Chart of the Month - Still early days for the omnichannel rep
May 2023, our CHART of the MONTH:
In the years leading up to 2020, biopharma had been testing new omnichannel tactics in an attempt to further increase the effectiveness of the rep beyond the face-to-face visit, but such efforts remained limited. In response to Covid, biopharma found itself having to boost and scale these efforts almost overnight, with the reach of rep email going up by at least 10% in both Europe and the US, and about 20% of HCPs having remote rep engagements. So how has the "omnichannel rep" developed since?
Despite biopharma’s strong focus on the omnichannel rep, only 9% of cardiologists in EU5 encounter this much-touted experience (visit + email + remote). This low number is mainly due to the unimpressive reach of the “remote” component in the mix. At the same time, 17% only receive in-person rep visits, and almost a quarter engages only through non-F2F channels. Finally, almost a third are not reached by any of these three channels. (The picture is not too dissimilar in the medical context, where only 7% of EU5 cardiologists report engaging with all three MSL channels and as many as 43% do not engage with any of the three channels at all.)
Omnichannel rep engagement can lead to not only increased effectiveness and a superior customer experience, but also boost efficiency & productivity by enabling the fieldforce to focus their face-to-face activities where it really matters. Further effort should therefore be paid to developing the remote channel into a robust complement to in-person efforts, defining the right use cases for such engagements (context/content, audience,…) and, importantly, training the fieldforce to be as adept at these remote approaches as they are in the flesh.
If you would like to know more about how Navigator365™ can offer uniquely actionable insights to help you optimize your channel mix, then please get in touch!
Chart of the Month is an ongoing series where we highlight an interesting chart or statistic from our Navigator365™ Core research, and offer a brief commentary on what this can tell us about trends in customer engagement in the life sciences.
