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#PractitionerLevelConfidence
Engaging healthcare professionals (HCPs) has become a high-stakes challenge for life sciences companies. Physicians are more selective than ever, limiting their time to a small number of trusted partners. Hybrid is now the standard, with HCPs blending in-person and digital interactions depending on context. The implication is clear: access can no longer be won through reach alone. It depends on the quality, relevance, and coordination of every touchpoint.
Research backs this up. DT Consulting has found that HCPs are more than twice as likely to engage further with companies that provide quality customer-centric experiences, and that these positive interactions directly influence how HCPs perceive a pharma company’s products. In today’s market, where access to HCPs is limited, the ability to consistently deliver such experiences is what determines which companies sustain trusted relationships.
Data from Indegene’s 2024 HCP Digital Affinity Report further underscores the challenge. One-third of HCPs are strong digital enthusiasts, another 40% are still developing their digital engagement, and the rest remain cautious. Preferences vary by specialty, therapy area, region, and even age group. For example, cardiology and endocrinology are embracing digital channels rapidly, while anesthesiology and surgery lag. Even older HCPs are proving to be active digital adopters, debunking the myth that digital affinity is tied to age. This diversity makes precision essential, yet most companies are still unable to deliver it.
The Execution Gap — and its Root Cause
Pharma has invested heavily in customer engagement over the past decade. Yet the experience from the HCP’s perspective is often fragmented, repetitive, or poorly timed. A physician may receive multiple outreach emails from different teams within the same company, be presented with conflicting product information, or wait days for a follow-up to a specific question. These breakdowns frustrate HCPs and erode trust.
The root cause is organizational. Functions such as marketing, medical, sales, and market access continue to operate in silos, each with its own objectives, budgets, and KPIs. Data may exist in abundance, but without integration and cross-functional accountability, it remains underused. Field teams rely on one set of insights, digital campaigns on another, and medical affairs on yet another, leading to duplication and inconsistency.
This misalignment explains why the industry’s intent to provide customer-centric experiences has not translated into measurable impact. Until companies rewire how people, processes, technology, and data work together, new channels and tools will only add noise rather than value.
Non-Negotiables for Effective Customer Engagement in Life Sciences
If organizational silos are the root cause, then three engagement attributes form the foundation for fixing them. These are not new ideas, but they remain the areas where pharma execution consistently falls short. In 2025, they are no longer optional.
1. Relevancy
HCPs expect content that reflects their specialty, their patient population, and even their personal channel preferences. Indegene’s Digital Affinity data shows stark contrasts: cardiologists and endocrinologists lean into digital engagement, while surgeons and anesthesiologists remain more traditional. Treating both groups the same guarantees wasted effort. Relevancy requires moving beyond brand-centric messaging toward content that is timely, precise, and personalized to the HCP’s context and channel preferences. Learn more about how a unified approach enables personalization in life sciences marketing.
2. Responsiveness
Responsiveness is not simply about answering faster. It is about creating confidence that whenever an HCP reaches out — whether to a rep, through a portal, or in response to an email — the answer will be timely, accurate, and consistent. Too often, delays or conflicting responses across functions create friction that diminishes trust. Embedding responsiveness into processes means aligning service levels across sales, medical, and access so the organization speaks with one voice.
3. Coordination
Perhaps the most visible symptom of structural misalignment is lack of coordination. HCPs often describe receiving multiple outreaches from the same company within days, each from a different team. This not only wastes valuable time but signals that the company itself is fragmented. Coordination means orchestrating every touchpoint across functions so that interactions feel seamless, purposeful, and respectful of the HCP’s time.
Together, these three attributes define the standard for modern customer engagement strategies. They shift the focus from one-off campaigns or tactical wins to sustained, enterprise-wide execution. Companies that embed relevancy, responsiveness, and coordination into their operating model are the ones that will succeed in delivering true customer centric experiences.
Adopting a Customer-Centric Organizational Framework to Drive Change
Too often, change management is treated as an afterthought. Yet creating meaningful HCP engagement requires an overarching framework that addresses internal challenges and creates a culture where the customer sits at the center of every decision.
The CX Mobilizing Omnichannel Digital Experience for Life Sciences (CxMODELS) framework was designed with exactly this goal in mind. It positions the needs of the customer at the heart of the organization while supporting customer engagement strategies through structure and governance. By mapping the layers of people, processes, and technology involved in customer interactions, CxMODELS enables life sciences organizations to deliver truly unified customer centric experiences.
At its foundation, the framework emphasizes integrity — embedding compliance, privacy, and ethical considerations into every engagement. It also ensures scalability across markets and therapy areas, and integration of customer insights into everyday operations.
CxMODELS is flexible enough for organizations of any size yet powerful enough to deliver enterprise-wide adoption. With a digital-first approach, it makes it possible to capture insights on what HCPs want and deliver the right message, at the right time, on their preferred channels.
When organizations adopt a framework like CxMODELS, they do more than streamline operations. They lay the groundwork for lasting transformation. Prioritizing relevancy, responsiveness, and coordination, and embedding them within a customer-centric culture, creates the conditions for stronger HCP access, higher-value interactions, and measurable ROI.
From Structures to Outcomes
The evidence is clear: prioritizing HCP needs and delivering consistent, high-quality interactions pays measurable dividends. Positive customer centric experiences build trust, strengthen relationships, and directly influence prescribing behavior. But the path to those outcomes lies in breaking down the structural barriers that have long held pharma back.
When organizations adopt frameworks like CxMODELS, they embed customer engagement strategies into the core of the business. Relevancy, responsiveness, and coordination stop being aspirational values and become operating principles. A digital-first, orchestrated model powered by integrated insights ensures that every engagement is purposeful and aligned to the HCP’s needs.
The result is more than operational efficiency. It is stronger access to selective HCPs, greater impact with every interaction, and optimized ROI across brands and portfolios. For pharma leaders, the message is simple: customer engagement will define who wins in the years ahead. The companies that rewire their organizations to deliver customer centric omnichannel engagement will be the ones that earn trust, create value, and achieve lasting growth.
Thoughts from Indegene experts
Jay Schwartz, VP Customer Engagement, Indegene
When building a truly optimized customer experience, the data utilized to evaluate progress cannot be limited to one data source. Too often, prescription prescribing data is utilized to determine customer success. While this measure is a critical component, it should not be evaluated in the absence of other key customer measures.
Understanding how the customer is engaging with the organization and therapeutic offering can be measured by interactions with the salesforce, medical liaisons, digital medium, product access specialists, and so on. It is critical to see the full picture to understand the level and magnitude of customer engagement. If one area of engagement is low, it may be the critical piece to unlock customer advocacy in support of product selection.
Peter Marchesini, SVP Commercialization Solutions, Indegene
While things are changing, there is so much that stays the same. The essence of commercial promotion is that you have relevant messaging that needs to get to the HCP. Whether it is done through a human channel or a digital channel, your goal is for the message you sent to be properly received, understood, and lead to appropriate patient utilization.
To rely on any one channel of communication is inefficient and incomplete. Not taking a personalized approach into account is not taking advantage of the tools and data that are needed to create an efficient approach. To treat any one of these digital channels as a tactic rather than giving it the same time and attention we have given to reps is not understanding how our customer base wants to receive their product and scientific information. You can choose to waste time, energy, and effort...but eventually someone will ask you why you have not explored, in a thoughtful way, a digital approach in combination with your sales team.
Authors
Markus Hinderberger
Nancy Phelan
Brooke Anderson
Jay Schwartz
Peter Marchesini
