Your browser is not supported.
The latest version of Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge is required to use this website.
Click the button below to update and we look forward to seeing you soon.
Update now
Caroline and Harry explore why customer engagement is still falling short (and what to do about it) – unpacking the research that shows a deep disconnect between HCP’s, who remain underwhelmed by pharma’s communications and Pharma executives, who remain convinced they’re doing brilliantly.
CAROLINE:
[00:00:08 – 00:00:18]
So welcome back to what the Pharma? Where we try and apply our expertise and know how in culture, capability and change to nutty conundrums that are facing our industry.
HARRY:
[00:00:18 – 00:00:43]
Each of these episodes is focused on real issues faced by people at pharma organisations. It’s not made up stuff. Today we’re talking about a chestnut of a topic, I think you could say very present in pharma customer engagement. Despite your response, I know you’re pretty fired up about this one. I’ve got my red rag ready and I’m about to open the stable gates. Let you at it. I’ve got a phrase to kick you off which I know you love. Right message, right channel, right time, go.
CAROLINE:
[00:00:44 – 00:01:24]
So my. Urgh. About customer engagement, it’s just. It’s so talked about. It’s so talked about and there’s so much frustration. I feel like in our industry, when you talk to people about their stuff, a lot of people are frustrated about it. So I feel like it is a can of worms to be opened, but in a good way. So you have opened it with that phrase, which I. The intent is good behind that phrase. And when it was originally coined 15 years ago, whoever came up with it, some clever person, totally good intent, I think. But unfortunately, like a lot of these slightly woolly phrases that are open to interpretation, it has been accidentally misinterpreted, I think, in our industry.
HARRY:
[00:01:24 – 00:01:29]
Yeah, because like all crappy visions, which you could say this is. No one would disagree with.
CAROLINE:
[00:01:29 – 00:02:02]
No, it’s fine, it makes sense. In fact, it’s easy to agree with it. But what has happened, I think, over time is while the intent was to sort of operationalize customer centricity, it was like to grab hold of. What’s actually happened is there’s a subtext to it now, so we might use that phrase, but it sort of comes with a whole load of small print of right message, right channel, right time, but only if it’s fairly straightforward for us to do and it fits in what we’re already planning and we. We’ve got a good sense of whether we can pull it off within compliance rules. Like there’s a whole load of caveats that sit underneath it or attach to it.
HARRY:
[00:02:02 – 00:02:05]
So it’s a bit Model T. You can have whatever you want as long as it is black.
CAROLINE:
[00:02:05 – 00:02:30]
As long as it’s black, yes. Yes. As long as it’s a retrograde email, for example. And my example of this, got a story, of course, is a company where they did a load of research, it was quite a while ago now they did a lot of research, pharma company, Big Big One. And what they found out was that the by far way in excess of all other channels, how healthcare profess professionals wanted to be communicated with was through WhatsApp.
HARRY:
[00:02:30 – 00:02:31]
Okay.
CAROLINE:
[00:02:31 – 00:02:39]
And the reaction to that when this came up in a group of customer facing people was immediately to dismiss it.
HARRY:
[00:02:39 – 00:02:39]
Right.
CAROLINE:
[00:02:40 – 00:03:41]
So I’m not arguing about whether WhatsApp was the right channel. Clearly the healthcare professionals thought it was right channel. I’m not going to get into that. But it was the moment of not even entertaining it as a possibility that really struck me because that says to me that we’re not very customer centric. And I’m accepting this was a little while ago, but I don’t think tons has changed. And the evidence for that is iqvia, bless them, have done lots of brilliant research, including last year 20,000 healthcare professionals, 38 countries, so reasonably punchy. And they looked at essentially the match between what the HCP said is their channel preference, so the channel they’d like to be communicated through and the actual interaction patterns. So how close was that match? So what they want and what they get, basically. Now there were some good countries, well done. Spain and Italy. 66% match, 70% in Italy. So 66% Spain, 70 Italy. I would still argue that’s nearly a third of who are not getting a match. 38 in the UK and 45 in Germany.
HARRY:
[00:03:41 – 00:03:42]
Right.
CAROLINE:
[00:03:42 – 00:04:28]
Ouch. So there is a case to say that actually channel match of that right message should be one of the easiest bits to get because how many channels are there? But we’re still not really hitting the mark. So what is going on there? Cause I absolutely believe the intent was there 15 years ago. The intent is still there to be more customer centric. The rationale for it seems to be well understood and believed, but we’re still struggling to get this alignment and to be truly customer centric in how we show up, because we don’t get to decide that as the industry, it’s not up to us if we’re customer centric. I started in PR and we used to say, you know, PR was about what other people said about you. And this is that, you know, the definition of we’re a customer centric organization.
