Successful businesses recognize the correlation between satisfied customers and customer loyalty. History clearly shows the value of investing in customer experience (CX) during a downturn. In the last economic recession, companies that prioritized CX realized three times the shareholder returns compared with the companies that did not [1].

There are many different ideas of what “customer experience” may mean to different industries. In theory, CX covers every aspect of a company’s offering and public interactions, including the quality of customer care, advertising, packaging, product characteristics, ease of use, reliability, word of mouth, and other company-related qualities [2]. There are also customer-related parameters that may play a role in CX. In the mid-1980s, the literature described customers as “rational thinkers” in their decision making and experience ranking; however, currently it is better appreciated that customers are “feelers” as well as thinkers, and the customer’s emotions, prior experiences, and cultural and spiritual backgrounds also play a role [3]. Indeed, customer’s emotions may be a key driver in their decision making, and therefore should be factored in any understanding of CX [4, 5].

While all these factors help shape a customer’s experience, measuring all these variables can prove not only difficult, but counterproductive. As Maklan and colleagues have proposed: “The challenge of implementing experience successfully is that it is defined so broadly, so ‘holistically’ as to exclude almost nothing; it has become the theory of everything” [6]. Such a holistic view, while useful for understanding CX, is less helpful in developing tools to accurately measure a positive CX or to define actionable goals to improve experiences.

A satisfied customer is at the crux of a successful CX. While there are many CX models and roadmaps, and many companies such as Amazon and Starbucks have successful CX models [7], there is a common theme that focuses on the customer’s perception of the experience. The Customer Experience Professional Association has developed the CX Framework [8]. This framework is used across industries to direct and facilitate all six disciplines of CX: Strategy; Customer Understanding; Experience Design, Improvement and Innovation; Metrics, Measurement, and Return on Investment; Operational Adoption and Accountability; and Culture. The customer-focused framework defines CX as a customer’s perception of an organization that is influenced by interactions with the organization over time. Interactions with an organization include those with the people, technology, and all aspects of the organization. (https://www.cxpa.org/home) Like other businesses, pharmaceutical companies strive to continuously improve customer satisfaction and heighten a customer’s desire to utilize their services and products again. The provision of accurate and timely information about their medications, along with understanding the customer’s preference of receiving it (i.e., written text, infographic, video, verbal communication), should be the foundation of the pharmaceutical companies’ Medical Information CX.

Although there are published data and guidance on CX in general for healthcare industries and pharmaceutical companies in particular, there is a paucity of literature on customer experiences focusing specifically on Medical Information interactions. When included in the literature, Medical Information is consistently regulated as one variable among many that pharmaceutical companies must consider when evaluating CX, and not as a stand-alone channel to be independently evaluated. However, as Maklan and colleagues have eluded, there may be value in “atomizing” the different variables that influence CX; a more limited scope may help better define concrete goals, more meaningful measurements, and clearer steps to improvement [6].

Medical Information is an important customer facing function of pharmaceutical companies that interacts with many customer types including healthcare professionals, patients/caregivers/consumers, and healthcare decision makers/payers. To provide a better CX, Medical Information can borrow tools developed in other industries. There are numerous tools that can be used to understand the CX (see the Glossary of Customer Experience Terms in the Electronic Supplementary Material [ESM] [9]).

The Customer Satisfaction Score directly measures a customer’s satisfaction level, wherein “customer satisfaction” is specifically defined as closing the gap between what the customer expected and what the customer subsequently experienced. The Customer Satisfaction Score is often measured on a scale from “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied,” although it may include some open-ended questions as well [10].

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) uses a single question to measure the likelihood of a customer referring a business, product, or service to others. It goes beyond customer satisfaction and measures CX and brand loyalty. The NPS is often simple to use and respond to, and it easily identifies satisfied versus unsatisfied customers. However, the application and implications of an NPS need to have a valid comparator available. Because it does measure a more holistic overall feel for a company, it does not accurately measure the latest interaction between a customer and a company [11].

However, the Customer Effort Score (CES) does specifically focus on the interaction, and it assesses the ease of a customer’s experience interacting with an organization (e.g., “How easy was it to find an answer on our website today?”). This is usually presented as a single 5-point scale question from “low” to “high” effort. Like the NPS, the Customer Effort Score can help predict brand loyalty, in that a high-effort score is highly correlated with brand disloyalty. Low effort does not necessarily guarantee brand loyalty, but it does remove an obstacle to it. The Customer Effort Score only measures the level of difficulty the customer experiences in using a particular service. It does not determine what exactly was difficult or why that process was difficult [10].

Although Medical Information can borrow the measurements and practices of other industries in assessing and enhancing customer experiences, we should be mindful of the value of not approaching CX holistically, but rather as individual components. Perhaps equal value is recognizing which individual components are truly impactful to the customer, which may be different in Medical Information versus other industries. In one of the few published CX studies focusing on Medical Information, a Contact Center had identified 17 key performance indicators (KPIs) deemed important in measuring CX [12]. Customers were asked after their interactions with the Contact Center which of those metrics were important to them. While some KPIs were important to both the Contact Center and the customers (e.g., “truthful information” and “presentation of solutions and alternatives”), other KPIs were much less so (e.g., “additional sales services” and “frequent customization of the phone call”). Identifying and focusing on the KPIs that are truly important to customers may yield the best return on investment in maximizing CX.

While there are many options for customers to obtain Medical Information from the pharmaceutical company, via a Contact Center, Medical Information website, e-mail, and interacting with Medical Science Liaisons, the Medical Information Contact Center accounts for nearly two-thirds of inquiries (data on file with phactMI, 2022). Enhancing the CX when interacting with Medical Information is not merely an academic exercise; it can have a significant impact on how the resulting information is used or shared. In a 2018 survey of more than 2600 US and European physicians, previous interactions with pharmaceutical companies’ Medical Affairs departments were evaluated. Examples of interactions included contact with Medical Science Liaisons and company Contact Centers, as well as accessing the Medical Information website [10]. Physicians who reported positive CX while obtaining medical information reported they were more likely to save that information or to share it with a colleague. Conversely, more than half of physicians who had negative CX reported doing nothing with the acquired information [13].

The purpose of this paper is to provide a guidance for designing and measuring interactions in the Medical Information Contact Center to facilitate the delivery of a superior and continuously improving CX. Two critical disciplines within the CX Framework (1) Experience Design, Improvement and Innovation and (2) Metrics, Measurement, and Return on Investment are highlighted. A strict financial Return on Investment may not be a relevant or appropriate measure for Medical Information Departments; however, a method for assessing the benefit of resources expended would be applicable. It is also important for Medical Information Departments to continuously demonstrate value to ensure companies invest in resources, tactics, and strategic initiatives for the delivery of a positive CX.

This guidance is based on the collected experience of this working group informed by collaborative data gathering and analysis by the CX Working Group of phactMI and Centerfirst. phactMI is a non-profit collaboration of Medical Information leaders from the pharmaceutical industry dedicated to shaping the future of medical information and enhancing delivery of information across a broad customer base. Centerfirst is a contact center quality monitoring service provider for the pharmaceutical industry. For the purpose of this paper, pharmaceutical customers include healthcare professionals (i.e., physicians, pharmacists, nurses), patients, and caregivers.