SOCIAL CRM AND ITS IMPACT ON PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY

Transcription

1 344 SOCIAL CRM AND ITS IMPACT ON PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY ABSTRACT MR. SHUVAM CHATTERJEE* *Assistant Professor in Marketing, Department of Management Studies, Regent Education & Research Foundation, Barrack pore. Kolkata. W.B. In the recent years, the rise of social networking has not only created a new social structure where individuals across geographies are tied up more cohesively, but has also given rise to a fresh area of study in Sociology, which gives a new tool to scholars and practitioners for understanding human, and more importantly consumer behavior. Social networking tools have started acting as a repository of information contributed by linked customers. A focus study of the content can actually help companies in understanding the customer s experience with the company s product or service which in turn can be translated to enhanced customer satisfaction. Socially created content could also be used to attract new customers. Moreover, a check on such content can also help companies avoid any possible damage to their brand equity. This paper tries to analyze the current customer relationship management concepts and set of difficulties that they face. The paper tries to point out the new possibilities offered by social networking tools and it would map the solution to the listed problems with these possibilities. The paper tries to pinpoint the effects of increasing adaptation of viral marketing on the CRM practices and would therefore study the implications of a tie up in one of the important vertical such, Pharmaceuticals. KEYWORDS: Customers, Relationship Marketing, Consumer Behavior, Social Responsiveness, Pharmaceutical Industry. INTRODUCTION CRM 2.0 BEST PRACTICES A number of Research Firms such as Forrester Researcher have studied the whole gambit of CRM 2.0 and the possible benefits that companies can gain through its usage. Some of the key findings that describe the best practices to be followed have been described below. SUPPORT CUSTOMER TO CUSTOMER INTERACTION Companies should actively encourage customers to interact among themselves. There should be less emphasis on institutional support and customers should independently sustain each other.

2 345 COLLABORATE WITH CUSTOMERS In order to understand customer needs more deeply, companies will have to involve them right from the product development to the product improvement phase. Customers bring with them a huge knowledge base which a company cannot afford to ignore. MONITOR CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR With the invent of social media and other internet based phenomena, companies can much conveniently monitor and understand consumer behavior. This allows them to rise above the geographical and demographical segmentation of customers, relying more on the way, a customer interacts or behave in the society. SOCIAL MEDIA AS A FEEDBACK MECHANISM Social media such as online communities, blogs and video sharing sites provide a platform for customers to let the companies know about their experience, good or bad, with the companies product. Companies ought to use such information as a source of feedback and should constantly improve their products or services based upon those feedbacks. RECENT TRENDS Salesforce.com has already come up with features that allow its users to view rising trends and topics on Twitter, a micro blogging site. This enables companies to monitor conversations about it from within the CRM application. Companies can now collect user information through various social networking sites. They have been found to develop tools and applications that are distributed free of cost among social network users. In return these companies collect all the demographic and behavioral information from these users. Some of the companies have started working jointly in this direction. Facebook has introduced the ability for users to make public the previously private aspects of their profile, which Salesforce.com could easily pull into it s CRM application. SAP has also recently invested in LinkedIn, a professional network, which give it access to 40 million virtual CVs that exists on LinkedIn. In future we might see SAP modules working more effortlessly with LinkedIn, allowing recruitment companies and traditional companies as well to operate seamlessly. This also brings to the issue of customers becoming more and more reluctant to share information on social networks due to fear of being monitored. For instance, Facebook users rebelled against the company when Facebook s Beacon program tried to publish user s buying pattern on Facebook affiliated websites. There were also objections to service providers such as Google.

3 346 However social networking companies are still evolving and trying to take the narrow path between what is right and what is wrong. Right now, they are not only worried about effective ways to monetize their operations but also about the high moral grounds of privacy. SOCIAL CRM & PHARMACEUTICAL S INDUSTRY Pharmaceutical sector was slow to pick up on social networking but web 2.0 is making its presence felt in this sector. According to a 2008 survey in The New England Journal of Medicine, only 17 percent of the US physicians are using computerized patient records. With US President Obama mandating health records to be digital within five years, growth in this sector is likely to see a boost. Web 2.0 has allowed patients to form social networks and forced pharmaceutical companies to change their business focus to Patient focus. Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0 are related concepts and with pharmaceuticals they are still in its nascent stages. Medicine 2.0 is basically the combination of web 2.0 with medicine (focusing on doctor-patient communication and technologies), whereas Health 2.0 is a combination of web 2.0 with healthcare (focusing on shaping healthcare with web 2.0 tools and concepts). The original definition given by Journal of Medicine Internet Research of Medicine 2.0 is- Medicine 2.0 applications, services and tools are Web-based services for healthcare consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals and biomedical researchers that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual-reality tools to enable and facilitate specifically social networking, participation, apomediation, collaboration and openness within and between these user groups.

