Building a World Class Medical Information and Patient Services Call Center

Industries Profiled:
Health Care; Pharmaceutical; Diagnostic; Medical Device; Biotech; Manufacturing; Science; Technology; Consumer Products


Companies Profiled:
Abbott; Zoetis Inc.; Advanced Sterilization Products; Akcea Therapeutics; Alcon Laboratories; Alexion Pharmaceuticals; Amgen; Astellas; AstraZeneca; Baxter International; Biogen; Biosense Webster; Boehringer Ingelheim; Cordis; Daiichi Sankyo; EMD Serono; Endo Health Solutions; Ethicon; Johnson & Johnson; Foundation Medicine; Galderma; GlaxoSmithKline ; Hoffmann-La Roche; Janssen; McKesson (Patient Relationship Solutions); Medtronic; Merck; Novartis Consumer Health; Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics; Pfizer; RECKITT BENCKISER; Sanofi Genzyme; Shionogi Inc.; Shire; Stryker; Sunovion; Takeda Pharmaceuticals; Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd; UCB Pharma; United Therapeutics

Study Snapshot

Best Practices, LLC engaged 47 leaders at 39 life science companies in this research through a benchmark survey. More than half of the benchmark participants serve at the director / head level.

Key topics covered in this report include:

• Call Center Team
• Structure and Focus
• Operational Excellence
• Complaint Management
• Performance Metrics
• Technology Use and Impact
• Future Trends and Issues

• Structure and Focus:

• Majority of call centers are regional or country specific, operating as an internal corporate function and additionally may contract vendors for special and promotional activities.
• Call centers focus first on 24-hour customer support and medical inquiries and second towards supplementing field-based promotional activities.

• Corporate functions represented in benchmark call center leadership team
• Job levels of the call center leader and the person to whom the leader reports

• Structure of the call center; Call center reporting function
• Key call center focus areas
• Approach taken by benchmark companies to operate their call centers

• Number of different categories of FTEs (full time equivalent employees) in contact centers
• Total number of products supported by benchmark call centers
• Approximate percentage of calls to contact centers by tier type
• Education levels of call center agents (who speak directly with customers)
• Presence of a back-up call center – separate from the primary center –to handle unexpected situations (such as a recall) that cause large fluctuations in call volume

• Approach toward tracking and resolving complaints that were not resolved during the first call
• Segmenting / stratifying complaints to support identification of recurring problems and root cause analysis

• Call center metrics for each of the listed performance metric areas
• Frequency of posting or reporting performance metrics to each of the listed stakeholder groups

• Types of CRM / customer database systems used by call centers
• Pros and cons of Salesforce
• Capabilities of benchmark call center CRMs
• Effectiveness of listed electronic or innovative communication channels used by benchmark call centers to interact with customers
• Innovative uses of social media successfully deployed by benchmark call centers
• Opportunities for pharma companies to take advantage of social media platforms’ customer service capabilities
• New technologies or systems that will change the way call centers do business within the next two years
• Success stories of new technology use within benchmark call centers

• Most important issues or obstacles that call centers need to tackle within the next two years
• Plans implemented around call centers to address new trends and/or issues
• Struggles and/or lessons learned around changes to call centers during the global pandemic