How to operate a sustainable customer engagement model?

Introduction

Go to market model transformation is one of the key challenges of pharmaceutical company. Operate a sustainable customer engagement model is key to ensure high performance of the core business, especially in Covid context.

In this article, we will dive into key trends that renew customer engagement approach, explain why customer engagement is important, what its pillars and key success factors are, to implement a successful customer engagement in your company.

We will also highlight the importance of cross-functional team upskilling as the foundation of a sustainable model.

What are the new trends in customer engagement?

Since 2003, BearingPoint and Kantar have launched the “Podium de la Relation Client” (Customer Relationship Podium) with a strong conviction: to evaluate company performance through the Voice of the Customer, thanks to a cross-sectoral approach, comparable year after year. More than 4,000 consumers and users are invited to give their opinion on the performance of the companies of which they are customers. The companies do not apply for this evaluation but are selected based on their representativeness in their market.

From this observatory of practices based on a representative sample of the French population, the new trends identified in terms of customer relations are organized around 3 main areas:

• Interacting with customers
• The data “new black gold”
• Better capture of customers

Figure 1: Trends in Customer Engagement [1]

One of the major trends is the application of Artificial Intelligence to Customer Experience (CX). AI offers innovative responses to new customer expectations. According to a Gartner study, 72% of customer interactions will involve the use of innovative technologies such as machine learning or chatbots by 2022.

The use of voice assistants as a purchasing channel, virtual or augmented reality to personalize the in-store shopping experience, anticipation of customer needs thanks to predictive marketing, creation of new services thanks to the Internet of Things, implementation of chatbots to access after-sales service are all use cases based on artificial intelligence that now seem to provide concrete solutions to the new expectations of customers.

Other trend illustrations:

• Mobile only: digital usage and social network maturity, mobile first across industries. For example, according to Google, 68% of smartphone users say they check their phone within 15 minutes of waking up in the morning.
• Personalization: moving from mass customization to hyperpersonalisation, developing loyalty strategies that go beyond programs

What are the new trends in customer engagement in pharma?

• The « new normal »: COVID-19 has accelerated a change in customer engagement practices. For example, HCPs virtual transition crisis has been accelerated and is becoming increasingly important. As the complexity and competition increase in pharma marketing, optimizing the customer experience has become more important than ever. A good pharma CX would be one that can understand their customer needs, the industry needs to adopt a customer-focused approach more than even to succeed in the new normal. 82% of HCPs want pharmaceutical companies to communicate beyond product information to support overall patient management, for example by offering services. [2]
• (Un)Branded content: managing branded and unbranded content in the customer journey is a critical success factor for HCP expectations. For example, 25% of the content received by HCPs is product information whereas they would like to receive only 7% on average. Only 9% of the content received by HCPs is medical education content when they would prefer to receive twice as much. [3]
• Customer Journey: knowing the pharma customer journey is crucial, this pharma customer journey has been transformed through virtual engagement model. Today, there are multiple touchpoints and multiple channels that HCPs can engage with. To increase customer satisfaction, we need to move from a logic of individualized touchpoints to a customer journey. An excellent CX needs to precisely map the customer journey and aim for immediate satisfaction and exceed expectations, at every touchpoint of the customer journey. [4]

What are the 3 pillars of a winning customer engagement model?

Customer engagement is built around 3 major pillars:

1. Execution: reflects the foundations of the customer relationship. This pillar includes the ability to offer a wide range of communication channels to each customer, the coherence of information transmitted between the different communication channels, the attractiveness and simplicity of digital tools, and the fact that the customer receives an appropriate response without having to make an effort. This pillar is considered a prerequisite by customers. A poor execution score is very penalizing, but a good execution is not radically differentiating.
2. Link: appears as the first level of differentiation by companies. This pillar covers the transparency of the information provided, the pedagogy in the explanations given to customers, the personalized support, the co-creation with customers (i.e., the ability to consider the customer's opinion and involve him in the company's future projects). If successfully executed, the link allows companies to strengthen the commitment of existing customers and increase contact opportunities, which are all opportunities for loyalty and development.
3. Emotion: is the pillar that characterizes the most successful type of Customer Relationship Management. It involves recognizing and rewarding customer loyalty, creating positive surprise effects, and treating each customer as an unique individual. Strengthening Emotion means improving differentiation and building the customer relationship of tomorrow.

What are the challenges of a winning customer engagement strategy in your pharma company?

A successful customer engagement model is built on a training foundation supported by 3 pillars that are essential to its efficiency:

1. First pillar: orchestrate your customer journey and engage your customer ecosystem:

• Create digital continuum to maximize performance
• Develop digital journeys to engage HCP ecosystem (visited, no visited…)
• Design & orchestrate customer journeys supported by valuable touchpoints
• Use plug & play platforms to diversify digital touchpoints (not only email for instance)
• Engage your Thought Leaders to promote peer-to-peer communication
• Rely on social network to attract your customers

2. Second pillar: generate insights & leverage data to loop

• Use your customer journeys to generate structured data on your customers
• Monitor customer experience KPI to maximize business impacts
• Develop advanced analytics to generate dynamic segmentation

3. Third pillar: creating a meaningful content experience

• Ensure consistency of content and customer experience, regardless of the channel used
• Create and deliver content adapted to your business needs for each of your customers
• Activate formats and messages that allow you to reach your objectives and measure them (KPIs)
• Implement an efficient operational routine to produce high value-added content through a content factory

The customer engagement model is built on a training foundation, which is the gateway to the implementation of a customer engagement strategy. Training employees to deploy these new approaches to customer engagement and upskilling employees is critical to its success. This training should be built around key principles:

• Masterclass in cross-functional teams
• Actionable training with one true customer per team
• Theoretical, practical & sharing sessions
• Top management engagement
• Maturity assessment before and after training to assess initial level of practices and knowledge and the evolution of practices through training

Authors:

• Sandrine Belkhous, Manager, Life Sciences
• Louis Santos
• Véronique Fassy