How to Create a Connected HCP Customer Journey

How to Create a Connected HCP Customer Journey

Customer behavior has changed significantly. The micro-moments that drive preference and decision-making have the most impact on a customer journey. Businesses try to make the best use of these micro-moments by focusing on digital customer experiences.

Can the pharma industry also adopt the B2B customer journey that has proved efficient for other industries like retail?

Can pharma create connected HCP customer journeys and deliver exceptional experiences?

The marketing landscape is constantly fragmenting itself, from influencers to micro-influencers and market segments to micro segments. The target consumers refuse to be treated like fragments and instead prefer to be treated as individuals.  Google reports  that 69% of online consumers agree that the timing, quality, and relevance of a brand message influence their decision-making process.

Healthcare professionals are no less and expect the same level of personalization in their customer experience journeys. Modern HCPs prefer digital modes of interaction, especially after the pandemic. HCP engagement is no longer optional, it is a necessity for pharmaceutical companies. 

Evolving HCP engagement landscape

The internet and emerging technologies have empowered HCPs to access crucial and relevant medical information on multiple channels. Traditional digital channels no longer work effectively. Marketing and content are evolving day by day. Starting from engaging with HCPs on a single channel to multiple channels, then omnichannel, and now channel-less, digital experiences have come a long way.

An omnichannel strategy focuses on connecting as many channels as possible whereas a channel-less strategy focuses on the experience delivered on any channel. This progress works in tandem with the preferences of HCPs. The kind of medical information HCPs require has not changed but the timing, format, and delivery of such information have changed.

HCPs require a pharma company that provides them with relevant, authenticated, and curated medical content. The new generation of time-constrained HCPs does not have time to gather and consume copious amounts of information. They want relevant and useful content that they can consume at the right time. When it comes to effective HCP engagement, the when, where, and how matter significantly. And these essential facets are the main pillars of a connected HCP customer journey. 

Why create HCP customer journeys

The pharma industry has a direct relationship with HCPs, not the patients, and yet it plays an important role in the HCP decision-making process that impacts patients directly. A customer journey will help pharma clarify the interplay between its customers, the HCPs, and their customers, the patients. It will also align the latest customer needs with customer behavior and emerging technologies.

A customer journey also enables pharma companies to keep up with the latest developments in the industry that is evolving rapidly. Pharma companies can curate effective marketing communications targeted at a relevant audience and reduce the high costs that come with poorly targeted marketing. To sum up, a customer journey provides insight into HCP behavior and needs and empowers pharma companies to prepare themselves to fulfill those needs most effectively.

Leverage content, data, and technology

The content still matters the most. What is required is content that engages HCPs meaningfully with deep educational information. HCPs desire curated medical information to understand new treatments and make better therapeutic and diagnostic decisions.

A content strategy should be a part of an HCP customer journey. All of the following will help pharma to leverage content in delivering better HCP engagement.

  • Personalized and high-quality content
  • Content library to engage across the whole journey
  • Interactive content for multi-touch experiences
  • Relevant information to cut through the clutter
  • Medical topics tailored to HCP’s personas
  • Content in bite-sized, downloadable, and animated format
  • Rich facts, stats, and evidence for products

Pharma companies have large volumes of data at their fingertips that can be used efficiently. Sales-based data helps to identify the sales potential of HCPs, such as the level of decision-making or the annual number of prescriptions. Behavior-based data provides insights into the differences between HCPs in their beliefs, prescription habits, or scientific appetite. Data based on content and channel preferences yield results on the level of engagement, popular channels, and modes of engagement.

A data management strategy coupled with predictive and visual analytics will help pharma companies to chart an HCP customer journey based on the insights. The following steps help to include data-driven insights in an HCP customer journey.

  • Identifying rich data sources
  • Assessing data quality and addressing data gaps
  • Sourcing additional data if required
  • Centralizing HCP customer data
  • Connecting data from across the organization
  • Identifying tools and capabilities required to process data
  • Defining audience segments from current data insights
  • Creating HCP customer personas
  • Personalize content as per customer personas  

Choosing the right technology depends on two main verticals: content and channel. Content as considered above is the information and messaging delivered to HCPs, and channel means the technology that is currently used to deliver the content. Technology in an HCP customer journey needs to fulfill the following engagement criteria:

  • Seamless and intuitive engagement across omnichannel
  • Recognition of internal and external user workflows
  • Optimized user experiences tailored to HCP interests  

In the past pharma companies have used descriptive analytics to launch traditional business models for communication and engagement. Today, technology has increasingly progressed towards sophisticated analytics that is powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Predictive, visual, and prescriptive analytics transform communication strategies to deliver meaningful interaction with HCPs.

Technology should be an essential part of business strategy for pharma companies. Some capabilities that pharma requires for elevating HCP engagement are:

  • A 360° view of HCPs and their customer journeys
  • Integrating marketing automation tools with CRM systems
  • Aggregating real-time insights across all digital channels
  • Real-time engagement through social media
  • Insights to identify the right mix of channels for each HCP
  • An ideal blend of digital and in-person channels

Creating quality experiences for HCPs

HCPs will appreciate and engage fully only if pharma companies deliver quality experiences. Such experiences can transform HCPs into loyal customers who will continue to engage with pharma more in the future. While there is no one-size-fits-all experience, pharma companies can succeed if they consistently fulfill the below criteria in their HCP customer journey.  

Relevant:  Interactions must be truly helpful and make the best use of an HCP’s time.

Consumable:  Content must be conveniently digestible to an HCP

Accessible:  HCPs should be able to access the required support on their own terms.

Connective:  HCPs should be able to connect with like-minded peers to share knowledge and insights.

Purposeful:  Any HCP interaction or content must authentically add to the purpose of helping patients.

Successful HCP customer journeys

QED42  has been working with multiple big pharma companies to personalize HCP customer journeys and deliver exceptional digital experiences. Consider a few examples. 

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories

We partnered with  Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories  to design and build a digital engagement portal for healthcare professionals to access high-value medical resources content tailored to their various practice needs.

  • 1772 HCP onboarded
  • 3 seconds load time
  • 1 day to roll out a new website

Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company

We partnered with a top leading pharmaceutical company to create a digital engagement portal for healthcare providers to access high-value medical education resources, articles, & research papers via an easily accessible healthcare provider portal.

  • 40 websites rolled out in 2 years
  • Rich data insights from HCP interactions
  • Peer-to-peer collaboration
  • Facilitated knowledge consumption

Fortune 500 biopharmaceutical company

We partnered with  a huge biopharmaceutical company  to deliver a seamless user experience across 3000+ websites with improved security, performance, and feature enhancements.

  • 3000+ websites managed
  • 25+ modules audited
  • Regular sites update to secure from breaches  

If you are looking for a similar elevated HCP engagement for your pharma, plan and work on creating connected and personalized HCPs customer journeys.

Pharma's role in creating quality HCP experiences

3-minute read

May 3, 2021

“Rocking remote”. “Venturing into virtual”. “Delighting with digital”.

There is a proliferation of industry commentary out there today about the future of HCP engagement beyond COVID-19. If we consider the sum of the HCP's experience as a blend of reach (how you access them) and value (what you engage them on once you've captured their precious time and attention) the focus can often over-index on the former. Talk of omnichannel with its notes of velocity, efficiency and automation can often dominate the discourse on the 'how' – but we need to think more broadly than that.

Never has the opportunity to be differentiated and distinctive been so great. The COVID-19 pandemic created a new, wide-open “experience playing field” and the old engagement landscape won't be the same again. To truly appreciate and embrace the possibilities of this chance for change, we ought to take a step back and consider what 'quality' HCP experiences really mean in practice.

So, what are the dimensions of quality that make for a truly valuable encounter with pharma that HCPs will appreciate, sincerely engage with and want more of in the future? There's of course no one-size-fits-all answer as each person’s likes and dislikes are unique, but we can acknowledge some common ingredients:

  • Relevant – “I feel this is a truly helpful and interesting use of my time”
  • Consumable  – “I can digest this in a way that's convenient for me and my patients”
  • Accessible  – “I can source the support I need on my own terms”
  • Connective – “I can learn and share with like-minded peers”
  • Purposeful – “I feel this is authentically customer-centric”

Relevant : We know that HCPs appreciate exchanges that are tailored to their own unique interests and needs, and the substance of the interaction must be thoughtfully planned for as well as the medium. Presenting a detailing aide remotely - however elegantly done - is by no means a guarantee of relevance. Recognizing the deeply personalized insights the field reps who know HCPs best can offer, there is an opportunity to be seized for field talent to play a more established role mapping the HCP journey itself - such as advising on customer experience design and co-creating with their marketing colleagues. When it comes to bringing those experiences to life in the field, empowering reps with more autonomy and trust to tailor meaningful engagements can be a smart route to differentiation. Reps who have the flexibility to hand-pick and enroll physicians in targeted digital campaigns or use outcomes data to target value-oriented conversations for HCPs - could be considered those most well-placed to elevate the experience above the competition.

Consumable : We know that finding the right information to share with their patients can be a time-consuming exercise for HCPs and often isn't as straightforward as they'd like. Patient-friendly content can be too difficult to access, too generic or too peppered with medical jargon to be truly helpful, and pharma-generated materials are often difficult to adapt to serve this need quickly. We've seen some companies respond swiftly to the need for intelligible patient information distilled in an easy-to-consume format during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the value of curation doesn't only serve the patient experience. For HCPs themselves, the opportunity to access fresh and tailored content paired with their professional interests can be truly helpful and valued. Doing this effectively requires two dimensions of understanding: knowing the unique preferences and passions of each individual HCP (e.g. their affiliations, publications, conference attendance, etc.) and establishing how such 'micro moments' communicating distilled information could blend conveniently into the rhythms of the HCP's routine (e.g. via a podcast to listen to on their commute).

Accessible : Even when compellingly executed, HCP experiences that are solely reactive to digital or rep-initiated outreach may be missing a trick. With HCPs' time - or more precisely the lack of it - more of a constraint than ever, it is no surprise that on-demand solutions offering them the ability to proactively connect with reps, source rapid answers to their questions and access resources at the point of need are on the rise. Offering opportunities for a frictionless and convenient mode of engagement on the HCP's own terms, they open up possibilities that pharma is in the early days of embracing but, if done right, could make for a more empowered experience that HCPs actively wish to re-engage with often. The opportunity to interact on-demand via a single hub could, for example, bring value to HCPs able to connect directly with customer-facing colleagues and collaborate in shared workspaces.

Connective : We know that most HCPs are naturally driven to connect with like-minded peers, exchange knowledge and establish lasting connections for future collaborations. This is not only true of physicians but also of other HCP types such as nurse specialists, who often lack the capacity to spend the time they wish on continuing professional development and feel degrees of isolation as their roles stretch more thinly than ever. Brokering networking and peer-to-peer sharing opportunities is an opportunity for pharma to bring a different layer of quality, and it's notable that one rep-to-multiple HCP remote meetings are a growing trend during the COVID-19 pandemic. Add to this HCP appetites for engagement via social channels and there's an opportunity to go even further - for example, by algorithmically matching and connecting HCPs with peers who share their personal and professional interests - but venturing beyond the compliance comfort-zone can often feel like a step too far.

Purposeful : Improving patient lives is the lifeblood of this industry, but pharma often doesn't do as compelling a job propagating its purpose as it could. As COVID-19 re-sets what being in a society and community means and tests our humanity and values, it has also elevated the very idea of ‘purpose’ and offers organizations a timely moment to (re)activate this new shared purpose in an authentic way. Connecting your customer-facing colleagues to their own unique patient-centric purpose can help them appreciate their authentic motivations for why they do what they do and forge a more emotional and empathetic connection in their HCP engagements. Doing this won’t just manifest more human conversations with HCPs; it can drive employee engagement and creativity and bolster individual performance as well.

These five dimensions of quality are not exhaustive and won't be of equal importance to every HCP

However, they're crucial underpinnings to meaningful experiences and bring opportunities to be bold and strike out distinctively in an experience landscape that is rapidly evolving. Each of these facets should be thoughtfully considered and planned for as opportunities to differentiate. But what does that mean in practice and how do you tangibly do it? Here are some starting points:

  • Acknowledge that no single team owns quality: it is the product of a strategic and enduring partnership across functions. Bring together a coalition of leaders across sales, marketing, medical, analytics and technology to agree the levers of accountability that fuel your customer engagement model – such as the degree of autonomy your reps have over digital and data – and ensure these are continuously bedded-in to ways of collaborating and learning journeys.
  • Reward quality as well as frequency and volume. Evolve the way you reward and recognize your reps (and others who contribute to the experience) by adapting your incentive compensation and other models to factor quality into the equation. Consider setting new performance measures for reps to play a more collaborative role helping co-create HCP engagement strategies harnessing their unique knowledge about the customer.
  • Break out of your comfort zone. Going bold on quality can often feel a step too far for an industry bound by rigorous rules as to what can and can’t be shared. But organizations truly committed to quality will seek to harness the sparks of opportunity to maximize new modes of engagement HCPs crave – such as social media-enabled peer connections – by leaning-in to creative yet compliant approaches.

While none of us yet know exactly where the course of the COVID-19 pandemic will take us on the future of customer engagements, it's fair to say that these drivers of quality will continue to resonate and take on an even more elevated role going forward.

For more on this topic, I invite you to view a recent session I led at the NEXT Normal Pharma Summit: Reinventing Relevance: Reimagining Pharma's Role Creating Quality HCP Experiences

Managing Director – Life Sciences, United Kingdom

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How to reach healthcare professionals online using social media advertising?

An introduction to the hcp customer journey.

customer journey hcp

A lot of medical information can be found online these days. Whether it is information about new treatment methods or the opinion of a peer, the search for information often starts online. This is a great opportunity for LSH companies to engage with their target audience. Mapping a customer journey for your target audience will help you to create valuable touchpoints. On this page, we will elaborate more about the customer journey to engage HCPs online .

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Customer journey mapping

What could the customer journey of an hcp look like, inbound marketing & customer journey mapping, customer journey mapping in life sciences & health.

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HCP Engagement: Emerging Trends, Success Metrics & Omnichannel Strategies [2024]

Kathryn Humphries

November 17, 2023

HCP engagement is no easy task. In this ever-changing digital world, HCPs’ needs and expectations are constantly changing, making it hard for you to keep up.

But getting your HCP engagement strategies right is key if you want to generate a positive ROI and achieve the results you want.

Read on to discover the emerging trends in HCP engagement strategies, success metrics to measure, and omnichannel techniques to make your pharma events a success.

This article was inspired by the session on ‘Building solutions and skills to support the future of medical education’ led by Doreen Lee (Medical Excellence Manager, Boehringer Ingelheim ), Donseok Ahn (Global IT Director – Medical, Reckitt ), and Pierre Metrailler (CEO, SpotMe ) at Veeva APAC Commercial Summit .

What is HCP engagement?

Healthcare Provider (HCP) engagement refers to the strategies and methods used by healthcare organizations, pharmaceutical companies, or medical device manufacturers to interact, communicate, and build relationships with HCPs.

The goal of HCP engagement is to provide value to these professionals, fostering collaboration, trust, and mutual understanding. This can involve various activities such as sharing relevant medical research, providing product information, facilitating continuing education, and understanding their needs and feedback.

Effective HCP engagement is crucial in the healthcare industry as it influences the acceptance and use of medical products, impacts patient care, and plays a significant role in shaping healthcare delivery.

To find the best HCP engagement solution for you, check out our ultimate list .

Why is HCP engagement important?

According to our research, pharma companies spend billions on medical education events. On average, 1–3% of their total annual sales.

That means a $40 billion pharma company spends at least $800 million on the hundreds or thousands of events they run each year. 

Take Boehringer Ingelheim for instance. They ran about 500 marketing and medical events in APAC by the end of Q3 in 2022. (And that’s excluding all the events they co-hosted with other companies). Then, there’s Reckitt . They run at least 1,000 global HCP, patient, and consumer events every year, with 200–300 in APAC alone.

With this growing number of events and cost inflation, life science event expenses are only going to increase.

That’s why large pharma companies need to focus on strategically boosting HCP engagement to ensure that the billions they spend on medical education events bring a positive ROI.

How has HCP engagement changed?

Did you know that 50% of HCPs who sign up for a life science webinar don’t even show up? Some studies report an even higher percentage.

Think of the billions your company spends on events. What a waste if less than half of the expected participants actually attend.

This statistic clearly shows that HCP engagement and needs have drastically changed. And the pharma industry needs to start acting to meet doctors’ high expectations.

Are you a life science company looking for the best event tech to help you run successful virtual and hybrid HCP events? Check out the 9 event platforms we recommend for 2024 .

Channel affinity

Achieving high HCP engagement across channels is challenging. That’s because doctors and healthcare professionals prefer receiving content in different ways. Some prefer more digital channels and others prefer more traditional ones. 

Their preferences tend to depend on their level of seniority and where they’re based. For example, with less and less free time on their hands, junior doctors prefer webinars and virtual events because they can participate while they’re on the go.

Doreen suggests analyzing your HCP demographic data to understand what the doctors attending your events prefer. She also recommends tailoring your content and channels to what they want. After all, your events need to be customer-centric in order to boost HCP engagement.

Tailor your event surveys to your HCPs’s needs too. For 45+ pre event survey questions and which pre event surveys to use to get more HCPs at your events, check out our blog post.

