Voice of Customer for Life Sciences

Voice of Customer & CX Analytics

In life sciences, customer insight isn't a nice-to-have — it's the foundation of every strategic decision. Who are your customers? What do they actually value? How do they make decisions? What would make them switch from the product they're currently using to yours? And once they've adopted, what keeps them — or what makes them leave?

These aren't questions you can answer from inside your organisation. They require structured, evidence-based customer research — the kind that separates what companies assume their customers want from what customers actually want. In my experience, the gap between the two is almost always larger than anyone expects.

Why Most Customer Research Fails in Life Sciences

Customer research in life sciences is fundamentally different from consumer research, and most companies approach it with the wrong methodology. Here's what I see going wrong:

Asking the wrong people. Companies research "customers" without distinguishing between the clinician who evaluates the product, the lab manager who implements it, the procurement officer who approves the budget, and the patient who benefits from it. Each has different priorities, different decision criteria, and different objections. Research that treats them as a single audience produces insights that apply to nobody
Asking the wrong questions. "Would you use this product?" is the least useful question in customer research. Of course they would — in theory. The useful questions are: "What would you have to stop doing to start using this?" "What would your colleagues say if you switched?" "Who else needs to approve this?" "What happened the last time you tried something new?" These questions reveal the adoption barriers that kill products after launch
Researching at the wrong time. Companies do customer research before launch (if they do it at all) and then stop. But the most valuable insights come after launch — when you can observe actual behaviour rather than stated preferences. What features do customers actually use? Where do they get stuck? What competitors are they also evaluating? Post-launch voice of customer is where positioning gets refined and adoption gets accelerated
Not connecting insights to action. I've seen companies invest six figures in customer research and produce a 100-page report that sits in a shared drive. The insights were good. But nobody translated them into positioning changes, messaging updates, sales enablement tools, or product development priorities. Customer research without an action plan is an expensive hobby

What I Deliver

HCP insight research: Deep understanding of clinician needs, workflows, and decision-making processes. This goes beyond satisfaction surveys. I research how healthcare professionals actually evaluate new products, what evidence they need, who influences their decisions, what barriers prevent adoption, and what would make them actively recommend your product to colleagues. I've conducted HCP research across diagnostics, digital health, and research tools — and the insights have directly shaped positioning, messaging, and sales enablement strategies
Customer journey mapping: A detailed map of how your customers move from awareness to evaluation to adoption to advocacy — and, critically, where they drop off. Most customer journeys in life sciences are non-linear: a clinician might hear about your product at a conference, forget about it for six months, see a colleague use it, request a trial, face resistance from procurement, and eventually adopt two years later. Understanding this journey — including the dark stages where no interaction is visible — is essential for designing effective engagement strategies
Payer and procurement research: What evidence and value arguments actually drive purchasing decisions? I research how procurement committees evaluate new products, what criteria they use, how they compare options, and what evidence package would make approval straightforward rather than contentious. This isn't guesswork — it's structured research with the people who actually sign the purchase orders
Competitive perception studies: How does the market see your product versus alternatives? Not your competitive analysis — theirs. What do customers think your competitors do better? Where do they think you're stronger? What misconceptions exist about your product? Competitive perception studies reveal the positioning gaps that internal analysis misses
Win/loss analysis: Why did you win the deals you won? Why did you lose the ones you lost? And — the question most companies forget to ask — why did some prospects never decide at all? Win/loss analysis at the deal level provides the most actionable insights for sales enablement and positioning refinement

CX Analytics for Pharma and Life Sciences

This is where voice of customer meets measurement at enterprise scale. I bring deep expertise in pharmaceutical customer experience analytics — from customer engagement scoring to omnichannel measurement frameworks to content effectiveness tracking. If you're investing heavily in HCP engagement across digital, field force, and medical channels and can't prove it's working, this is what I do.

I've built the CX analytics function for a global pharmaceutical company from the ground up — designing measurement frameworks, customer engagement scores, and omnichannel analytics tools used across 12 global markets. This isn't theoretical. I've done the work, managed the stakeholders, navigated the data challenges, and delivered the frameworks that connect engagement activity to commercial outcomes.

Key Capabilities

Customer Engagement Score (CES) design: A composite metric that captures engagement depth, breadth, recency, and trajectory across all channels. Not just "is this customer engaged?" but "how engaged, through which channels, and what does that predict about their behaviour?" I design CES frameworks that are actionable — each engagement tier has a clear next-best-action, not just a number on a dashboard
Omnichannel measurement framework: Connecting the dots across email, digital, field force, medical affairs, conferences, and content channels. Most pharma companies measure each channel independently. The result is a collection of vanity metrics that tell you nothing about cross-channel impact. I build frameworks that measure the customer journey, not just the channel
Content effectiveness measurement: Which content assets actually drive engagement progression? Which webinars lead to follow-up conversations? Which email campaigns correlate with behaviour change? Content effectiveness measurement connects content investment to commercial outcomes — because "it got 10,000 views" doesn't answer "did it change anyone's mind?"
Digital targeting and prioritisation: Data-driven frameworks for selecting which channels, audiences, and content types deserve investment. Not all engagement is equal, and not all customers are equally valuable. Targeting frameworks ensure your engagement resources are allocated where they'll have the most impact
Cross-channel journey analytics: Understanding the actual sequence of touchpoints each customer encounters — and which sequences lead to adoption, trial, or advocacy. This requires connecting data across CRM, digital analytics, event systems, and field force platforms

How It Works

Phase 1 — Scoping and Design (Weeks 1-2): I define the research objectives, identify the target audiences, and design the methodology. For customer research, this means interview guides, survey instruments, and sample design. For CX analytics, this means data source mapping, framework design, and stakeholder alignment. The methodology depends on the question — some problems require 30 customer interviews, others require analysis of 50,000 engagement records.

Phase 2 — Research and Analysis (Weeks 3-6): Fieldwork, data collection, and analysis. For customer research, this might include HCP interviews, procurement officer discussions, competitive perception surveys, and win/loss reviews. For CX analytics, this means data integration, scoring model development, and framework validation. I look for patterns, not anecdotes — insights that are robust enough to build strategy on.

Phase 3 — Insights to Action (Weeks 7-8): Research without action is waste. I deliver insights with clear strategic recommendations — not just "here's what we found" but "here's what this means for your positioning, your messaging, your sales approach, and your engagement strategy." Every finding comes with an action plan. Where applicable, I translate insights directly into positioning updates, messaging refinements, or sales enablement improvements.

What You'll Have at the End

Customer insight report with strategic recommendations (not just findings — actions)
Customer journey maps by audience segment
Competitive perception analysis
Win/loss analysis with sales enablement implications
For CX analytics engagements: measurement framework, engagement scoring model, and analytics dashboard specifications
Action plan connecting insights to positioning, messaging, and sales strategy

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