Customer Relations Management (CRM) – three words that may sound super complicated, although many business areas have implemented different CRM approaches since the early 1970s. Nowadays, the CRM system is an inevitable part of almost any online industry, and, of course, it’s crucial for healthcare and life science.
As the average aging of the population grows, together with chronic disease cases, the demand for medical and pharma services only increases. In the United States, 25% of people under 45 have reported chronic conditions. The higher the age, the more people require stable medical treatment — people from 45 to 65 report 50% of chronic diseases, and the largest group is people over 65 (81% of chronic cases). Such a massive number of patients requires a more advanced approach regarding patient relationships and how to manage them.
The market researchers expect the healthcare CRM market size to reach $17.8 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) growth of more than 9%.
This article will cover the main aspects of the best CRM for pharmacy and its benefits. Let’s go.
What Does CRM Stand for in Healthcare?
Let’s start with what CRM is. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, which is widely used across industries. CRM tools are currently rising in popularity due to their ability to quickly store customer-related information and allow users to access it swiftly without having to go through several processes to retrieve just one document or any other details. CRM in the pharmaceutical industry plays a crucial role, as its features and abilities assist industry workers in collecting and managing various types of data, ranging from patient records to information about various research endeavors.
Usually, pharmaceutical CRM software solutions are developed to maintain and promote positive customer experience and comfortable management. It helps to organize communication processes, keep track of operational activities, and see what works in your management approaches and what requires changes in the current health system.
Typically, CRM allows the execution of the following activities:
Communication
Communication with the patient is the most vital thing that healthcare can have. An uncomfortable and broken communication chain usually leads to the interruption of treatment and the potential worsening of the condition. A proper customer relations system should allow one to initiate, schedule, and manage patient appointments with HCPs, making both customer and service provider lives much easier.
Management
As the daily life of any company consists of numerous tasks, the healthcare CRM system should allow assignments or add task tickets to people, making monitoring work progress, deadlines, and updates more comfortable. It makes communication and treatment process smoother and continuous, giving better results and creating an exciting experience for the patient.
Reporting
Analytics is the next vital thing that is supposed to be integrated into the CRM. A proper report system is critical to understanding business dynamics. This feature allows every user to create and personalize various analytical reports, from marketing campaigns’ ROI to the average patient count.
Patient Management
As any CRM system should be adapted to the business industry’s requirements, healthcare CRM software is also centered on providing specific features and technologies for patient management. A unique healthcare industry feature allows creation, updating, and segregating of patient records based on their diseases, conditions, feedback, or other specifics. Such sensitive data inside pharmacy CRM software should be stored according to HIPAA compliance. It means that HIPAA-compliant patient relationship management tool is highly protected from data breaches and malicious intruders, taking full responsibility for data security.
Key Benefits of Healthcare CRM System
As you can see, CRM software covers most parts of the daily operational routine. It significantly helps employees to handle tasks and reduces the number of human mistakes during management. However, modern healthcare CRM solutions can be more than just a customer data management tool. It brings much more possibilities to provide a better patient engagement experience and improve interaction with your brand. Here are some of the key features:
Automate Resource Management
When it comes to customer interaction, the most critical resource is time. Before digitalization, the internet, and highly complex software (like CRM platform), doctors and medical employees used a manual customer management method. It means that most of the records were kept in a written physical form which is complicated and uncomfortable to store and manage.
Nowadays, medical CRM software systems can store, analyze, and suggest the most appropriate appointment time considering location and purpose. All schedule changes are followed up with notifications and appointment reminders sent to the patients.
Improve Patient Experience
Prudent patient management is good for pharma and healthcare companies and significantly increases customer positive experience and satisfaction. Once all communication between the patient and HCP is structured, clear, and consistent, there’s no tension in getting necessary treatment or consultations.
Additionally, healthcare CRM software is a database of customers’ medical history which is also a great plus for the patients: based on their gender, birth date, the sphere of activity, CRM can notify people about taking medication on time, ask about their well-being, offer discounts, and so on.
24/7 Support
When patients suddenly address their issues, having all the treatment records at your fingertips is good. It makes it easier to provide customers with appropriate answers or medication when HCP can quickly learn about potential issues of particular customers, even if it’s beyond working hours. You can simply imagine how the patient experience affects the communication flow.
Speaking of working hours, modern healthcare CRM systems support chatbots. This technology allows helping patients 24/7 by reassuring them and sharing basic healthcare recommendations.
