Pharma customer experience trends and CX measurement best practice

Alongside my DT Consulting colleague Eleni Lee I’ll be appearing at the BHBIA’s 2023 Winter Seminar on Friday to present some of our customer experience data and discuss CX measurement best practices.

More details about the event, which is only open to BHBIA members, are available here. The full programme also includes Novartis’ customer experience activation director Ben Head and content strategy lead Krissie Mee exploring why CX is so important in 2023 and beyond.

Customer experience in Europe: a digital drop-off for the pharma content HCPs most need

There’s a digital drop-off for the pharma content that HCPs in Europe’s five biggest markets say they need the most from the industry.

That’s one of the conclusions from DT Consulting’s latest report on pharma customer experience (CX), which follows our similar studies cover global pharma and the US industry.

Based on a survey of 2,265 healthcare professionals (HCPs), the new research uses our Customer Experience Quotient® (CXQ®) methodology to measure how well doctors perceive their interactions with particular pharmaceutical companies.

Creating the right foundations for omnichannel success

Much like with ‘patient-centricity’, the overuse of ‘omnichannel’ in pharma is in danger of tarnishing the term. This would obscure the golden truth that resides at its core – that is, the way it can address pharma’s pressing need to better understand its customers’ needs and how best to meet them through a connected set of channels.

As the industry continues with the ongoing period of adjustment that characterises any omnichannel journey, one of the strongest indicators of how individual companies are performing is through the lens of the customer experience (CX) they provide. After all, if a company doesn’t shine when engaging its stakeholders, it is unlikely to find itself meeting their needs, let alone exceeding them. Currently, pharma is some way away from provide excellent customer experiences.

For its interactions with HCPs our CX research shows the industry provides what we’d consider a good, though distinctly average, level of customer experiences. Within that, digital channels as a whole lag behind their non-digital counterparts and HCPs highlight a multitude of content gaps when they talk about the information and services they want from the industry.

CX: How is pharma experienced in the US?

Pic: Ankit Dembla on Unsplash

As pharma moves along on its journey towards an omnichannel, CX-driven future, measuring the customer experience (CX) is a vital way of assessing its progress. Knowing the extent to which stakeholders are delighted by their engagement with the industry provides a solid understanding of how different types of content, and the channels through which they’re delivered, are performing.

But our latest research shows the customer experience provided to HCPs in the US is approaching an inflection point, as unsustainable marketing investment choices face a looming reckoning. All too often pharmaceutical companies spend money on financing commercial activities for their own sake, and it’s unsustainable.

We’ve been tracking pharma’s progress in customer experience since 2017, using our Customer Experience Quotient^® (CXQ^®) to measure interactions between healthcare professionals (HCPs) and the pharmaceutical industry. These surveys see respondents asked about their two most-recent interactions with a pharma company and last year it was run for the first time on a global basis. Between July and September 6,270 HCPs in 14 countries rated a total of 12,540 recent experiences with a pharma company.

Pharma customer experience in the US faces an inflection point

The latest Customer Experience Quotient® (CXQ®) report from DT Consulting is also our first US benchmark and it reveals a close race for leadership as pharma faces an inflection point in CX.

Based on a survey of 900 HCPs, it uses our CXQ® methodology to measure how well doctors perceive their interactions with particular pharmaceutical companies.

Within its rankings we find one pharma firm achieves excellence in personalisation, though such heights remain a challenge for the rest of the pharmaceutical industry.

Webinar: HCP customer experience in pharma

On Wednesday 24 May I’ll be discussing recent DT Consulting research on how to best engage HCPs over digital and non-digital channels and what content experiences best connect with them.

We’ll look at what research on more than 6,200 HCP interactions reveals and talk about HCPs’ most pressing unmet needs, as well as sharing advice on how to take an omnichannel approach to CX planning and engagement.

• Register now for The State of HCP Customer Experience in Pharma webinar to hear more