Physician Research Module from Manhattan Research
THE CASE FOR CUSTOMER CARE: PHYSICIAN CUSTOMER SERVICE PORTALS
Manhattan Research Releases Report Discussing the Future of Service Portals from Biopharma Companies
A day in the life of a pharmaceutical sales rep isn’t what it used to be. In today's world, there are more reps, and fewer physicians willing to see them – and as a result, pharmaceutical companies are now faced with the task of re-inventing the service model that has been in place for decades.
While the old model put a premium on the amount of time a rep was able to spend with a physician, the reality today is that companies -- and reps -- may derive equal value from encouraging certain physicians to visit a website for additional information, rather than trying to rush through that information during a 90-second in-person detail. As a result, companies are beginning to employ surround sound CRM strategies that integrate Web-based content and customer service with the other channels of communication, like the rep, into an integrated suite of online content and services.
In response to these trends, many pharmaceutical companies are building full-service portals for physicians, which allow physicians to conduct activities such as accessing journal reprints, ordering samples, downloading patient education information, and even live online videoconferencing with a rep. Examples of these platforms include sites such as MerckProductServices.com and PfizerPRO.com.
“Physicians are not saying that they want to do away with the sales force entirely,” says Meredith Abreu Ressi, VP of research at Manhattan Research. “Most physicians still want to be able to talk to a rep when they have a question, or when there’s a new product launch – but if it’s a routine question or transaction, they’d prefer to conduct those activities online, when it’s convenient for them. This is really about providing physicians with a variety of channels to access information so they can choose the method that is most convenient and useful to them.”
Although most physicians are not completely removing the sales force from their overall channel mix, the majority do prefer to conduct some activities online.
“This is not unlike the evolution we've seen take place across most industries today,” says Ressi. “If you think about your relationship with most companies -- be it an airline, a bank, or a retail store -- the norm has evolved such that the customer can choose how he or she prefers to interact with a company, whether than means in-person contact, email, online, or over the phone. This is really just about providing physicians with a variety of channels to access information - so they can choose the method that is most convenient and useful to them.”
For more information about this research module and access to the ePharma Physician® v8.0 study, click here.
The Case for Physician Customer Care:
Service Portals and a Successfully Integrated CRM System
Table of Contents
I. Physician Portals: Where Are We Now?
- Trending and Current Adoption
- Figure 1-1: Service Portal Visitation Declines 2007–2008
- Figure 1-2: Interest in Using a Service Portal Increases 2007–2008
- Figure 1-3: Physician Customer Service Expectations
- Top Portals
- Figure 1-4: Top Biopharma Customer Service Portals
- Figure 1-5: Number of Service Portal Visits (past 12 months)
- Physician Demand for Portals (by Company)
- Figure 1-6: Companies from which Physicians Want a Portal
- Who Uses Portals Today?
II. Developing a Physician Portal: Features and Physician Expectations
- What are They Using? What do They Want to Use?
- Figure 2-1: Top Features Physicians Use on Service Portals
- Figure 2-2: Top Features of Future Interest for Service Portals
- Differences by Specialty
- Figure 2-3: Features of Interest (by Specialty)
- Figure 2-4: Features of Interest among ePharma Physicians
- Figure 2-5: Pfizer Site Examples: PfizerPRO and PfizerOncology.com
- Features to Consider
- Email Customer Service
- Figure 2-6: Email Customer Service in Pharma
- Live Video Rep or Call Center
- Figure 2-7: Physician Interest in Live Video Rep
- Figure 2-8: Merck OnCall and Topamax360 Offer Online Rep Access
- Integrating Medical Affairs
- Figure 2-9: Physician Interest in Reporting Adverse Events Online
III. If You Build It, They Won’t Just Come: Marketing Your Portal
- Marketing the Portal Online
- Figure 3-1: Search Engine Spending to Promote
- Figure 3-2: Frequency of Visiting Medscape vs. Pharma-Owned Portals
- Top Portals
- Figure 3-3: Pfizer Product Sites Link to Pfizer PRO or PfizerOncology
- Figure 3-4: Merck Offers Single Login and Navigation across Portfolio Sites
- Selling the Site: Public vs. Password-Protected Content
- Sales Force Buy-in
- Closed Loop CRM
- Figure 3-5: How Retail has Shaped Expectations for Customer Service
- Figure 3-6: Pharma Struggles to Integrate Physician Touch Points in a Customer-Centric Model
Excerpt
Once upon a time, good customer service meant a friendly voice on the phone or a smiling face in the store. But in today’s world of the Internet, email, text messaging, message boards, blogs, and micro-blogs, consumer expectations for customer service have evolved.
Simply offering a toll-free number isn’t enough these days: In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Web site for a consumer packaged good (CPG) today that doesn’t offer customer service via email. Today, banks, hotels, health insurance companies, and many other service-providers offer online customer service as a routine way of doing things. Sites such as Amazon.com make you hunt for the toll-free number, and handle almost all of their customer service requests online.
Today’s customer service is also hyper-focused on the needs of the consumer – to the point that it is no longer sufficient to simply respond to customer service requests. Instead, many companies are taking customer care a step further by anticipating, or even seeking out, customer service issues mentioned on blogs or in communities. Comcast, for instance, appointed a “Chief Twitter Officer” who monitors Twitter (a micro-blogging site) for mentions of Comcast service problems, and responds accordingly.
So imagine that you are a busy primary care physician – arguably working in one of the most time-crunched occupations out there. You come home from a busy day at the office, pay the bills through Citibank.com, order your groceries through Peapod.com, and maybe a pizza for dinner through SeamlessWeb.com. You send an email to your cable company about a mysterious charge on your bill that month, check your kids’ grades online, and email with a patient who has a question about a lab result. But what if you actually wanted to talk to a rep about a new product or new indication? Could you simply send an email to a company or rep and expect a response? Or might that company actually have online customer service, and a rep standing by waiting to talk to you? For most pharmaceutical, biotech, and device companies today, the answer is “No.”
The business case for developing a portal – especially in a drug company with a diverse portfolio or therapeutic category expertise – is found in recognizing that offering an integrated platform for cross-brand customer service is simply the table stakes for being a competitive company in today’s marketplace. The portal will not, in itself, suffice as a marketing strategy cornerstone, or replace a large percentage of the sales force. It will act as a brand extender and relationship-building platform for today’s increasingly hard-to-reach physicians. And just as we can look back and chuckle about the days when brand teams questioned the value of having a product Web site, one day we will look back and ironically reference the era when physicians lacked a central online resource for interacting with a company.
Full access to this report is available for clients of Manhattan Research’s ePharma Physician® v8.0 study. For information on gaining access, please email sales@manhattanresearch.com.
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