Patient Acquisition
A cure can not be delivered to the struggling patient if no one knows. Many aspects of a successful pharma business rely on attracting new customers and sharing your medication approach with more patients than before. A healthcare management system will be an excellent addition to your marketing strategies, as it helps to create and promote valuable content and marketing messages to the previously targeted audience. It significantly influences patient acquisition.
Also, it can store communication records and provide access to this data by request to keep the marketing campaigns as consistent and productive as possible.
Collect Feedback
Back in the offline days, most patients only had a few options to get medical help, and there was no significant need to collect patients’ opinions. Today, everyone has a few choices of how they will get their treatment just by opening a web browser, and the marketing game for pharma and healthcare companies becomes more complicated.
Feedback has become an inevitable part of every business, whether you are growing vegetables for sale, making video streams, or providing professional treatment for complex illnesses. Every customer of yours has something to say about your company’s service. Collecting this feedback will open many possibilities for improving your communication tools and operational processes.
Data Security
Any healthcare organization collects and processes a lot of sensitive patient information. It makes such medical institutions vulnerable to data breaches and malware attacks in an attempt to get this information and use it for ransom.
A proper CRM solution is supposed to assure the safety and confidentiality of user data. System administrators should set authorities and define access levels for different types of employees. A properly secured healthcare customer relationship management software won’t allow an accident or intended data breach. Such protection measures significantly improve patient engagement.
Enhanced Personalization
Recent studies show that more patients are becoming interested in healthcare organizations that can offer them some level of personalization during treatment. Data is one of the most critical elements of any process of personalizing customer experiences. With the help of CRM for the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare professionals can now gather any kind of data about their patients and use it to create unique treatments and find a customized approach to each patient that comes to them.
Reports, Metrics, and Dashboards
Another important nuance of CRM for healthcare providers is analytics. From drug discovery and research to customer interaction, it is important to always stay on track with the current state of things. It’s not only about reporting current statistics but also about being able to analyze data dynamics. It means that you can track how your business is doing within some period of time, how satisfied your patients are, and the productivity of medical workers.
Who Can Benefit From Healthcare CRM Features?
As you can see, the idea of a CRM system is flexible to the required business needs. The healthcare industry provides different services to its customers, whether this is a pharma business that sells their drugs to the patients and healthcare providers directly or healthcare organizations like private or public hospitals.
How Does It Work?
How to Choose the Best Healthcare CRM Software?
Such various services, united under one industry, require different features and technologies for their digital environment. To make the choice of healthcare CRM software system more accessible, it is usually divided into three categories.
Here are the main types of CRM software:
- Operational, developed for marketing and sales automation, data storing, and service providing; this software is perfect for revenue teams of pharma companies, concentrated on customer communication.
- Analytical — designed for businesses to effectively manage patient data and customer acquisition and retention processes. This is good for pharma companies and healthcare organizations as it allows them to improve drug research and discovery and track customer reactions.
- Collaborative CRM is perfect for significant medical structures and health systems like public hospitals. It will enable healthcare providers and junior medical officers to collaborate effectively on specific patients using electronic health records, developing better customer service and increasing customer satisfaction and retention.
As you can see, the technical equipment of your CRM software may vary depending on healthcare business needs. Once you decide to implement such a system into your company’s daily life, there will be several options, like getting a custom solution by hiring and maintaining a development team or already prepared software with various pre-set features.
What Is the Future of Healthcare CRMs in 2024?
The pharmaceutical CRM market is predicted to be worth 30.13 billion USD by 2023, double that of 2021 (14.70 billion USD). This is caused by the rising need for software that allows healthcare organizations to automate many workflows, boost team productivity, and organize data more efficiently.
Apart from the continued market growth, CRM software for the pharmacy industry will likely undergo some changes in its features. In 2023, generative AI was one of the most significant trends in the pharmaceutical industry; in 2024, it will continue to be so. Combined with pharmaceutical customer relationship management software, generative AI will enhance patient-HCP interactions, increase personalization, and streamline numerous operations, among other benefits. More companies will start incorporating AI into their products, which is why most pharmacy CRM software will receive at least a few new features, or some old ones will be scrapped and changed.
Why Healthcare CRM Is Vital to Your Business?
Modern time follows rules of comfort, the complexity of services, and effective communication. It’s hard to imagine any service, especially pharma or health systems, that won’t be using the benefits of digitalization, customer relation management, and patient data analytics.
Proper CRM for healthcare covers almost every issue connected to communication fails, lack of collaborative possibilities, or analytical engines. This will improve patient satisfaction, communication, and internal operational processes.
Reach out to the Viseven team and receive personalized recommendations for your business based on our expertise.