HARRY:
[00:04:28 – 00:04:38]
Is not one of self anoint yourself, it’s where the customer thinks you are. Yeah, yeah, we’re talking about customer engagement. You’ve also talked about preference. Can you kind of connect those things?
CAROLINE:
[00:04:38 – 00:04:41]
So in the case of the example that was about channel.
HARRY:
[00:04:41 – 00:04:41]
Yep.
CAROLINE:
[00:04:42 – 00:05:13]
So customers prefer to be communicated through certain channels, I prefer to be communicated through text message. My children prefer to communicate me with through Snapchat. That’s a problem for us and we have to navigate that. So it’s just in terms of channel, it’s just preference when it comes to things like right message, then we’re talking more about relevance. So. And value. So is the stuff you’re sending me, do I care about it? Is it going to help me in some way? Or are you just telling me what you want me to know or hear versus what I want to benefit from?
HARRY:
[00:05:13 – 00:05:14]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:05:14 – 00:05:47]
So that’s where that disconnect quite often shows up. And, you know, there’s reams of data that talk about that. And right time is essentially the time that’s right for the customer, not the time that’s right for our brand strategy. So the connection is, you know, it depends if we think about customer engagement as a process or an outcome. So whether customers are more engaged or whether we are. How we are engaging. Yes, but largely it’s used as how we are engaging with customer experiences. The outcome and those three components are part of, but not the totality of creating that moment of engagement.
HARRY:
[00:05:47 – 00:05:49]
And if you get it right as an organization.
CAROLINE:
[00:05:49 – 00:05:50]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:05:50 – 00:05:51]
What does it give you?
CAROLINE:
[00:05:51 – 00:05:57]
Well, I’m not going to answer that because I’m not the expert, but I have some friends who are at Forrester. They’re not really my friends, but they.
HARRY:
[00:05:57 – 00:05:59]
Might be more good research plugging them.
CAROLINE:
[00:05:59 – 00:06:19]
Well done, Forrester, for this research in 2024. So if we’re getting all of that right, this is a proxy, I suppose, but per. So we know already there’s good data to show across industry, improved customer experience correlates to growth. Okay, so macro level, get customer experience. Right. Get more growth, commercial growth, relative to your competitors.
HARRY:
[00:06:19 – 00:06:20]
Yep.
CAROLINE:
[00:06:20 – 00:06:44]
Brilliant. If we chunk down that a little bit and say, actually part of that getting it right is to have something that’s quite personalized. So, you know, that whole encapsulation of preference and relevance, we could probably label personalization. So it’s really right for me as the customer, not as the company. Then we’ve got some great data from Forrester. So personalized content, increased prescribing likelihood by 47% percent.
HARRY:
[00:06:45 – 00:06:46]
Holy moly.
CAROLINE:
[00:06:47 – 00:06:51]
And reduced overall marketing spend by about 30%.
HARRY:
[00:06:51 – 00:07:00]
So you can do less, essentially, if you’re saving. If you’re saving on marketing spend, that’s probably doing less of something and you’re getting bigger returns.
CAROLINE:
[00:07:00 – 00:07:13]
Yes. So it’s a good idea. And I think most of us are bought into that as a direction of travel, that’s where we should be going. But what I think is interesting is around the gap between that stated intent and how big the gap still is.
HARRY:
[00:07:14 – 00:07:38]
So 60% of doctors could not name a pharma company that stood out for being particularly effective in their digital communications in the last 12 months. Right. There are just. No, people are just not doing it well. And there is also another massive gap which doesn’t make things better. So only 35% of HDPs felt that pharma’s customer facing resources met their needs.
CAROLINE:
[00:07:38 – 00:07:38]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:07:39 – 00:07:42]
So the combination of timing and content and all of that stuff.
CAROLINE:
[00:07:42 – 00:07:43]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:07:43 – 00:08:00]
However, 80% of pharma executives believe that they’re doing really well. So HDPs, they are the customers, they are the ones that get to decide whether they’re being engaged effectively and so on. A third of them think that pharma’s getting it right, whereas the vast majority of the pharma companies think they’re getting it right.
CAROLINE:
[00:08:00 – 00:08:03]
That is so interesting. That is so interesting. That’s.
HARRY:
[00:08:03 – 00:08:06]
So the massive perception gap, slightly to.
CAROLINE:
[00:08:06 – 00:08:07]
Self awareness of us all.
HARRY:
[00:08:07 – 00:08:08]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:08:08 – 00:08:15]
That we think we’re doing better than we are. I mean, there’s always holes in data. Again, as always with this, I’m sure people have got other data they can share.
HARRY:
[00:08:16 – 00:08:16]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:08:16 – 00:08:26]
But I don’t think that’s dissimilar to a lot of other data that’s out there. That there is this kind of consistent void between what we think we’re doing and what we’re actually causing.
HARRY:
[00:08:26 – 00:08:26]
Yep.
