The critical role of customer engagement
Editor’s note:
In this article for Pharma Market Europe, Amelia Hutchins explains the importance of delivering a true Omnichannel experience to customers. She highlights that a lack of innovation can be a barrier to genuine engagement and that automation and machine learning are necessary to serve interconnected, personalised experiences.
Qualitative insights and data patterns should inform decisions at both a broad and individual level. Amelia suggests that companies can learn from other industries to achieve true Omnichannel, and that it’s essential to listen to customers and continuously evaluate their approach to ensure total customer-centricity. Finally, she suggests breaking the challenge down into manageable, actionable pieces and starting with a small test-and-learn exercise with customer management at its heart.
Why a successful leap from Multichannel to Omnichannel is within your grasp
The ambition of Omnichannel is to deliver the right message (for the customer), at the right time (for the customer), using the right mix of channels (for the customer).
Pharma companies have wrestled with Omnichannel to the point that many in the industry are tired of even talking about the “O” word. Meanwhile, both within and outside the Pharma industry, we regularly see strategies purporting to be Omnichannel that are, in truth, Multichannel, with some Omnichannel elements. You must have the confidence to jump in with both feet; when interactions are relevant, interconnected and insight-led, with the customer placed at the core of every decision, that’s Omnichannel in action.
Engage your customers
Lack of innovation is often a barrier to genuine engagement. The right technical infrastructure enables companies to connect with customers across all channels. Automation and machine learning are required to serve interconnected, personalised experiences – and to anticipate what should come next in a customer journey. This is the Omnichannel sweet spot that Multichannel (even with aspects of Omnichannel) can never reach.
Be bold by getting beyond surface and vanity metrics. It is useful to know how many customers registered for an online seminar, but how many turned up, and of those, how many stayed for the duration, asked a question, opened the follow-up email, clicked through to the related content, and so on? Data, like feedback, is a gift. Look for patterns which can inform decisions at a broad scale, and seek to layer information on top of past engagements to inform actions at an individual level.
Equally important are the qualitative insights. Ask customers what is valuable to them and find out why. What do they want to see more or less of? What would improve their experiences with your brand? As you are discovering what works for your customers, make sure this is reflected in the way you innovate the content and services you and your teams deliver in future. Using the data in this way will enrich and continuously improve your customers’ experience.
Learn from other industries
It all started with a test aimed at engaging customers. In the early 2000s, my team and I rolled out personalisation to an unsuspecting Amazon UK audience. By today’s standards, there’s nothing too impressive about that. But the start of the 21st century was the early days of eCommerce: the “mobile internet” was in its infancy; a significant proportion of the population remained unwilling to share payment details online; Amazon was still selling actual VHS cassettes.
As hard as it sounds to believe, there was significant pushback from many people at Amazon who refused to believe that a robot could spit out content more relevant and appealing than beautifully crafted website copy.
The pilot test was an unqualified success. Manual content had a typical click-through rate of 4-8%, whereas the personalised version converted at way over 20%. This was a watershed moment for Amazon’s customer experience, and it rewrote the requirement for digital content: make it automated, dynamic, responsive, relevant. And of course, it didn’t stop there. Amazon’s personal, relevant experience now carries across every touchpoint, from website, to app, to live chat, to call centre, to connected TV.
Yes, this is eCommerce – a vastly different proposition to Pharma. But examples of breaking new ground and demonstrating exceptional levels of innovation and customer-centricity can be found in a multitude of industries. Think of recent advances in a heavily regulated financial sector where we can all manage our accounts online, where our online interactions and preferences are recognised in other channels, like call centres and live chats, and where we approve our website payments via our banking app.
How achievable is Omnichannel in Pharma?
If companies in other industries have literally invented pathways to Omnichannel, it’s up to us in Pharma to break down the remaining barriers. There aren’t many industries left where we can do something truly transformational and customer-centric using approaches that have been tried and tested.
Contrary to popular belief, true Omnichannel is achievable in Pharma; we have a clear and exciting opportunity to engage customers more successfully, and the key lies in a change of outlook. Companies can be unintentionally self-serving and assumptive about what they would like their customers to hear, but success can be transformed by listening to customers, continuously checking the approach to ensure total customer-centricity, and using technology to deliver relevance and value.
Omnichannel is within your grasp. If a perceived lack of time and headspace is making it difficult to plan effectively, break the challenge down into manageable, actionable pieces. Omnichannel perfection does not happen overnight, or with one big bang launch. As with the Amazon example, sometimes it starts with a small test-and-learn exercise with customer engagement at its heart.
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