4 347 The current Social Networking World in Medical world can thus be shown as below: The rise of such technologies has given birth to social patients. The patients are interacting with one another, discussing issues in communities and sharing knowledge at wikis. Social networking broadly has following impacts on the following in Pharmaceuticals and Health Industry: CONSUMERS AND PATIENTS Patients are increasingly using social networking tools for staying informed of latest development in certain areas of their interests. Patients have different patterns of usage depending on if they are newly diagnosed or managing a severe long term illness. Long term patients are more likely to connect to a community in Health 2.0. Startups like CureTogether plans to bring together patients and scientists to create an open source health research system. imedix is a free website that helps you find and share health information. With these tools and portals gaining platform, patients are using them for sharing their experiences and to take second opinion. Google Health and Myopencare are another such services that allow patients to record their health related data in a structured format which can be

5 348 used by medical practitioners for better diagnosis and treatment. The data being Quantifiable, measurable and actionable is helping both the patients and the doctors. Special networking sites are coming for common disease like Diabetes. TuDiabetes (Web 2.0 for people touched by Diabetes) and Blogabetes (Bloggers about Diabetes) are some of the initiatives in this direction. The phenomenon is as such termed as Diabetes 2.0. SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING With the rapid expansion of Health related blogs, wikis and other social networking portals, more and more search strings direct users to these knowledge centers/reviews. This makes it imperative for big firms to take notice and design their search marketing program with the Web 2.0 effect in mind. Specialized search tools are developed by firms to cater to consumer s needs. Scienceroll Search is a personalized medical search engine powered by Polymeta search and clustering engine. You can choose which diabetes to search in and which one to exclude from your list. It works with well known medical search engines and databases and we are totally open to add new ones or remove those you don t really like. Other notable tools are: VisualDxHealth: Visual healthcare tools and widgets. Internal Medicine Journal Search: Personalize your searches. RADIOLOGY SPECIFIC SEARCH ENGINE Thus these social networking platforms can be used effectively to reach customers in a more organized fashion. J&J was quick to note this. They found messages were not being conveyed in traditional media. Simultaneously, they noticed growth in social media tools to share healthcare information. Before they could inject themselves into the online community conversations, however, internal coordination with legal and regulators preceded moves into the social media arena. This gave J&J an opportunity to pilot their online presence and find their voice. Emboldened by its successful implementation of social media tools, Johnson and Johnson launched a channel on YouTube 12 to provide unbranded videos to help people improve their lives based on the vast knowledge possessed by J&J. Thus Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly using social networking medium as a channel to reach the customers in multiple way. KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND COLLABORATION Doctors around the world are increasingly using wikis and other forums to discuss and collate knowledge. These medical wikis are easy starting point to do research and help doctors to take structured notes and share their experiences and views with other experts. The wikis can be specific like Radiopaedia: a wiki for radiology, Flu Wiki and Wiki surgery or general like

6 349 Ganfyd.org.(Ganfyd is a collaborative medical reference by medical professionals and invite non medical experts) HEALTH COMMUNICATION PARTNERSHIPS Patients, researchers, scientists and physicians are increasingly building communities to discuss issues pertaining to healthcare. Sites like SocialMD (social network for physicians) and DoctorsHangout.com are bringing the doctors around the world together. The MedPedia project is a long term world wide project to evolve a new model for sharing and advancing knowledge about health, medicine and the body among medical professionals and the general public. This model is founded on providing a free online technology platform that is collaborative, interdisciplinary and transparent. Anyone can contribute and there are multiple ways of contributing. Physicians or PhD in the biomedical field can create a profile and approved Editors get privileges to make changes directly to the Medpedia wiki. INDUSTRY EXAMPLE CML EARTH Novartis Oncology released an innovative social media platform (CML Earth) targeting the global leukemia audience (CML stands for Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia). CML Earth is a way to connect with other patients, healthcare professionals and groups. It is a global interactive social network dedicated to connecting the CML community from around the world. It provides different login to patients, healthcare professionals and patient groups. It is a Flash based application with a global map that you can zoom in and out of and view in satellite, map or hybrid mode. There is a brief take a tour video which helps newbie to understand the interface. The site requires simple registration after which the user can log on and discuss his case with other patients. The platform supports multiple languages. Novartis controls negative comments regarding their brand by not allowing users to post contents which contain adverse event reporting, treatment information and names of specific medicines or companies. The objective of Novartis is clearly to communicate with the patients and promote their brand. Rather than mass adoption the site is used as a tool to offer the community. Although the interface is clean the site is not optimized for search engines. Another issue is the high band width version of the website which may go against it in the developing countries. NOVARTIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL Novartis has launched a YouTube channel.this is yet another step taken by Novartis to experiment with the new channels of communication. By allowing patient stories to be told, Novartis is aiming at turning around its PR.

7 350 The production quality of the videos is high with most of the videos being just about a minute long- bite-sized and to the point. The videos end very simply with a screen with the Novartis company name, thus, creating brand awareness while communicating with the patients. Patients suffering from cancer, dengue fever, meningitis and transplantation share their stories on this channel. Novartis product names cannot be used in the videos due to the constraints of not promoting medical products directly but it is implied that these patients have been treated with Novartis products. Ratings and comments are disabled to check adverse reporting. Here is how the company describes itself and its on-line presence in the sidebar: At Novartis we seek to discover, develop and successfully market innovative products to prevent and cure diseases, to ease suffering and to enhance the quality of life. Breakthrough medicines are our highest priority, and we offer a wide range of healthcare products in pharmaceuticals, vaccines, consumer health, generics, eye care and animal health CONCLUSION Social networking provides a great opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry to come near to their customer and reach out to new customers. The enormous growth in the social networking will be replicated in the developing countries like India after an extensive coverage in the developed markets. The social networking could be a very strong and effective medium for the pharma industry to communicate their values and strategies to their customers. REFERENCES 1> Blogabetes ( 2> CML Earth ( 3> CureTogether ( 4> Flu Wiki ( 5> Ganfyd.org ( 6> imedix ( 7> Journal of Medical Internet Research ( 8> Medpedia Project ( 9> MyOpenCare ( 10> PolyMeta ( 11>Scienceroll Search (

8 351 12> TuDiabetes ( 13>VisualDxHealth: Visual healthcare tools and widgets ( 14> Wikisurgery ( 15> Youtube- Johnson & Johnson Channel ( 16> Youtube- Novartis Channel (