Useful Advices - Business

The sales pitch for interactive voice response (IVR) is very compelling - being able to offer 24-hour service to customers without human intervention. However, a large number of IVR applicat

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

ions fail to work well. Jonty Pearce looks at seven of the greatest sins!

1. No option to speak to a person
The biggest trap is that IVR entices the unwary into the lure of being able

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

o provide service to the customer with no human intervention. IVR vendors are often guilty of selling this offering. While IVR can be of great help, providing a self-service facility to regu

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

lar customers, it is not the complete panacea. IVR works best in two areas - playing options to route calls to the best agent group and self-service to a closed group of frequent callers. Au

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

omating beyond this level can often be counter productive with poor customer service and less than expected take up. Even worse, is to use an IVR to answer a sales line. I never fail to be a

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

mazed at how many companies greet a sales opportunity with a pre-recorded voice!

2. Poor or No hand off to an agent
A frequent trap is not allowing people to connect to an agent. Cost

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

s often the reason given for this. For example, a well-known mobile phone company publishes a number to call if you have questions with your bill. But, it does not allow the option to transf

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

er the call to an agent to discuss the problem. When transferring to an agent the customer details should be transferred with the call. It is bad customer service to ask for the same details

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

again.

3. Poor menu prompt structure
This is widespread. The golden rule states that you should never have more than five options on a voice menu. There should also be no more than two

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

levels of menu. This should be treated as an absolute maximum. Personal experience has shown that the most successful menus have just three options.

4. Recording Messages
A poor voice

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

recording has ruined many a good IVR application. A good example is a frequent flyer application that speaks in a calm voice, “Your account balance is” followed by a gruff speaking voice bar

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

king “eight thousand two hundred and ten.” A common mistake has been to use the telephone handset to record announcements rather than a professional recording studio. This can result in inco

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

sistent volume levels as well as poorer speech quality. Recording studios are able to smooth out volume levels and provide the correct frequency profile to match the telephone rather than st

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

ereo quality.

5. Voice Recognition Accuracy
Voice recognition is a very powerful technology, but it is not a panacea. It claims 95% accuracy, but this is frequently on a single command

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

Mobile phone users can find difficulty using the service. For some users, it simply fails to work at all. It should be used with care and works best to a closed user group. After two voice

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

recognition attempts the caller should be connected to a live agent.

6. Taking too Long for frequent users
A new user to the system needs clear instructions on how to use the system. I

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

is also important that frequent users can enter information as quickly as possible. Most IVR systems allow type ahead, sometimes called cut through, that allow users to enter data while the

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

voice command is being spoken. So a frequent user would not have to wait until the end of “Please enter your account number followed by hash, or wait on the line to be connected to an opera

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

or. BEEP”, but could enter the account number in the middle of the sentence.

7. Insufficient testing
So, all that trouble has gone into developing the IVR application. Was it first int

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

roduced to a small group of internal customers to iron out any problems? All to often the answer is no. This would have sorted out all the previous sins before they caused any lasting damage

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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