CAROLINE:
[00:08:27 – 00:08:37]
And I think that’s, like I keep saying, that’s doubly interesting when we are so ambitious around this. Like I can’t think of a pharma company that isn’t focused on some form of customer experience.
HARRY:
[00:08:38 – 00:08:42]
Yeah. At least espousing that. It’s absolutely the thing you’re talking about.
CAROLINE:
[00:08:42 – 00:08:44]
Yes, yes, definitely. Yes.
HARRY:
[00:08:44 – 00:08:51]
Okay. So there’s a pretty significant gap, multiple gaps. What is going on? Why are there these gaping holes?
CAROLINE:
[00:08:51 – 00:10:49]
Well, I don’t know and I’m not sure any of us know, but I’ve got some theories and we’ve got some experience and we’ve got some experience and we’ve seen some things definitely living alive and well in multiple of our clients. So, you know, while we can’t be sure, we can have a good informed guess, I suppose. And one of the things that is very obvious is that there has been huge investment in the nuts and bolts, if you like, the infrastructure around making this shift towards more customer centricity improved customer experience, whatever label you want to put on it. And so huge amounts of investment in platforms, in systems, in capability, build training. Everybody have got some sort of customer journey workshop happening at any time. There is no doubt in my mind that we have invested in this and we’ve invested in very rational things, very sensible things that we definitely need. So none of that feels like it was wasted. Wasted. However, like with any change, a big component of it is behavioral. So if we think about any change, no matter what it is, even if it feels, feels like really techy thing, there is a component of that that is about a human behavior being different, especially in the sort of complex change that we’re dealing with most of the time. And we also know that a lot of behavior is driven by belief. So beliefs equal behaviors, which then equal doing something differently. Great. We definitely noticed that as an industry, we know that that’s part of the jigsaw, but we haven’t necessarily done is put the same weight of investment into what I would argue is more likely to lead to successful outcomes as we have with the other side. I would wager that if we tallied up the amount of money we’ve spent on trying to support mindset and behavior change versus what we’ve spent on introducing new CRM platforms, digital training, it would.
HARRY:
[00:10:49 – 00:10:50]
Be 1 or 2% max.
CAROLINE:
[00:10:50 – 00:11:02]
Yes. And so as a result, we’ve kind of got this. We’ve kind of got this surface level shift has happened. It’s like the top of the C has changed, but underneath nothing’s moved.
HARRY:
[00:11:02 – 00:11:23]
There’s easier, I believe, to make decisions about capital investment for new systems. It’s the same thing. I mean, here we’re talking about data and AI and fancy systems that will enable the customer engagement stuff. It is the same for CRM, for erp. These big system solutions.
CAROLINE:
[00:11:23 – 00:11:24]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:11:25 – 00:11:28]
Often to behavioural challenges.
CAROLINE:
[00:11:28 – 00:11:33]
Yes. And of course, it is easier to put a number on that because it’s a tangible thing.
HARRY:
[00:11:34 – 00:11:42]
And people won’t question you either if you’re sitting around the boardroom going, right, I’m proposing we’re spending 20 million on this system. All right. Yeah. It’s coming from a great supplier.
CAROLINE:
[00:11:43 – 00:11:53]
Yes. And the other annoying thing about behaviour and mindset, change versus system change is when it’s a system or a process or a tech piece of tech. Someone else’s problem, frankly.
HARRY:
[00:11:53 – 00:11:53]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:11:53 – 00:11:55]
You buy in the thing.
HARRY:
[00:11:55 – 00:11:55]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:11:55 – 00:12:03]
And it works or it doesn’t and it’s someone else’s problem somehow. There’s always an opportunity to kind of go, they are in Charge of making that work.
HARRY:
[00:12:03 – 00:12:03]
Yes.
CAROLINE:
[00:12:03 – 00:12:06]
And realize the associated benefits if we’ve quantified them.
HARRY:
[00:12:06 – 00:12:07]
Yes.
CAROLINE:
[00:12:07 – 00:12:10]
With behaviour and mindset stuff, it’s like, oh, it’s me.
HARRY:
[00:12:10 – 00:12:12]
Yeah, we got do it. Yep.
CAROLINE:
[00:12:12 – 00:12:13]
It has to be me.
HARRY:
[00:12:13 – 00:12:14]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:12:14 – 00:12:27]
Because we can’t control the behaviour of any other human. Much as I try with my children. You cannot control the behavior. You can’t tell someone else how to behave and believe it’s going to have an impact. You can and should control your own.
HARRY:
[00:12:27 – 00:12:49]
Agree. The thing that I was going to jump on there was, and I’ve seen it in different contexts, it’s not just a pharma thing. For sure. It’s not just a customer engagement thing. Even when there is the acknowledgement of. Right. We’ve really got to work with the beliefs and the behaviours. It’s. We’ll do it over. Can’t you do it over there? Don’t you rubic or insert name of consultancy? Probably could be an internal team.