Personalization

According to a pharmaceutical industry report by EPG Health , less than 20% of HCPs are getting personalized experiences. That means that at least 80% believe they’re getting a one-size-fits-all event experience. And that results in low HCP engagement.

Life science companies have to think about the HCP journey and give doctors what they expect. If doctors want to receive medical content through a mobile app, then that’s what pharma companies should use.

This was something Donseok recently discovered the importance of. He found that in Asia, 80% of doctors accessed events remotely using their mobile devices. But, in the US and Europe, it was the other way round – 80% of HCPs accessed events using their desktop. That’s why it’s key to understand your target audience to boost your HCP engagement.

Personalizing your events for HCPs also involves giving them the option to choose whether they’d like to join an event in-person, remotely, or watch on-demand content when they have time. 78% of HCPs would like a mixture of in-person and virtual events (Ashfield Healthcare). So, take this into account when organizing your next medical education events.

Emerging HCP engagement trends

All pharma companies talk about how HCP preferences are changing and how to adapt to them. But what are the top 3 emerging HCP engagement trends? And how can you address them?

Hybrid events

In the past, medical education events were all in person. They then suddenly became completely virtual. As a result, HCPs have seen the best of both worlds. Now they want event experiences that combine both physical and digital channels and engagement. In other words, they want hybrid events.

When we say hybrid , we mean life science events that are available for both in-person attendees and remote ones. So, this involves inviting some doctors to physically attend and others to participate via virtual streaming.

Pierre and Donseok both agree that creating a similar experience for both types of audiences is fundamental for high HCP engagement. You don’t want your virtual participants feeling like they’re an afterthought. That means you need to have the right combination of in-person and virtual interactions, and sometimes even a mix.

To achieve high HCP engagement at a hybrid pharma event, you need to include all elements and activities at both the in-person and virtual parts.

For example, Donseok highlights the fact that when you attend a well-planned in-person life science event, the experience is exceptional. At Reckitt’s events, reps greet doctors as they arrive, take photos of them and provide them with refreshments. A proper VIP experience. 

Pierre underlines the fact that there are ways to create experiences like this for virtual audiences too. For example, you could send a swag bag before your virtual event. You could have a welcome message that’s personalized to each HCP as they join the virtual event. Or you could create a personalized quiz for remote attendees.

A great way to build an outstanding hybrid pharma event experience (or an in-person event with digital aspects) is by using a mobile event app . It’s a sure way to boost HCP engagement. That’s because you can run Q&As , polls , and surveys. Plus, you can create networking opportunities and use gamification to get both your physical and virtual attendees interacting with each other.

Using a mobile event app is also a way to track event metrics . Pierre says that the gap between what data insights you get from an in-person event versus those you get from an online event is getting smaller and smaller. By having a mobile event app at your in-person life science event, you can see what sessions HCPs are attending, what content they’re engaging with, and how long they spend watching your presentations. 

Hybrid pharma events do come with their challenges. One of which is the cost. After all, it’s like paying for two events in one. But low-tech hybrid events and lower costs are possible if you do your research. And there’s the huge advantage of reaching and engaging a larger audience of HCPs from all over the world. 

Looking for ways to boost HCP engagement at hybrid events? Check out  4 hybrid event best practices to increase audience engagement .

On-demand content

Over the past few years, HCPs’ time has become even more precious. Many doctors are called last minute to stand in to treat patients, and everyone wants to talk to them about upcoming medical topics. They’re therefore very selective about what they spend their free time on.

This is an important factor to consider when thinking about HCP engagement and what you should be investing in at your pharma events.

Doreen says: “When it comes to medical education, doctors have no patience for 30-minute or 1-hour webinars anymore unless there’s a super important international keynote speaker. On average, they prefer 5- to 10-minute bitesize case studies”. 

That’s why Boehringer Ingelheim is investing in this kind of content because they want to give their customers what they want. They’ve found that the typical 45-minute duration of a webinar just doesn’t work anymore. HCP engagement is significantly higher when online life science events last 15–20 minutes. And it increases even more when life science companies provide on-demand event videos that last just 3–6 minutes, according to Doreen. Just because an event is scientific and technical doesn’t mean it has to be long. 

HCPs no longer want to be invited to a session at 14:30 that may not fit in with their busy schedule. They want to consume event content when it best suits them. That means making it available on demand in short, bitesize chunks that they can watch whenever and wherever they please. Between surgeries, for example, or in the hospital lobby while they wait to start their shift.

Pierre has also noticed this HCP engagement trend at the pharma events that have been run through SpotMe’s life science event engagement platform . That’s why SpotMe will soon be launching a gated Content Hub tailored for pharmaceutical companies. They’ll be able to upload their event content for HCPs to consume on demand. (Watch this space!)

Another crucial point about boosting HCP engagement with on-demand content is fighting the so-called webinar fatigue . Doreen states that she’s asked doctors about this and found that it’s not that they’re fed up of webinars and online events. In fact, junior doctors much prefer them because they’re efficient. The issue is with “me-too webinars” – so many pharma companies are running events about the same topics.

Read on for a way to solve this dilemma.

HCP interaction

It’s often hard to come up with new content for life science events. But according to Pierre, one way to differentiate is by changing the format you use to present your medical content. If you simply deliver the same content differently, you’ll instantly attract more attendees. 

It could be as simple as changing the name ‘webinar’ or ‘virtual event’ to ‘live experience’ or ‘real-time learning’. Or you could create the opportunity for peer-to-peer interactions – another emerging HCP engagement trend. 

HCP engagement will be higher if they get to interact and experience something new. For example with a collaborative whiteboard session or clapping along during an event.

Medical education events are not just a way to educate doctors. They’re also a way for doctors to network and share scientific knowledge. And there are several ways to do this through HCP interaction.

For example, before your event, you could use the ‘submit your case’ technique. This is a way to invite HCPs to submit detailed case studies that are used to feed panel conversations. Or during your event, you could organize short 15-minute 1:1 meet the expert sessions that could take place between HCPs and KOLs in person or virtually. 

We gathered insights and surveyed about 100 customers and partners in the pharma industry about HCP engagement before, during, and after medical education events. In their opinion, these are some other emerging trends that will shape the future of medical education and HCP engagement:

Having KOL speakers at your medical events is a great way to keep HCPs engaged. Find out how to recruit and nurture KOLs with the ultimate KOL engagement plan for successful pharma events .

How to increase HCP engagement

Now you know how HCP engagement has changed and what the emerging HCP engagement trends are, you may be asking yourself “How can I improve my HCP engagement?” Here are some ways you can boost your HCP engagement strategies:

  • Personalize and tailor content to HCPs
  • Create an omnichannel journey
  • Give HCPs the choice of how they want to engage with your content, e.g., by letting them choose if they want to attend your hybrid event remotely or in person
  • Use technology like mobile apps at your events to boost digital HCP engagement
  • Provide on-demand content they can watch whenever and wherever is convenient for them
  • Set up 1:1 meet-the-expert sessions or meetings with sales reps at your events using a meeting scheduler

Measuring HCP engagement success metrics

Given that HCP engagement has changed over the past few years, the way life science companies measure that engagement has changed too. 

With the rise in event technology , there are a lot of opportunities to measure a wide range of event metrics. But this also means it can be difficult to know which metrics you should be measuring.

We’ve analyzed how our life science customers measure success and KPIs and grouped our findings into 3 types of event metrics that pharma companies should measure before, during, and after their medical education events:

  • Reach: how many HCPs you attract to your event
  • Engagement: how engaged HCPs are during your event
  • Advocacy: how likely are HCPs to recommend your brand/product after your event

To measure reach, you can track open rates, click-through rates, and conversions before you hold your life science event.

This is the main metric that Boehnringer Ingelheim is measuring at the moment. Doreen says that the biggest challenge for them is getting HCPs to accept and adopt event content on their website given that they are a company and not a society. 

Once they’ve achieved acceptance from a certain number of doctors, they monitor how many doctors visit the website each month. Doreen explains that it counts as a ‘visit’ when an HCP stays on the website for at least 30 seconds. By using first-party data analytics, Boehnringer Ingelheim knows who visits the website and where they’re from.

Getting first-party data, such as names and email addresses is key from a marketing perspective and one big reason why you should be investing in medical education events.

There are so many places where it’s no longer possible to track people’s information to inform your marketing strategies. But, when HCPs attend your events, it’s an easy way to collect their data. That’s because they don’t mind giving their data, as their aim is simply to get educated.

Discover other event marketing strategies by reading 12 virtual event marketing strategies you need to succeed and content marketing for events: how to repurpose your event content .

There are so many metrics you can measure to understand HCP engagement. It all depends on what engagement activities you include in your life science event. Some examples of engagement metrics are attendance, Q&A and poll responses, viewing time, drop-offs, and claps .

Reckitt is concentrating a lot on tracking HCP engagement but they’re using fairly simple metrics to do so.

  • The first HCP engagement metric they look at is access to the virtual event platform. Donseok recalls that at Reckitt’s first virtual event, 5–10% of remote HCPs couldn’t join because the platform wasn’t accessible in their region. If doctors can’t access your event, of course HCP engagement will be lower.
  • The second HCP engagement metric Reckitt focuses on is whether the virtual event platform is easy to navigate and use. The bandwidth needs to be monitored, for example, so that the video and audio quality are smooth and HCPs will have a positive event experience. And you can track HCP interaction during Q&As, polls, and chats with speakers.
  • The third HCP engagement metric Donseok talks about is survey scores. He and his team create surveys to ask HCPs about the quality of the virtual/hybrid event and their level of engagement. They ensure to send out the survey before the end of a session so that they get a higher response rate. In the past, their response rate has been over 90%. So, take a leaf out of their book for your post-event surveys!

What’s the aim of medical education events? Is it to get more participants or higher HCP engagement that then results in positive brand advocacy?

At the recent Veeva APAC Commercial Summit, Luciano Adrade (VP Commercial Operations & Strategy Emerging Markets, GSK), said that it’s not about getting 3% more participants. It’s about transforming your HCPs, changing clinical practices, and altering prescription habits for the future of medicine. That’s how to measure the success of medical education events.

You can measure advocacy after your life science events by monitoring the CX quotient, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and post-event surveys. These are the metrics large pharma companies are using to prove their event ROI.

Want to find out about other event metrics you can track? Read 19 virtual event success metrics you should be measuring .

Creating an omnichannel HCP engagement strategy

People often consider medical education events as very tactical but not highly strategic. But medical education is part of the omnichannel journey. So, pharma companies need to create an effective omnichannel strategy.

The common journey for a life science company going from tactical events to strategic events for full omnichannel deployment is the following:

  • Consolidate requirements. Including event use cases, desired functionalities, target users, IT & compliance requirements.
  • Carry out an RFP . Initiate a tender process alongside relevant business owners to assess solutions against your organization’s needs.
  • Select a vendor. Choose a single vendor to ensure consistency and drive efficiencies in your omnichannel strategy.
  • Define the operating model. Design processes, governance and determine delivery models best suited for your teams (self, agencies, delivery unit).
  • Integrate with a CRM. Ensure compatibility of solution with your tech stack and seek native integration with your CRM for bi-direction data flows.

Typically, our life science customers consider these 3 things when building their omnichannel strategy:

  • Operational excellence
  • Next best action

Let’s take a look at them in more detail.

Omnichannel event strategies are becoming more important in 2024. To find out what other corporate event trends are emerging, take a look at our post.

Choosing the right technology for your HCP engagement strategy

The first step in building a successful omnichannel strategy is selecting the technology that suits your company’s and HCPs’ needs and expectations. You need to think about how an event solution fits in with what you have. For example, most life science companies use Veeva CRM , Veeva Vault , and Veeva Network . So, it’s important to find an event platform that integrates with Veeva and adds HCP engagement features to the mix.

Donseok suggests the following 3 steps when deciding on which technology to use:

  • Ensure you understand your company’s ecosystem, capabilities, and operational model. Make sure you ask about the software’s partner network.
  • Talk to other pharma industry experts to understand their IT, procurement, and omnichannel processes. It’s useful to know what other life science companies are doing and what lessons they’ve learned.
  • Run a pilot of the event technology with the most challenging market in terms of bandwidth and population, and use this to understand its effectiveness.

Donseok also mentions that he spoke to a Forrester analyst who talked about the huge fatigue people experience when companies switch from one platform to another. So, it’s important to ensure you choose the right platform and show your HCPs why that platform is the best for your and their needs.

It is possible to run fully compliant medical events using technology. To find out how, read our article on event compliance: busting 5 myths in the pharma industry .

Driving operational excellence within your HCP engagement strategy

When creating an omnichannel strategy, you have to have the end objective in mind to be able to measure its success. Doreen recommends asking yourself “Why am I doing medical education?”. Ideally, you want to provide HCPs with the necessary, scientifically sound information so they can provide their patients with the best treatment. So, before you start crafting an omnichannel strategy, you must clearly define your outcome and KPIs.

To achieve operational excellence, Doreen suggests following in Boehringer Ingelheim’s footsteps. They start by trialing event technology with small groups of HCPs to test adoption and slowly increase the group size if it’s successful. 

In their experience, reach starts out as very poor. But they ask for feedback and look at metrics such as how many HCPs accessed the event, how long HCPs spent at the event, the level of HCP engagement during sessions, and the bandwidth speed. Then, they adjust the experience and test it again.

Boehringer Ingelheim managed to go from 5% to 66% reach just by iterating and increasing the size of the HCP group each time.

Enabling the next best action

Emmanuel Desproges (Digital Leader JPAC & Asia, Sanofi) explains that to carry out the next best action, you need to know, organize, and manage your data. Once your data are clear, you can think about your next best action.

By using a life science event platform for in-person, virtual, or hybrid events, you can collect a huge amount of data. These data then feed into an integrated record system, usually Veeva , from which you can derive a lot of business applications.

This is exactly what the Veeva and SpotMe silver technology partnership is about. SpotMe creates the event experience and collects the data, then sends it automatically to Veeva via a native connector integration. 

Pharma companies then use these data to score HCP sentiment, scale hyper-personalization, and drive conversions with context. These metrics help guide their next best action.

Planning your next life science event and looking for an RFP template to help you select the vendor that suits you?

SpotMe has created an RFP template tailored specifically to large pharma companies looking for a vendor to fulfill their omnichannel life science event platform needs and requirements.

Not only does it include 200+ new RFP questions for hybrid and virtual event technology success, but it also has sections on new footprint, reputation, integrations, and information security. And it contains an RFP outline and a vendor response sheet, so you can efficiently exchange information with prospective event platform vendors.

As an event engagement platform for life science companies and with approximately 50% of our customers from the pharma industry, SpotMe helps large pharma companies to create, build and execute webinars and in-person, virtual, and hybrid medical events. We, therefore, have first-hand experience of what life science companies need to run a successful medical event and achieve high HCP engagement.

Download our RFP template and join 10,000 life science industry experts who are effectively mapping out exactly what they want from an event solution vendor and ensuring their medical events are a roaring success with sky-high HCP engagement.

Healthcare Provider (HCP) engagement refers to the strategies and methods used by healthcare organizations, pharmaceutical companies, or medical device manufacturers to interact, communicate, and build relationships with HCPs. The goal of HCP engagement is to provide value to these professionals, fostering collaboration, trust, and mutual understanding. This can involve various activities such as sharing relevant medical research, providing product information, facilitating continuing education, and understanding their needs and feedback.

Pharma companies spend billions on medical education events. On average, 1–3% of their total annual sales. That means a $40 billion pharma company spends at least $800 million on the hundreds or thousands of events they run each year. With this growing number of events and cost inflation, life science event expenses are only going to increase. That’s why large pharma companies need to focus on strategically boosting HCP engagement to ensure that the billions they spend on medical education events bring a positive ROI.

You may be asking yourself “How can I improve my HCP engagement?” Here are some ways you can boost your HCP engagement strategies: 1. Personalize and tailor content to HCPs 2. Create an omnichannel journey 3. Give HCPs the choice of how they want to engage with your content, e.g., by letting them choose if they want to attend your hybrid event remotely or in person 4. Use technology like mobile apps at your events to boost digital HCP engagement 5. Provide on-demand content they can watch whenever and wherever is convenient for them 6. Set up 1:1 meet-the-expert sessions or meetings with sales reps at your events using a  meeting scheduler

As SpotMe’s Head of Content, I share useful insights and handy tips on event management, marketing, and tech every day. I have 6+ years’ experience writing, editing, and managing content for large international companies. When I’m not coming up with creative ideas, you’ll find me singing along to musical theater or traveling the world!

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Secrets to a Successful Pharma Product Launch: Best Practices For Impactful Events

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Consider the hcp journey to ensure successful product launches.

Launching a new product is hard. Remarkably hard, in fact—according to reports by Bain 1 and McKinsey 2 , 50-66% of brand launches do not meet expectations. In addition, the stakes are high and the cost of errors can be devastating. According to Deloitte 3 , performance during the first 6 months after a launch correlates to market share over the long term, and less than 50% of brands achieve peak sales estimates after 5 years on the market. 

Why are we so unsuccessful? Unfortunately, there is no one simple answer. However, a key reason for average underperformance is that we continue to launch brands like we always have, with only some incremental improvement. Given the enormous risks, in many instances, we become risk averse and focus almost entirely on the product (efficacy, safety, dosing) without regard for the patients who will be using it and the healthcare providers (HCPs) who will be prescribing it. The stakes are high and the cost of errors can be devastating when it comes to launching a new product.

