Reps, orchestrators vs. facilitators, and value providers vs. sales agents.

In short, this holistic approach can lead to relevance and value at a time of so much noise and irrelevance.

In the next edition, we will take this strategy to some tangible level of execution.

Let me know your thoughts on this and potential future topics in the comments. Thank you :)

Walid Hamza