CAROLINE:
[00:12:49 – 00:12:49]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:12:51 – 00:12:56]
Just make them be more efficient or more innovative or more customer centric or whatever.
CAROLINE:
[00:12:56 – 00:12:56]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:12:56 – 00:12:57]
Over there.
CAROLINE:
[00:12:57 – 00:12:58]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:12:58 – 00:12:59]
So we don’t have to change and.
CAROLINE:
[00:12:59 – 00:13:03]
People don’t intend to do that. Like it’s not people going, oh, I, I believe I’m perfect.
HARRY:
[00:13:03 – 00:13:03]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:13:03 – 00:13:11]
But it’s just intuitive for us all to go, okay, someone else needs to be different here so that I don’t have to be.
HARRY:
[00:13:11 – 00:13:23]
That’s just human for the decision maker, the leader that goes, no, actually change starts here. Yes, I’m going to change. I do want to live our vision of customer centricity. Engagement.
CAROLINE:
[00:13:23 – 00:13:24]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:13:24 – 00:13:25]
What should they be doing?
CAROLINE:
[00:13:25 – 00:13:47]
So I think they should be role modelling a whole series of stuff. Yeah, I’ll come on to in a minute. And also if you are in a position where you have the power to do something different, and I know we talk about this a lot, but it comes back to how are we designing what good looks like in this organization? What do we value?
HARRY:
[00:13:48 – 00:13:48]
What gets you ahead?
CAROLINE:
[00:13:49 – 00:14:23]
Formal and informal. So formal, what are our sales incentives look like? What do our compensation schemes look like? What do our objective setting process look like? All of that stuff. Formal stuff and informal stuff. So what do I ask questions about? What do I call out when I’m rewarding and valuing and celebrating things, etc. Etc. And the big shift with all of that, I think, think if we really want to be customer centric as defined by our customers, not by us, is two things. One is, first of all, are we measuring that in any way?
HARRY:
[00:14:23 – 00:14:23]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:14:23 – 00:14:26]
Like, so some companies are definitely doing this, but some are not.
HARRY:
[00:14:26 – 00:14:27]
So what are they measuring?
CAROLINE:
[00:14:28 – 00:14:33]
Like what customers think of us? Do we even know the answer to that question or not?
HARRY:
[00:14:33 – 00:14:44]
And is your actual customers. So it’s not the data we’re talking about which is the big scale studies and all the rest of it. It’s like the people you are insert name of Pharmaco your and probably the.
CAROLINE:
[00:14:44 – 00:14:46]
People who are seeing those customers every day do know that.
HARRY:
[00:14:46 – 00:14:47]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:14:47 – 00:15:11]
But is it aggregated in some way that you can then go okay, is the stuff we’re doing making a difference to how customers feel about us? And actually and as an aside, customer feeling towards us is great. Sentiment, perception, experience, great. But that needs to cause something and what we’re hoping it causes is preference. Essentially they prefer our thing, whatever it is time, effort, attention, partnership, medicine to.
HARRY:
[00:15:11 – 00:15:15]
Others because there is limited capacity. You’ve got to choose.
CAROLINE:
[00:15:15 – 00:15:18]
I’ve got five minutes. Am I going to speak to you or to you?
HARRY:
[00:15:18 – 00:15:21]
I’m going to prescribe that or that. Yeah, all that.
CAROLINE:
[00:15:21 – 00:15:34]
So success metrics, incentives that bundle based on what the customer values and whether we are delivering that versus based on for example volume of interactions.
HARRY:
[00:15:34 – 00:15:34]
Yes.
CAROLINE:
[00:15:34 – 00:15:45]
So that shift but critically at all levels of the organization. So it doesn’t work well if we are only saying if you’re in a customer facing frontline role.
HARRY:
[00:15:45 – 00:15:45]
Yes.
CAROLINE:
[00:15:45 – 00:15:53]
You get measured and incentives on that. But us, yeah. Big wigs up here, we’re not being motivated or incentivized around that at all.
HARRY:
[00:15:53 – 00:15:54]
Yes.
CAROLINE:
[00:15:54 – 00:15:55]
We can just carry on being and functions.
HARRY:
[00:15:56 – 00:16:23]
I’m saying off to the side but essentially the ones that aren’t in the customer facing roles and they’re not the leaders. So those that manage contracting, that kind of stuff. Yes, I know we, we have worked with some folk that have found this bit. Of course it’s hugely impactful on the experience of the HCP is the contracting arrangement they have for that pharma company if they’re going to do a speaking event or something. Yeah. And as some systems can be in process. So painful.
CAROLINE:
[00:16:23 – 00:16:23]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:16:23 – 00:16:26]
And that of course just disengages the person.