There is one bright spot, though—patient journey mapping. We now do a fantastic job of mapping out the entire patient journey across a disease state, focusing on those few touchpoints along the journey we can really influence. This map then becomes a guide for our marketing efforts as they relate to the patient.

This presents an opportunity: can we take this similar approach for HCP engagement? Even if we simply think about an HCP journey, from becoming aware of a brand or new clinical data to retention (or adoption) into their treatment algorithm and eventually advocating for the brand (even when they are not paid as speakers), could this provide us more insights and allow us to reconfigure a more successful launch approach?

Defining the HCP Journey Map

By mapping out an HCP journey, pharma companies can identify touchpoints that will provide actionable insights and key current and desired behaviors. We can also begin thinking beyond clinical needs and start addressing the HCP’s individual needs—understand their motivators, both clinical and non-clinical, that are automatic (which are habits) and reflective. We can also ask what additional information, training, peer perspectives, and reframing they need to provide better patient outcomes.

Mapping an HCP customer journey will cause us to think more deeply about our strategic goals that go beyond adopting a brand. This begins with understanding HCPs’ behaviors, defining the desired experiences, and adjusting to the environment the brand is launching. Going beyond just reinforcing messages and, prior to launch, ensuring we have a strong diagnostic plan to be able to assess the complexities of launch. Some of those are traditional measures like exposure to messages and some are more focused on changing habits. We need both leading and lagging indicators to ensure a successful launch, and we need to go beyond just simple awareness.

Moving Beyond Healthcare Professional Awareness—The Challenges

In order to start building beyond awareness, we need to address some of the changes in the marketplace that put pressure on our ability to reach and effectively inform HCPs about new treatment options. One of these challenges is the speed at which treatment landscapes are changing, the increased complexity of new MOAs, and the sheer volume of options in a given therapeutic space.

Take oncology for example. In 2018 alone, there were more than 44 new drugs approved by the FDA—that’s almost an average of one new treatment a week. Facing a flood of information, the average community oncologist is tasked with identifying a more complex, niche patient for targeted therapy. They have to consider multiple lines of therapy at once to ensure correct sequencing that optimizes response and addresses symptomology without risking limiting options in later lines of therapy, and they have to manage all of these decisions with shared decision-making, and effective expectation setting, and overall patient care. While this era of innovation is incredibly exciting for patients and potential outcome improvement, it creates a challenge to break through the noise for an HCP who is already in information overload.

There are also industry challenges to consider as well. Bringing new molecules to market is increasingly more expensive. We are seeing pharma hedging bets and not funding some brands until 6 months pre-launch, a timeline that used to be closer to 2 years, thus shortchanging strategy and message development lead time and leading to a default mentality to previous launch plans.

Another challenge is the potential lack of change when it comes to our industry’s marketing approach. We generate campaigns and messages to focus on the differentiators. Sometimes these differentiators are obvious and meaningful in clinical practice. Other times, and more commonly now, these differentiators require explaining with complex data and require an HCP’s traditional treatment approach to evolve beyond what may be intuitive. This complexity, in both the science and its potential impact on an HCP’s already established behaviors, must be taken into account to successfully drive beyond awareness

Desired Behavior Change and  Driving HCP Engagement Strategies

So how do we plan to address these established behaviors? As you know, “content is king” when planning for customer engagement and education at launch. While advertising might drive awareness through a focus on a singular set of safety and efficacy messages repeated across omnichannel marketing campaigns, strategically designed content focusing on underlying drivers and barriers will change behaviors leading from awareness to trial and eventual adoption.

If adoption is what we are ultimately working toward, and we know the content will help drive toward this goal, how do we approach developing the right content for the right HCP at the right time and ensure it is in the right place? It starts with developing a blueprint of diverse, evolving messages grounded in clinical data and elevated by the ability to tailor based on underlying HCP behaviors, beliefs, and barriers. Taking this approach ensures your content is driving decision-making as it relates to the correct cadence of messaging, tactical solutions, and eventual channel placement.

For more information on understanding behavior, see here .

  • Social Media Facts Sheet
  • The Secret of Successful Drug Launches
  • Pharma-Launch Paradigm

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Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

Aaron Agius

Published: May 04, 2023

Free Customer Journey Template

customer journey hcp

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.

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Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2021? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map right at the last second?

person creating a customer journey map

The thing is -- understanding your customer base can be extremely challenging. And even when you think you've got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

Download Now: Free Customer Journey Map Templates

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While it isn't possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a very handy tool for keeping track of important milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I'll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

Customer journey stages.

  • What is a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

What's included in a customer journey map, steps for creating a customer journey map.

  • Types of Customer Journey Maps
  • Customer Journey Map Best Practices

Benefits of Customer Journey Mapping

  • Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

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  • Buyer's Journey Template
  • Future State Template
  • Day-in-the-Life Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand, product, or business as they become aware of a pain point and make a purchase decision. While the buyer's journey refers to the general process of arriving at a purchase, the customer journey refers to a buyer's purchasing experience with a specific company or service.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I've worked with were confused about the differences between the customer's journey and the buyer's journey. The buyer's journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don't wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process to consider, evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand's place within the buyer's journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer's journey. When you create a customer journey map, you're taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey, instead of leaving it up to chance.

Free Customer Journey Map Template

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For example, at HubSpot, our customer's journey is divided into 3 stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

HubSpot customer journey map stages

The stages may not be the same for you — in fact, your brand will likely come up with a set of unique stages of the customer journey. But where do you start? Let's take a look.

Generally, there are 5 phases that customers go through when interacting with a brand or a product: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Loyalty.

Customer journey stages

1. Awareness Stage

In the awareness stage, customers realize they have a problem. At this point, they may not know that they need a product or service, but they will begin doing research either way.

During this stage of the customer journey, brands should deliver educational content to help customers diagnose a problem and offer potential solutions. Your aim should be to help customers alleviate their pain point, not encourage a purchase.

Some educational content that I've created in the past are:

  • How-to articles and guides
  • General whitepapers
  • General ebooks
  • Free courses

Educational content may also be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

  • Social media
  • Search engines

2. Consideration

In the consideration stage, customers have done enough research to realize that they need a product or service. At this point, they begin to compare brands and offerings.

During this stage, brands should deliver product marketing content to help customers compare different offerings and, eventually, choose their product or service. The aim is to help customers navigate a crowded marketplace and move them toward a purchase decision.

Product marketing content may include:

  • Product listicles
  • Product comparison guides and charts
  • Product-focused white papers
  • Customer success stories or case studies

Product marketing content may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

  • Your website
  • Conferences

3. Decision Stage

In the decision stage, customers have chosen a solution and are ready to buy.

During this stage, your brand should deliver a seamless purchase process to make buying products as easy as possible. I wouldn't recommend any more educational or product content at this stage — it's all about getting customers to make a purchase. That means you can be more direct about wanting customers to buy from you.

Decision-stage content may include:

  • Free consultations
  • Product sign-up pages
  • Pricing pages
  • Product promotions (i.e "Sign up now and save 30%")

Decision-stage content may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

4. Retention Stage

In the retention stage, customers have now purchased a solution and stay with the company they purchased from, as opposed to leaving for another provider.

During this stage, brands provide an excellent onboarding experience and ongoing customer service to ensure that customers don't churn.

Retention-stage strategies may include:

  • Providing a dedicated customer success manager
  • Making your customer service team easily accessible
  • Creating a knowledge base in case customers ever run into a roadblock

Retention-stage strategies may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

5. Loyalty Stage

In the loyalty stage, customers not only choose to stay with a company — they actively promote it to family, friends, and colleagues. The loyalty stage can also be called the advocacy stage.

During this phase, brands should focus on providing a fantastic end-to-end customer experience. This should span from your website content to your sales reps all the way to your social media team and your product's UX.

Most importantly, customers become loyal when they've achieved success with your product — if it works, they're more likely to recommend your brand to others.

Loyalty-stage strategies may include:

  • Having an easy-to-navigate website
  • Investing in your product team to ensure your product exceeds customer expectations
  • Making it easy to share your brand with others via a loyalty or referral program
  • Providing perks to continued customers, such as discounts

Loyalty-stage strategies may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

  • Your products

To find out whether your customers have reached the loyalty stage, try a Net Promoter Score survey , which asks one simple question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?" To deliver this survey, you can use customer feedback software like Service Hub .

Now, let's get to the good stuff. Let's talk about creating your customer journey map.

What is the customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer's experience with a company. It also provides insight into the needs of potential customers at every stage of this journey and the factors that directly or indirectly motivate or inhibit their progress.

The business can then use this information to improve the customer's experience, increase conversions, and boost customer retention.

Now, the customer journey map is not to be confused with a UX journey map. But, for clarity, let's distinguish these two below.

What is UX journey mapping?

A UX journey map represents how a customer experiences their journey toward achieving a specific goal or completing a particular action.

For example, the term "UX journey mapping" can be used interchangeably with the term "customer journey mapping" if the goal being tracked is the user's journey toward purchasing a product or service.

However, UX journey mapping can also be used to map the journey (i.e., actions taken) towards other goals, such as using a specific product feature.

Why is customer journey mapping important?

While the customer journey might seem straightforward — the company offers a product or service, and customers buy it — for most businesses, it typically isn't.

In reality, it's a complex journey that begins when the customer becomes problem-aware (which might be long before they become product-aware) and then moves through an intricate process of further awareness, consideration, and decision-making.

The customer is also exposed to multiple external factors (competitor ads, reviews, etc.) and touchpoints with the company (conversations with sales reps, interacting with content, viewing product demos, etc.).

Keep in mind that 80% of customers consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products.

By mapping this journey, your marketing, sales, and service teams can understand, visualize, and gain insight into each stage of the process.

You can then decrease any friction along the way and make the journey as helpful and delightful as possible for your leads and customers.

Customer journey mapping is the process of creating a customer journey map — the visual representation of a company's customer experience. It compiles a customer's experience as they interact with a business and combines the information into a visual map.

The goal of this process is to draw insights that help you understand how your customers experience their journeys and identify the potential bottlenecks along the way.

It's also important to note that most customer journeys aren't linear. Instead, buyers often experience a back-and-forth, cyclical, multi-channel journey.

Let's look at the stages that you should include in any customer journey.

  • The Buying Process
  • User Actions
  • User Research

1. The Buying Process

To determine your customers' buying process, you'll want to pull data from all relevant sources (prospecting tools, CMS, behavior analytics tools, etc.) to accurately chart your customer's path from first to last contact.

However, you can keep it simple by creating broad categories using the typical buying journey process stages — awareness, consideration, and decision — and mapping them horizontally.

2. Emotions

Customer journey map template service

Whether the goal is big or small, remember your customers are solving a problem. That means they're probably feeling some emotion — whether that's relief, happiness, excitement, or worry.

Adding these emotions to the journey map will help you identify and mitigate negative emotions and the pain points that cause them.

On HubSpot's journey map , we use emojis to represent potential emotions at different stages of the customer journey. 

3. User Actions

customer journey mapping: user actions

This element details what a customer does in each stage of the buying process. For example, during the problem-awareness stage, customers might download ebooks or join educational webinars.

Essentially, you're exploring how your customers move through and behave at each stage of their journey.

4. User Research

customer journey mapping: user research

Similar to the last section, this element describes what or where the buyer researches when they are taking action.

More than likely, the buyer will turn to search engines, like Google, to research solutions during the awareness stage. However, it's important to pay attention to what they're researching so you can best address their pain points.

5. Solutions

customer journey mapping: solutions

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot's free customer journey map templates .

This has templates that map out a buyer's journey, a day in the life of your customer, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company's buyer persona. Not only will this lead to improvements to your product, but also a better customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you're creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don't have one, I would recommend creating a buyer persona . This is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics representing your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics at the ready.

Don't have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot's Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started. 

Some great ways to get valuable customer feedback are questionnaires and user testing. The important thing is to only reach out to actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services and who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

  • How did you hear about our company?
  • What first attracted you to our website?
  • What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
  • How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
  • Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
  • Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
  • On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
  • Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
  • Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you've learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I would recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a UX journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company — so if you group too many personas into one journey, your map won't accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it's best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don't worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there's no overlap.

This is essential in creating a UX journey map because it provides insight into your customers' actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they're quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you also need to look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

  • Social channels
  • Email marketing
  • Third-party review sites or mentions

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand, impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding -- you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

Customer-Journey-map-meeting

HubSpot's free customer journey map template makes it easier than ever to visualize the buyer's journey. It saved me some time organizing and outlining my customer experience and it made it clear how a website could impact my user's lives. 

The customer journey map template can also help you discover areas of improvement in your product, marketing, and support processes.

Download a free, editable customer journey map template.

Types of Customer Journey Maps and Examples

There are four types of customer journey maps , each with unique benefits. Pick the one that makes the most sense for your company.

Current State

These customer journey maps are the most widely used type. They visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers currently experience while interacting with your company. They're best used for continually improving the customer journey.

Customer Journey Map Example: Current State Journey Map

Image Source

Day in the Life

These customer journey maps visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers currently experience in their daily activities, whether or not that includes your company.

This type gives a broader lens into your customers' lives and what their pain points are in real life.

Day-in-the-life maps are best used for addressing unmet customer needs before customers even know they exist. Your company may use this type of customer journey map when exploring new market development strategies .

Customer Journey Map Example: Day in the Life

Future State

These customer journey maps visualize what actions, thoughts, and emotions that your customers will experience in future interactions with your company. Based on their current interaction with your company, you'll have a clear picture of where your business fits in later down the road.

These maps are best for illustrating your vision and setting clear, strategic goals.

Customer Journey Map Example: Future State Journey Map Example

Service Blueprint

These customer journey maps begin with a simplified version of one of the above map styles. Then, they layer on the factors responsible for delivering that experience, including people, policies, technologies, and processes.

Service blueprints are best used to identify the root causes of current customer journeys or the steps needed to attain desired future customer journeys.

Customer Journey Map Example: Service Blueprint journey map

If you want a look at a real customer journey map that HubSpot has used recently, check out this interview we conducted with Sarah Flint, Director of System Operations at HubSpot. We asked her how her team put together their map (below) as well as what advice she would give to businesses starting from scratch. 

Hubspot customer journey map examle

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

  • Set a goal for the journey map.
  • Survey customers to understand their buying journey.
  • Ask customer service reps about the questions they receive most frequently.
  • Consider UX journey mapping for each buyer persona.
  • Review and update each journey map after every major product release.
  • Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams.

1. Set a goal for the journey map.

Determine whether you aim to improve the buying experience or launch a new product. Knowing what the journey map needs to tell you can prevent scope creep on a large project like this.

2. Survey customers to understand their buying journey.

What you think you know about the customer experience and what they actually experience can be very different. Speak to your customers directly, so you have an accurate snapshot of the customer's journey.

3. Ask customer service reps about the questions they receive most frequently.

Sometimes, customers aren't aware of their specific pain points, and that's where your customer service reps come in.

They can help fill in the gaps and translate customer pain points into business terms you and your team can understand and act on.

4. Consider UX journey mapping for each buyer persona.

It's easy to assume each customer operates the same way, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Demographics, psychographics, and even how long someone has been a customer can determine how a person interacts with your business and makes purchasing decisions.

Group overarching themes into buyer personas and create a UX journey map for each.

5. Review and update each journey map after every major product release.

Every time your product or service changes, the customer's buying process changes. Even slight tweaks, like adding an extra field to a form, can become a significant roadblock.

So, reviewing the customer journey map before and after implementing changes is essential.

6. Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams.

Customer journey maps aren't very valuable in a silo. However, creating a journey map is a convenient way for cross-functional teams to provide feedback.

Afterward, make a copy of the map accessible to each team, so they always keep the customer top of mind.

Breaking down the customer journey, phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints accordingly are essential steps for maximizing customer success .

Here are a few more benefits to gain from customer journey mapping.

1. You can refocus your company with an inbound perspective.

Rather than discovering customers through outbound marketing, you can have your customers find you with the help of inbound marketing.

Outbound marketing involves tactics targeted at generalized or uninterested audiences and seeks to interrupt the customers' daily lives. Outbound marketing is costly and inefficient. It annoys and deters customers and prospects.

Inbound marketing involves creating helpful content that customers are already looking for. You grab their attention first and focus on the sales later.

By mapping out the customer journey, you can understand what's interesting and helpful to your customers and what's turning them away.

2. You can create a new target customer base.

You need to understand the customer journey properly to understand your customers' demographics and psychographics.

It's a waste of time and money to repeatedly target too broad of an audience rather than people who are actually interested in your offering.

Researching the needs and pain points of your typical customers will give you a good picture of the kinds of people who are trying to achieve a goal with your company. Thus, you can hone your marketing to that specific audience.

3. You can implement proactive customer service.

A customer journey map is like a roadmap to the customer's experience.

It highlights moments where people experience delight and situations where they might face friction. Knowing this ahead of time allows you to plan your customer service strategy and intervene at ideal times.

Proactive customer service also makes your brand appear more reliable. For example, when I worked in customer support, we would anticipate a surge in tickets around the holidays. To be proactive, we'd send out a message to customers letting them know about our team's adjusted holiday hours. We would aalso tell them about additional support options if we were unavailable and what to do if an urgent problem needed immediate attention.

With expectations set, customers won't feel surprised if they're waiting on hold a little longer than usual. They'll even have alternative options to choose from — like a chatbot or knowledge base — if they need to find a faster solution.

