Success in customer experience might be a marathon…

…but you can learn all you need to know in a sprint at Create Health’s CXIH Summit 2015.

This Sunday, the London Marathon will bring together two of the best long-distance runners in the world, as current marathon world record holder Denis Kimetto takes on fellow countryman (and former world record holder) Wilson Kipsang.

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For both Kenyans, success depends upon a multitude of elements coming together and working in their favour. Nutrition, training schedules, rest and recovery, and mental preparation must all be spot on. Coaches, dietitians, physiotherapists, and psychologists must all be pulling in the right direction. But what if one element isn’t functioning as it should; what if Kimetto comes to the line worried that his diet’s not been right, or if Kipsang feels his head coach has been off his game? It wouldn’t stop either starting the race, but they’d have niggling doubts running through their minds about how well they could perform.

It’s the same in anything we undertake; from learning to play the piano, to recovering from a chronic condition. Every failing element creates doubt, a doubt that can grow to dent faith in success. A patient who undergoes yet another unsuccessful treatment change is going to lose faith in their doctor, the value of adhering, and perhaps their recovery altogether.

Positive customer experience is considered golden across all consumer-based sectors; whether you’re booking a hotel room or looking for an insurance quote, every element you encounter should run like clockwork, making the road to success as seamless and hitch-free as possible. It’s no coincidence that, with digital so central to modern day lives, Barclays launched their Digital Eagles initiative to improve digital literacy amongst young and old. A customer who better understands how to use the platforms Barclays operates within, is of course, more likely to have a positive customer experience when engaging with them.

Consumer brands invest in customer experience because if they don’t, there are a million other places their customers can go. The situation isn’t quite the same in healthcare, but the implications are no less significant. From a commercial standpoint, a professional who, from their very first interaction with a representative, feels informed and in control is more likely to prescribe and re-prescribe a treatment (and more generally have a positive opinion of a brand). And from an ethical perspective, a patient given the tools to take charge, not just of their treatment, but also of their life in general, is more likely to achieve a better outcome.

At Havas Lynx, we’ve recently been discussing the importance of taking a more holistic view to patient experience in order to achieve treatment success. As such, we’re pleased to be taking part in Create Health’s Customer Experience In Health Summit, held on 12th May in London. The Summit brings together the brightest and most inspiring leaders in customer experience from inside and outside of healthcare, with experts from GSK, Merck Serono and Pfizer talking alongside the best from RBS, Travelodge, AXA and many more. We’ve always really enjoyed working with the Create Health team; they have a knack of creating a relaxed atmosphere that opens people up to genuine debate and discussion. Last year, those of us that attended their event were imbued with ideas and enthusiasm. This year, our very own Rob Fuller and Claire Knapp will be delivering a talk, but whether you listen to them or any of the other speakers, you’re bound to stumble across some enlightening insights.

For more on the power of patient engagement and holistic support, read our latest white paper, Smiles That Save Lives

We’re pleased to be able to offer Havas Lynx clients a 75% discount off the normal ticket price for CXIH 2015. Just use the promotional code ‘havas’ when you come to pay.

The death of traditional consumerism: what does it mean for pharma?

HAVAS Worldwide’s latest paper, The New Consumer & The Sharing Economy, outlines a growing sentiment against over consumption. Seven in ten of us believe it to be putting our society and the planet at risk, and the majority feel that current models of consumerism are not sustainable. More than this, we feel weighed down by the sheer amount of ‘stuff’ we own.

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Put simply, we’re tired of consumerism and bored of adverts that try to manipulate us by pushing products at us like they’re the answer to life’s problems. We want to be in control, we want to be able to make informed decisions about how we spend our time and money and we don’t want others telling us what to do.

This goes for healthcare as much as consumer markets. Patients no longer expect to merely be prescribed a pill that they unwittingly swallow down once a day and hope for the best. Facilitated by an abundance of information technologies, they are knowledgeable about treatments and want to be actively involved in managing their own health care.

The wealth of monitoring apps across treatment areas (AsthmaCheck, MoodPanda and Diabetes In Check are but a few) is a fair indicator of a general desire for information and authority regarding personal treatment regimens. For financially hamstrung public health providers such as the NHS, this is a welcome trend. Empowering patients with greater control of their treatment reduces the burden of care placed on public providers, and has the potential to garner much better results by actively engaging patients.

So where does pharma fit into all this? The patent model and subsequent relationship with healthcare providers has always followed traditional models of consumerism; ‘we are a drug company and we’ve produced this drug which you can buy from us’. So how can we who work in pharma support and facilitate patients’ desires for greater inclusion and authority in their care and still turn a profit?

Firstly, we need to reshape our relationship with the people we serve. Pharmaceutical companies can no longer act as vendors and must become partners to professionals and patients alike. In doing so, we need to provide solutions, not pills, and increasingly this will mean delivering holistic services and systems of care. ‘Beyond the pill’ solutions are an arena in which there is massive potential for pharmaceutical companies to add real value.  At HAVAS LYNX we’ve worked on a series of patient care programmes that have been shown to half the number of days patients spend in hospital.

When pharma partners its expertise with other parties, it opens up a world of new revenue streams. Start-up accelerator organisations such as Healthbox are stimulating the sort of innovation and collaboration that pharma should be looking to more and more. Even amidst the context of Pfizer’s efforts to secure the acquisition of AstraZeneca, pharma companies need to look beyond traditional development pipelines when seeking to expand their offering.

We need to innovate past the sector mainstream and recognise outsider trends, much in the same way that Facebook is making moves to expand beyond social by purchasing of ProtoGeo. There are so many exciting and disruptive technologies being developed that have the potential to transform the lives of patients. Far more than offering supplementary revenue, these areas that currently lie on the fringes of the market are likely to be the mainstay of pharmaceuticals in the future.