Taking a Customer and Patient-centric Approach in Pharma & Healthcare

Truly knowing your customers in the Pharma and healthcare world is now even more critical to the success of the brands you promote today and in the future than it has ever been. Customer Journey Mapping is an important mechanism that can help you get there.

Pharma and healthcare used to be about putting the product at the heart of your selling strategy. Nowadays, brands across the pharma and healthcare industry have realized that taking a more customer and patient-centric approach is key to remaining competitive.

Just imagine a world where you know your customers so well you can tailor to their needs...

That’s why companies have invested so heavily in CRM systems. Customers are now at the heart of the selling strategy and, by tailoring your brand content and messaging to their needs, you’re more likely to achieve the success you crave for.

What is Customer Journey Mapping and why is it important?

Well for sales teams, it helps to explain the journey a customer goes through when deciding what brand to prescribe for their patients. It is also an enabler of customer centricity, all part of truly understanding a customer's challenges, wants and needs. The information and data you collect from the mapping process is different to what you might get from other sources, thus, providing a full picture of all experiences. 

By also understanding the patient journey as much as possible, it means you can more accurately interpret the influence the patient can have on your customer.

How sales can harness a Customer Journey Map

But you may ask yourself why is it so important for sales teams? Well, as a sales representative working in the pharma and healthcare industry, you have a deep understanding of your customers’ needs, experiences and behaviours, this of course all being an essential ingredient to securing prescriptions for your brand. After all, you work with your customers directly, so you know them better than anyone!

By developing a journey map, it can help you capture the knowledge you have about your customers and their patients, and as a result, help you identify the most valuable touch-points you need to focus on. So, for example, understanding a customers, attitudes and beliefs, in-person/digital interaction references, challenges and pain points helps you to build a picture of how your customers want to receive information around your brand and what makes them ‘tick’.

Technology & Communication

It's important to recognise the key role technology & communication channels play on how you and your company interacts with its customers. Interactions between customers and sales representatives are now taking place across lots of different channels and devices (such as webinars, online brand e-details, in-person customer meetings, Zoom calls, to name but a few) which has created an endless number of possible touch-points across the customer journey.

So, can you imagine a world where you knew your customer so well you can tailor to their needs? Well, now you can and we’ll show you how. 

Circus Street’s brand new course on Customer & Patient Journey Mapping for Sales will help you get a better understanding of your customers, and importantly, increasing the prescriptions of your brands.