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Omnichannel CX for life sciences: What do we need to get there?

12 Jul 2022

The cornerstone of omnichannel is the ability to connect with customers across channels of their choice in a contextually relevant way. This means knowing exactly what your customers need and want across channels and tailoring every piece of information sent to them based on that knowledge.

However, operationally executing this level of personalization for exceptional customer experience is a challenge. Even though many pharmaceutical organizations have already started embracing the omnichannel way of thinking, very few are truly making significant strides in building a comprehensive and personalized experience for the customer.

Here are primary reasons why:

  • Siloed approach to omnichannel activities leading to disconnected offline and online engagements

    Ineffective channel and content coordination

    Poor management and governance of enterprise-wide data due to disparate systems

So, what does it take to create an omnichannel game plan that sets your customer experiences apart?

Exceptional customer experiences are born from well-nurtured journeys governed by foundational building blocks. While advanced technology is crucial to its success, organizations also need a change in mindset and cross-functional ambassadors to work towards the common omnichannel goal. In this blog, we outline that journey in three stages.

1. An org-wide mindset change

To provide a great customer experience, omnichannel should evolve from being a mere buzzword to a mindset incorporated within every layer of the hierarchy. Oftentimes, teams hesitate to break away from their familiar methods of orchestrating customer engagement, resulting in siloed omnichannel initiatives across the organization. Changing that mindset of “we’ve always done it this way” is the first - and most critical - step towards achieving omnichannel success. Leaders must address the limiting mindsets across the organization and take appropriate actions to drive that change. This means ensuring that every employee understands the reasons for switching to an omnichannel framework, how it will enhance the outcomes, and what the new process will look like.

A good change management strategy is essential here – one that leads employees, teams, and departments toward thriving and benefiting from omnichannel change, rather than reacting and merely surviving it. For example, highlighting how an AI-driven automated omnichannel framework can enable faster access to customer insights for the salesforce or mean a shorter time to design and execute campaigns for the marketing team can be a powerful way to create excitement, counter fears, help employees trust the new process, and boost omnichannel adoption enterprise-wide.

Changing org-wide perspectives for omnichannel customer experiences

2. Omnichannel ambassadors

To sail through a massive omnichannel transformation, pharmaceutical organizations need to build a well-trained team of experts to lead critical value-adding roles that oversee the implementation, improvement, and management of omnichannel initiatives. It is crucial to

strengthen capabilities and expertise across every layer of the omnichannel framework, including data, medical, content, sales, marketing, and advanced analytics.

A cross-functional team of omnichannel ambassadors

When you have such a diverse set of omnichannel experts aligned to the same vision with full transparency of each other's contributions, it then becomes easier to execute an effective full-blown omnichannel strategy with customer experience as the focal point.

3. Technology and advanced analytics

Advanced analytics built on top of a robust tech stack is the engine that powers omnichannel experiences. It’s not just about dipping into out-of-the-box applications but supporting your omnichannel strategy with the best-in-class technological infrastructure.

Let’s look at some key components:

Key components of an omnichannel tech architecture

  • A Cloud-Based Data Platform: Cloud-based data warehouses or data lakes can help you get an enterprise-wide grip on your data and generate a comprehensive, 360° view of your customers. This is done by consolidating and unifying large volumes of data from various sources (internal sources as well as third-party and CRM systems), solving the problem of siloed systems. These platforms use common data models and advanced algorithms to standardize and integrate both structured and unstructured data, enabling you to take complete control of your data landscape and gain actionable insights through a single gateway.

    Advanced Customer Analytics: The customer analytics foundation helps you make sense of all the collected data by visually displaying customer trends. It can help you better understand the various aspects of customer interactions, including their preferred content, channel, and time of interaction. Robust analytics solutions come with built-in AI-driven learning models that use specific attributes to understand customer behavior based on their historical interactions with the brand, their demographics, prescribing behaviors, content, and channel affinities – enabling you to decipher the needs and wants of the customer effectively.

    Marketing Mix Models (MMM): Developing a deep understanding of customers and their journey along the content consumption experience is a critical precursor to understanding the best marketing channels to use for engagement. This is where MMM can help. It is a technique used to measure the impact of a variety of marketing inputs on sales. The primary goal is to quantify the effectiveness of each marketing input across various channels in terms of its contribution to sales, helping you identify the best combination of channels that drive effectiveness and ROI while optimizing investments.

    Next Best Action (NBA) Engine: An effective NBA model, integrated with key downstream systems, leverages machine learning capabilities to recommend what to do next for a customer based on their past behavior, recent actions, interests, and needs – a crucial enabler for building contextually relevant and personalized experiences. These recommendations, delivered in real-time, can significantly boost marketing and field-force effectiveness when it comes to personalizing engagements.

Conclusion

The right mindset, talent, and technology are the three pillars of success holding your omnichannel strategy together. By ensuring these pillars are executed effectively enterprise-wide, pharmaceutical organizations can lead the race towards providing customers with a smooth, personalized, and consistent experience across every touchpoint.

Authors

Vikrant Ghai
Vikrant Ghai
Vidhan Biyani
Vidhan Biyani