CAROLINE:
[00:16:26 – 00:17:06]
So how are those areas of the organization being incentivized based on customer value, customer experience. So that’s one. So if you’re in a position of power, you could have a look at that. I think even if you’re not officially hierarchically in that position of power, you can still call out great stories of moments where the customer experienced value. So it is within everybody’s gift. I would say. I think the other thing is about involving customers so what if we just did more co designing, co development, co thinking with our customers and there’ll be a million voices out there and in my own head I feel it going, oh, that’s going to be so hard.
HARRY:
[00:17:06 – 00:17:07]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:17:07 – 00:18:08]
But I absolutely believe unless we can crack that, how can we ever claim to be customer centric? Because we just won’t know because we’re not customers ourselves. So yeah, I think that could be interesting for brave companies. And I’m sure again there are in fact I know there are pockets where they are practicing with this and it’s not market research again, it’s not that big aggregated stuff. It’s actually genuinely rather than building for and then processes. So even language is important. So if you have brand planning that just reinforces brand centricity essentially. But a simple shift of relabelling that to, I don’t know, make it up, customer planning, reframes some of that thinking and then of course you can build from there and put in more opportunities to pull in the customer into that thinking. It doesn’t mean that the company is not trying to sell their product anymore and just fixing whatever problem the customer. Of course there has to be alignment between what you have to offer and what the customer needs are. Of course there does.
HARRY:
[00:18:08 – 00:18:09]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:18:09 – 00:18:11]
I mean the frame starts with the customer.
HARRY:
[00:18:11 – 00:18:56]
We do spend a lot of time working with teams that and organizations, not just account teams in helping them to realize the transition they want to from the kind of the sales model of old product promotion to genuine partnership. And there is can be a point of confusion when we are talking about spend time understanding your customers needs essentially what’s going on in the account, what are their priorities, what are their pressures? Where are the holes in the patient journey? What do these stakeholders care about, you know, what are they researching, what is keeping them awake at night, all of that stuff. And there’s a point that comes in that we go, but what about us? Yeah, absolutely, us, them comes into it just a little bit later.
CAROLINE:
[00:18:56 – 00:18:57]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:18:57 – 00:19:36]
So swim around in your customer’s world for a lot longer and then when you are super sure, pretty sure that you understand what matters to them, the problems they’re trying to solve, you go right now, given our wealth of resources and the wonderful products we have and everything around it, how we positioned to help with those things? Yes, because if we help with those things yet the magical triple win or the common goal as we like to say, where patients get better treatment. Yes, the hcps, the pressures alleviate whatever they are. And more patients are getting faster access to the best treatments, you’ve got good products, then you’ve increased the market for your products.
CAROLINE:
[00:19:36 – 00:19:54]
And none of this is new. Like, there was great examples in all of the companies we work with of people doing this, but again, like, we keep banging on about it’s about consistency and it’s also about the frustration that some of these teams experience in an organization that says it’s customer centric but doesn’t feel like it.
HARRY:
[00:19:54 – 00:20:14]
Yeah, I mean, you talked a bit about habits. Another framing on that is the. Or framing on it, the motivation and discipline. When you are doing behavioral change, the motivation, at least theoretically, is there. Do this, it will get better, it might then wane if your incentives are not keeping you motivated. What about the discipline stuff?
CAROLINE:
[00:20:14 – 00:21:58]
Well, I think that’s where it gets a bit tricky, because I think there’s a good question we can all ask ourselves in organizations, which is, what are the consequences if I don’t do it? Because quite often we talk a lot about accountability, but for real accountability, that’s to be a consequence of something happening or not happening. So holding people to account, I think is always an interesting one because quite often it’s sort of linked very much to feedback. So the consequences of I might get some negative feedback or be called out on that in some way, but actually sometimes we need a bigger consequence than that. So we want rewards, but we also want consequences. And I think a lot of time we don’t. The answer to that question is there are none. So, very tactically, what happens in an organization if you don’t put data from a call that is useful into the CRM, does it happen? Yeah, yeah. And that is such a linchpin then of so many other parts of the jigsaw, but there’s no consequence attached to it. So it almost sends this message that actually the organisation doesn’t really care if you do that or not. So there’s something very at the heart of this, which I know is easier said than done, which is getting really precise on what we mean as an organization and it might be different for different organizations about customer centricity. So when we are customer centric, this is what it will look like and that’s going to have some data stuff of what customers think of us, like the outcome of that customer centricity. But it’s also going to have some real tactical operational things of when we are customer centric, we will habitually be entering data that’s joined up. And that precision, I think, could be really helpful in helping people know what they’re supposed to be doing that’s different because when it’s just conceptual vision. Okay, but what am I supposed to do differently tomorrow? Yeah, it’s very hard to pin that down.
HARRY:
[00:21:58 – 00:22:00]
Yeah. You can’t just switch on there.
