Business profile

Customer Feedback Grows Revenues
for Global Healthcare Research Firm

Before a new medicine can be brought to market, it must be developed in the lab, undergo extensive human testing in a long series of clinical trials, navigate the maze of the regulatory process, and finally -- hopefully -- be approved by the appropriate government agency. After all that, the long sales, marketing and commercialization process can begin.

Throughout that process, Quintiles Transnational provides a broad range of professional services, information and partnering solutions to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and healthcare industries worldwide, including:

Product Development Services delivering clinical research and outcomes research consulting
Commercialization Services specializing in sales force deployment and strategic marketing and consulting
NovaQuest forges traditional alliances to help customers develop and market new compounds.

"It's an extremely competitive arena, so it’s essential that we listen and respond to what our customers tell us, and give them every possible means to communicate with us," explained Ross Law, Director of Corporate Strategic Services.

Quintiles’ expertise and global resources supplement the capabilities of both big pharma and small biotech firms. "We’re a flexible extension of our customers’ in-house resources," explained Zeynep Aydogan, Associate Director of Quintiles’ Corporate Strategic Services. "We help them achieve more without expanding their headcount."

Its successes are impressive. In the last five years they have managed more than 2,300 clinical trials worldwide, involving 120,000 hospitals and clinics and over 1.4 million patients. Quintiles' teams helped develop or commercialize every one of the world's thirty best-selling drugs. The company has also helped speed nine of the top ten bestselling biotech products to the market.

Then and Now

Quintiles began collecting customer satisfaction data in 2001, using an in-house Lotus Notes-based system. Over 5,000 surveys were deployed to 500 different clients, spanning all regions and lines of business. These formed a core of knowledge and best practices the company was determined to retain and build upon.

"By 2003, we’d simply outgrown the old system," said Law. "We were updating our CRM solution to Salesforce.com, and decided it was time to partner with a customer feedback specialist offering a hosted solution."

Quintiles had many challenging requirements:

Retain the data and best practices they'd already developed
Enable multiple survey versions and personalized customer experiences
Yield seamless reporting of data across the organization for action and follow-up
Integrate smoothly with Salesforce.com.

With many lines of business in global markets spanning fifty nations, the solution also needed to capture the voices of many different customers, speaking — literally — many different languages. It had to:

Hear both internal stakeholders (e.g., Operations, Project Managers, Business Development) and external customers
Measure and manage numerous customer touch points with people at every level in the enterprise
Support multiple languages and global requirements within a highly-regulated industry.

A customer feedback system that could meet these challenges would garner big returns in revenue, margins and growth, said Craig Hendrix, Associate Director of Corporate Strategic Services. "Our customers' long-term utilization of our clinical and commercialization services offers significant repurchase opportunities."

Integration and Customization

Following an exhaustive vendor evaluation in late 2003, Quintiles selected CustomerSat as its customer intelligence solution. Law was impressed by CustomerSat’s willingness to customize the solution to meet Quintiles’ specific requirements. “They’re very responsive, very committed to their customers."

Quintiles' new Global Customer Feedback Program has three phases:

System & Survey Design constructs a full set of measures assessing the company’s performance in both projects and business relationships. The focus is on discovering which factors are important to customers, and identifying how to measure them.
Survey Distribution and Collection creates and distributes surveys and collects feedback.
Customer Feedback Reporting distributes reports to all levels of Quintiles management for follow-up action and process improvement. Managers are expected to act quickly on these reports.

Results of the three loyalty questions (overall satisfaction, likelihood of repurchase, and willingness to recommend) flow directly into Salesforce.com, along with links to individual responses in CustomerSat Enterprise, CustomerSat’s robust hosted application. "This lets us quickly grasp the context of each relationship, read notes about upcoming or past meetings, and review open proposals and opportunities with that contact," Hendrix added.

Personalization

Two basic types of surveys are extensively customized to allow a virtually unlimited number of variations.

Project surveys collect customer feedback at the beginning and end of projects, and at predetermined milestones. These surveys tell project managers how well their team handled various aspects of each project, where they need to improve, and how satisfied the customer is.
Business Relationship surveys, sent annually to key decision-makers and influencers at client companies, measure the customer’s loyalty and engagement in broader ways that go beyond project specifics.

Although the core set of project survey questions are the same, each version varies depending on the type (e.g., project, proposal), current project status (e.g., beginning, ongoing, end), line of business, language and other considerations.

Survey invitations are extensively personalized, based on particular issues, opportunities and other customer information. Personalization ensures that the wording of every invitation is appropriate for that customer, service, region or parent company.

Close Integration with Salesforce.com

Answers to the three loyalty questions reside in Salesforce.com, along with customer data like contact info, meeting notes, proposals and contracts. Records of survey requests, activity, follow-up notes and corrective action plans are also in their CRM system. Most of the actual survey data remains in CustomerSat Enterprise, which not only reduces the cost of Salesforce.com, but reduces its data load, keeping it fast and responsive.

"This close integration means higher efficiency," said Hendrix. "We can instantly see the context of each relationship, notes about upcoming or past meetings, open proposals or opportunities with that contact." This also shrinks the time it takes to prepare for client meetings or to bring new staffers up to speed, making staff promotions, transfers and turnover less of an issue.

Distributing Feedback

Quintiles’ primary internal customer, the Project Manager, reviews all customer feedback, identifies issues and plans corrective actions. Survey results are cascaded via email to senior management, functional management, key business development and operations personnel working on each project.

"One of the biggest changes has been the company’s increased commitment to customer feedback. We really listen to our customers," Zeynep said. They extrapolate the insights they receive on specific projects or issues, and utilize them to enhance their best practices and capabilities.

Customer feedback is utilized in monthly project reviews, performance appraisals and account planning. It's also an important element in performance appraisals, and bonus/compensation packages. Little more than five years ago, Quintiles staffers didn’t know what their customer satisfaction score was. Now they not only know it -- their compensation depends on it.

Customer Loyalty and Future Growth

By tracking key performance metrics across both the service delivery process and the relationship, Quintiles surveys provide actionable information to enhance both.

One vital metric, the Customer Loyalty Index, is closely related to the company’s growth, repeat business, and potential strategic partnerships. There’s a limited pool of potential customers within the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, Hendrix explained, and a close network of key decision makers. "We run into the same people all the time, so loyalty and engagement are even more crucial," he said.

High scores reflect a deeper relationship between the company and its customers. Aydogan called it "a key driver of future action." Loyalty scores guide senior management in making key decisions about improvements and investments. They inform both corporate and individual goals, key performance indicators, and project reviews.

Since they began measuring customer feedback, Quintiles' Customer Loyalty Index has increased 11%, while annual revenues have hit record levels. Their current goal is to increase the Index another 6% in the next three years.