Sunday, February 14, 2021

Still Evolving: Pharma’s New Pathway For Digital And F2F Customer Engagement

Still Evolving: Pharma’s New Pathway For Digital And F2F Customer Engagement 

Last year – probably left with no better choice – the pharma industry, in general, had to take an unprecedented interest in digitalization of business processes. It happened faster than ever, especially in the marketing domain, along with a few others. Large research studies, across the world have vindicated this point. However, such digital transformation initiatives of last one year, is far from getting over. These are still like a work in progress. Primarily because, the extent of sudden changes in healthcare customer behavior, overall business environment and market dynamics, are still unfolding – slowly and gradually, though.

Consequently, the future drug marketing roadmap for the ongoing journey isn’t clear, just yet, especially in the area of striking a critical balance between virtual F2F (Face to Face) and in-person F2F customer engagements. Which is why, ascertaining the extent of personalization of customer contacts, customer-centric content development and their preference-based channel selection, may take more time. Accordingly, the framework of a strategic blueprint will need to be continuously updated during 2021, based on robust data.

Charting and analyzing the trend for each critical interface related to customer contacts – based on credible data, has already been initiated by renowned professional agencies. The findings of the same are also started trickling in. Some of which are on the expected line thinking, whereas a few others aren’t so expected, by many.

In this article, I shall dwell on some of these critical trends related to striking a right balance between virtual F2F and in-person F2F customer engagements for commercial excellence in 2021 and beyond. The purpose is to encourage marketers for keeping eyes on the ball, always. This is critical while formulating robust digital marketing strategies – charting a new pathway for reps’ digital empowerment – from here on. Let me start by quoting an important research study.

Digital initiatives helped staying relevant in uncertain times:

Several other research studies, including the Veeva study on ‘Industry-wide digital acceleration’, published on September 23, 2020, highlighted pharma’s digital efforts to stay relevant during a year-long uncertain times, like the last year. Even today, the industry’s digital channels, mostly related to customer engagement, like doctors and patients, are drawing similar importance of the top management.

The research underscored, healthcare sectors in emerging countries, such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia and China are increasingly relying on digital return in a post-pandemic world. Interestingly, digital engagement has now unlocked access even to those healthcare professionals who were declining F2F access to many pharma companies.

‘Slow return of in-person interactions’ – what does it mean?

While the increasing use of digital channels in customer engagement was true during last year, the recent APAC Veeva Pulse Data also shows signs of a slow return of in-person interactions. The top 5 therapeutic areas that have started to reopen include:

  • Respiratory,
  • Cancer,
  • Infection,
  • Diabetes and
  • Cardiovascular.

The study shows that F2F interactions dropped dramatically between February and April 2020 but increased back to pre-COVID numbers by July 2020. Curiously, at the same time, virtual engagements and meetings also continued to increase significantly. Thus, the question to ponder and address properly is – If in-person F2F interaction is increasing alongside digital, what would it mean for healthcare engagement while moving forward?’

Is it a signal for the hybrid customer engagement model in the future?

While doctors are realizing the benefits and ease of user-friendly digital engagement, this may not mean that virtual visits, meeting and engagements are replacing F2F in-person interactions, lock-stock and barrel.

Thus, it now needs to be established by more and larger studies, whether a customer engagement model with an optimal mix of digital and F2F in-person engagements can be more effective for better commercial outcomes, now and in the days ahead. The point that needs to be ascertained first is – what will this optimal mix be – between digital and F2F, which I reckon, will differ from company to company – mostly based on therapy areas they represent. 

F2F engagements may increase from the past year, but not as old normal:

Except initial turbulence, with incredible resilience the pharma industry navigated through the choppy environment during the pandemic, with the skillful...continue reading at...Still Evolving: Pharma’s New Pathway For Digital And F2F Customer Engagement ] 

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