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 Corp. 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.
- Partnering Solutions involving financial assistance 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 for Quintiles Transnational.
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 Customer Relationship Management (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 help Quintiles meet its customer satisfaction and financial targets, 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 feedback 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.
- 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 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.
Close Integration with Salesforce.com
Answers to selected survey 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.
"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 staff up to speed.
Distributing Feedback
Quintiles’ primary internal customer, the Project Manager, reviews all customer feedback, identifies issues and plans corrective actions.
"One of the biggest changes has been the company’s increased commitment to customer feedback. We really listen to our customers," Aydogan 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 and account planning. It's also an important element in performance appraisals and bonus/compensation packages.
Customer Satisfaction 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.
High scores reflect greater alignment between the company and its customers. Aydogan called it "a key driver of future action." Satisfaction scores guide senior management in making key decisions about improvements and investments. They inform both corporate and individual goals, performance targets, and project reviews.
Since they began measuring customer feedback, Quintiles' key indicators of Customer Satisfaction have increased 11%, while annual revenues have hit record levels. Their current goal is to increase that score another 6% in the next three years.
