Author: Christian Velten

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

Between 2019 and 2022, members of the Medical CX department (which I had the honor to lead) drove the evolution of (medical) customer services provided by Roche Pharma. We were supporting Digital Health, Personalized Healthcare and FMI divisions of the company with expertise about and implementation of customer services around their products, Typically being program-embedded contributors, working hand in hand with colleagues designing the products. Examples had been in-app customer services (Digital Health) or aligning medical services around the FMI portfolio to the enterprise approach.

The Medical Customer Experience department I had the pleasure to head at Roche Pharma (global), embraced the full value chain of digital customer touchpoints, medical content processes, internal customer engagement supporting platforms/tools, CX insights, and CX execution. As part of the overall ambition to provide customers and patients with better experiences with Roche, the Digital Customer Engagement sub-team took the effort to design a lean but advanced Digital Content Strategy which developed into a Digital Content Best Practices Framework. The team used the opportunity that most assets and aspects of end-to-end content processes were either homed in the department or…

I am proudly sharing that “CareRing“, the Roche internal community for employees who are patients or caregivers, has won the 2020 Reuters Pharma Awards Europe in the category ‘Most promising MVP/pilot’. The CareRing platform is homed in the Medical Customer Experience department I am heading. But I cannot claim too much contribution myself. I just gave CareRing a home at times of uncertainties, and acted as an internal sponsor. My sincere congratulations are going to a truly cross-enterprise team of enthusiasts and passionate individuals who are jointly leading and driving and who were doing a lot of things very right.…