The Missing Middle of Omnichannel
Customer Measurement

THOUGHT STARTER SERIES

Measuring the impact of customer engagement has long been a struggle for life sciences companies due to the difficulty of linking customer-level engagement data with sales impact. Even in the U.S. where healthcare professional (HCP)-level prescribing data is available, understanding true cause and effect can prove challenging.

Without a more granular understanding of how customer engagement drives value, most companies are left flying blind, delivering engagement plans and tactics without any way of knowing if they are having the desired impact.

At Veeva, we believe there are five key measures that can help commercial teams fill the gap of omnichannel customer measurement. But before we dive into what we call the “missing middle,” let’s first take a look at the five core dimensions of measuring omnichannel customer engagement (see diagram on page 2):

1. Exposure – Measures which customers you are engaging with and how—through what channels, at what time and with what content.
2. Engagement – Assesses whether your customer interactions drive positive engagement.

The first two levels are input measures—they are designed to show what engagement activity is taking place. They are valuable things to measure but in themselves don’t tell you much about impact. To do this you need to add outcome measures (levels 3-5).

3. Conversion – Adds further context around whether positive engagement resulted in a desired action by the customer. This can be tactical (e.g. getting them to attend a congress), or ideally, more strategic (e.g. moving them through a ladder of adoption until they are advocates of your product).
4. Experience – Brings the voice of the customer into play. It is critical to capture feedback directly from customers about their experience of engaging your company and what they think about your products.
5. Results – Measures business results, typically based on sales or market share. But ultimately, impact should be measured by the number of patients benefiting from your products.

The dichotomy of current omnichannel measurement

Historically, pharma has been very good at measuring levels
one (channel-level exposure measures) and five (aggregated
business results at market, submarket, or hospital level)
because this data is most readily available. Most teams have
access to detailed reports and dashboards that slice and
dice this data in many ways.

The challenge with focusing on these two levels is that it
is either too high level (results), or too granular and siloed
(exposure) to drive meaningful action and help refine and
optimize engagement strategies. To help identify this
missing middle of omnichannel customer measurement,
we’ve developed the following key measures that can
fundamentally improve your level of understanding and
effectiveness (see diagram).

Filling the missing middle

Customer engagement index (CEI)

The customer engagement index is the first step in moving
away from measuring interactions at the individual channel
level to having an objective measure of engagement across
all channels and touchpoints over time. The CEI is calculated
by analyzing every type of interaction with a customer—both
customer-initiated (pull) and company-driven (push)—over a
given time period and applying a score or weighting to each
interaction based on the relative quality of those interactions.
These are then added up and indexed to arrive at one score
per customer. The beauty of this measure is it encourages
a truly omnichannel approach and can be used to correlate
to other measure such as whether better engagement led to
better satisfaction, conversion, and business results.

Share of voice and benchmarks

Veeva Pulse is a unique, proprietary aggregated data set
built from millions of HCP interactions across the world.
Through this data, companies can understand actual share
of voice—how much interaction they’re having relative to
others. The difference with this data, compared to just
looking at your own data or using survey data, is how
comprehensive it is and the fact it is built from actual HCP
behavior and engagement.

Relationship quality

This measure seeks to evaluate the quality of the
relationships between your customers and field teams.
Using a similar approach to the customer engagement
index, it looks at all interactions between reps or MSLs and
their customers, and intelligently scores “real engagement”
by analyzing the volume, quality, and timeline of activity.
Every individual relationship is scored to better understand
connections and help identify which relationships need to
be prioritized and how.

Journey conversion

Many companies have invested huge amounts of time
and money designing target HCP journeys and planning
campaigns to execute on these journeys. However, they
are often executed with limited visibility over whether the
desired customer action was achieved. Measuring journey
conversion assesses how well HCPs progress through an
adoption ladder with a clear data-driven view on the target
behaviors and next actions you are trying to drive. Visualizing
and measuring journeys in this way provides rich insight
into what type of engagement works with different types of
customers.

Customer satisfaction

Finally, capturing the voice of the customer is essential
for truly understanding the impact of your engagement.
The typical measures are Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
and/or Net Promoter Score (NPS). There are many ways
of measuring this. The challenge is to try and move away
from one off, ad-hoc primary research to capturing ongoing,
regular feedback. It is also important to measure customer
sentiment and perception as well, particularly when it
concerns a specific product.

Technology platforms such as Veeva CRM offer powerful
ways to capture the voice of the customer on a regular basis.
Take, for example, the five-star rating that pops up at the end
of a Veeva CRM Engage Meeting call to ask the HCP to rate
the call. It takes less than 10 seconds to complete but can
capture useful information about whether a customer found
the interaction valuable. The survey facility within Veeva’s
eDetailing aid (Veeva CLM) is also a powerful tool to capture
HCP reactions and sentiment. All help to build up a far richer
picture over time about what customers really think.

Capturing the right data to drive insightful action

The reason these five key metrics have not been more widely
adopted is due to the complexity in capturing the necessary
data to measure them. This should no longer be the blocker.
Veeva offers a range of tools that customers can use to not
only help capture the right data points, but more importantly,
enable this insight to be fed back to the right people in
the right way so timely action can be taken to improve the
customer experience (see diagram).

A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work when it comes
to measuring omnichnannel engagement. The key is to be
clear on the business question you are trying to answer
and the decision you are trying to make, and then selecting
the right range of tools to enable this. Getting this right
will help unlock further efficiency and effectiveness in your
omnichannel strategy.

Key Takeaways

Opportunities exist to address the “missing
middle” by better linking channel-level customer
engagement measures (exposure) with high-level
results by measuring engagement, conversion,
and customer experience.

Introducing five key metrics, each of which brings
a unique and different perspective to omnichannel
measurement, can transform your understanding
of the effectiveness of your customer engagement
and omnichannel strategies.

The ability to capture the right data should no
longer be a blocker if you are clear on the questions
you need to ask and the business decisions you
need to make.

Veeva’s technology suite offers the ability to not
only capture the right data at scale, but present this
data back in the form of actionable insights to allow
commercial, medical, and field teams to make more
effective and timely decisions.

Aaron Bean
VP, Business Consulting – Europe
Aaron.Bean@veeva.com

About Veeva Business Consulting

Veeva Business Consulting combines commercial and medical expertise with Veeva’s proprietary data and technology to deliver
better business-focused solutions for our customers. Our team of experts offers a suite of advisory offerings, including launch readiness,
digital acceleration, and content optimization, all supported through unique HCP insights and analytics.

To learn more, visit: veeva.com/business-consulting.