How a Large Biopharma Adopted Preference-Driven HCP Engagement

Feb 24, 2023 | Prath Krishnamoorthy

Even before COVID-19, healthcare professionals (HCPs) had started inquiring about new ways to engage with them, including through digital channels. After all, most of us prefer the convenience of communicating via mobile phones, and HCPs are no different.

In fact, 75% of HCPs indicated they would like to keep or increase their digital interactions with the industry in the latest Veeva HCP 360 Trends Report.

One leading biopharma company made it a priority to go beyond the traditional face-to-face model and truly meet HCPs where they’re most comfortable.

The company’s field teams were already early pioneers of Veeva CRM Engage’s virtual meeting capabilities, and it was a natural extension to grow their capabilities to two-way chat and sharing approved content.

Here are a few of their lessons learned about change management, field empowerment, and content strategy.

Change management eases engagement shift

When the leading biopharma field organization went beyond virtual meetings to run a pilot program for CRM Engage’s other features, it opened a new channel for HCPs to pull information through compliant chat.

Early in the pilot program, the organization put together a cross-functional team that included its brand, field leadership, compliance, legal, regulatory, and training divisions. This broad visibility helped the program move fast and innovate while also ensuring that it stayed within company guidelines.

Even though the organization found the CRM Engage platform easy to use, comprehensive training helped field adoption.

Instead of focusing their time on how the chat function works, the organization wanted reps to think about how they deliver brand stories and how CRM Engage complements what they do best.

Field leadership challenged their team to think about the customer groups that could really benefit from chat messaging and target these groups accordingly. First line managers also received training so they could understand the value of chat messaging and coach their teams to use it consistently.

To bring it all together, the teams shared their experiences, discussed best practices, and reinforced the importance of this omnichannel engagement strategy at leadership-sponsored field feedback meetings.

Empowering field teams

A sales representative’s job is to solve problems: to deliver information compliantly, provide service quickly, enable meaningful interactions, and supply excellent customer service. A common goal is to promote deeper engagement and connections as HCPs request content resources and samples or field teams provide appointment reminders.

When reimagining your HCP engagement approach and getting started with compliant two-way messaging, it’s helpful to communicate with field reps about how new channels will complement their existing face-to-face approach. For representatives who have embraced this approach, it’s almost as if you hologram yourself into HCP offices and can be there 24×7. When HCPs make requests, you’re there.

Digital engagement content strategy

The use of content in omnichannel engagement is an area where the industry has made great progress. In a recent survey, 83% of HCPs stated that they believe the content they receive now is more relevant to their needs than before the COVID-19 crisis.

Right now, many biopharma organizations are focused on repurposing existing content. As field teams learn more about what HCPs need from biopharma, they can optimize their content strategy for digital channels.

One interesting Engage use case, sharing approved content through compliant chat, provides valuable, meaningful interactions. For example, the large biopharma company’s field team experienced multiple instances where an HCP sent a message through chat, letting reps know they were having trouble with patient coverage and affordability. The reps answered the question immediately by simply replying to the chat message with a link to the approved content.

Providing branded content that can answer HCPs’ questions on demand has had a positive impact. HCPs don’t want to wait days to get the answers to their questions when they can have the information at their fingertips to get patients the life-changing information they need.