A Customer Operating System: Case Studies from the Other Side

The State of Experience Excellence

Customer and Colleague Experiences in Life Sciences are becoming essential areas of focus for the industry. They are inspiring Customer and Colleague Operating Systems intended to increase clinical and financial outcomes, attract and retain talent, and reduce wasted and ineffective costs.

A Customer Operating System is one in which a thoughtful compendium of solicited and observed feedback drives awareness, analysis, and decisions to improve experiences. Simply stated a system where customers break ties.

In healthcare, this goes beyond attributing operational metrics in omnichannel endeavors where orchestrated visits, views, streams, and calls are heralded as the primary causes for lifts in prescribing. That is the mark of a strictly Financial Operating System.  Operational metrics are valuable but not comprehensive.

In the trailing twelve months, Life Sciences leaders across the top 50 companies have brought up the term “Customer Experience” in quarterlies, 10Ks, and other official financial statements more than 2,000 times and “Patient Experience” more than 2,700 times. When these terms show up in these places, it is an indication of the CX’s importance placed, gained or goaled on shareholder value.

Yet, as the recent reports on CX from DT Consulting illustrate, no single company has transformed its efforts to a point of receiving an “excellent” rating in DT’s Customer Experience Quotient (CXQ®) index with either the HCP or the patient customers.

Links to the reports are at the bottom of this issue and I encourage you to check out the criteria for the CXQ®. Trust, Simplicity, and Relevance are core to the ratings and essential aspects of a compassionate health experience that is good for customers and good for business.

An observation . . . we must get both experiences right. This is a business of intermediaries. A broken experience on either one of these customers breaks both and they often unfold outside our owned and operated engagements. Breaks hurt their relationship and – that relationship has clinical and personal importance for both patients, physicians, and the entire care team.

The Physician Foundation’s longitudinal data tell us – their personal connections with patients really matter to doctors. It is not a stretch to imagine the doctor's ability to enhance the DT Consulting criteria on the left of Figure 1 in connection with a prescription, has an impact on the experience and their relationship. Professionals feel the friction you cause and allow on their patients.

So, the question becomes, “how do we get to excellent?”

Customers Break Ties

Let's start with what gets in the way of optimizing customer and colleague experiences in your organization.

That’s an easy one - - -  almost everything.

Resistance to change gets in the way. Habit gets in the way. Comfort gets in the way. Silos get in the way. Pretty much anything that has the potential to impact the economics and/or egos of other people gets in the way.

When we reflect on the shortcomings of changes we needed to make and why they did not live up to their potential we often realize it was:

• Never Money
• Rarely Desire
• Sometimes Skill
• Frequently Understanding
• Often Habit
• Always People

That would tell us, that we need to take people on a journey to the possible "other side" with us, give them the wheel, and let them wear the cape.

Let's Go Through the Looking Glass:

4 Steps to Help Your Organization Change with a Case Study from the Other Side

The other side is the place you want and need to be but where you clearly are not. Getting there takes a change that is often harder than necessary. Please note, I did not say a case study from the Future.

This is not an exercise in predicting the future. It is an effort to accelerate the present - - what is possible  and valuable right now

Take MyPharma for example (I made that name up) – 

They are listening and observing with an intent to act, and with a very clear future state in mind. That takes cross-company/silo change, which can be done quickly if approached specifically.  

Note the date above. It is 20 months away - and everyone that needed to be involved and informed agreed upon it.

If the idea that it can be done sounds like a fairytale you’ve heard before – you might be on to something. The following steps are from one of my favorite workshops I do to help teams get to the other side from CX theory to CX impact.

Let’s go through the looking glass (this is where it gets a little weird) with some wisdom from The Cheshire Cat.

#1 – Assume Good Intentions

I believe Cheshire Cat may well have inspired Captain Obvious, but this is worth saying . . .

Change often meets the Us versus Them sticking point that leaves both parties believing the other is well – a little crazy. The Case Study from the Other Side can help you realize that you are ultimately striving to get to the same place. It gets easier to unload the baggage of personal agendas and perceptions when we accept that others, we are working with on the same mission have different and valuable vantage points we need to hear.

In thirty years, I have yet to meet someone in pharma who does not want better experiences and outcomes for providers and patients.

#2 Invite People in by Removing Barriers to Participating

 Here are two simple questions you can ask to see if you might be dealing with or creating barriers.

• Is it clear to my colleagues and collaborators that I may have some valuable insights and ideas to help drive better experiences with customers?
• Is there someone in or supporting my company who could likely add essential value that I have not invited to participate in?

These ‘doors’ were put there, opened, slammed, and even locked by people. Meaning, they are imaginary and arbitrary.  If you are behind the door, open it. If you are in front of it accept it is figurative and break on through to the other side.

#3 Get off the Beaten Path

 Part of the exercise I go through with the people I work with includes a careful and deductive look at

• Possible  - With no guardrails, where can we go?
• Valuable - Time for a Ven diagram - narrow the list of ideas to ones that have value for the customer and the business and both.
• Doable – Imagination must give way to practicality and reality, so this is a time to address barriers to the other side. This does not mean we stop here. It means we know what we will face on the journey.

And finally – with a bias for action.

• Actual – Get started.

# 1 Agree on Where You Are Going and Why

You have assumed the best in your collaborators, opened the doors to ideas and insights, and gone beyond the beaten paths. NOW - you need to write the case study that resides on the other side of change - together.

When we all agree and design where we need to be in 12,18, or 24 months out, deconstructing the path, resources, and timelines to get there becomes clearer and a shared mission. 

We will know we are on the right road by measuring positive momentum differentiated from the road we were on (KPIs) and by the organization's attention, activation, and validation of your transition to a Customer Operating System.

 "Roads? Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads." - Back to the Future

There is a place we can go and it is better than where we are today. It is a place where we show up better for customers by hearing and responding to them. It is also a place where business efficiencies and impact are improved because we have stopped guessing and started listening with intent.

If you need to get started on your Case Study from the Other Side and move from data to impact, you can message me here.

Resources Noted Above:

https://dt-consulting.com/the-state-of-customer-experience-in-the-global-pharmaceutical-industry-2022-hcp-interactions/

https://dt-consulting.com/the-state-of-customer-experience-in-the-pharmaceutical-industry-2022-patient-interactions/

https://physiciansfoundation.org/physician-and-patient-surveys/the-physicians-foundation-2018-physician-survey/