Lyriko team has attended the Reuters Customer Engagement Europe 2022 in London, one of the most important events within the Life Science commercial operations space. We have met so many key personalities and participated in stimulating conversations that have confirmed how personalization is what everyone aims for to take customer engagement to the next level in the post-pandemic era.
We have spotted four essential topics that must be kept in mind to enable a personalised experience for HCPs truly:
1. HYBRID IS THE NEW NORMAL
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been the belief that the shift from F2F interactions to digital interactions would have been disruptive and would completely change engagement dynamics. However, while it is true that the pandemic significantly increased the prominence of digital channels, F2F interactions have significantly rebounded in the post-pandemic.
Indeed, digital channels will have more prominence in the future, yet the real challenge is not how to enable personalization there, but how to make personalization happen in a truly omnichannel fashion, considering physical and digital venues. As noted by Caroline Neumann, Global Director CMK at P&G Health, Life Science companies must pay attention to the risk of being “lost in change” when investing in enhancing the logic of digital channel communications. That is, the Pharmas must be careful that, in their haste to resort to digitisation because of covid, they do not make wrong and rash decisions, which will lead to errors and inconsistencies in the long run.
2. NOT DIGITAL-FIRST, BUT OMNICHANNEL-FIRST
As highlighted above, the real challenge is to make digital and physical work seamlessly. The complexity grows exponentially when such infrastructures need to be scaled globally. Nick Lagan, Global Head of Omnichannel Operations at Grünenthal, highlighted in his talk how global and local divisions should complement each other to create synergies: local divisions have the most specific data, yet some processes work better when a shared framework is defined globally. It is essential that global and local leaders start communicating early to ensure a shared vision before implementation starts.
3. MICRO-SEGMENTATION
Differently from what has been done until now (that is: using the same static personas over and over again), it is now crucial to generate more specific persona profiles using dynamic scoring and meaningful metrics. As noted by Jose Maria Guido Avila, Global Brand Lead, HCP Marketing at Sanofi, best results are achieved not when focusing on vanity metrics, but when marketing teams work creatively with data to go beyond basic KPIs and find where positive experiences really lie within the flow of interactions with HCPs. Pharma companies should not see the abundance of channels as an excuse to spam communications, achieving “omni-hassle” rather than omnichannel personalization, but as a way to reach their customers where they want to be reached, and with the content that actually matters to them.
4. CONTENT RELEVANCY
To apply the Next Best Content paradigm, content has to be relevant to the customer, based on personal and contextual insights. Florent Buhler, Commercial Excellence Director Immuno-Oncology at MSD called this process the “mindshare” battle. We are all overloaded by promotional insights, so much that our brains have developed a sort of screen to protect themselves from this mass of information, most of the time useless.
Therefore, to get the right point of contact with the HCP, it is necessary to find the key to breaking through his/her interests, achieving what has been defined as the “digital smile” by Jose Maria Guido Avila. Which is, that spontaneous, almost surprised, but undoubtedly satisfied reaction that accompanies the thought: “That’s what I was looking for!”.
We can say the main takeout from the event is: content is king.
It is the most essential instrument for successful interaction with HCPs. Therefore, all tools must be put in place to make it as personalised and relevant as possible, to make it accessible at the right time and through the best channel, online or offline depending on the moment.
The focus in the coming years will undoubtedly be this: how to make the content usable in the best possible way.