CAROLINE:
[00:22:00 – 00:22:00]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:22:00 – 00:22:01]
Now I am customer centric.
CAROLINE:
[00:22:02 – 00:22:03]
Yes. Mindsets.
HARRY:
[00:22:04 – 00:22:04]
Mindsets.
CAROLINE:
[00:22:04 – 00:22:06]
What is it and how do we change them?
HARRY:
[00:22:07 – 00:22:10]
Yes. It is bounded around a lot by us as well.
CAROLINE:
[00:22:10 – 00:22:11]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:22:11 – 00:22:40]
Essentially the way that we think about things. So when you hear customer engagement or customer centricity, what do you think about? What does it lead to in your intentions? What do you believe is your accountability or responsibilities in that? And of course, we’re looking to. And I think the organization we’re working with are looking to a position where everybody feels like I am in part responsible and accountable for high levels of customer engagement.
CAROLINE:
[00:22:40 – 00:22:40]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:22:40 – 00:23:04]
I’m doing my bit to contribute towards that. It’s not a separate team called Customer Engagement Team, it is us. We talked about before, different levels, different jobs, everybody can contribute to that. And the actions that come out of it as well being like, right, if I am accountable for that, then I need to do those things like put the data into the, into the CRM system so that we can achieve this thing together.
CAROLINE:
[00:23:04 – 00:23:05]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:23:05 – 00:23:08]
Not sure it’s great definition of it, but that I think that’s how it.
CAROLINE:
[00:23:08 – 00:24:26]
Shows up and what we know about mindset and the sorts of things that change mindsets. Because essentially if we go back to the beginning of this conversation, we’ve invested loads in systems and processes and training and there’s this undercurrent. It’s like when you see a boat and there’s an anchor, it’s anchored to the sea floor, the boat is moving around. So it looks like progress is happening, even if it’s not circular. But actually the stuff underneath is absolutely not shifted at all. It’s solid. And so you’re never going to get real traction until you address that stuff underneath. And I think the thing that’s underneath is organizational mindset. So I’m not talking now about just one or two people because quite often you’ve got loads of people who absolutely believe it and are convinced. But until you feel this shift in the sort of received wisdom inside the organization, you’re not going to get that real flow happening and trajectory. And what we know about that is stuff like identity. So how do we think about ourselves as an organization? Are we an organization that sells medicines? And that’s our job that’s going to make you really brand centric. When organizations have been successful, they’ve Reframed that to say, actually we’re an organization that by improving health outcomes for patients, we manage to sell medicines and deliver returns to shareholders. And so it’s a flipping of.
HARRY:
[00:24:26 – 00:24:40]
And that’s the difference, I think with the mindset bit. Because everybody’s saying that, everybody’s saying we are a patient centric health outcome improving organization that is espoused.
CAROLINE:
[00:24:40 – 00:24:40]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:24:40 – 00:24:42]
No problems there.
CAROLINE:
[00:24:42 – 00:24:52]
But it’s when the rubber hits the road and it’s like actually because the bit that’s underneath that is then if you really believe in that as your identity, when you have a trade off moment.
HARRY:
[00:24:52 – 00:24:52]
Yes.
CAROLINE:
[00:24:53 – 00:25:04]
You align it to who you’re trying to become or who you believe you are rather than who you used to be. And that’s the difference between an organization that’s made a mindset shift and one that hasn’t.
HARRY:
[00:25:04 – 00:25:11]
Yeah. And that individual will be reinforced in the behaviour that they want versus everybody.
CAROLINE:
[00:25:11 – 00:25:20]
That’s what we want to do. Why would we not do that? Versus that feels a bit uncomfortable. So let’s just not do that because it’s too challenging.
HARRY:
[00:25:20 – 00:25:21]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:25:21 – 00:26:17]
So that is all the things that we’ve already talked about. Measures and rewards aligned up to that. The leader behaviour, the reaction you get in the room when you say this is what we’re going to do. The leader’s like, oh, oh yes, that is what we should be doing. And I think there’s also something linked to that that’s even harder, that is about making the old beliefs uncomfortable. So that that kind of. We don’t believe that here anymore. And making that quite overt. This is not what we are alongside what we actually are. And then of course people need to experience benefits. So reams of slide deck saying this is what’s going to happen when we’re doing it is insufficient for people to really shift mindsets collectively. What we need to do is have a go. Have a go. It’s a bit like we talked about in the episode on questions. Try doing some questions, see what happens. See if you get a different result. And ditto with some of this stuff. Try it. Take a small area of the organization, give people the experience and share it. Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:26:17 – 00:26:24]
Whether it went as intended or not. Yeah, yeah. Because if you bury it, like didn’t have a super positive outcome, then it’ll just fester.
CAROLINE:
[00:26:24 – 00:26:25]
That sends a message in it.
