Pharmaceutical and life sciences companies need to focus on the increasingly vital customer experience to meet modern expectations.  With expectations shifting toward digital-first and on-demand interactions, stakeholders ranging from patients and providers to caregivers and payers now demand more personalized engagement. AI is a key technology for reimagining customer engagement and enhancing the overall experience. These modern tools help companies differentiate their user experience from the often uniform strategies that dominate pharma marketing.

During a recent regional roundtable discussion sponsored by Swoop, editor-at-large Marc Iskowitz sat down with a distinguished group of marketing executives to discuss how pharma is transforming engagement with its customers with AI. Participants included Ashley Cudin, VP, enterprise sales, Swoop; Joyce Ercolino, director, digital excellence and customer experience, Harmony Biosciences; Elaine Gamble, (formerly of Otsuka); Devin Kanach, director of product marketing, Swoop; Rusty Rahmer, U.S. head of marketing operations, customer experience and digital innovation solutions, GSK; Eric Redline, ​​EVP, product strategy, Swoop; Kelly Marie Tullo, customer engagement business partner, AstraZeneca; and Amy Turnquist, AVP, life sciences, North Highland. 

Improving segmentation and targeting with AI

AI is changing the way pharma engages with healthcare providers (HCPs), pharmacists, payers and patients. By leveraging AI, companies can more accurately identify and reach their target audiences, optimizing the commercialization of new products.

“We had to build the right data foundations initially to figure out what is the right patient journey,” Tullo said. First, the company shifted its sales force into specialized experts, such as lung cancer or hematology specialists. Then, it “used AI to build a next-best indication model for that individual sales rep” to help physicians maximize patient opportunities. In addition, for infused products, “we’ve created a lot of different enrichment models to make sure that we can predict which physician would prescribe a product.”

Part of the challenge with AI is that it often provides the next-best suggestion. “It wants to optimize an outcome. It’s trying to find the right sequence of things and time to produce an outcome, while the outcome is not in the data set yet,” Rahmer noted. As customers are pushed through the funnel, it’s important for brands to define success on their own terms rather than conversions. “Take brand qualities like confidence in doing business with us and use those as dimensions for the AI machine to optimize so that we have somebody who has the right content to get through the process but also…that the outcomes match our brand and what we were trying to enforce,” he explained.

For pharma brands, “the funnel is a simple awareness trial of ‘Are you a doctor or advocate,’” Tullo said. “If you keep it simple, AI can actually optimize to give the right experience along the way.”

The key is to define the business problem. “You have to have that clear, specified requirement of who you’re going after, why and the problem you’re solving,” Gamble advised.

The use of interactive virtual assistants

Bottom-of-funnel engagement in the pharma industry is being transformed by the use of interactive virtual assistants such as chatbots. These technologies are enhancing customer experiences by streamlining interactions, offering personalized support and improving operational efficiency.

“AI takes the test-and-learn agile mindset that we should be applying as agile marketers and operationalizes that at a scale that we can’t do individually,” Turnquist said. This approach ensures that marketing strategies remain effective and responsive to customer needs.

“Some people want to work with the chatbot because all their needs are met; others want to talk to someone; maybe the chatbot is the screener to make that conversation much more effective and create better outcomes,” Gamble said. “The operational efficiencies have to start with the customer effectiveness and centricity.”

There is an opportunity to “reduce the calls that come into our call center by making the content easier to find on the website,” Rahmer said. However, the technology’s success hinges on proper implementation. “It fails, not because the technology has failed, but because you fail to operationalize the capability you just installed.”

Chatbots enhance the user experience, especially for patients with urgent or specific queries. “If you can use a chatbot to help someone get through a website faster so they don’t have to read it all, it’s more convenient and efficient,” Ercolino explained.

Improving the customer experience with AI assistants

With AI capabilities, “segmentation can be much more fluid, dynamic and customer centric,” Gamble said. “People do change; they don’t stay in one segment until a year ends, they might travel from one to the other.” Marketers can respond more efficiently to customer needs and move them through the funnel more effectively with AI. “I can be more aligned to your behaviors and what your potential is and respond in a more real-time manner to what the predicted interest will be,” she explained.

AI assists in managing complex audience segments. “We have to use AI, we’ve gotten too big to manage this with business rules.” Tullo emphasized. Personas are critical to success. “If you’re trying to get a better customer experience, the persona helps because that’s more around their behaviors, motivators, drivers and those things.”

The goal is to “use the infinite data points to get this HCP or patient into the right value exchange journey,” Rahmer added. This approach allows for more nuanced and tailored customer interactions, ultimately leading to better engagement. “AI serves as a good air traffic controller so we can connect our customers with who they need to talk to,” Tullo said.

The direct-to-consumer (DTC) platforms have the potential to connect the consumer to a provider with less friction and faster. “There’s more convenience. People want things that are easier for them,” Ercolino said.

In addition, “these models give us a little more control over what some of the customer experience can be,” Gamble said. “Giving people more accessibility, so depending on that middle person who may not treat them the same way as they treat other patients that live in different communities, can only have a positive benefit,” she added.

Ultimately, these AI capabilities can help educate consumers about alternative experiences so they can decide for themselves, much like they do between Coke and Pepsi or Verizon and AT&T. “In a lot of ways in those other markets where it’s much more lifestyle, you have a choice,” Redline said. “If you’re given a drug by your doctor, you can’t switch. However, if you have five different drugs and the safety profile is the same and efficacy is largely the same, the doctors could say, whichever you want, you do the research, take one.”

Ensuring compliance, safety and privacy

The integration of compliance into every stage of the business process is essential to maintaining trust and safeguarding patient information. “A lot more vigilance is needed upfront to make sure that partners have the right support and security around what they do before you invest in them. This has become really important,” Ercolino said. “If you lose that pillar of trust, the whole stack of cards comes down.”

Managing data privacy across various channels is a complex but necessary task. “We’re building a centralized data privacy {model/approach} in order to put personalization in place and adhere to that,” Rahmer explained. “I am identifying this patient or HCP using the data I have available to me, which I’ve connected through clean rooms, through third parties. I can project that this HCP or this patient should be on this particular journey, and if I can exchange this particular value with that customer, I will move them incrementally toward a better customer for me.”

Compliance discussions with partners from the concept review stage is critical. “Bring people together to understand what the potential risks are, what questions will need to be answered to address or mitigate those risks and get everybody on board beforehand,” Turnquist added.

It’s up to vendors to educate stakeholders about the process. “Sometimes they don’t even know who they should be pulling in for things and then you end up hitting roadblocks, and it blocks innovation,” Cudini said.

As pharmaceutical and life sciences companies navigate the evolving landscape of customer engagement, focusing on the customer experience is increasingly vital. Through the strategic use of AI, companies can deliver tailored experiences that differentiate them in a competitive market, while also ensuring compliance and data privacy. By embracing these modern tools, pharma can not only meet but exceed the expectations of today’s healthcare consumers and foster stronger, trusted relationships with patients and providers.