Solving for True Customer Centricity – The Life Sciences Industry’s Transition to Future Engagement Models

Customer engagement in the life sciences industry has evolved dramatically in the last several years, owing to new blended models of engagement that leverage content for more fruitful, virtual interactions.

Despite this, many in the industry have not fully grasped the importance of balance. Balancing the digital and physical engagement approach through a true omnichannel strategy, and understanding how critical the channel mix is for commercial teams, is still something that our industry needs to truly embrace.

This comes into play when we consider diverse regions such as Asia Pacific, where in-person and video usage for customer engagement can go up to as high as 65% in Australia, to as low as 25% in markets like Singapore and South Korea.

The deployment of digital solutions such as AI, while accelerated in the last several years, has also called into question various issues around how ready the industry is to utilize AI and machine learning in real-world applications, and what we need to get field and marketing teams to where they want to be.

Embracing a mindset shift to pave the way for effective engagement models
In an incredibly competitive market, field teams now must work harder than ever to stand out. Every interaction field teams have with healthcare professionals needs to add value and provide customers with the right material to inform key decisions. Beyond selling alone, the industry needs to make a concerted shift towards patient-centric engagement, which is a key facet of success for field teams. Achieving true customer centricity involves helping healthcare professionals serve patients better, and prioritize positive patient outcomes.

We need to have a deeper understanding of what healthcare professionals want. This means having a strong grasp of the unique challenges they face across various patient personas, and understanding what are the areas biopharmas can help to alleviate. Patient access and outcomes can be improved when healthcare professionals are empowered with effective information about products, so that they can choose the right treatments that will have the best outcomes, and manage their patient loads more efficiently. 

Considering the fluid nature of personas
We commonly consider categorizing healthcare professionals based on different personas, when thinking about what they want and need. Very often, we overlook the fact that personas are not fixed; they are dynamic and ever-changing, even while there are elements of truth in the types of personas we have determined. There is a need to rely on real-time, and up-to-date data, and design a persona that is dynamic, with the tools available. With an additional perspective from the medical representatives, this can help create a more accurate view of the healthcare professional, reduce our inclination to cognitive bias, and to ultimately deliver what they need.

Taking a more connected engagement approach to digitalization in the industry
While there has been considerable effort from life sciences companies to digitalize and reframe engagement models, most approaches remain scattered and fragmented.

Many organizations are undergoing their digital transformation independently, and this leaves firms across the sector at various points on the adoption curve, with a myriad of new software and data into their organizations. This poses a real challenge for interoperability and consistency, which will eventually hamper speed and consistency within a company.

As an industry, there is a real opportunity for life sciences organizations to establish a singular, first-principle approach to customer engagement. Building and leveraging solutions that help to make customer engagement more compelling will help to dramatically improve speed, efficiency and quality across all functions.

Key considerations for life sciences companies
With this in mind, there remain several key considerations for biopharma in this new age of engagement. Keeping these considerations in mind, will be pivotal to stay ahead of the curve:

• Shift towards using the right aggregators and platforms to make the most of digital solutions and innovations, instead of building independent systems for each organization.
• A good data foundation is paramount: the right reference data will inform a tailored experience for healthcare professionals and will enable field teams to reach the right audiences and deliver a truly customer-centric experience.
• Having the right data will supercharge digital solutions and strategies that are future-fit for this industry, informing tangible, personalized change in engagement models.
• Measured risk taking: experimental models are not one size fits all, and the adoption and scale of new engagement models and approaches should be tailored to the landscape it will be expected to work in, working in tandem with market nuances. Capabilities and new engagement models should also be bespoke to data sets available, and the strength of data-driven foundations.