Drug details, a phone call away

G Sankaranarayanan, Chennai

City-based Pharma Call Private Limited has come up with a novel solution for the pharmaceutical companies to enhance the customer reach and strengthen customer relationship by offering Pharmareach, a first of its kind inbound call center service.

Pharmareach facilitates pharmaceutical companies in providing scientific and promotional information about their medicines/drugs and medical equipment to doctors and pharmacists over phone. P V Sundaram, chairman, emphasises: “The twin goal is to enhance the customer reach and strengthen the customer relationship of pharmaceutical companies.”

He quotes a survey by a leading research body, which shows that 60 per cent of the doctors are able to spend a mere two minutes time with medical representatives (MR) which barely gives them time to assimilate the facts presented. Fifty one per cent of the doctors also consider that the repeated visits by representatives a disturbance.

The survey, he says, also reveals that the consulting doctors in leading government and private hospitals feel hesitant to meet the representatives due to paucity of time but would like to equip themselves with information (about the medicines, etc) if they are accessible at the time of their convenience.

“Every business segment has embraced business process outsourcing and customer care through call centre. We are positioning Pharmareach as a complimenting service to the process of information transfer through medical representatives (MRs). Actually, we help MRs getting appointment with doctors or the company supplying more information (brochure, product catalogue, etc) based on the request of doctors,” he says. Sivaramakrishnan, Chief, Operations, adds, “Pharma Call also helps sales force of the pharmaceutical companies to enhance their knowledge, preparedness and effectiveness in communicating with doctors during drug details.”

According to him, the Pharmareach system works in the following way: First the client, the pharmaceutical company, enrolls with Pharma Call and becomes a member, after which the pharmaceutical company provides Pharma Call with necessary information/literature about its products. The pharmaceutical company gets an all India toll free number, which the company popularises among its panel of doctors, executives and pharmacists. The customers, on dialling the toll free number at their convenient time, can get the necessary information over phone from the Pharma Call executives. “We provide the telephone bills (which will be paid on a monthly basis) every month along with details about the actual calls handled from various destinations,” said Sivaramakrishnan. “This is the cheapest medium to reach doctors accurate and uniform information on drugs, medicines and medical equipment,” he added.

The company is planning to approach select pharmaceutical companies to begin with. After every call is completed, the Pharma Call executives will be recording the information provided and the details of the complete exchanges.