Philadelphia, PA — Every year, the University of Michigan compiles its American Customer Satisfaction Index. Segments like credit unions (85%) and internet retail (80%) have the highest satisfaction. Followed by categories like tobacco (75%) and gas stations (73%). Toward the bottom: Airlines (65%).
Paul Shawah, Vice President of Product Marketing at Veeva, joked, “We’re more satisfied with the industry that kills us than the one that takes us on vacation.”
Shawah shared that same opinion of airlines and expected terrible customer experience… until he booked a trip to China.
Shawah is a United guy, but he booked the trip on a third-party site just to see the full range of flight options. At checkout, he couldn’t tell whether or not he was eligible for an upgrade; so, he jumped on the mobile app. His flight reservation was already updated there. The upgrade didn’t seem to be available; so, he called and was greeted with: “Hello, am I speaking to Paul? … Are you calling about your flight to China?
I’m not sure he ultimately got the upgrade, but that one customer experience upgraded his view of what to expect from the industry. From a third party site to a mobile app to a call center, United had delivered an entirely seamless experience.
Shawah is working with Brian Cantwell, Associate Director of Marketing Technology at Biogen, to try to bring that level of orchestration to pharma.
Cantell showed us what he calls their Mythical Customer Journey:
We’ve all made one – it’s the ideal customer flow through all our integrated communications. It’s mythical because no customer really interacts with our marketing that way.
To create United-like orchestration, Cantwell laid out three basic steps:
- Gather insights from each of those unique touchpoints (what was relevant in the sales call, which email earned a click thru, what video was viewed on the website, etc)
- Take one step forward by improving those individual channels
- Then take a big leap forward by connecting those insights
Taking that leap requires integration between functions that don’t typically get along: marketing, sales and technology.
At Biogen, they took several practical steps to bridge those gaps and get all their silos working together for each customer:
- Their sales and marketing leads sit right next to each other.
- All the systems reps use are integrated in Veeva. It’s their swiss army knife of tools.
- They gave reps visibility into interactions customers have with marketing
- Created processes that gets new materials out to the field as soon as they’re approved
- Focused on a growth / improvement area: personalization across web and email
