How to deliver excellent customer experience to patients 

Listening to patient needs and providing relevant support and information lies at the heart of delivering customer experience (CX) excellence.  Being patient-centric is not about processes and data, it’s about people.  People who are Pharma’s true customers.  Yet, despite the rhetoric, many companies are still not getting this right. 

In this report, experts challenge the industry to raise the CX bar for patients.  It identifies the critical success factors for effective CX strategy and delivery, the role of other stakeholders, the value of digital data and communications and ways to measure CX success.  

“It always fascinates me how seldom people working in pharma have met real live patients”

Mike Rea
CEO, IDEA Pharma

Leading Pharma and Patient Advocacy experts tackle key issues:

• Focus on Patients: Who do you see as your customer - HCPs, payers or patients?
• Semantics:  Could a consensus in terms of language align Pharma to a shared vision of what patient-centricity means?
• Fit for purpose: Is it time Pharma thought more broadly about patients and their needs – more human-centric, perhaps?
• Leadership: Progressive companies have appointed Chief Patient Officers and specific teams to spearhead and implement strategy – what can you learn? 
• Barriers: What are the internal and external barriers and how can you overcome them?
• Whose responsibility? What cultural change is needed to ensure good CX for patients is a companywide priority? 
• Is it working? What mix of quantitative/qualitative tools and KPIs are critical for effectively monitoring patient CX? 

Key Topics Explored 

• Putting the patient front and centre of Pharma’s focus is a “must-do” otherwise companies will lag behind their competitors and lose market advantage. 
• Delivering effective patient CX is about listening to and understanding the patient’s needs from all angles and achieving positive health outcomes.  This is “beyond the pill” in action.
• Pharma have to move away from summarising patients in terms of averages.  The ‘average’ patient does not exist because each person is unique and initiatives that only deliver for the average patient will please no one. 
• Multichannel, digital and mobile platforms and social media are transforming the relationship between patients and physicians. Pharma needs to listen to these conversations.
• While “pushing” information to patients is bound by many rules, the “pulling” of insights about the patients experience has no regulatory hurdles to overcome. 

Expert Contributors

• Eddie Chan: VP and Head of Global Marketing at UCB 
• Lode Dewulf: VP, Chief Patient Affairs Officer at UCB 
• Mark Duman: Director of Market Development at Intelesant 
• Dr. Paul Field: Global Lead of Professional and Patient Communications at Bayer HealthCare AG 
• Kasia Hein-Peters: VP and Head of Marketing for Dengue Vaccine, Sanofi Pasteur 
• Dina Inverso: Strategy Leader of Reimbursement and Patient Engagement  at CSL Behring
• Mike Rea: CEO, IDEA Pharma
• Andrew Schorr: Founder of PatientPower.info and PatientPower.eu, and Global Patient Advocate
• Suzanne Schrandt: Patient and Patient Advocate, Deputy Director of Patient Engagement at Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute