In today's competitive Pharma environment, customer experience (CX) isn't just a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity. Yet most Pharma companies are still struggling to tie their CX efforts to real business results.
What is Outcomes-Driven Customer Experience?
Outcomes-Driven Customer Experience is about crafting experiences with the clear goal of driving specific business outcomes. Unlike traditional CX strategies that aim to improve overall experience solely through customer feedback, this approach works backward from business goals to shape experiences that achieve these goals.
The Traditional CX Approach: Challenges and Limitations
Many Pharma companies adopt a CX strategy that goes something like this -
"Improve. Hope. Wait."
Improve: Reactively fix pain points and optimise touchpoints to enhance overall customer experience.
Hope: Hope these improvements will lead to positive customer behavior changes.
Wait: Wait to see if these behavioural changes result in better business outcomes.
While this can lead to some improvements, it often lacks a direct link to strategic business goals. As a result, these companies are seeing limited returns on their CX investments and struggle to show the value of their efforts.
The Outcomes-Driven CX Approach: A Paradigm Shift
On the other hand, the Outcomes-Driven CX approach involves:
- Identifying Specific Business Outcomes: Start by defining clear, measurable business outcomes aligned to commercial strategy
- Determining Necessary Customer Behaviours: Identify the behaviours we'd need to see from the various members within the healthcare ecosystem to reach those outcomes.
- Crafting Intentional Experiences: Design interventions to encourage and enable these desired behaviours and deliver them as one cohesive customer experience.
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.
Flipping the script on CX in Pharma, Jed Casey (2024)
Example: Launching an Alzheimer's Treatment
It's common to consider CX in launch strategies but instead of a vague goal like 'best patient experience', an outcomes-driven approach would focus on the specific strategic outcomes important for commercial success.
For example if we set a strategic goal around driving early diagnosis, this would mean identifying key behaviours like encouraging patients with early signs and symptoms to see a general practitioner, prompting general practitioners to perform regular cognitive screenings and supporting caregivers having difficult conversations with loved ones around memory loss.
Tailoring experiences to enable these behaviors can lead to better patient outcomes and support the successful launch of new treatments. We move away from 'the customer experience' to 'targeted customer experiences' aligned to clear goals.
Conclusion
Outcomes-Driven Customer Experience is a powerful shift in how Pharma companies approach CX. By being more intentional around business outcomes, companies can design more effective and impactful customer experiences. This not only drives business growth but also ensures that CX efforts align with the overall strategic vision.
This is part 1 in series on Outcomes-Driven CX, where I'll be breaking down an approach to more intentionally crafting customer experiences that drive business outcomes in Pharma.