4. You can improve your customer retention rate.

When you have a complete view of the customer journey, it's easier to pick out areas where you can improve it. When you do, customers experience fewer pain points, leading to fewer people leaving your brand for competitors.

After all, 33% of customers will consider switching brands after just one poor experience.

UX journey mapping can point out individuals on the path to churn. If you log the common behaviors of these customers, you can start to spot them before they leave your business.

While you might not save them all, it's worth the try. Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25%-95%.

5. You can create a customer-focused mentality throughout the company.

As your company grows, it can be tricky to coordinate all your departments to be as customer-focused as your customer service, support, and success teams are. That's because each department has varying goals, meaning they might not be prioritizing customer needs -- they might focusing on website traffic, leads, product signups, etc.

One way to overcome this data silo is to share a clear customer journey map with your entire organization. The great thing about these maps is that they map out every single step of the customer journey, from initial attraction to post-purchase support. And, yes, this concerns marketing, sales, and service. 

For more examples of customer journey maps, read on to the next section for a few templates you can use as a baseline for your company's map. 

Customer Journey Mapping Examples

To help guide your business in its direction, here are examples to draw inspiration from for building out your customer journey map.

1. HubSpot's Customer Journey Map Templates

HubSpot's free Customer Journey Map Templates provide an outline for companies to understand their customers' experiences.

The offer includes the following:

  • Current State Template
  • Lead Nurturing Mapping Template
  • A Day in the Customer's Life Template
  • Customer Churn Mapping Template
  • Customer Support Blueprint Template

Each of these templates helps organizations gain new insights into their customer base and help make improvements to product, marketing, and customer support processes.

Download them today to start working on your customer journey map.

free editable customer journey map template

2. B2B Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map clearly outlines the five steps Dapper Apps believes customers go through when interacting with them.

As you can see, it goes beyond the actual purchasing phase by incorporating initial research and post-purchase needs.

B2B customer journey map example

This map is effective because it helps employees get into the customers' minds by understanding the typical questions they have and the emotions they're feeling.

There are incremental action steps that Dapper Apps can take in response to these questions and feelings that will help it solve all the current problems customers are having.

3. Ecommerce Customer Journey Map Example

This fictitious customer journey map is a clear example of a day-in-the-life map.

Rather than just focusing on the actions and emotions involved in the customer's interaction with the company, this map outlines all the actions and emotions the customer experiences on a typical day.

ecommerce customer journey map example

This map is helpful because it measures a customer's state of mind based on the level of freedom they get from certain stimuli.

This is helpful for a company that wants to understand what its target customers are stressed about and what problems may need solving.

4. Future B2C Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map, designed for Carnegie Mellon University, exemplifies the usefulness of a future state customer journey map. It outlines the thoughts, feelings, and actions the university wants its students to have.

future BTC customer journey map

Based on these goals, CMU chose specific proposed changes for each phase and even wrote out example scenarios for each phase.

This clear diagram can visualize the company vision and help any department understand where they will fit into building a better user experience.

5. Retail Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map shows an in-depth customer journey map of a customer interacting with a fictitious restaurant.

It's clear that this style of map is more comprehensive than the others. It includes the front-of-stage (direct) and back-of-stage (non-direct or invisible) interactions a customer has with the company, as well as the support processes.

customer journey map example for retail

This map lays out every action involved in the customer experience, including those of the customer, employees directly serving diners, and employees working behind the scenes.

By analyzing how each of these factors influences the customer journey, a company can find the root cause of mishaps and problem-solve this for the future.

To get your business from point A — deciding to focus on customer journeys — to point B — having a journey map — a critical step to the process is selecting which customer mindset your business will focus on.

This mindset will determine which of the following templates you'll use.

1. Current State Template

If you're using this template for a B2B product, the phases may reflect the search, awareness, consideration of options, purchasing decision, and post-purchase support processes.

For instance, in our Dapper Apps example, its phases were research, comparison, workshop, quote, and sign-off.

current state customer journey map template

2. Day in the Life Template

Since this template reflects all the thoughts, feelings, actions, needs, and pain points a customer has in their entire daily routine — whether or not that includes your company — you'll want to map out this template in a chronological structure.

This way, you can highlight the times of day at which you can offer the best support.

Get an interactive day in the life template.

day-in-the-life

3. Future State Template

Similar to the current state template, these phases may also reflect the predicted or desired search, awareness, consideration of options, purchasing decision, and post-purchase support processes.

Since this takes place in the future, you can tailor these phases based on what you'd like the customer journey to look like rather than what it currently looks like.

Get an interactive future state template.

Customer journey map template future state

4. Service Blueprint Template

Since this template is more in-depth, it doesn't follow certain phases in the customer journey.

Instead, it's based on physical evidence — the tangible factors that can create impressions about the quality and prices of the service — that often come in sets of multiple people, places, or objects at a time.

For instance, with our fictitious restaurant example above, the physical evidence includes all the staff, tables, decorations, cutlery, menus, food, and anything else a customer comes into contact with.

You would then list the appropriate customer actions and employee interactions to correspond with each physical evidence.

For example, when the physical evidence is plates, cutlery, napkins, and pans, the customer gives their order, the front-of-stage employee (waiter) takes the order, the back-of-stage employee (receptionist) processes the order, and the support processes (chefs) prepare the food.

Get an interactive service blueprint template.

Customer journey map template service

5. Buyer's Journey Template

You can also use the classic buyer's journey — awareness, consideration, and decision — to design your customer journey map.

Get an interactive buyer's journey template.

Customer journey map template buyer

Charter the Path to Customer Success

Once you fully understand your customer's experience with your business, you can delight them at every stage of their buying journey. Remember, many factors can affect this journey, including customer pain points, emotions, and your company's touchpoints and processes.

A customer journey map is the most effective way to visualize this information, whether you're optimizing the customer experience or exploring a new business opportunity to serve a customer's unrecognized needs.

Use the free templates in this article to start mapping the future of customer success at your business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August, 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Customer experience drives pharma’s long-term viability

Facing unprecedented disruption across the value chain, four in ten healthcare CEOs  don’t think they will be economically viable a decade from now if they continue on their current path. For pharma, improving the customer experience across stakeholders — including patients, caregivers, healthcare providers (HCP) and payers — can benefit both the healthcare ecosystem and the business outcome.

Innovators that do this well test new approaches and audiences while consistently creating quality experiences that help enable true engagement. This level of consumer “obsession” is essential to retaining customers and driving growth for pharma companies in the future .

So, how can you design solutions that yield meaningful customer impact and brand results? Standing out requires focus on delivering easy, purposeful, personalized and adaptable interactions at every touchpoint:

Connectivity of data, technology and experience can empower customers to have seamless experiences across devices and channels.

Consumers, patients, caregivers and healthcare providers should be able to easily navigate interactions with pharma companies to meet their needs. This is becoming increasingly important — our loyalty survey data shows that more than half (51%) of consumers say they are less likely to be loyal to a brand if its online experience isn't as easy or enjoyable as in person. That percentage is highest for Millennials (57%) and Generation Z (69%).

  • How to stand out
  • Where to look for inspiration
  • Making an experience “easy” is actually quite difficult operationally, especially within the existing organization structures found within many pharma companies. Brand teams should utilize new research methods and human-centered design to understand and develop focused solutions to address the challenges facing their patients and customers.
  • Coordinating dynamic engagement strategies against multiple detailed customer journeys requires connecting processes, data and technology stacks across functions, such as business insights, medical, legal and regulatory (MLR), and corporate communications.
  • One innovator in this space is Hims & Hers Health. 1 Having expanded from men’s health into women’s health and mental wellness, the company’s initial experiences with customers were conducted entirely over the phone, with seamless ordering, identity verification, an HCP consult and confirmation in a few easy steps. 2 They continue to empower customers through choice, now providing products to customers in person through relationships with brick-and-mortar partners.
  • Another example is One Medical, which emphasizes the delivery of services through a convenient and customer-friendly experience. Personalized portals, phone calls and in-office experiences are enabled end-to-end by technology, helping One Medical offer customized care in whichever channel the patient prefers and reducing friction — raising the bar for the provider industry as a whole. 3

Meaningful experiences that lead with a human voice.

As interactions move from being in person to remote to fully digitally immersive, engagement will come from the ability to create unique human experiences in a digital environment. Our research has found that connections are based on the seamlessness of engagement across channels and the belief that the company has a shared purpose. We call this customer attraction .

Companies that communicate with purpose and creativity define their audiences by both behavioral and attitudinal segments and often enjoy higher levels of customer satisfaction. Pharma companies, whose mission is centered on improving patients’ lives, should seek out solutions that consider the whole of the person and are relevant for their customers, patients and communities.

  • When Pfizer launched its “This is Living with Cancer” program, it aimed to help patients manage their disease. 4 The program offered a coordinated set of services, featuring human care champions and an integrated digital tool to organize important information in one place. Patients could build networks and local communities, record health information and use wearables to track symptoms. By designing holistic solutions to meet patient needs across settings, Pfizer established a partnership across stakeholders with a shared purpose to improve patient health.

Personalized

New analytics and tools can optimize channel selection and ensure differentiated, relevant experiences. .

Advanced analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are giving many pharma companies new capabilities to automatically recommend the most effective channel to reach their target audience with relevant content. This new wealth of data is the result of generational shifts in comfort with providing personal information. That information can help create meaningful customer journeys and personas.

Starting with a robust internal data strategy and management processes, companies may also buy or build additional technology capabilities to drive personalization (such as customer data platforms and next best action engines). To improve returns, these tools should be integrated with existing technology infrastructure and processes should be evaluated, taking into account the implications for sales and marketing teams.

  • Personalized experiences require relevant content. In the future, generating the volume of content needed to meet customer and patient needs for omnichannel interactions will likely be enabled through modular content and an automated approach to medical, legal, regulatory (MLR) review that uses generative AI.
  • While Next Best Action engines are becoming more standard, there is an opportunity to broaden their use from automated emails and sales suggestions to coordinating all human+digital channels.
  • Biotechs are already using data to help patients. Kite Pharma used an integrated technology ecosystem to create a tailored experience that supports cancer patients through their chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) treatment journey. Patients are able to find a treatment center, track their personal medication and navigate reimbursement. 5
  • Outside of pharma, insurers are leveraging patient data to better understand policyholders and craft personalized calls to action for healthcare interventions. 6

The ability to continually uncover new insights can help you innovate and improve the customer experience.

Success in the future will depend on pharma’s ability and agility to harness technology to meet an evolving set of stakeholder needs at a faster pace and on a broader scale. One step is to embed a test-and-learn capability within your commercial function to harness innovations in digital engagement, AI  and machine learning to improve processes, time to market and content across your ecosystem of channels and collaborators.

As we look to the future, digital innovations will provide new arenas for engagement and new opportunities to support providers in their interactions with patients. The fully immersive digital experiences made possible with AI in the future could have the potential to take telehealth to another level. Participants will have a far greater sense of “being there” for conferences as well as in interactions with sales teams, medical professionals and patient support services. Companies that position themselves to capture this opportunity can gain competitive advantage.

  • AI and automation are being widely used across the pharma industry and within the commercial function to improve impact. Novo Nordisk, for example, leverages AI to generate suggestions for email subject lines. In testing AI- versus human-generated email headers, the company found that machine-written headers led to higher engagement, with a 14%-20% open rate versus 12%. 7 This helps the company to increase customer satisfaction and improve personalization potential while saving on marketing spend, time and effort.
  • Biohaven launched the migraine drug Nurtec (rimegepant), approved in 2020, with a digital-first model that included a combination of direct-to-consumer campaigns and telemedicine in addition to traditional sales representatives. 8 Patients were encouraged to share their experience managing migraines on social media. The company was able to continuously evolve its digital content through a story engine that gleaned patient testimonials and reviews from the online chatter. 9

Where does your company stand? Answer the four questions below

The need to move toward a human+digital future is clear, but the challenge is how to leapfrog competitors through smart investments of time and innovation resources. A coordinated approach across the enterprise is recommended to drive impactful change. In a PwC Pulse Survey in 2022, 60% of executives said that digital transformation was their company’s most critical growth driver. 

Ask yourself the following questions to gauge your readiness for customer engagement and take the recommended actions in the areas in which you can improve:

1. Is your company clear on why customer experience matters and how it contributes to the goals of the business?

2. are you organized in a way that enables truly integrated experiences for patients and other customers, 3. do you have the business and technical capabilities to prioritize and address the challenges your customers face today, 4. is your organization prepared to adapt to a new culture and ways of working.

Pharma can move beyond buzzwords to behavior by defining and aligning the organizational rationale, goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for enhancing customer experience. We find it helpful to use objectives that the organization is driving toward, such as growth or shareholder value. This can direct innovation energy toward customer experience efforts that build on past efforts and are not siloed. 

Take action

  • Create a direct tie from customer experience to the organizational vision, objectives and financial performance. 
  • Establish a set of “golden KPIs” that are measurable and meaningful performance indicators.
  • Draw inspiration from the retail industry and have customer experience measures evaluated within performance.

The increasingly integrated nature of healthcare and the move toward account teaming means the definition of customer is expanding to care-adjacent stakeholders such as foundations, patient advocates and even payers. Creating holistic experiences requires new types of information sharing across commercial, medical, market access and R&D teams. Pharma companies should aim for consistency at each stage of the patient’s journey, including the movement from clinical trial to commercialization. 

Take action 

  • Identify the customer and prioritized engagement stakeholders.
  • Define aspirations at the brand level for targeted customer experiences.
  • Create omnichannel engagement strategies, including compliant use cases for cross-functional teaming.

Pharma companies have identified areas customers find lacking today: clarity, connectedness, speed and personalization. Moving forward, industry leaders can differentiate themselves by investing in critical and complementary technical capabilities such as immersive and data-driven customer engagement, digitally enabled products, and innovative real-world evidence (RWE) . We continue to see a large volume of digital experimentation, indicating that companies have not found the sweet spot between where to play, how to engage, and how to create patient impact and value.

  • Take a use-case-driven approach to prioritize efforts to integrate and build process, technology and experience capabilities.
  • Understand and address patient and customer needs with a 360-degree view of stakeholders that integrates internal and external data assets. This will allow you to better segment and target audiences and meet their specific, personalized needs.
  • Streamline and improve content creation and approval processes through the adoption of modular content to support personalization and increase speed to market.
  • Invest in technology that can give you a 360-degree view of your customer, incorporating journey management and marketing automation with customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities.

Understanding the impact on people is critical for any transformation. To make adoption stick, organizations embarking on change should make it personal to every role, show the bigger picture and use real-time data and feedback to iterate. This approach enables employee buy-in to support and help drive the change throughout the organization.

  • Identify skill gaps and operating model adaptation required to drive alignment and adoption, establishing training and upskilling initiatives. 
  • Establish a feedback loop with both employees and customers to get their input. Learn and iterate.
  • Develop a robust business readiness plan with allocated resources to execute new initiatives.

References 1  Hims Inc. - Investor relations , accessed January 3, 2023.  2  “ Hims & Hers launches new line of mental wellness supplements, with more options to help support stress, sleep and lack of focus ,” Investorsforhims.com (February 7, 2022), accessed January 3, 2023. 3  Heather Landi. “ Amazon scoops up primary care company One Medical in deal valued at $3.9B ,” Fiercehealthcare.com (July 21, 2022), accessed January 3, 2023. 4  “ Pfizer launches novel programs to put important support services at the fingertips of cancer patients ,” Pfizer.com (October 5, 2017), accessed January 3, 2023. 5  Kite Konnect , Kiteconnect.com, accessed January 3, 2023. 6  “ UnitedHealthcare introduces the use of predictive analytics to expand its capabilities to address social determinants of health ,” Unitedhealthgroup.com, accessed January 3, 2023. 7 Rana Masud. “ Novo Nordisk wins over doctors with AI email subject lines — and a human touch ,” ECHEMI.com, accessed January 3, 2023. 8  Beth Snyder Bulik. “ Biohaven accelerates DTC campaign timing for migraine med Nurtec ,” Fiercepharma.com (April 20, 2020), accessed January 3, 2023. 9  “ How Biohaven’s Nurtec ODT became a first-of-its-kind launch to cure the common migraine ,” Marketingtwitter.com, accessed January 3, 2023.

Elizabeth Otterman

Principal, Customer Transformation, PwC US

Principal, PwC US

Jacquie Newland

Director, Customer Transformation, PwC US

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Pharmaforceiq

Customer Journey Management in Pharma: How to Find the Right Leads at the Right Time

One crucial challenge of pharma marketing is identifying and engaging with the right Healthcare Professional (HCP) leads at the right time. And the competitive landscape of the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t make it any easier. The solution? Developing an effective customer journey management strategy to maximize engagement.

This post will explore the key strategies and best practices for customer journey management in pharma marketing. Discover actionable steps to streamline touchpoints and maximize marketing ROI.

How to Navigate Pharma Customer Journey Management 

The customer journey is a sequence of steps an HCP takes from their first contact with your brand till they make a prescription or treatment decision. As a pharmaceutical company or sales executive, you’ll need to map out and manage the customer journey. Here are 7 steps that you can follow to navigate this process effectively.

1. Define Your Target HCPs

Begin by understanding your target audience—the healthcare professionals you want to engage with. A key aspect of this step is finding out your target HCPs’ preferred mode of communication. Develop detailed customer personas that encompass these four things:

  • Preferences
  • Motivations

This information will give you rich insights to guide your engagement strategy and marketing campaigns and, more importantly, help you manage the customer journey.