HARRY:
[00:26:25 – 00:26:26]
Yeah, exactly.
CAROLINE:
[00:26:26 – 00:26:39]
And of course we’re ultimately shooting for nirvana and getting there, but you need to stage gate it. So pick off something and go after it. If it’s channeled, go after that. If it’s content, go after that work on getting relevant.
HARRY:
[00:26:39 – 00:26:43]
Well, if you’re gonna do your research, which they are doing.
CAROLINE:
[00:26:43 – 00:26:43]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:26:43 – 00:26:45]
Put effort into what you can do with it.
CAROLINE:
[00:26:45 – 00:27:32]
Yeah, but I think that’s. Pick off what you want is the answer to like. I feel like just saying put like just. It’s just jfdi, isn’t it? Maybe it’s about having a more precise goal. So like get more precise than right message, right thing, right time or we’re gonna improve customer experience. It is this. It is this. Like that’s a great future aspiration. But these big statements, it’s like, well you know we talked about on the other one about the gold medal, it’s like so you know, we’ve got some great data. If you’re only at 30% match between preference and alignment in the UK or 45% in Germany, maybe that just go after a goal and see the improvement and believe that you can make improvement in there. There’s something about that and it might not be that, but they’re trying to do everything all at once with these really nebulous labels on it.
HARRY:
[00:27:33 – 00:27:43]
I think it stays hidden because it’s ugly, the data so it doesn’t get shared internally, widely. You hide that dirty washing. Yeah, because it’s too painful.
CAROLINE:
[00:27:43 – 00:27:56]
Lance that boil. Come on, get everybody. Well, if we say everybody owns it, then everybody owns the problem too. Bring it into your next town hall, bring it into your next team meeting, bring it into your next one to one.
HARRY:
[00:27:56 – 00:28:07]
And do you think that within that. Because it probably should be at the organisational level, you decide right what bit we’re going after specifically rather than it being distributed like yeah, but imagine if.
CAROLINE:
[00:28:07 – 00:29:20]
A company went, okay, we know aspirationally we want all of these things working together, but first we’re going to fix the channel preference bit and we’re going to really nail that and work out how to do it. And we’re going to visibly measure ourselves on whether we’re better than the competition at doing that based on what our customers tell us. And then when we’ve cracked that nut, we’ll go on to the next piece of the jigsaw. And you could do that as experiments in different parts of the organization. But the it’s not so much pick one part at a time, it’s the bit around translating this kind of nebulous aspiration into something that people can go after within a 12 month time frame or an 18 month. It’s what we just did for the R and D thing. Be precise about Your goal, what you’re trying to cause, what you’re trying to make happen and hold yourselves to account visibly and talk about it as an organization and align around that together. So we’ve been around the houses a bit, talked a lot about different stuff and kind of rehearsed some, well rehearsed already, arguments in the industry. So potentially what would be quite helpful is if we pick out a couple of things each that we think based on our experience, what we’ve seen, what we’ve seen working in the industry are most useful. So one or two I will let you think. Okay, I’ve got my two already.
HARRY:
[00:29:21 – 00:29:21]
I will think of two.
CAROLINE:
[00:29:21 – 00:29:32]
Okay. So my first one is if an organization is not already measuring customer value that they are offering in the eyes of the customer, so what the customer thinks of the value they bring.
HARRY:
[00:29:32 – 00:29:34]
So asking the customer, basically asking the.
CAROLINE:
[00:29:34 – 00:29:43]
Customer, and I don’t mean like big macro market research, I mean more tangible, more granular, more we can do something with it.
HARRY:
[00:29:43 – 00:29:43]
Yep.
CAROLINE:
[00:29:43 – 00:29:49]
In potentially nearly real time. But you know that if they’re not doing that, do that.
HARRY:
[00:29:49 – 00:29:49]
Yep.
CAROLINE:
[00:29:49 – 00:31:06]
So that’s number one. Number two is use that understanding of the value that you are bringing to customers through the eyes of the customer to incentivize and, and have some consequences. So if you’ve got, certainly if you’ve got accountability as a value, then make sure that there’s some consequence for not doing some of this so that you’re really reinforcing that this matters to the organization in a way that they’re going to do something about it if you’re not on the bus. And of course motivate and incentivise. And the critical bit of that is all levels. So it cannot just be customer facing teams. And the second thing I would go for is to use that understanding of what customers are valuing and how well you’re delivering that value or not to incentivize and have consequences. And not just kind of consequences being you don’t get the incentive, but actually actively have consequences for not delivering value. And I don’t mean blame, this is not about that. What could that look like, having a result? I think what it could be is things baked into, very specifically into objectives. So one of the consequences is actually, you know, if an organization really believes in customer centricity and people are not doing things that are in line with a customer centric approach, then you shouldn’t be able to be a high performer in that space because you either believe it or you don’t.
