Will Google Wave influence Pharma customer service?

By MaverickNY on October 1, 2009

Image by niallkennedy via Flickr

Like many people, I’m eagerly awaiting my Google Wave invite and an opportunity to play in the sandbox.

While others in the Pharma Social Media world are fretting about the potential impact of Sidewiki making things more social (or even antisocial), take a look at this short video from Salesforce about how they built a demo to allow a potential customer to interact with a robot and a real live customer service agent to solve a problem.

Now translate that to the Pharma world.

Every Pharma and Biotech company gets calls every single day with enquiries about products or requests for information.

Imagine a physician being about to enter his information and interact with the company via an online request eg he tells the robot he’s looking for information about product X. The robot produces a list of information and files or letters (approved internally) relating to that product. If there is something you need, you can download the letter or clinical paper.

Further enquiries or more complex issues could be transferred to a medical information specialist in the usual way, while ensuring that the initial interaction was as quick and efficient.

There are many other ways Pharma companies could catch the wave, improve customer interactions and experiences and get to understand their market better.

Scientists in Pharma research could collaborate with Academic institutions and share information on research more easily and in real time. Ditto the same for biotechnology or life science companies.

Instead of wasting considerable time and energy travelling and organising meetings, marketing and New Product specialists could hold online collaboration discussions in the form of an Advisory Board in real time around the world or host a Wave that could be collaborative with investigators and product development or new indications over time.

Ditto for marketing and sales teams looking to share information and develop a cohesive live and ongoing joint strategy for improved market penetration post product launch.

What Google Wave does is helps collaboration and breaks down silos. The possibilities are endless. We are limited only by our imagination.

What do you think?

Hi Sally,
I have used a few customer relationship management (CRM) tools in my time, and have found that most are still very clunky. One was based on Lotus Notes, can you imagine?
Life science, biotech, and pharma companies have complex products and often need to exchange and record communications. I think the possibilities for collaboration are spectacular too. We’ll finally be able to easily answer the ‘what’s in it for me’ question for scientists hesitant to try these new-fangled social media/communication tools. (perhaps we shouldn’t tell them the ‘social’ part 😉
I have high hopes for Google Wave and am anxiously awaiting my invitation too! Thanks for the great post!
Mary

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