2. Identify Key Touchpoints

Touchpoints are channels that connect your pharma company with target HCPs. Determine the touchpoints where your target HCPs interact with your brand. This should include both online and offline channels, such as:

  • Social media
  • Conferences
  • Direct meetings

Identify the different stages of their journey, from initial awareness to conversion, ongoing engagement, and referrals. Identifying touchpoints can give you the information you need to streamline and optimize your customer journey. Streamlining your customer journey will reduce the steps your target HCPs must take to interact with your brand before making a decision.

customer journey hcp

3. Gather Customer Data

Collect relevant data at each touchpoint to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. Utilize surveys, analytics tools, and customer feedback mechanisms to gather quantitative and qualitative data. These insights will help you tailor your engagement strategies.

Comprehensive data analysis can help identify patterns, trends, and target segments . Leverage internal and external data sources to gain insights into healthcare professionals’ prescribing behavior, market dynamics, and emerging trends. This data-driven approach will enable you to focus on the most promising leads.

4. Analyze and Identify Pain Points

Comprehensive data analysis can help identify pain points at every touchpoint in the customer journey. Analyze the data you’ve collected to identify pain points and areas of improvement in your customer journey. Look for issues like lengthy approval processes, lack of information, or challenges in accessing resources. Addressing these pain points will enhance the overall customer experience.

5. Develop Actionable Solutions

Develop actionable solutions to address each pain point you’ve identified. Streamline processes, provide easy access to relevant information, and ensure prompt response times. By addressing these areas, you can enhance customer satisfaction and engagement.

Consider putting up informative content on homepages and landing pages so your audience doesn’t have to navigate through many pages to get the information they need. Also, ensure that your team knows enough about your products to provide help when HCPs reach out to you.

customer journey hcp

6. Implement Personalization

Personalize your interactions with healthcare professionals by leveraging the data collected. Tailor your communication methods and offerings based on their preferences, specialties, and patient demographics. Delivering personalized content, services, and support will strengthen your relationship with your target physicians. It will also give them easy access to the information they need.

Asides tailoring your content to the target HCP, ensure you adapt your content to fit the medium you choose. For example, if it’s a presentation, consider adding a voice-over or chatbot to guide them through the material.

7. Continuously Monitor and Adapt

Customer journey management is an ongoing process. Continuously monitor customer feedback, track relevant metrics, and measure the impact of your strategies. Adapt your approach based on the insights you gain to ensure a continually optimized customer journey.

Automate Your Customer Journey Management With PharmaForceIQ

Adopting strategic customer journey management techniques can optimize your customer acquisition process, enhance conversion rates, build long-lasting relationships with healthcare professionals, and get you referrals.

Are you looking to unlock untapped opportunities and maximize your pharmaceutical marketing ROI? Look no further than PharmaForceIQ , your ultimate solution for automated customer journey management.

Gone are the days of having several touchpoints that leave your target HCPs feeling weary. With PharmaForceIQ, you can streamline your customer journey by reducing touchpoints, monitor the impact of your efforts, and deliver tailored communications that captivate, engage, and convert.

Are you ready to optimize your customer journey and make your pharma marketing strategies more effective?

Contact us today and experience the transformative power of PharmaForceIQ through an exclusive demo.

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Viseven

How to Get 300 Website Subscribers in 30 Days by Setting up Omnichannel Customer Journeys

customer journey hcp

The Viseven team has gone through plenty of unique cases where an omnichannel customer journey would be a brand new HCP engagement practice in the pharma market.

A top 50 pharma enterprise from France addressed Viseven to solve a problem that has become widespread in the transforming digital world.

The challenge was to increase the number of registrations to a new web portal section for cardiologists using existing audience demographics which comprises 4.847 healthcare professionals.

This omnichannel marketing case study unveils the benefits of using automation technology and explains how to implement a subscription strategy that would become an impulse for boosting sales and ROI.

The Main Goals

After creating and launching a new section of the website, our client could not reach success and attract the desired amount of new users. Our objectives were to:

  • create the customer journey that includes several branches for multiple customer experience scenarios
  • produce content of diverse types and for a few promotional campaigns
  • launch subsequent campaigns to encourage 300 visitors to subscribe to the website

The Main Challenges

When examining the possible solution strategies for the case and considering the circumstances in the pharma industry, we had to:

  • break down a stereotype of websites as online resources that contain solely promotional materials
  • engage with HCPs using a modified channel mix to introduce a new section of the client’s web portal

The Solution

After analyzing the target database account data and customers’ previous behavior, we decided to take advantage of a marketing automation platform and its features that allowed us to:

  • use email and SMS as two main channels for pharma customer engagement
  • reserve social media as an extra channel for possible scaling

Final Results and Achievements

Within a two-week marketing campaign, the Viseven team created an impact on the future of the company and reached several key points:

  • 98% goal attainment
  • 196 new registrations
  • 3x registration boost of potential customers

Fill in the form below to get this pharma omnichannel case study straight to your inbox.

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Why HCP Customer Engagement in Life Sciences Must Change

The healthcare industry is rapidly evolving, driven by technological advancements, regulatory shifts, patient-driven demands, and the continuous influx of data and insights. 

As patient care intensifies and the expectations of HCPs transform, HCP customer engagement in Life Sciences must significantly change. 

Post-COVID-19 , there’s been an intensified surge in digital integration. For pharma companies, this presents a prime chance to meet healthcare professionals’ increasing desire for comprehensive omnichannel interactions. Each month, HCPs have over 70 interactions with pharma content through ‘owned’ channels, both medical and commercial. 

An enterprise CRM solution for the Life Sciences industry , such as Exeevo Omnipresence CRM , has become essential. Device agnostic and built on the power of Microsoft’s 365 Dynamics and 365 Copilot, Omnipresence CRM brings multiple business applications together in one system, coupled with advanced analytics to reveal insights, drive wiser decisions, and bring new opportunities for commercial growth.

Let’s explore HCP engagement in the Life Sciences industry and explain how an enterprise CRM solution can streamline operations and drive commercial growth.

What is HCP Engagement?

HCP engagement is the process of creating meaningful and productive relationships with healthcare professionals. 

It involves interactions, collaborations and communications to understand and fulfill their needs and concerns. The aim is to introduce new products or services while providing valuable insights and resources to improve patient care and treatment.

Building strong ties with HCPs facilitates a better understanding of their challenges and requirements. This can help develop more targeted solutions and services. 

With an omnichannel approach, HCPs could receive pertinent research updates via email, access patient reports through the app, and participate in online webinars. This approach ensures a consistent, informative, personalized experience across all touch points.

Here’s a real-life example to showcase the power of Omnichannel HCP engagement:

SANOFI China showcases the power of HCP engagement done right. They are committed to innovation and patient care, but outdated legacy and disparate solutions were stifling commercial growth.

customer journey hcp

They implemented the Omnipresence CRM to improve HCP interactions across all touchpoints, tailoring real-time personalized interactions. The real-time insights allowed them to improve business outcomes and automated processes to promote productivity.

Unifying data into a single source along with advanced analytics and machine learning in Omnipresence CRM gave SANOFI key insights to prompt better decision-making and led to commercial growth. The solution also let SANOFI personalize real-time Omnichannel interactions with HCPs, which enhanced the customer experience. 

SANOFI better aligned its operational teams by prioritizing intelligent insights across the customer journey. They were able to strategize sales more effectively to position themselves as an innovative and digitally progressive market leader.

HCP Responsibilities

Healthcare professionals carry out multiple responsibilities. Their contribution helps shape the direction of patient care, medical research, and even the development of new medical technologies

1. Patient Diagnosis and Treatment

In the Life Sciences industry, one of the primary responsibilities of a healthcare professional is to diagnose and treat patients using the most current medical knowledge and practices. This involves a comprehensive understanding of the disease, careful examination of the patient, and selecting the most effective treatment plan.

2. Medical Research

Staying updated on the latest advancements in medical research and technologies is another crucial duty of HCPs. It involves attending seminars, reading research papers, and implementing new techniques and procedures that improve patient outcomes.

3. Patient Education

HCPs also play an important role in patient education. They are responsible for informing patients about their condition, discussing various treatment options, and explaining the benefits and potential risks associated with each option. 

4. Collaboration with Pharmaceutical Companies 

Healthcare providers often collaborate with pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials and research. Their knowledge and clinical experience contribute to developing and testing new drugs. It makes them instrumental in bringing innovative treatments to the market.

5. Feedback

HCPs provide feedback on medications and medical devices crucial for research and quality assurance. Their real-world experience with these products helps Life Sciences companies understand how they are used in practice, what works well, and what can be improved.

What are the Challenges for HCP Engagement?

Engaging effectively with healthcare professionals presents several challenges for Life Sciences companies. These obstacles can impact the efficiency and outcomes of such engagements.

1. Managing Time Constraints

HCPs face significant time constraints as they balance patient care demands, administrative tasks, professional development, and personal life, creating a busy schedule. These constraints can limit their time to engage with Life Sciences companies. Thus, HCPs might miss the latest information about new products, drugs, or technology. 

2. Being Informed 

The medical field and pharma industry is a rapidly evolving space. HCPs need to remain updated on a broad spectrum of medical information, including;

  • the latest treatments, 
  • research developments, 
  • and technological advancements.

This requirement poses a significant challenge, considering the vast amount of information they need to digest.

3. Balanced Patient Interaction

HCPs are responsible for managing patient needs, expectations, and emotions, all while providing high-quality care. This balancing act leaves little time for other critical activities. One is engagements with Life Sciences companies that could enhance their practice.

4. Adhering to Regulatory Compliance  

Regulatory guidelines in healthcare are stringent and complex. HCPs must adhere to these rules while managing their patients, as there’s no room for error. The regulations often require extensive paperwork and administrative tasks. These tasks consume time and energy, limiting their interactions with Life Sciences entities.

5. Navigating Ethical Considerations

It’s essential to balance a business’s commercial interests with the primary obligation of HCPs to prioritize patient welfare. Ensuring transparent interactions is crucial to avoid potential conflicts of interest, maintain public trust, and uphold the integrity of clinical decisions.

Digital Solutions Crucial to HCP Engagement Success

Digital solutions are pivotal to HCP engagement success. They bridge gaps in communication, offer immediate data accessibility, and promote continuous growth and collaboration. 

These tools enable HCPs to be better equipped to deliver outstanding patient care and stay at the forefront of medical advancements. 

Let’s take a closer look at how technology promotes HCP engagement success.

1. The Power of CRM in Streamlining Interactions 

CRM systems play a transformative role in streamlining interactions across various industries. They are most important when managing complex relationships, such as those in the healthcare sector.

  • They enable comprehensive and personalized customer interactions.
  • They automate routine tasks for efficient communication.
  • They improve decision-making with real-time data analysis.
  • They promote consistent messaging across multiple channels.

Life Sciences companies can track engagement with a CRM to fill the gap in Omnichannel marketing. They can ensure the touchpoints across channels are personalized at certain intersections in the journey. As a result, your dialogue with healthcare professionals becomes more structured and efficient.

CRM solutions also track individual HCP engagement, past communication, preferences, and behaviors. This capability helps companies supply healthcare providers with timely, relevant, personalized information and improve HCP engagement. 

2. Harness Data-Driven Insights for Personalized Engagement

Harness Data-Driven Insights for Personalized Engagement

Leveraging data-driven insights allows for a personalized approach to engagement. However, solutions like SFDC or Veeva use many data warehouses, which centralize the data and then clean and manipulate it into one data source. This centralization

eliminates the ability to use real-time data, often leading to data loss or insights. Exeevo is the only solution that unifies data from multiple data warehouses into a single source of truth. This helps you optimize insights and interactions with HCPs. 

  • Identify: Use databases like AMA Physician Masterfile to accurately identify potential healthcare professional targets.
  • Target: Utilize geographic location, specialty, and hospital affiliation information to micro-target your audience and tailor the campaign to their specific needs.
  • Engage: Deploy a mix of online and offline channels to start conversations, using data to deliver the right message at the right time in the right channel for maximum impact.

With structured data analysis, Account Executives or Field Reps can better understand HCP preferences, needs, and behaviors. It empowers Commercial, Marketing, Medical Affairs , and Commercial Operations to tailor communication strategies. 

Life Sciences companies can use HCP engagement platforms to monitor HCP interactions and identify patterns and trends to segment the target audience based on their behavior and preferences. These segments can then receive targeted and personalized communication. It can create a sense of understanding and respect for the HCP’s time and specific interests.

3. Enhance Remote Engagement Capabilities 

The digital transformation has enabled Life Sciences companies to engage with HCPs regardless of geographical location. Remote engagement capabilities like virtual events and webinars allow companies to reach out to HCPs and provide flexibility that traditional face-to-face interactions cannot.

customer journey hcp

Remote engagement tools also allow HCPs to access a wealth of information on demand, such as recorded webinars, informational videos, and other relevant content. 

Since 75% of employees are more likely to watch a video than a text, it becomes more effective and enhances the ability of HCPs to stay informed about the latest developments in their field.

4. Utilize CRM Analytics for Effective Engagement

According to Deloitte , the most challenging aspect of the end-to-end HCP engagement process is: 

  • Usability of the system: Interfacing challenges and lack of intuitive usability in CRM systems can limit efficiency in HCP engagement.
  • HCP master data: Accurate, updated, and complete HCP master data is crucial but often challenging to maintain. 
  • Executing cross-border engagements: Navigating regulatory, cultural, and logistical issues during cross-border engagements can complicate HCP outreach. For example, China has PIPL rules, and you cannot cross border data. Exeevo is the only solution currently compliant in China, as the Microsoft data center is located there.

Cloud-based and real-time-driven CRM systems come to the rescue. They offer robust analytics capabilities that can enhance the effectiveness of HCP engagement strategies. 

But, with most CRMs, every department must rely on distinct data warehouses. While most CRMs struggle to integrate this data in real-time, Exeevo stands out as an exception. 

Exeevo’s CRM analytics can be instrumental in maintaining HCP master data. You can configure the system to flag inconsistent or outdated information. Additionally, integration with external databases can help validate and enrich HCP data for accuracy and completeness.

CRM analytics can provide insights into regional preferences, language requirements, and legal regulations when executing cross-border engagements. This information can help tailor engagement strategies to specific regions. Moreover, tracking cross-border interactions can ensure regulatory compliance and reduce the risk of violations.

5. Improve Customer Experience Through Omnichannel Marketing

Digital technology improves the customer experience for HCPs. Life Sciences companies can personalize customer engagement by collecting and analyzing data from sources beyond their traditional focus. This could be electronic health records, HCP and patient portals, and wearables.

Digital interactions allow various channels to ramp up or down based on the customer’s and brand’s needs. The following example illustrates how the channel mix works. This can shift from pre-launch to the end of the cycle depending on geographic preferences, where talent is located, market dynamics, and culture.

HCP Customer Engagement

Healthcare providers can access information, communicate their needs, and give feedback through seamless digital interactions. Moreover, digital platforms provide opportunities for Life Sciences companies to offer digital sales aids (DSA) such as educational resources, personalized content, and on-demand support. 

Final Thoughts

As the healthcare industry continues to grow, renewing the approach toward HCP engagement is crucial. It’s no longer a desirable change but a pressing necessity. HCPs carry heavy responsibilities that range from patient care to collaboration with pharma companies. 

Embracing digital technology, particularly next-generation CRM platforms like Omnipresence, offers a viable solution. Such platforms leverage data analytics, artificial intelligence , and machine learning advancements to help pharma companies extract valuable insights and drive intelligent decision-making. 

At Exeevo, we understand these dynamics and are committed to revolutionizing customer experiences in the Life Sciences industry. Contact Exeevo to learn more about how we can help transform your HCP engagement strategies. 

For more life sciences insights and industry trends, don’t forget to check out our Blog .

customer journey hcp

Mapping the Omnichannel Customer Journey in 2023

In 2023, the way in which the consumer engages with a brand has changed significantly. Marketers need to map journeys across various touchpoints and make sure they work seamlessly. This is at the heart of an omnichannel strategy.

A recent report by Arm Treasure Data and Forbes Insight in 2020 shows that 75 percent of consumers are somewhat or very likely to buy from a company based on their experience. This is regardless of price or product. In fact, 77% consider such experiences to be just as important as the quality of a company’s products or services.

Understanding and mapping consumer experience throughout the journey, then, has become an even more critical part of a marketer’s job. As the Arm, Treasure Data Global Head of Marketing Tom Treanor says: “Companies need to look hard at their customer touchpoints, both in-store and online, and understand what their customers value most and where improvements can be made.”

For consumers in the US,  a recent report  indicates that the most important factors across touchpoints are:

  • Convenience
  • Knowledgeable help
  • Friendly service

To help you to map and design such experiences in 2023, we’re going to cover:

  • Types of channels and touchpoints 
  • How to map the consumer journey
  • The challenges to overcome
  • Some best practice examples

A 2021 survey of business professionals revealed that their top business priority for the next five years was to improve customer experience. Let’s begin our own journey towards this.

Types of Channels and Touchpoints in 2023

A customer’s journey arises from the interaction with various brand touchpoints.  In 2020 , almost 90% of retail consumers started with digital channels.

This doesn’t mean the role of offline is unimportant.  In one study , 78 percent of marketers believed that digital marketing was important to their overall marketing efforts, while 39 percent said the same about offline campaigns.

In the online space, some consumer channels for touchpoints would be social media, e-mail, and advertising.

