MAE Day — MAE Day: Customer Experience Principles for Life Sciences

Burning Questions

What if the fundamental truths, beliefs, and guidelines for customer engagement and support in life sciences were as rigorous as the standards and regulations we abide by from research through commercialization?

What might change in our cost, impact, and approaches to education, engagement, and support?

How might industry and customers benefit?

The Life Sciences industry adheres to multiple strict and complex regulations, from the research bench to the body. Guidelines and standards ensure rigor, safety, fair and balanced communications, and a quest for excellence.

The fact stands, however, that today's pharmaceutical landscape features wildly inconsistent customer experiences (CX) for patients and healthcare professionals. The industry has had some wins — uncovering and addressing breaks between customers and care, and enhancing trust (authentically) to increase access and the big R in CRM -Relationships.

We've also seen a few too many false starts — Centers of Excellence emerged only to quietly sunset. We’ve shoehorned CX into traditional functions that weren’t designed to carry it. And we’ve allowed the gravitational pull of comfort with old modes, block true customer-informed design and decisions.

One core reason is that the industry lacks shared principles to baseline what constitutes, at the very least, what is minimally acceptable. This makes the pursuit of excellence fractured and slow. Current approaches prioritize short-term survey scores and superficial metrics while deeper issues remain unaddressed. 

We’ve invested millions in platforms, dashboards, and consulting. Studies from DT Consulting, McKinsey, Across Health, and Deloitte show only incremental progress—some momentum, some stagnation, and some regression. For an industry built on evidence, we remain surprisingly anecdotal. The evidence in the present is clear; Software alone ain't Solving (SaaS) our customers' problems.

All the while,  the evidence is clear: better experiences drive better outcomes. Better outcomes drive better business. And better business, done right, drives trust.

Meet MAE

The MAE framework introduces two powerful, complementary principles:

• Minimally Acceptable Experience (MAE =): No one—patient, clinician, or system—should face avoidable friction, confusion, or burden when accessing care.
• Maximally Achievable Experience (MAE + =): We must aspire to the best possible journey—marked by clarity, ease, partnership, and support.

Together, these define and redefine the floor and the ceiling. And, without both, we’re stuck in the current state — in the messy middle. Principles denote cultural shifts, a deep focus on reciprocity, and guidance that can inform enterprise efforts from vision through value.

The long list of CX experts, innovators, and life sciences leaders in the space provided rich feedback on the concept. [thank you all!]

Advice ranged from cautions around standardizing mediocrity to exclamations that mediocrity would be a positive shift. In the end, there was agreement that without shared principles that inform behaviors and decision making, we’re building on a mountain of sand.

• No foundation for measuring impact.
• No way to compare or improve.
• No consistent path to cultural change that enhances trust, loyalty, or behavioral change.
• No clear focus to simply show up as more helpful.

Feedback also debated goals and overarching focus that this is an effort to drive innovation more than compliance. Simply setting standards AKA Must Dos, would define a set of rules, but our industry is in motion and often volatile. Standards would likely be out-of date before the ink dried.  Principles are Should Dos , they guide us culturally to do the right things for humans and humanity.  

Experience optimization is not a soft skill—it's a clinical, commercial, and competitive variable that demands a base-level foundation. Without this, the notion of Experience as a Medicine (EaaM) — the proven clinical impact and value of making the path to get, start, and stay on therapy in line or above expectations — will remain elusive and inconsistent

Who MAE Serves

• Patients: From clinical trial participants to chronic care patients, MAE principles ensure consistent, supportive experiences across the entire patient journey.
• Physicians & Clinicians: Including prescribers, specialists, nurses, and case managers who require streamlined processes and clear information to provide optimal care from understanding the data to managing a therapy toward intended outcomes.
• Hospitals & Health Systems: From clinical staff to administrative decision-makers who manage therapy integration within larger healthcare ecosystems
• Industry Itself:   Pharma shares customers—and a reputation that needs repair. With shared experience principles, we potentially gain shared wins:

> Lower cost to serve

> Less waste and rework

> Greater loyalty and trust

> And yes, stronger shareholder value.

The Goals of MAE Principles

Protect and Involve the Customer

Codify dignity, clarity, and ease as a baseline expectation, while helping expose hidden gaps, especially in third-party touchpoints.

Enable Measurement and Improvement

Move beyond vanity metrics to track what really matters: adoption, adherence, advocacy, trust, helpfulness, and time-to-start.

Accelerate Innovation

With the basics in place, companies can finally focus on differentiating experiences—not fixing foundational flaws.

This will require standards that enable industry to shift from intent to operationalization. Many fantastic and proven governance and operational standards exist from contributors and partners, which the coalition intends to leverage with attributions.

 Elevate the Industry

Create a shared discipline of experience excellence—one that earns trust and drives long-term reputation recovery.

Note: Advisor for MAE echoed that it is extremely rare to find partners that combine rigorous CX methodology with a deep understanding of Life Sciences. This is viewd as an essential area of exploration from hiring, maturing, and through delivering value.        

 Where are Standards Applied?

If pharma influences the journey—directly or indirectly efforts should be made to meet or exceed the MAE baseline across all touchpoints. MAE recognizes that patient and HCP experiences span multiple channels and require consistent quality regardless of how they engage with pharmaceutical companies and their therapies.

Industry and Partner Roles

With a keen understanding and acknowledgment that we are operating in a ball of yarn, it is still notable that success requires collaborative effort across the life sciences ecosystem and directly from the customers themselves, individually and through representative groups.

Each stakeholder is vital in establishing, implementing, and evolving the MAE principles to create lasting improvement in pharma, device, distribution, and diagnostics customer experiences. Below are some explorations to be explored in roles.

What's Next for MAE Day?

Upcoming Milestones

• Public Webinars: Introduction to MAE Principles and Framework
• Board Formation: Founding Board formalization and public announcement.
• Working Groups: Launch of specialized MAE Working Groups
• Gap Report: Align on the current state through a culmination of existing assets from experts and new perspectives

MAE the Force Be With US

Please join us in building the first shared customer experience guidance for the life sciences industry. Register here to learn more, provide feedback, or become a Founding Member  .

© 2025, Rx4CX, LLC. All rights reserved. "MAE Day" and the "Minimally Acceptable / Maximally Achievable Experience" framework for Life Sciences Customer Experience Principles are proprietary concepts. Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution is prohibited.