InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
Technology's Value: Listening To Your Customers
Technology can help generate the feedback companies need to outflank the competition
By Tom Trainer
Issue column appeared: Sept. 18, 1995
Getting closer to customers is a priority for many companies today. They recognize that close contact is vital to not only keep customers happy in the short term, but to get feedback that keeps future products, services, and strategy ahead of the competition--and in tune with customer needs.
It's a big issue in the pharmaceuticals industry, which is undergoing great changes as more of its business comes from very larg e customers with a keen eye on value: managed health-care organizations.
Judging by the audience and speakers at the InformationWeek 500 conference --which this year takes customer-driven technology as its theme--it's just as big an issue in other industries.
IT's Big Role
My firm, Eli Lilly and Co., recognizes that information technology is going to play a big role in helping us stay ahead of the competition. We've even changed our corporate mission statement to reflect the fact that IT will be a key factor in delivering health-care solutions. I hope to play a big part in making sure that happens; it's the reason I came here from Reebok, a company that operates in a rapidly changing consumer-oriented market.
The pharmaceuticals industry, which has traditionally operated in a less fickle market with product cycles of 10 to 15 years, is having to make radical changes. Companies are streamlining operations, adjusting to the concept of customer intim acy, and trying to develop products more rapidly. Many of those changes are enabled by technology.
We think technology will help us change from being just a pharmaceuticals company to one that can play a broader role in disease management, helping improve patient care while controlling health-care costs. For example, we're planning a nationwide information network to link health-care professionals and organizations, helping them identify effective treatments.
We have many more initiatives under way. One is a new customer service system that will support a recently formed customer service organization, which handles calls from consumers and health-care professionals. The organization replaced several specialized call centers and gives these customers a single point of contact. But it also means representatives must field calls from outside their areas of specialized knowledge.
A Complex Problem
Building a system to support this customer-service organization presents a complex set o
f issues. The system must provide information that lets representatives answer questions on a variety of subjects, so callers receive consistent, informed answers no matter which representatives they talk to. This means the system has to integrate information from different parts of our organization. Many companies may find, as we did, that no single off-the-shelf package meets their needs. But packages can handle many of the individual functions, such as call-tracking. For us, that means providing a solution involves integrating components from different systems.
We think a customer-service system can do more than just help our employees respond to customers' questions. It can also support longer-term goals such as building customer relationships, and developing and improving products.
Our system will help streamline operations by making support staff more versatile and reducing the dependence on specialists. It will enable information documented by one customer representative to be speedily access ed by another, so information about a caller is readily available to any agent if that customer calls again. That helps build customer relationships.
Finally, call-tracking makes it possible for us to gather information from customer calls that can then be passed on to other areas of the company. That means the system ultimately can be used to help us improve education programs and products, based on feedback direct from the customer.
This column appeared in Final Word, a forum for professionals with opinions on information management. Your contributions are welcome. IW cannot return unsolicited manuscripts. Please send submissions to: InformationWeek, 600 Community Drive, Manhasset, N.Y. 11030, or E-Mail them to mfaden@cmp.com
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