The role of mobile in online touchpoints has become increasingly important in 2023. More than half of all web traffic is mobile, and a smartphone analytics study  predicts a 25% increase in mobile traffic by 2025.

Turning to offline, some common channels for touchpoints are direct mail, in-store interaction, and mainstream advertising. All the above should be matched with a high degree of customer service for the best results.

On a granular level, consumers can interact with product demos, checkout forms, giving feedback, signing up for subscriptions and notifications, and more.

It’s important for the omnichannel marketer to focus on providing a consistent and frictionless experience across touchpoints. Today’s consumer uses  an average of  six touchpoints. Nearly 50% regularly use more than four.

How to Map the Consumer Journey

Omnichannel touchpoint mapping consists of outlining all the consumer interactions with your brand. It identifies each step of the buyer’s journey. It allows brands to visualize and link every such experience a customer has.

There are many ways to create such maps, from connected notes to spreadsheets. The process starts with research and data gathering. Consumer questionnaires and user testing are some ways to do this.

From this, consumer profiles can be created. These are the behavioral and demographic characteristics of your main consumers. For example, younger first-time users, older loyal users, occasional users, primarily digital users, and so on.

Based on the main segments, the next step is to list out all the touchpoints that they use. Research should also indicate consumer actions, obstacles, and desired outcomes during the interactions.

After this, the omnichannel marketer will check for consistency across all of the touchpoints and try to create a seamless experience across all of them. In some cases, touchpoints can be mapped in terms of how they enable the consumer to move up the marketing funnel. There are several factors to consider, such as:

  • Consideration

Gaps can now be identified and plugged. For example, is customer service lacking in a few touchpoints? Is there a missing touchpoint between sales and after-sales to create loyalty? Is there a touchpoint that does not link to the next?  Here’s a powerful way  to visualize customer journeys, identify the drop-offs and engage them from one single dashboard.

To sum up, omnichannel marketers can map consumer journeys by:

  • Creating profiles
  • Listing and linking touchpoints
  • Identifying and plugging gaps

For more advice on real-time consumer journey mapping and how to make use of this powerful tool to influence customer experience, do  read this .

The Challenges to Overcome

As with any other marketing effort to streamline and improve activities, there are certain challenges and constraints to be overcome.  An earlier survey  of retailers and the omnichannel experience by Price Waterhouse identified some of them.

  • Budgets : Linking and strengthening touchpoints involves an outlay. Often, a business case has to be made for this, competing with other spending such as infrastructure.
  • Data : For an effective mapping of customer journeys, integrated data is essential. This means integrating all the information that could have been collected separately by various sales and marketing functions.
  • Skills and Resources : Over half the companies in  a Forbes survey  a few years ago lacked the analytic skills and tools necessary to analyze data meaningfully. Upgrading of such skills should be a priority for the marketer who seeks to extract meaning from data to create effective consumer journey maps.

Examples of Omnichannel Journey Best Practices

Here are a few examples of companies that have mapped consumer journeys to make a significant difference:

Use-Case 1: Real-time, Personalized, and Hyper-local Alerts

1Weather is one of the top-rated Android weather apps that provides local weather predictions. It has more than 8 million active users, of which 95% are from the U.S. They had the challenge of understanding consumer behavior and providing real-time, personalized, and hyper-local alerts. The brand noticed lower page sessions within the app due to a lack of re-engagement. By mapping users’ app behavior and location preferences, they increased opens and overall engagement rate. More details  can be found here .

Use-Case 2: Integrating An Overview with Navigation Tools

For some time, Disney has been seen as extremely skilled in mapping consumer journeys for an effortless omnichannel experience.  The website  and apps give you an overview of the attractions to expect and tools to plan your stay there.

At the park, the same devices allow you to navigate your way around and offer helpful tips to get the most from your time there.

Use-Case 3: Consistency, Creativity, and Willingness to Experiment

Fashion giant Burberry has used some form of omnichannel marketing  from the start.  They have shown consistency, creativity, and willingness to experiment. They knew that consumers would be looking for Burberry signatures such as a trench coat and tartan design from the beginning of their experience and so made sure these were in focus both offline and online. In their journey mapping, they aimed for consistency. Dedicated customer service accounts and weather advice for fashion were other innovative touchpoints.

What to Keep In Mind

To sum up, omnichannel marketers should focus on providing a consistent experience across touchpoints, integrating online and offline.

There are several ways to map the journey of today’s consumers, and it all starts with research and data.

Skills and resources need to be upgraded to take full advantage of the omnichannel marketing opportunity. It’s also important to remove data silos to gain an overall picture.

An omnichannel journey is what consumers expect nowadays, and brands need to make it a fulfilling experience. That way, they can be seamlessly moved up the marketing funnel.

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The Rise of Customer Science in Pharma to Predict HCP Journeys

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Over the next several weeks, we’re dedicating space on our blog to explore a fast-growing business discipline called Customer Science .

What is Customer Science? And more specifically, what is Customer Science in Pharma?

Customer Science is an emerging practice that integrates data science, behavioral science, and AI to gain a deep understanding of the customer experience – or in the case of life sciences, HCPs and their patients – and what motivates their decisions along the customer journey.

The shift to digital channels has radically changed how HCPs and patients connect and engage with biopharma companies. At the same time, the rapid development of technological innovations like machine learning and AI are providing never-before-seen insights into HCPs and patients, and dramatically impacting sales manager decision-making. All of this has created a perfect storm for commercial organizations to use Customer Science to better understand their audiences and deliver more valued experiences to meet their needs.

Customer Science is at the center of our work around customer journeys, combining data science, behavioral science, and AI. 

In the coming weeks, we’ll look at the AI technological revolution that has made Customer Science achievable, life sciences industry dynamics that are driving the need for change, lessons from past industry disruptions, and what lies ahead in this new discipline.

First, we want to begin by looking at the rise of Customer Science as a new paradigm for sales managers to better understand HCP and patients and, consequently, drive engagement. To do that, let’s go back to the start of ODAIA.

ODAIA - Costumer Science Webinar

‍ ODAIA’s beginnings in Customer Science

When we founded ODAIA six years ago, our focus was to better understand the customer journey using machine learning, AI, and data science. We wanted to help companies move beyond post-it note and whiteboard mapping exercises that didn’t accurately reflect reality, only showed what was known about customers, and plotted what an ideal journey might look like.

An image of a pharma team creating a customer journey map using post-it notes

But what about the things a company doesn’t know and can’t see about its customers? Or the fact that not every customer journey is the same? What if we could not only show past and present customer experiences, but also predict future ones?

We believed it was the underlying organizational processes that created the customer journey. If we could analyze these processes and all the data behind them and use machine learning, we could understand the journeys of multiple people, see roadblocks, identify patterns, and use AI to predict future journeys.

We knew the implications in life sciences could literally be life changing. We can get a complete view of a therapeutic journey, including HCPs and patients, and accurately forecast changes over time – what HCPs are prescribing, in what regions, for which sets of patients. Ultimately, biopharma companies and their sales reps could get life-changing therapies to the people that need them faster.

This seed of an idea sparked the ODAIA vision and mission. Fast forward to today, Customer Science is at the center of our work around customer journeys, combining data science, behavioral science, and AI. 

Applying Customer Science in Pharma

Data science is statistical analysis on the HCP experience and their many touchpoints with a pharma brand, including people and channels. Behavioral science interprets the data for insights on HCP behaviors. And AI makes reason of what’s happening and why, to predict what will happen next with HCPs and their patients.

In other words, Customer Science is layer upon layer of understanding of any therapeutic area to get a clear picture of the HCP and their patient decisions along the entire customer journey. We’ve been applying Customer Science for six years. Now, we have 2- 3 of the top 15 largest pharma companies innovating their go-to-market approach and commercial strategies using ODAIA.

The rise of Customer Science is being driven by the need for a more complete picture of HCPs, their behaviors, and the ability to make correlations from data captured from many different channels. Moving ahead, Customer Science will be the new paradigm for sales managers to better understand HCPs and their patients to enhance customer engagement.

Top-decile targeting is no longer enough

For decades the industry has been trained that syndicated market data is the only data sales managers need for HCP engagement, including targeting segmentation and pre-call planning. If sales managers know the HCP and their address, medical license number, the volume of prescriptions they write, and get a refresh of this data every three to six months, they can drive effective customer interactions.

But what does this data truly tell us about the HCP and their patients? Not enough. We still don’t know the “why” behind the data. There are no forward-thinking KPIs about which HCPs might be better to engage compared to others. We may know which HCPs are high prescribers in a therapeutic class, but not understand which have a greater propensity to switch to a new treatment option that their patients may need.

Decile-based targeting according to prescribing volumes was perhaps the last major innovation in customer engagement – and that was over 30 years ago. Companies brought in (and still do) hordes of consultants to manually decile groups, which takes time. It’s the reason why call planning and targeting segmentation can only be done every few months – it is the limit of what is humanly possible.

Top-decile targeting remains the industry’s standard mode of operating. The conventional thinking is to chase the highest-deciled prescriber groups with more promotional visits and calls. And, if you need to, add more reps to drive more engagement and, hopefully, sales with these groups. Companies define successful patient outcomes on this strategy. It’s been the prevailing wisdom for decades.

The Emergence of Customer Science in pharma to deliver more meaningful HCP and patient experiences

But Customer Science is changing the game once again with a new paradigm to target the right doctors and patients and drive engagement. Sales teams can look beyond past HCP trends and usage data in picking the right physicians and leverage AI algorithms to score and rank HCPs based on prescribing potential. 

Also, sales managers can understand HCP behaviors, picking up signals about why they’re writing prescriptions and what changes their mind about what they’re writing. With better insights, sales can educate physicians on new therapies more efficiently and get the right message to them at the right time in the best channel. The best part? Instead of waiting for new data every quarter or bi-annually, sales managers can get weekly or monthly predictions. 

The innovative sales managers of the future will leverage Customer Science to improve HCP and patient experiences and make data-driven decisions to fulfill HCP needs more effectively and efficiently. They’ll be able to spend less time analyzing data and more time seeing customers. Most importantly, they can shrink the time from symptoms to treatment to improve the health outcomes of patients.

Perhaps no single innovation has done more to propel Customer Science forward over the past six years than AI. It was the final piece to the Customer Science puzzle.

In our next blog in our three part series, Peter Harbin , VP of Industry Solutions at ODAIA, will take a deeper look at AI, the life sciences industry trends that are driving the need for change, and lessons from past industry disruptions so we don’t repeat history.

Learn more about ODAIA and Customer Science as a new paradigm for sales managers to drive HCP engagement at our upcoming webinar called “ The New Science Behind Meaningful HCP Engagements ”. Learn more and register here .

Discover How Other Pharma Companies are Optimizing Their Sales Processes with MAPTUAL

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Helen Kontozopoulos

Chief tech evangelist & co-founder.

Over 20 years of experience in technology and entrepreneurship space. Adjunct Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, teaching product development, design and startup creation. Host of the Making Impact Podcast, interviews with life sciences leaders about how their work impacts our lives with technology.

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Healthcare Provider (HCP) Customer Journey

The customer journey is all about the experience that an hcp has with a company or brand.

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Marketers who understand the impact of the HCP customer journey are more successful in driving impact from brand messaging deployed in the marketplace.  In the early days of digital and non-personal promotion (NPP), HCP and other stakeholder email address databases were not as developed or robust as they are today.  At that time, a primary focus for NPP was strictly reach where campaigns were largely deployed by blanketing therapeutic categories with messaging that could have benefited from a more personalized and coordinated approach. Since then, the approach to NPP has become far more sophisticated, along with a shift away from reach as the sole focus, which now includes engagement as the primary currency.

The customer journey is all about the experience that an HCP has with a company or brand.  This customer journey truly matters.  In deploying NPP, we are trying to develop a digital relationship with an HCP, and we’re doing so by having a digital conversation.  Just as is the case with a live conversation, the digital conversation needs to feel sincere and genuine.  That is far more difficult to accomplish in a digital fashion.  One major advantage in the industry today is having the ability to implement and execute integrated campaign architecture across platforms and solutions in a way that both meets a brand’s strategic imperatives, while still providing a seamless customer journey that feels coordinated, genuine, and sincere.  The reason this is important is because NPP is no longer just about reach, it’s about engagement. Without engagement, we can’t change behaviors that drive incremental revenue, which drive ROI on a marketer’s spend.  Driving engagement across our platforms and solutions is a core expertise of MNG Direct.

A proven formula for impact includes a combination of reach, engagement, and optimization:

Reach—Include a robust database of HCP’s and other stakeholders including NP’s, PA’s and Nurses.  On average, we typically achieve >90% list match against a brand target list.

Engagement—Achieve superior engagement rates by crafting the appropriate campaign architecture, which is often deployed in an integrated fashion using complementary platforms and solutions across the engagement continuum.  Our solutions offer timely, relevant, and personalized attributes that drive higher than industry average engagement rates.

Optimization—Commit fully to a data-driven NPP approach.  Our data analytics, advanced segmentation, and intelligent automation, deliver an informed approach to NPP deployment, whether using scheduled or triggered campaigns to targeted HCP’s.

Careful control of variables in the campaign architecture such as the placement, cadence, frequency, and integration of individual solutions allows a seamless customer journey and experience for the HCP audience, which delivers optimal engagement and impact for clients in a cost effective manner.

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#FutureReadyHealthcare

The Digitally-Savvy HCP Learnings to Engage HCPs Around the World More Effectively and Efficiently​

Hcps are more digitally savvy now than ever.

As HCPs get more digitally savvy, pharma marketers should understand that engaging physicians through channels and time of their preference with content that is relevant to the individual customer is no more an option, but the critical factor to ensure success for any of their multichannel marketing initiatives. However, these preferences often vary at a regional, experience, and specialty level which is a critical input for pharma marketers to plan their multichannel marketing initiatives. This report slices and dices our findings from the survey by regions, specialties, HCP experience levels, channels, devices, content type, and its consumption time—so pharma marketers can plan their omnichannel marketing strategies for maximum impact and efficiency.

Our study yielded the following key findings:

Our Study Represented HCPs Across Geographies, Specialties, And Experience

We surveyed 984 physicians from the United States, Europe (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy), India, and China for this study. All participants have > 10 years of experience and represent a broad spectrum of specialty areas as shown below.

*Europe: UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy *APAC: China, India

* Percentages do not add up to a hundred as some respondents have > 1 specialty.

HCPs Extensively Use Digital Channels Primarily For Learning And Development

For a significant part of the past 18 months, HCPs have been overworked with a majority of them working extended hours or at full capacity. Moreover, the pandemic also ushered in certain changes in HCPs' content and channel preferences. While the rise in digital channels and advancement in technologies have helped pharma organizations to reach out to HCPs, it is important for them to understand HCP behavior and their preferences when it comes to content and digital channels to deliver a great customer experience.

We asked HCPs how extensively they used digital channels for various activities related to learning, networking, telemedicine, and remote engagement. Globally, HCPs used digital channels mainly for personal learning and development (77%), followed by video conferencing for professional networking (68%), and telemedicine/telehealth practice with patients (63%), as shown in Figure 1. While the adoption of digital channels for remote engagement has increased in the recent past, HCPs' usage of such channels for remote interactions with pharma companies or for monitoring patients remotely could be better.

Figure 1: What purposes do HCPs use digital channels for?

Figure 2 provides the distribution of main reasons for which HCPs use digital channels at a regional level. Apart from the United States and after Germany, HCPs in all other regions are keen on using digital channels for video conferencing for professional networking. Furthermore, HCPs from India and the United States are more open to using digital channels for telemedicine/telehealth when compared with HCPs from China and the EU region (the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France and Italy).

Figure 2: What purposes do HCPs use digital channels for? (regional distribution)

In terms of specialties, > 76% of HCPs across the board responded that learning and development was their main reason for using digital channels, followed by video conferencing for professional networking (68%) and telemedicine and telehealth practice with patients (63%). The same trends were observed for HCPs with different experience levels indicating that the primary purpose for which HCPs are adopting digital channels are consistent across specialty and years of work experience.

HCPs Device Preferences Vary By Region And Content Type

Figure 3: Which devices do HCPs prefer to consume clinical, medical, and promotional information?

Figure 4: Which devices do HCPs prefer to consume clinical, medical, and promotional information? (regional distribution)

As pharma marketers improve their marketing strategies by incorporating multiple formats, channels, and analytics, it is extremely important for them to build content and communication strategies that are accessible to HCPs via multiple devices. Figure 4 illustrates the devices that HCPs prefer to access the various types of information. As illustrated, HCPs based out of China and India prefer using a mobile device for medical and promotional information, whereas a computer/laptop is the most preferred device for HCPs in the United States and Europe.

It is important for pharma companies to note this pattern and select the appropriate channel, content, format, and device to reach out to HCPs. For instance, in India and China, since HCPs prefer mobile devices, the frequency of them accessing platforms or applications will be high; however, the time they spend on these channels could be extremely limited. Thus, it is important that pharma marketers build hyper-focused HCP segments and create crisp, short, and modular content that is educational, factual, and easily consumable on mobile devices. On the other hand, this approach holds good for the United States and Europe as well, where HCPs largely prefer to consume content on a computer/laptop due to which, pharma marketers have the flexibility to create more in-depth and elaborate content and format.

