How your customers see you

pharmafile | April 6, 2004 | Feature | |   

When looking at the performance of new products there are many reasons for their possible success. Perhaps GPs hooked into something that you did with your pre-launch marketing, or maybe strong initial sales are the result of a clever, and

oh-so-subtle marketing campaign; perhaps it was the wonderfully inventive promotional item that meant they would never forget to prescribe your product; or it may even have been the wealth of new indications that your representatives were able to recite chapter and verse.

Alternatively, if you look elsewhere in your company portfolio it can be difficult to work out why some of the older products with more established competitors are still being prescribed ahead of, let's face it, some stiff and credible competition. Could it be that in general GPs are on the whole so satisfied with your company and its products that they were willing to give you the business first, without thinking twice about your competitors?

Customer satisfaction is the Holy Grail of marketers worldwide, no matter what industry they operate in. Just like the Holy Grail, its form changes depending to whom you talk. You might think it is all about your representatives building partnerships with GPs, understanding their needs and offering solutions. One of your competitors thinks that the education events, with dinner thrown in, are the key to success. Another thinks GPs chose them above anybody else because they are constantly publishing in respected journals. Who is to say who's right and wrong? Well, there is one person who can shine light on it, but generally in the five minutes representatives get with GPs they are too busy solving problems, following your script and leaving the promotional pen to ask them what really drives their satisfaction. Cue the rise of customer satisfaction surveys.

Gauging customer satisfaction

Coupled with the emergence of customer relationship management (CRM) as a discipline, customer satisfaction surveys have also increased in popularity over the last decade. Since 1994, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has been used as a self-styled 'powerful economic indicator'. The ACSI says its role is to track rends in customer satisfaction and provide valuable benchmarking insights of the consumer economy for companies, industry trade associations, and government agencies.

So what makes customer satisfaction such an important indicator? Research from the University of Michigan uncovered two very important consequences of continued customer satisfaction. Firstly, as a future predictor of current earnings, increased customer satisfaction has a direct relationship to sales: the more satisfied a customer is, the more likely they are to buy even if prices increase. Secondly, satisfaction can be seen as a cumulative indicator of shareholder value: the more satisfaction a company creates, the greater their 'market value add'. In view of this, continued customer satisfaction represents real benefits to your company's bottom line.

Of course there are several ways of ascertaining some crude measures of satisfaction; increasing sales and volumes,  favourable press reports, representatives are getting time with the GPs and not being shown the door.

All interesting and relevant measures, but are they enabling you to target your resources most effectively and focus on delivering those services that bring about tangible business benefits. The problem is that over the past few years, salesforces have been a major growth area for all pharmaceutical companies; although it is difficult to pinpoint exact figures for salesforce sizes (estimates put it anywhere between 12,000 and 15,000) there has not been such a substantial increase in the number of GPs, which can mean only one thing – more sales representatives vying for a piece of the GPs' time.

Consequently, the time that representatives get with the GP becomes more and more precious, and time is often not spent properly defining the real customer satisfaction drivers.

There are several conscious and subconscious drivers to satisfaction. Most of us have been through the process of making a major purchase: a car, house or holiday where we are ultimately satisfied, or not, with our purchase. Rationally we all have a list of criteria that we think influences our decision-making. For a car these might include its engine size, colour, speed, safety, look, fuel economy, storage space, stereo system, after sales service, number of coffee holders and so on. As we go through the process of making a purchase, our conscious side tells us the most important aspects we are looking for and we begin to focus our attention on them.

It may be most important to us that we get a safe car with good after sales service, or perhaps a car that is easy to park yet speedy. So, if you are offered a car that is easy to park, yet speedy (a new mini for example the coolest car around according to a recent survey) but if it is fluorescent green you may refuse to buy it. Your conscious side has already told you that colour is not important, so why can you somehow not imagine driving the little green machine?

Perhaps, and I say this anticipating a reaction, could it be because colour is more important than you previously believed? Subconsciously it has a strong relationship to overall satisfaction levels (in this case, desire to buy the car). The same sort of thinking applies to GPs who, when asked what influences them most, in many instances, may not be able to verbalise their drivers of satisfaction and often give 'socially acceptable' answers.

Are GPs satisfied?

At the end of 2003, Genactis interviewed a demographically and geographically representative sample of over 500 GPs across Europe to ascertain the major influences on their satisfaction across three major themes – company sales representatives, company image and company services.

They were also asked to assess overall pharmaceutical company performance across all of these areas. Firstly, GPs were asked to state what was important to them and then, taking the overall performance and satisfaction scores, the derived importance scores were calculated in order to assess what is really driving satisfaction.