HARRY:
[00:31:06 – 00:31:07]
Yeah.
CAROLINE:
[00:31:07 – 00:31:11]
In some cases I Know it’s not. There’s nuance of course but it’s back.
HARRY:
[00:31:11 – 00:31:21]
To kind of definitions of culture. If you’re saying as an organization where you’re customer centric then you should get ahead if you’re customer centric and in the opposite then is you don’t get ahead if you’re not.
CAROLINE:
[00:31:22 – 00:31:35]
Absolutely that. And that is an example of a consequence. It’s not about beating people with a stick. It’s just there is a result that is tangible and meaningful to an individual of being customer centric or not being.
HARRY:
[00:31:35 – 00:31:36]
Proper organizational pull through.
CAROLINE:
[00:31:36 – 00:31:56]
And very importantly that is at all levels of the organization. So it isn’t just your cams and msls, it is all functions. There is some version of that and it is all, all levels of the organization. So if you are the most senior leader in the organization, you have that accountability too. And there is a consequence for you too.
HARRY:
[00:31:56 – 00:31:57]
Nice.
CAROLINE:
[00:31:57 – 00:31:59]
Otherwise you don’t mean it and people feel that you don’t mean it.
HARRY:
[00:31:59 – 00:32:12]
What are your two so linking to your one about do your research. Basically ask your customers for those that are already doing that. There’s those organizations that are. There’s some that aren’t doing it yet. But then what happens?
CAROLINE:
[00:32:12 – 00:32:13]
Okay.
HARRY:
[00:32:14 – 00:32:22]
As we know from the big scale stuff, the results are pretty ugly at the moment. You know, not great levels of customer satisfaction based on the engagement.
CAROLINE:
[00:32:22 – 00:32:23]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:32:23 – 00:32:34]
And so what happens with that is gets buried often. You know, it’s a team that is managing that they get in the results go. Let’s just take that off into a project perhaps or something.
CAROLINE:
[00:32:34 – 00:32:35]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:32:35 – 00:32:41]
Rather than going right organizationally this is a truth about the thing that we say matters to us. Let’s all have a good look at it.
CAROLINE:
[00:32:41 – 00:32:42]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:32:42 – 00:32:48]
Available to everybody. Encourage discussions, bring it to town halls. All of that good stuff.
CAROLINE:
[00:32:48 – 00:33:01]
Yes. And noticing differences because it might be some areas you’re getting better scores than in other areas and then that gives you great information to say okay, what are they doing that we’re not doing? Or how is that different? What’s going on there?
HARRY:
[00:33:01 – 00:33:02]
Exactly.
CAROLINE:
[00:33:02 – 00:33:03]
So you can uncover opportunity.
HARRY:
[00:33:03 – 00:33:04]
Definitely.
CAROLINE:
[00:33:04 – 00:33:05]
Otherwise it’s hidden.
HARRY:
[00:33:05 – 00:33:12]
Yeah. And the other thing is it tends to be so big and the ambition is so high that it’s overwhelming.
CAROLINE:
[00:33:12 – 00:33:12]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:33:12 – 00:33:18]
And that overwhelm can absolutely to inertia is a freeze response.
CAROLINE:
[00:33:18 – 00:33:18]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:33:18 – 00:33:24]
Instead of what you can do is go right which bit of this are we really going to focus on?
CAROLINE:
[00:33:24 – 00:33:24]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:33:24 – 00:33:48]
And getting very precise in that. So the opposite of the right content, right channel, right time go to. Right. We’re going to focus on channel preference. Here we see there is a massive opportunity. We can clearly define what is it that the customer prefers and are we meeting that? It’s pretty binary on it and say, right, currently, whatever the number is, we’re at 20%.
CAROLINE:
[00:33:48 – 00:33:49]
Yes.
HARRY:
[00:33:49 – 00:33:51]
By the end of next year, we’re going to be at 30%.
CAROLINE:
[00:33:51 – 00:33:56]
Yes. And helpfully, somebody have already given us a sort of industry benchmark.
HARRY:
[00:33:56 – 00:33:56]
Right.
CAROLINE:
[00:33:56 – 00:34:00]
So even if we don’t have our own benchmark, we can at least go with that.
HARRY:
[00:34:00 – 00:34:02]
We’re going to be better than the average.
CAROLINE:
[00:34:02 – 00:34:02]
Yeah.
HARRY:
[00:34:02 – 00:34:28]
Brilliant. Four tips. There we go. Done. So there we are, the end of this episode. Look in the show notes if you want to see the references to the data and the studies we’ve talked about. If you love it, recommend it to a friend. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. That way you won’t miss future episodes. And if you are convinced that customer centricity is something for you, but you’re struggling with the how, give us a shout. LinkedIn, Rubica.co.uk, whatever way you like.