HCPs from China prefer to consume clinical, medical, and promotional information over mobile devices followed by computer/laptops and tablets. Similar trends can also be observed for HCPs from India who prefer mobile devices for consuming medical and promotional information and computer/laptops for consuming clinical information. Our data also indicate that younger HCPs are more willing to consume promotional information over mobile as compared with their senior counterparts. Furthermore, the survey indicates that physicians from Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Pulmonology, Urology, Emergency Medicine, General Surgery, and Immunology are more open to consuming promotional information over mobile compared with the physicians from other specialty areas.

HCPs Are Not Sure That Pharma Representatives Understand Their Requirements Completely

Figure 5: How do HCPs feel about pharma representatives' understanding of the HCPs requirements during COVID-19?

Figure 6: How do HCPs across regions feel about pharma representatives' understanding of the HCPs requirements during Covid-19?

Figure 7: What are the motivations of HCPs to meet pharma representatives remotely versus in-person?

Since the beginning of the pandemic, in-person discussions with pharma representatives have declined steeply. In response, pharma companies had to train their sales force not just to use digital channels but also to help them have useful discussions with HCPs virtually. Globally, 59% of HCPs are still not sure if pharma representatives understand the HCPs requirements completely, as shown in Figure 5. With pharma companies investing resources in multichannel engagement frameworks, there will be a stronger need for a digitally-savvy sales force that can recreate the in-person experience using virtual channels. Given the important connection of the sales force between the industry and HCPs, companies who do not prioritize this stand to lose out on their ability to engage physicians.

More than 50% of HCPs in Europe (excluding Germany), the United States, India, and China prefer to meet representatives remotely because of the flexibility in scheduling appointments. For HCPs in India and China, apart from this factor, the ability to access more educational content in various formats was a driving factor to prefer remote engagement models.

Figure 8: How did HCPs' sense of value for pharma representatives change from 2019 to 2021?

As in-patient visits reduced because of the pandemic, the demand for nuanced and insightful content on topics such as treatment options and patient education has substantially increased. Just like pharma companies, HCPs also need the resources to ensure that the patient journey is seamless and effective in a virtual setting. As seen in Figure 8, 62% of HCPs believe that the most significant area where pharma representatives can add value is by understanding the need of HCPs and sharing only relevant content.

This trend is equally prevalent across regions, with HCPs stating that understanding the specific needs of HCPs and sharing relevant content with the HCPs through a channel that they prefer was the most significant way in which pharma representatives could add value to their interactions. Thus, for pharma representatives, having a content library handy for specific personas before their appointment not just improves the engagement levels, but also generates a strong sense of value that the representatives are providing to the physician by showing that you are completely aligned with the HCPs requirements.

HCPs Are Overwhelmed With Overtly Promotional Content

Figure 9: How overwhelmed do HCPs feel with content shared by pharma companies in the past 12 months?

Figure 10: How overwhelmed do HCPs across regions feel with content shared by pharma companies in the past 12 months?

Figure 11: How overwhelmed do HCPs across specialties feel with content shared by pharma companies in the past 12 months?

Figure 12: Which type of content are HCPs overwhelmed with?

Content in the pharma industry continues to be heavily representative-centric. Although pharma companies added digital content, a mere conversion of offline content to online edition is suboptimal. In earlier sections of the report, we highlighted how the adoption of digital channels by HCPs is gaining momentum. However, globally, 62% of physicians are overwhelmed by the content they receive from pharma companies, mainly due to excessive product promotional content information, as depicted in Figure 12. For pharma companies, this insight is alarming because if physicians associate certain brands with merely such promotional content, it will become extremely difficult for the former to position themselves as a trusted partner who enables HCPs to deliver improved health outcomes.

HCPs Are Increasingly Adopting Digital Channels To Consume Content

Pharma organizations are increasingly using webinars and online journals to share medical and promotional information, while still relying on a conventional face-to-face channel to engage with HCPs

Figure 15: Which channels do pharma companies use to engage with HCPs?

Figure 16: How did pharma companies' use of channels to engage with HCPs change from 2019 to 2021?

In 2021, the top 5 channels used by pharma companies to engage with HCPs are webinars and webcasts, online journals, in-person meetings with reps, websites, and marketing emails (Figure 16). When we probed HCPs about their channel preference to receive communication from pharma companies, they cited webinars and webcasts, in-person meeting discussions, online journals, websites, and offline journals as the most common ones (Figure 17). The preference for webinars is especially correlated to the prevalence of Covid-19.

Figure 17: Which channels do HCPs prefer to receive content from pharma companies?

Figure 18: How did HCPs' channel preference to receive medical and promotional information from pharma companies change from 2019 to 2021?

However, it is interesting to note that 65% of HCPs still prefer to engage via in-person meetings with reps as seen in Figure 18. It implies that this channel should still be a core element of a successful, integrated online, in-person and remote engagement framework. At the same time, a well-planned digital channel strategy can act as the accelerator for pharma companies to get not just the foot in the door, but also to develop efficient and effective hybrid engagement models. For example, medical and scientific journals, websites, marketing emails, and social media can be used to personalize the customer journey to augment the effectiveness of face-to-face discussions. This also highlights the need for the pharma industry to take inspiration from digitally mature industries and move away from a siloed approach, and implement sustainable and insightful measurement frameworks that can effectively assess end-to-end customer journeys.

HCPs Prefer Short Webinars Over Other Virtual Engagement Channels

Figure 19: Which virtual formats did HCPs most engage with?

Figure 20: HCPs preference for webinars across regions

Figure 21: How did HCPs' preference for webinars change across specialties?

During the pandemic, many pharma companies shifted to virtual engagement formats and hosted numerous virtual conferences. However, globally as well as regionally, the interest/attendance in virtual conferences is significantly lesser than webinars. This could be because of the extremely busy schedule of most HCPs who had to treat Covid-19 patients in addition to those from their specialty, as well as the digital fatigue induced by the sheer large volume of virtual events hosted in the past 18 months. These factors also validate the steep interest in short virtual discussion formats such as webinars.

As the pandemic situation recedes globally, pharma companies will resort to hosting in-person events. However, virtual engagement formats that were extensively used in the past 18 months will become an integral part of the new hybrid engagement model. Therefore, as the pharma industry continues to explore the best ways to host and manage virtual engagement platforms to deliver the best user or attendee experience, it is important to invest in resources and build a measurement framework to assess the effectiveness of such events. A rigorous and updated understanding of HCPs' preferences will play a critical role in ensuring that pharma companies achieve the Return on Investment (ROI) they seek from such outreach.

Figure 22: Which type of information do HCPs prefer to receive from pharma companies?

Figure 22 illustrates the type of content HCPs prefer to receive from pharma companies. As in previous surveys, product-related information such as safety, efficacy, and treatment guidelines continue to be the most sought-after data by HCPs globally. Their increased interest in understanding treatment guidelines, RWE, and clinical data mainly stem from the Covid-19 pandemic as HCPs invest more time to understand the disease and vaccine development updates. Meanwhile, new categories such as approved indication, medical information, and treatment cost are also the topics that physicians would like to access from the various channels used by pharma companies.

The information presented in Figure 22 is especially helpful for pharma companies that already have an audience or physicians' cohort, familiar with the brand. Pharma marketers can craft consistent, personalized, and multi-touch messaging using the right channels and formats to improve engagement.

Figure 23: How did HCPs' preference for type of information change from 2019 to 2021?

As shown in Figure 23, HCPs’ preferences for the type of information they would like to receive from pharma companies have not changed much across the top categories. With the rise in digital offerings and the impact of the pandemic on in-person interactions, HCPs are looking to receive more content that is addressed toward adherence programs and digital health services. At the same time, HCPs are overwhelmed with overtly promotional content and would like to receive less content that is directed toward discounts or sample offers.

Figure 24: What type of content do HCPs share with their peers?

As shown in Figure 24, physicians across the board extensively share treatment guidelines with their peer network. A key factor driving this could be the pandemic situation, in which HCPs had to treat Covid-19 patients apart from their specialty. Thus, they had to leverage their peer network to get indepth information on treatment guidelines to deliver the best health outcomes to their patients. This also reflects the fact that HCP peer networks are more interested in educational content that can improve their practice. Pharma marketers need to take note of this point and craft their HCP communication strategies with an informative content mindset, since these types of messages are welcomed by HCPs because they strengthen their knowledge about a specific condition without disrupting the daily operations.

Figure 25: Which sources do HCPs frequently use to access information?

Figure 25 presents the top 5 sources HCPs use to access medical information. When it comes to accessing clinical and medical information or educational content, HCPs prefer to use independent websites, private medical networks, and websites maintained by universities or nonprofit organizations that they know and trust as compared with pharma companies' own websites. Most European HCPs use Sermo, which indicates that HCPs are more inclined toward active and engaging discussions with their peers on the latest medical trends and developments, treatments guidelines, clinical data, and disease information pertaining to their specialties, followed by the need to build their network for ongoing medical education. In the United States and India, HCPs are more interested in accessing sources such as Medscape and WebMD that provide extensive coverage of clinical information and educational content.

As pharma companies use more digital channels, there will be a continued demand from the medical community for diverse formats of digital content that can be accessible across devices and platforms, especially on mobile apps and social media networks.

Digital Channels Allow Pharma Companies To Engage HCPs At A Time They Prefer

As much as it is important to use the right marketing channels to engage HCPs, it is vital that the content reaches HCPs at a time they prefer. HCPs are extremely busy attending to patients, so pharma organizations need to reach them not just through their preferred channel, but also at their preferred time of the day.

While there is a noticeable shift in channels preferred for engagement, the time and days when HCPs wish to receive content from pharma companies have not changed much since 2019 (Figures 26 and 27). Across all specialties, countries, and experience levels, HCPs prefer to receive or access information from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm on weekdays and 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm on weekends. For pharma companies, these time preferences are not just significant but also favorable. Unlike face-to-face discussions that are largely time-bound with each appointment constrained to just a few minutes during working hours; digital channels allow pharma companies to engage with HCPs without these constraints.

Figure 26: What time did HCPs prefer to receive clinical, medical, and promotional information in 2019?

Figure 27: What time did HCPs prefer to receive, clinical, medical, and promotional information in 2021?

At a regional level, HCPs from China prefer to be contacted between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm on all days including weekends, except Monday, when they prefer to be contacted between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm. For HCPs from Germany, the preferred time is 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm on all days including weekends. HCPs from Spain and Italy also align with global time preferences. But HCPs from the United Kingdom prefer consuming content between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm on all days. HCPs from India prefer to be contacted between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm on all days, including weekends. HCPs from the United States consume content between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm, except on weekends, when they would like to be contacted between 8:00 am to 11:00 am.

In terms of specialty, 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm on weekdays is the preferred time for all physicians except Ophthalmologists and Geriatrics physicians who prefer the 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm slot, Dermatology and Obstetrician-Gynecologist (OBG) physicians who prefer the 11:00 am to 2:00 pm slot, and General Surgeons who prefer the 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm slot. For weekends, the 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm slot is the most preferred slot for all specialty physicians except Orthopedics, Urology, Psychiatry physicians preferred 8:00 am to 11:00 am slot. Primary Care, Family Medicine, Cardiology, pulmonology, Dermatology physicians preferred 11:00 am to 2:00 pm slot, on weekends and Pediatrics physicians preferred the 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm slot.

Based on the analysis of our survey findings, we propose the following recommendations for pharma companies to effectively capitalize on the latest trends that are shaping the HCP engagement framework.

Pharma companies need to invest significantly to improve their content development capabilities

55% of our survey respondents said that they feel overwhelmed by the content they receive from pharma companies. This could be the key reason why, globally, 70% of HCPs feel pharma representatives do not understand their requirement, and 63% HCPs are suggesting that pharma representatives need to share only relevant content with them to make the interactions more insightful. This shows, even though pharma companies have taken the first step towards customer-centricity, they have a long way to go to achieve the ideal customer experience. To get there, it is essential that along with upgrading their capabilities they also enable a sustainable partner network that can accelerate this process for them.

Bridge the gap between HCP preferred channels and channels used by pharma companies to engage them

Our survey revealed that at region and specialty levels, the gaps in channels used and channels preferred are significantly wide for certain countries and specialties. For instance, in the United States, the most commonly used channel was marketing emails (55%), though this tool did not even rank in the top 10 channel preferences of HCPs. Thus, it is important for pharma companies to create a multichannel marketing plan that is HCP-centric, and not the other way round, where channels dictate the engagement level.

HCPs expect pharma companies to use digital channels to give them on-demand access to representatives and content

56% of HCPs said that remote interactions with pharma representatives have increased by over 40% mainly owing to the flexibility to reschedule appointments. They also mentioned that amongst all virtual engagement formats, webinars, and webcasts are their preferences as they are the shortest form of engagement and also can be accessed on-demand at the physician's convenience. The acceptance of these formats indicate that HCPs are employing such formats so that they can effectively use digital channels for the activities that interest them the most, which are learning and development (77%), followed by professional networking activities (68%).

To significantly improve HCP engagement, pharma companies need to consider the regional variations in HCP preferences when it comes to content, channel, device, and time

In the United States, at 79% response rate, content related to efficacy is the most preferred, with 68% of HCPs accessing through computer/laptop and 28% of them stating that 5 pm to 8 pm on weekdays is the best time to share content with them. These are critical granular insights that pharma marketers can incorporate into their existing and upcoming HCP engagement plans to significantly improve the effectiveness of the programs.

Appendix: Top insights for each region

The United States

1.   Pharma companies mainly use marketing emails, websites, and online journals to reach HCPs in the United States. However, HCPs themselves prefer face-to-face discussions, webinars or webcasts, and online journals to receive medical information. Regarding the device preference, the HCPs prefer to consume content over computer/laptop between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm on weekdays.

2.   HCPs in the United States have a higher preference for content on safety, efficacy, and treatment guidelines. They use digital channels for personal learning and development activities, telemedicine practice, and video conferencing for professional networking, and leverage websites such as Medscape, WebMD, and Epocrates to satisfy their content needs.

3.   47% of HCPs in the United States feel overwhelmed to an large extent by content shared by pharma companies. Content formats that overwhelm them the most are product promotional content and emails from pharma sales representatives.

4.   14% of HCPs in United States believe pharma representatives do not understand their requirements completely. They feel representatives can add value by understanding their specific needs and sharing only relevant content at their convenience through their preferred channel. Also, they expect pharma representatives to be accessible on-demand through channels of their choice.

The United Kingdom

1.   Pharma companies mainly use emails from representatives, webinars, and websites to reach HCPs in the United Kingdom. HCPs also prefer to access information through webinars and online journals. However, their third channel of preference is websites over emails from representatives. They prefer to consume content between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm on weekdays mainly using their computer/laptop.

2.   HCPs in the United Kingdom have a higher preference for content on real-world evidence, safety, and efficacy. They use digital channels for personal learning and development activities, video conferencing for professional networking, and telemedicine practice. The websites they leverage to access content are Sermo, Medscape, and WebMD.

3.   45% of HCPs in the United Kingdom feel overwhelmed to an extent by content shared by pharma companies. Content formats that overwhelm the most are product promotional content and eventsrelated information.

4.   13% of HCPs in the United Kingdom said that pharma representatives do not understand their requirements completely. They see representatives adding value by understanding their specific needs and sharing only relevant content at their convenience through their preferred channels. Also, they expect pharma representatives to be accessible on-demand through channels of their choice.

1.   Emails from representatives, online journals, and offline journals were the main channels used by pharma companies to reach HCPs in Germany. HCPs also prefer to access information through offline and online journals, however, they chose webinars as their third preferred channel over emails from representatives. They prefer to consume content between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm on weekdays mainly using their computer/laptop.

2.   HCPs in Germany have a higher preference for content on treatment guidelines, safety, and efficacy. They use digital channels for personal learning and development activities, video conferencing for professional networking, and remote interactions with pharma companies. Sermo and Medscape are the 2 main websites they use to access content, followed by search engines.

3.   58% of HCPs in Germany feel overwhelmed to an extent by content shared by pharma companies. Content formats that overwhelm the most are product-related promotional content and events-related information.

4.   12% of HCPs in Germany said that pharma representatives do not understand the requirements of HCPs completely. The HCPs see representatives adding value by understanding the specific needs of HCPs and sharing only relevant content at their convenience through their preferred channels. Also, they expect pharma representatives to be accessible on-demand through channels of their choice.

1.   Pharma companies mainly use emails from representatives, webinars, and marketing emails to reach HCPs in Spain. However, face-to-face discussions, emails from the representative, and webinars are among the top 3 preferred channels of HCPs. They prefer to consume content between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm on weekdays mainly using their computer/laptop.

2.   HCPs in Spain have a higher preference for content on Real-World Evidence, treatment guidelines, and efficacy. They use digital channels for personal learning and development activities, video conferencing for professional networking, and remote interactions with pharma companies. The websites they leverage to access content are Sermo, Medscape, and Mayo Clinic.

3.   57% of HCPs in Spain feel overwhelmed to an extent by content shared by pharma companies. Content formats that overwhelm the most are product promotional content and events-related information.

4.   Most HCPs in Spain believe that pharma representatives completely understand their expectations. They see representatives adding value by understanding the specific needs of HCPs and sharing only relevant content at their convenience through their preferred channels. Also, they expect pharma representatives should be accessible on-demand through channels of their choice.

1.   Pharma companies use self-directed web detailing, webinars, and face-to-face discussion channels to reach HCPs in France. HCPs also prefer self-directed web detailing and face-to-face discussions, however, they chose online journals over webinars as their third channel of preference. They prefer to consume content after 8 pm on all weekdays mainly using their computer/laptop.