For example, pricing strategy (3.3), has a high stated importance (4.1 out of 5), yet a low derived importance; only 7.7% of overall satisfaction across all the attributes listed comes from pricing strategy. Conversely value of programmes and seminars (2.2) has a medium stated importance (3.6 out of 5) but the highest derived importance (20%), meaning that it has a significant positive relationship on the overall satisfaction levels.

This analysis provides useful insight, and can be used effectively when planning company marketing and sales strategies. The simple categorisation (selling points, supporting points, qualifiers and low yield – see the March issue of Pharmafocus for full details) enables strategists to focus on those aspects that directly influence overall satisfaction levels, and consequently future sales.

Several aspects of sales representatives' service were identified and assessed. They included: value of representatives  knowledge (1.1), value of representatives  relationship (1.2) and value of sampling policy (1.2). Both representatives knowledge and relationships are an important selling point and have a significant influence on overall satisfaction.

By multiplying the overall derived importance by the company performance within these areas, an overall customer satisfaction rating was calculated. Across the industry, average sales representatives' performance across all three criteria is 57.6%, with AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline performing best at 78.2% and 70.8% respectively. However, representatives from Bristol-Myers Squibb are perceived as being significantly below average at building relationships, performing at 48.2%, compared to an industry average of 55.9%. Sampling policy is a low yield category of service, and most companies, GSK and AstraZeneca excepted, all perform below the 50% mark.

The value of service

Company services encompass: value of information provided (2.1), value of programmes/seminars (2.2.), and value of promotional items (2.3). From this list only programmes and seminars, which includes dinner meetings, continuing education and sponsorship, is deemed to be a selling point; it is important in both derived and stated importance. Promotional items are perceived as having a minimal impact upon satisfaction by GPs, and when the derived analysis is run, it is clear that subconsciously it also does not greatly impact satisfaction. In instances such as this it is worth examining if funds may be better spent elsewhere.

Overall, within the area of company services, a very significant performance gap exists between the top three companies and the others: AstraZeneca (66.5%), GSK (63.2%) Pfizer (59%) dominate with their nearest competitor, Wyeth, only achieving a performance of 43% in this area.

In this case the key performance differentiator is programmes and seminars (2.2) where the three leading companies (could they also be the ones with the biggest 'dinner' budgets?) are perceived as being nearly 20% better than their nearest rivals.

The third-best performer Pfizer (66.6%) performs nearly 20% better than Lilly (38.2%) and Bayer (37.6%) when GPs are asked to compare the value of programmes and seminars provided.

Promotional items, whilst not a significant driver of satisfaction, is a great performance differentiator. Across the industry, GPs gave an average rating of a paltry 33.5% with even the top three only garnering 50%.

Abbott and Napp appear to really fall down in this area. Perhaps Menarini in Italy could provide inspiration for interesting promotional items. In the Italian part of our survey Menarini was given a score nearly 40% above all other companies with regard to promotional items.

GP perceptions of service

Within the areas of company service surveyed, company as a leader in the field (3.1) is the second most important of all service attributes offered.

This aspect of service seems to be particularly related to a company commitment to, and support of, medical research, and the culmination of that research into innovative, safe and effective products. Nearly all companies are rated highly in offering safe and effective products (the industry average mean score is 4.0).

Overall in this category, Wyeth (58.6%), MSD (58.2%), Boehringer Ingelheim (57.3%), Aventis (56.3%), BMS (56.4%) and Lilly (55.1%) cluster around the mean of 58.2%, whilst AZ, GSK and Pfizer again lead the table with Abbott, Sanofi-Synthelabo and Napp trailing behind the average.

Pricing strategy (3.3) and social responsibility (3.2) were rated quite highly when GPs were asked to state how important they were, yet their derived scores are substantially lower than the stated scores. In some respects this is symptomatic of some 'socially' responsible answers by GPs.

However, the low scores awarded to all companies in this arena is also symptomatic of GPs not being aware of initiatives in this area, and the high stated score is likely to be an indication that this is an area in which they are interested.

The culmination of the Genactis Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey is a table ranking the top 15 companies in each of the five major European markets on both their provision of service across each of the main themes assessed and also on an overall customer satisfaction score.

Reviewed in conjunction with the key driver analysis, it provides a road map of where to focus attention to improve customer satisfaction. To assess your efforts, the final customer satisfaction score in our annual survey will benchmark your performance both relative to your competitors as well as against the level of your previous customer satisfaction performance.

Customer satisfaction is a key to success and benchmarking keydrivers with the Genactis Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey is essential to improving performance.

*See the March issue of Pharmafocus for tables and survey results