Reinventing your omnichannel strategy to optimize patient experiences
An effective omnichannel strategy should focus on giving customers what they want, specifically when they want it.
A successful omnichannel strategy aims to generate a constant, seamless, positive customer experience across all channels while simultaneously increasing sales across multiple platforms.
Digitisation, artificial intelligence, apps, and social media are among the ways it can improve a company’s reach in the marketplace. An effective strategy should focus on giving customers what they want, specifically when they want it, yet this is a complicated task.
Developing a successful omnichannel strategy isn’t simple. Implementing it requires hiring the right people with the appropriate skills who can gain a deep understanding of customer journeys. And it’s important to keep track of customer journeys to become aware of critical touch points that can be tweaked to improve a pharmaceutical company’s marketing reach. This might involve identifying the right mix of channels to target customers, whether digitally or through the use of more traditional venues, such as TV or newspaper ads.
“Broadly speaking, omnichannel is about education,” says Rohit Dayama, Global Client Partner at Cognizant. “It’s about making sure that people and healthcare professionals are informed about what is coming next in terms of products and launches and effectively getting new drugs to patients, but it’s also about influencing decisions.
“Pharma, from our perspective, has really come on in leaps and bounds in terms of customer-centricity, defining patient journeys or HCP journeys, and actually using data science to discover insights and personalize that engagement, but in terms of what HCPs and physicians specifically want to consume, they want to consume medical information. They want to understand the opinions of their peers. They want to hear a perspective from a key opinion leader. They want to understand treatment guidelines and dosage guidelines.
“How they want it is on their terms, and on their terms means information when they are ready to consume it. It has to be in bite-sized pieces, concise and to the point, rather than a lot of unsolicited emails or (sales) rep visits. Our view is that there is still a lot of a disconnect between what pharma is trying to actually push out and achieve and how it is being consumed or received,” he adds.
“Pharma’s omnichannel efforts aimed at meeting the needs of physicians and patients face several challenges. These include improving collaboration between teams, such as between the medical affairs and commercial teams, and making sure that communication is synchronized, addressing channel integration issues and personalization”, according to Dayama. “Unfortunately, budget constraints may be the biggest deterrent to developing a successful omnichannel strategy,” he cautions.
OMNICHANNEL AND DATA
Another important aspect of a successful omnichannel strategy is the effective use of data. Data-driven decision-making is becoming increasingly important as it ensures regulatory compliance, and supports a seamless, integrated experience across multiple channels. This enables pharmaceutical companies to engage effectively with healthcare professionals and patients alike, enhancing customer experiences and ultimately improving patient outcomes. Tools and platforms enable pharmaceutical companies to centralize, clean, and organize data from various channels, ensuring a unified, real-time view of customer and product information. For Informatica’s senior solutions architect, Martin Hebach, a fit-for-purpose and dedicated data management platform is vital in any omnichannel enterprise.
“If omnichannel is about collecting and distributing relevant data whether it’s customer-specific data, product-related data or services-related data, a robust and functional tech omnichannel platform should offer an interface to all the relevant business applications that are used by the different channels. This could be web technologies that connect into call centre systems or technology that connects into ERP systems in the backend of larger corporations,” he says.
In addition to the interface technology, a good data platform should feature integration solutions to transform the various data formats that channels need and to provide insight into whatever the internal standard of the customer company is, Hebach believes. It should then treat the master data for all these customer related topics and product-related topics, separate from the transaction data. The master data is necessary to create the 360-degree view on the customer, the product, maybe even on the provider in the healthcare industry and the transaction data allows you to derive insights on specific interests of a specific person on a specific product.
Hebach adds: “We are clearly handling sensitive and highly regulated personal and healthcare information data, there is a large compliance aspect behind that, and you need very strong governance on what you do, how you do it, and especially about the data content.”
THE AI FACTOR
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming omnichannel commerce by combining the power of data integration with generative AI. With integration, businesses are now able to better understand and engage their customers by leveraging data from multiple sources to create a unified view. This holistic approach allows for precise audience segmentation and the delivery of hyper-personalized product recommendations.
Generative AI further enhances this transformation by enabling applications like chatbots to provide tailored, context-aware responses to individual queries. These capabilities are supported by seamless data workflows that integrate updates from websites, mobile apps, and CRM systems, ensuring data consistency and integrity across all channels. Best practices in this space demonstrate how these technologies work together to deliver a smooth and cohesive customer experience, setting a new standard for innovation in omnichannel strategies.
THE NEED FOR A VISION
Rohit Dayama believes that when tackling challenges like budget constraints, vision is key, adding that it’s important to have an idea of “what the digital strategy should be in terms of content, channel and data, and what are the key outcomes that that strategy should look like”.
Many believe that the best vision is consumer centric. For example, if a pharma company were to launch a new hair loss treatment product, it would be important to understand the needs of potential users of the product. Questions that should be asked include, “what is the emotion behind hair loss? What is the stigma? What are the elements behind hair loss, such as genetics?” and then, “where are consumers looking for information? What impacts and leads their purchasing behaviour?” In this scenario, a successful omnichannel strategy and product launch would not only get the product in front of the right customers but could also help remove the stigma of hair loss and normalize it.
So, omnichannel developers need to understand where consumers stand on these concerns and then personalize content for them. In addition, it would be necessary to run as many clinical trials as needed to show that the product is safe and effective during the pre-launch period; it would be helpful to send sales reps into the field to make physicians aware of the product and build sales momentum. Based on personal information about consumers and how they might react to a product, developers would be able to create content and select channels. Having this knowledge in hand also would help them use their money more effectively, especially when budgets are constrained.
ESTABLISHING PARTNERSHIPS
In addition to promoting a product directly to consumers, some industry leaders believe it would be helpful for pharma to establish partnerships with organizations that could shed light on consumer needs and purchasing habits. In the case of a hair loss product, data from pharmacies might be helpful when developing both prescriptions and over-the-counter products.
As long as there are no product shortages, making the product available through pharmacies would help drive consumer traffic. Many believe that with pharmacies, pharma could amplify and piggyback on their marketing opportunities and their channels, and use their skill sets as well. But this is not about utilising one channel. It’s about utilising the right channel at the appropriate time. When taking this approach, it has been suggested, pharmaceutical companies should be prepared to share a percentage of the sales with their pharmacy partners.
Also, helping the omnichannel effort would be a patient support program that includes use cases and discussions of patients’ successes and challenges. This type of program would support patients and create a community. Gathering these types of data and insights would influence current and future omnichannel content. Harnessing such real-world evidence would give product credibility to a prescriber base as well.
Other omnichannel strategies for driving consumers to the product include creating, in the hair loss example, an app for smartphones that would scan a user’s scalp for potential hair loss. It’s important to remember that omnichannel is about making sure that healthcare professionals and patient customers are informed about their products. It’s about effectively getting new drugs to patients while harnessing data to gain insights and personalise customer engagement.
This article covers the main points from a 'hackathon' session 'Redefine and Reinvent your Omnichannel Strategy to Provide Truly Personalized HCP and Patient Experiences' at Reuters Events Pharma EU 2024, in Barcelona, sponsored by Cognizant and Informatica.