2.   Efficacy, safety, and dosage are their content preferences. They use digital channels for personal learning and development activities, video conferencing for professional networking, and telemedicine practice. The websites they leverage to access content are Sermo and Univadis, followed by search engines.

3.   42% of HCPs in France feel overwhelmed to an extent by content shared by pharma companies. Content formats that overwhelm the most are product promotional information and events-related information.

4.   15% of HCPs in France believe that pharma representatives do not completely understand the expectations of HCPs. They see pharma representatives adding value to their interactions by understanding the specific needs of HCPs and sharing only relevant content at their convenience and by being accessible on-demand through channels of their choice.

1.   Pharma companies mainly use face-to-face discussions, websites, and emails from representatives to reach HCPs in Italy. The top channel preferences of HCPs are face-to-face discussions, online journals, and webinars. They prefer to consume content between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm on weekdays mainly using their computer/laptop.

2.   Efficacy, treatment guidelines, and safety are their content preferences. They use digital channels for personal learning and development activities, video conferencing for professional networking, and remote patient monitoring. The websites they leverage to access content are Sermo and Medscape, followed by search engines.

3.   40% of HCPs in Italy feel overwhelmed to an extent by content shared by pharma companies. Content formats that overwhelm the most are product promotional content and events-related information.

4.   HCPs feel pharma representatives can add value to their interactions by offering self-service options and by understanding their specific needs and sharing only relevant content at their convenience.

1.   Pharma companies mainly use webinars or webcasts, text messaging, and social media to reach HCPs in India. However, channels preferred by HCPs are webinars and webcasts, online journals, and face-toface discussions. Their preferred time to access content is between 2pm to 5pm on weekdays and after 8pm on weekends.

2.   HCPs in India have the highest preference for the contents on safety, treatment guidelines, and Real-World Evidence, and they primarily use digital channels for personal learning and development activities, video conferencing for professional networking, and for telemedicine practice. Medscape, WebMD, and Sermo are the websites they use to access content and network with their peers.

3.   A staggering 71% of HCPs in India feel overwhelmed to a certain extent by content shared by pharma companies. Product promotional content and events-related information are the main types of content that are leading to digital fatigue.

4.   While only 7% of HCPs believe that pharma representatives do not understand their requirements completely, > 55% of HCPs suggested that pharma representatives can significantly improve the quality of interactions by understanding the specific needs of HCPs and sharing only relevant content at their convenience through their preferred channels.

1.   Webinars and webcasts, face-to-face discussions, and social media are the top 3 channels used by pharma companies in China to reach HCPs. Meanwhile, channel preferences of HCPs are webinars, face-to-face discussions, and online journals. They prefer to consume content over mobile between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm on weekdays.

2.   HCPs in China have a higher preference for contents on safety, efficacy, and treatment guidelines. They use digital channels for personal learning and development activities, video conferencing for professional networking, and for telemedicine practice. They leverage websites such as Sermo and Univadis, followed by search engines to satisfy their content needs.

3.   58% of HCPs feel overwhelmed to an extent by content shared by pharma companies. Content formats that overwhelm the most are product-related promotional content and events-related information.

4.   Like India, in China also a very small percentage (5%) of HCPs believe that pharma representatives do not understand the requirements of HCPs completely. According to physicians, pharma representatives can add value to their interactions by understanding the specific needs of HCPs and sharing only relevant content, and being accessible on-demand through channels of their choice.

Customer Journey

Customer Journey

Our approach to customer journey mapping is rooted in a deep understanding of all the emotions, touchpoints, influences and pain points involved along the path to a decision from a consumer-centric perspective. we take a broader view of the journey that encompasses the pre-journey experiences of the customer in order to develop richer, effective and more dynamic engagement strategies. .

Key questions answered include:

  • What touchpoints, triggers and emotions are involved at different stages of the decision journey? Where and at what times are my target customers experiencing the greatest number of pain points?
  • How do I reach customers early-on, prior to the decision cycle?
  • What engagement strategies can we develop that will result in meaningful progress along the journey for my customers?
  • How do we enhance customer experience across key channels or through product innovation?
  • What factors and touchpoints have the greatest impact on decision-making along the journey? How are my customers making decisions during key areas of the journey?
  • What can we do to not only win customers but retain and build a relationship with them? How do I re-engage lapsed customers?

Our approach is tailored specifically to the business question and client need, often leveraging these four stages:

  • Discovery and Framing: Alignment with stakeholders on key objectives and in-going hypotheses, key areas to explore and immersion into existing research and external sources as needed.
  • Qualitative Journey Exploration: Using Strategy3's proprietary Pathfinder Toolkits, 1:1 in-depth interviews are completed to provide foundational insights and an overall decision map is built during an immersive, client-welcoming, synthesis session.
  • Quantitative Deep Dive and Validation: An online survey validates the journey created during the exploration phase and identifies relative importance and impact on KPIs and other key measures like conversion.
  • Synthesis and Activation: All inputs are collated into comprehensive map(s) that identify opportunities to improve the customer journey, and prioritizes strategies and implementation tactics like marketing/brand updates and product/service innovations. Action plans are shared in an interactive, cross-team Activation Session.

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Harness the power of data and AI in healthcare with new Microsoft solutions

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We are living in the era of AI in healthcare , where data and algorithms augment human capabilities and enable new possibilities for improving health and well-being. AI can help us understand complex patterns, generate insights, and provide recommendations that can enhance clinical decision making, personalize care, and empower patients as well as automate tasks to improve productivity. However, AI in healthcare also comes with many challenges, such as ensuring the quality of model training data, privacy, security, and compliance, as well as addressing ethical, social, and legal implications.

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At Microsoft, we are committed to helping our customers and partners overcome these challenges and harness the power of AI in healthcare. We believe that bridging data, AI, and trust is required to accelerate the digital transformation in healthcare. We do this by providing trusted, secure, and scalable platforms and tools that help you manage, analyze, and share your data, as well as build, deploy, and monitor your AI solutions. Moreover, we collaborate with industry experts to ensure that our AI solutions are aligned with the best practices and standards of the healthcare domain.

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At HIMSS24, we are excited to introduce new product and feature updates which are designed to help you harness the power of data and AI in healthcare.

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We recognize that data is the fuel that powers AI technology, and peak performance requires clean, integrated, accessible data. However, healthcare data is complex, heterogeneous, and often siloed, making it challenging to extract insights and drive value. Through continued investments in data management and analytics, we are empowering customers to achieve agility in new ways.

Our momentum continues with the public preview of healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric . Now your organization can unify data and insights through one common architecture and experience. Healthcare data solutions in Fabric provide data models and transformation pipelines that help customers create a multi modal warehouse and provide a secure and governed way for organizations to access, analyze, and visualize data-driven insights across their organization.

  • The multi modal warehouse leverages industry standards such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and complies with regulations, such as HIPAA and GDPR.
  • Allows organizations to access and query your healthcare data using familiar tools, such as Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Machine Learning, and Power BI.
  • Leverage Fabric data engineering and data science capabilities to conduct data analysis and operationalize machine learning pipelines at scale using Python notebooks powered by Spark’s distributed computing capabilities. 

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We’re excited to see how our customers can accelerate time-to-value using healthcare data solutions in Fabric to unify their data at every layer—one copy of data in the lake, one product experience for collaboration, governance, and unification of the business model to ensure resources are cost-optimized. Learn more about healthcare data solutions in Fabric .

With imaging data playing a crucial role in assisting diagnosis and predictive care, it is imperative that medical images and the metadata associated with them can also be easily stored alongside clinical data. The DICOM service in Azure Health Data Services now integrated with Azure Data Lake Storage in general availability, enables organizations to store, manage and query medical images in the cloud, allowing organizations to operationalize imaging data in AI and machine learning development, for secondary use scenarios as well as for clinical research purposes. To learn more, read our documentation .

With the FHIRlink connector for Power Platform in general availability, organizations now have an easy way to build low-code, no-code applications that interact directly with FHIR compliant REST application programming interfaces (APIs). The connector reduces the complexity in authenticating to FHIR services, constructing FHIR based API calls, and working with resulting FHIR JSON data, removing the need for custom, single-use integration solutions. This enables developers to build apps directly against the FHIR services, removing the complexity and cost of mapping, transforming, and synchronizing data between systems. To learn more, read our documentation .

Our partners are already seeing success working on these new technologies to help their customers achieve their goals. Quisitive shared more about their experience working with healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric:

“Through our tight collaboration with Microsoft and Fabric’s groundbreaking ability to transform unstructured data, we’re revolutionizing healthcare delivery. Microsoft’s dedication to speed, security, and innovation enables us to deploy solutions for our clients in record time and set the stage for AI and copilot advancements. Together, we’re closing care gaps, improving patient experiences, and enhancing operational efficiencies, delivering impactful results in real-time.” —Syed Fahad, VP of Industry Solutions, Quisitive

Maximize the power of AI to improve patient and clinician experiences

One of the big challenges AI can help solve is helping clinicians provide personalized care tailored to their unique needs while also empowering clinicians with the right set of information from various sources to generate insights. With Azure AI Services for Health, we’re excited to share some recent feature and service updates that aim to help improve insights for clinicians while empowering patients with better outcomes.

Azure AI Health Insights  provides a suite of AI models and services that can help healthcare organizations improve clinical and operational outcomes by providing pre-built models that perform analysis and provide inferences that can be reviewed and used by clinicians and researchers to facilitate patient care during important healthcare scenarios. Azure AI Health Insights will be generally available in May 2024, and includes models for patient timeline, clinical trial matching, and oncophenotyping. The Radiology insights model , also planned for general availability in May 2024, provides quality checks through feedback on errors and inconsistencies. The model also identifies follow-up recommendations and clinical findings within clinical documentation with measurements (sizes) documented by the radiologist.

We’re excited to share new private preview capabilities to Azure AI Health Bot  services to help support organizations who want to build healthcare specific copilot experiences infused with generative AI and built in safeguards. The new private preview capabilities in Azure AI Health Bot provide pre-built templates, connectors, and out-of-box healthcare intelligence that can be customized and connected into existing workflows and content sources. Customers can then build their own copilots supported by protocol-based workflows side by side with generative AI answers which are responsibly adapted to healthcare with specific compliance controls and healthcare safeguards. Learn more about the private preview of Azure AI Health Bot with generative AI .

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Georg Isbary, Head of Portfolio and Customer Excellence and Elias Zimmer, Manager Digital Customer Excellence from Roche Pharma Germany , shared more about how they are using the Azure AI Health Bot to power their copilot experience:

“As we move forward into the Age of Copilots, our collaboration with Microsoft and Crayon has enabled us to explore new ways how clinicians can interact with our Healthcare Professional (HCP) portals. By leveraging Azure AI Health Bot to build copilot experiences for doctors, we are developing an intuitive, conversational interface that lets clinicians access and explore Roche’s clinical documentations in a more natural way and to cope with the complexity and flood of information. The pilot for this new user experience, powered by generative AI features and compliant with the necessary security standards, has been integrated into our systems and will be further tailored to regional market needs. We’re excited to see how this revolutionary AI experience will transform healthcare making knowledge more accessible and actionable for clinicians around the world.”

Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is helping your organization shape a healthier future with data and AI

We are excited to strengthen our data and AI investments through the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare . Our healthcare solutions are built on a foundation of trust and Microsoft’s Responsible AI principles. Through these innovations, we are making it easier for our partners and customers to create connected experiences at every point of care, empower their healthcare workforce, and unlock the value from their data using data standards that are important to the healthcare industry.

We look forward to seeing you at HIMSS24, visit us at Booth #3161 and with Nuance in booth #2741.

  • Read more in our HIMSS announcement blog .
  • Learn more about healthcare data solutions in Microsoft Fabric .
  • Explore more about Azure Health Data Services .
  • Learn more about Azure AI Health Insights .
  • Read more about Azure AI Health Bot .

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  1. How to Create a Connected HCP Customer Journey

    A data management strategy coupled with predictive and visual analytics will help pharma companies to chart an HCP customer journey based on the insights. The following steps help to include data-driven insights in an HCP customer journey. Identifying rich data sources. Assessing data quality and addressing data gaps.

  2. PDF Guide to Digital HCP Engagement

    and up-to-date customer data derived from past interactions to optimize future interactions and create a personalized customer journey at the time, place, or channel of a customer's choosing. Successful multichannel digital programs help bridge the gap between the value a company can offer and an HCP's needs:

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    Recognizing the deeply personalized insights the field reps who know HCPs best can offer, there is an opportunity to be seized for field talent to play a more established role mapping the HCP journey itself - such as advising on customer experience design and co-creating with their marketing colleagues.

  4. How to draft an HCP customer journey

    The journey is important. The same applies to your HCP journeys (customer journeys for HCPs). You adapt your message to your persona (just like the prince didn't show up with running shoes).

  5. Build an Effective HCP Customer Journey Map

    The HCP customer journey consists of the steps a healthcare professional takes before the prescription of a medicine or the choice of a certain treatment method. This journey can start with increasing awareness about a certain disease or treatment method. It ultimately ends when your product is prescribed or recommended, and the HCP shares his ...

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  7. HCP Engagement: Trends, Success Metrics & Omnichannel [2024]

    Life science companies have to think about the HCP journey and give doctors what they expect. If doctors want to receive medical content through a mobile app, then that's what pharma companies should use. ... After all, your events need to be customer-centric in order to boost HCP engagement. Tailor your event surveys to your HCPs's needs ...

  8. Improve HCP Engagement with Healthcare Customer Journey

    Now is the best time to time to implement patient journey mapping in healthcare.. According to a survey of 30 US-based health system leaders conducted by Deloitte, 77% of executives said they are actively reimagining their customer journey planning, switching from treatment to achieving and maintaining health and well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the transformations most ...

  9. Consider the HCP Journey to Ensure Successful Product Launches

    Mapping an HCP customer journey will cause us to think more deeply about our strategic goals that go beyond adopting a brand. This begins with understanding HCPs' behaviors, defining the desired experiences, and adjusting to the environment the brand is launching. Going beyond just reinforcing messages and, prior to launch, ensuring we have a ...

  10. The Digital HCP Customer Experience Journey

    The Digital HCP Customer Experience Journey. Report this article Sherlynn Tan Sherlynn Tan Digital Engagement & Transformation Published Jul 12, 2019 + Follow ...

  11. PDF Riding Out the Storm: The Future of Post-Pandemic Customer ...

    HCP inboxes have been inundated with digital content pushed out by pharma companies. Looking more closely at digital engagements, spending on ... Digital engagement can greatly enhance the customer journey — for example, virtual meetings can be scheduled at convenient times from various locations. At the same time, digital approaches must be ...

  12. Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

    Breaking down the customer journey, phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints accordingly are essential steps for maximizing customer success. Here are a few more benefits to gain from customer journey mapping. 1. You can refocus your company with an inbound perspective.

  13. How to improve customer experience in the pharma industry: PwC

    Facing unprecedented disruption across the value chain, four in ten healthcare CEOs don't think they will be economically viable a decade from now if they continue on their current path. For pharma, improving the customer experience across stakeholders — including patients, caregivers, healthcare providers (HCP) and payers — can benefit both the healthcare ecosystem and the business outcome.

  14. Customer Journey Management in Pharma

    The customer journey is a sequence of steps an HCP takes from their first contact with your brand till they make a prescription or treatment decision. As a pharmaceutical company or sales executive, you'll need to map out and manage the customer journey. ... Asides tailoring your content to the target HCP, ensure you adapt your content to fit ...

  15. A Guide to HCP Engagement

    These best practices can help HCP engagement through several compliant and cost-effective ways to deliver significant value. Icreon's 20-year journey involves helping life science companies bring digital innovation to the forefront. Discover more about how we help Life Sciences companies connect the dots for better customer engagement.

  16. Omnichannel Marketing Case Study: 300 Subscribers in 30 Days

    The Viseven team has gone through plenty of unique cases where an omnichannel customer journey would be a brand new HCP engagement practice in the pharma market.. A top 50 pharma enterprise from France addressed Viseven to solve a problem that has become widespread in the transforming digital world.. The challenge was to increase the number of registrations to a new web portal section for ...

  17. The Future of HCP Engagement in Life Sciences

    SANOFI better aligned its operational teams by prioritizing intelligent insights across the customer journey. They were able to strategize sales more effectively to position themselves as an innovative and digitally progressive market leader. HCP Responsibilities. Healthcare professionals carry out multiple responsibilities.

  18. The Customer Journey: What does it mean to take the customer ...

    The path that an HCP pursues together with a life sciences company is generally referred to as a journey, i.e., a customer journey. Along this journey, the HCP has the chance to go through or ...

  19. Mapping the Omnichannel Customer Journey in 2023

    Mapping the Omnichannel Customer Journey in 2023. In 2023, the way in which the consumer engages with a brand has changed significantly. Marketers need to map journeys across various touchpoints and make sure they work seamlessly. This is at the heart of an omnichannel strategy. A recent report by Arm Treasure Data and Forbes Insight in 2020 ...

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  21. Healthcare Provider (HCP) Customer Journey

    The customer journey is all about the experience that an HCP has with a company or brand. Marketers who understand the impact of the HCP customer journey are more successful in driving impact from brand messaging deployed in the marketplace. In the early days of digital and non-personal promotion (NPP), HCP and other stakeholder email address ...

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  23. Customer Journey

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  24. Harness the power of data and AI in healthcare with new Microsoft

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