I love Amazon.
They’re the poster child for Customer Experience. A company that lives and breathes customer centricity, always pushing themselves to find new ways to create happier, more satisfied customers.
They’re also one of the most valuable companies in the world. They’ve demonstrated that by obsessively focusing on better customer experiences, they can deliver exceptional commercial results, consistently.
Is this how it was sold to your organisation?
“Look at all these other industries. They’ve focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences and have seen incredible business results.”
"Superior CX drives superior revenue growth!”
"This company improved their customer satisfaction score by X%, which we correlated to an increase in revenue of Y%.”
It would be easy to draw the conclusion that it’s definitive:
Better customer experiences = Better business results.
But this is lazy thinking.
We need to scratch beneath the surface.
Why does Amazon focus on great experiences?
Two main reasons:
- A great experience with Amazon drives customer loyalty i.e. repeat customers: “I had a great experience purchasing from Amazon last time, so I’m going to keep coming back”.
- Word of mouth: “I had a great experience with Amazon; you should use Amazon too!”
But how does this work in Pharma?
We’re not trying to get repeat patients. I hope that when a patient finishes on one of our treatments, they never come back.
We don’t expect patients to recommend treatments they’re not intended for.
"But how about Doctors??"
Maybe it’s all about the physician?
Perhaps a great customer experience will differentiate us? Maybe we’ll get a repeat conversation or a repeat engagement?
Really?
That’s why we’re doing all of this? To try to get a repeat conversation with a doctor?
Something’s off with this equation.
Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean everyone is doing it right.
In a recent Forrester survey, only 15% of CX leaders said that they’re effective at proving the business impact of CX, while 58% said they are not effective at this at all!
Clearly, there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about this.
How do we fix it? We need to be more Outcomes-Driven.
Experience
Cater to customer needs to ensure satisfaction
Behaviour
Hope people behave differently as a result
Outcome
Wait to see if commercial outcomes follow
Experience
Design experiences that enable those key behaviours
Behaviour
Define the key customer behaviours to reach those outcomes
Outcome
Set clear and strategic business outcomes
Do less of the first. Do more of the second.
Outcomes-Driven CX means being more intentional about the Outcomes we hope to achieve and working back to craft the Experiences that drive them.
It starts with an honest conversation about what we’re trying to achieve.
What do we hope this customer experience is going to bring?
Are we clear about how this will deliver value for the business and the person we’re designing the experience for?
Ground this change in the real world - how will people act differently as a result of this experience? (for some examples check out the section on behaviours in this article)
How does this ladder up to our strategic goals within the business? (more on this here)
The true commercial driver for CX in Pharma isn't simply loyalty or word of mouth. It’s far more nuanced than that.
We're not Amazon, and that's okay. But blindly following the "CX equals success" mantra, is dangerous. We need to be smarter.
Surely, the first step is a simple conversation about why we’re doing all of this in the first place anyway.