Author: Christian Velten

Those who know me a bit longer know me for being a big advocate for seeing patients as customers (of healthcare providers, pharma included). This can be perceived as a quite provocative statement. But I think, I have some quite good arguments at hand. A big thank you goes to Mark Doyle by “A life in a day” for the opportunity to share my thoughts today, to discuss them, and to the be challenged on it. Feel free to watch the recording on the ‘A life in a day’ website, please. Read more at …

I am proudly looking forward to joining Yigal Aviv from Pfizer and Dirk Abeel from OMNI-X-ELLERATION for a panel discussion about the current maturity of omnichannel in the pharmaceutical industry. I am representing Roche. Feel free to listen to us remotely, on March 8 at 3:30p.m. CET, in case the topic might find your interest, please.

Feb 2022 – present / ROCHE PHARMA Leading the Roche Pharma enterprise patient and customer feedback program (Voice-of-the-Customer). • On enterprise level, strategically and operationally enabling Roche in creating an outstanding, enjoyable, consistent and impactful patient and customer experiences. • Provide strategic guidance and expertise on e.g. patient-centric and impactful launch strategies and other enterprise initiatives with a holistic patient or customer journey perspective. Achievements Voice-of-the-customer program successfully deployed Achievements Business Intelligence Pharma November 7, 2024 Collective CX Exec Coaching on enterprise level Achievements Business Events Leadership Pharma September 15, 2023 Assessment of Roche Pharma CX Ecosystem and Gap Analysis…

In 2022 I had the great pleasure being a member of a cross-functional “digital squad” which was defining and executing on a digital launch strategy for a new pharmaceutical treatment launched by Roche in the EU. We saw an exceptional opportunity using the product launch as a sweet spot for early introducing CX methodology to the go-to-market approach. My role had been to add CX expertise and perspective to the table, where I have to say that my other functional colleagues (digital strategy, market insights, content management) had been remarkably open to consider new methodologies for a more customer-expectations-driven approach.…

In 2020, a highly talented CX Insights lead in the Roche Pharma Medical CX department (which I had the pleasure to lead), together with cross-functional colleagues, set-up and drove the first global customer feedback program at Roche Pharma. The initiative called ‘OneFeedback’ (leaned towards the ‘OneRoche’ vision wording) had been the forerunner of and was later fusing into the Roche Pharma corporate Voice-of-the-customer program. OneFeedback was initially focusing on key corporate customer touch-points in the web, which all were homed in the MedCX department at that time. Within the initiative the team was also closely collaborating with the Roche Technical…

Presentation about providing commercial value proof of customer experience approaches.

In 2021, members of my team of the Roche Pharma Medical CX department together with the Roche Pharma Global Medical Information team were driving an truly exciting initiative on innovating how Roche answers to medical information inquiries. The initiative called ‘Customer Driven Content Authoring’ (CDCA) was based on a systematic co-design approach with Roche customers, physicians, pharmacists and patients. Medical information requests (MIRs) or medical inquiries are an obligatory and vital service provided by pharma companies. It is a bit similar to service call centers in other industries, but much more sensitive and regulated. Every answer provided could have an…

Dr. Christian Velten presenting how Roche uses Voice-of-the-customer (VoC) to learn from HCPs’ & patients’ opinions.

In my role as Global Head of the Medical Customer Experience department at Roche Pharma (global) I have been co-initiating and co-sponsoring an initiative which aimed to make a Roche therapeutic area (“product line”) more patient-centric. Together with the TA’s medical director, the Global Head of Patient Partnership and smart colleagues across all functions involved we focused on identifying barriers (to be removed), providing enabling resources enabling (facilitating patient-centricity in day-to-day business), and ‘building on successes’ (sharing best practice examples).

Panel on Modernizing Medical Affairs at the virtual Reuters Pharma 2021 conference