Currently, the figure of the Carterized Manager in the Healthcare sector is a fundamental piece in the competitive strategy of any manufacturing company or distributor in the pharmacy channel.  Not only because of the profitability and volume of business it generates, but also because of the added value it brings to the client.

At MST Holding we wanted to get to know a little better the day-to-day work of the Carterized Manager and we have conducted a short interview with one of them, which you can read below:

1. The main challenges you face in your day-to-day work.

We have quarterly objectives and every day I try to reach them, and always be positive, you can not slow down the pace of work to avoid surprises and to reach the goal set by the client.

Not to fail the client is my main challenge.

2.            How many clients do you currently manage and what is the volume of business.

That depends on the number of pharmacies we call, but we handle approximately 30 orders a day, and if we are unable to contact them, we make sure we keep calling them so we don’t lose a sale.

I have an agenda to keep track of customers and thus organize the rotation and needs of each customer.

The volume of business depends a lot on the type of order and product we are dealing with, it is not the same an order of exclusive medicines that are very expensive than an order for example of dressings or dermo-aesthetic products where the average order is already lower. But normally we work with a demanding volume of work and the sales amounts are usually approximately 2.200€ of average order (with the exceptions that I have mentioned).

3.            Differences between your current position and your previous sales roles.

The difference now with my previous jobs, is that the previous ones have always been face-to-face and the current job of portfolio manager is that I handle everything by phone in teleworking mode. Another important difference is that now I have a portfolio of clients and in my previous jobs I also had one, but I also had to reach a prospecting quota, that is to say to make new clients every month.

4.            As a sales expert, what do you like most about being a Carterized Manager?

Personally, I love dealing with the public and the figure of the Carterized Manager allows me to have a closer and more informal relationship with customers. I also like challenges and testing myself by always surpassing the objectives set by myself, it is a way to stay motivated. I can manage a large number of pharmacies on a daily basis and this is a great challenge for me. I consider this to be a very important sector and I find it very rewarding to be able to contribute my experience and knowledge.

5.            What personal success story are you most proud of?

In the last laboratory I worked in, it was quite complicated since everything, or almost everything, was prospecting and I opened many pharmacies from the list. One of them was in a center (I can’t say the name due to confidentiality!) where I had already tried several times to create a contact (other colleagues and even my boss) without success. Finally, I was able to place an order with them and thus create customer loyalty by opening a space in their pharmacy. This is a laboratory that is not very well known and I positioned myself alongside the rest of the laboratories with a recognized name. It was a great personal satisfaction.

If you want to know more about Gestor Carterizado you can contact us at: marketing@mstholding.com

Customer care has been changing in recent years. And although we usually believe that these changes are limited to sectors such as the technology industry or telecommunications, the truth is that customer service in the health sector has also been transformed. At Consulting c3, as a consulting area of the MST Group specializing in this sector, we encounter common cases in people who perform customer service functions in healthcare.

The changes are significant and it is good to know them in order to understand the new trends in the field of Customer Experience (CX) in Heathcare. So what do our consultants encounter when they carry out a project in the Healthcare sector? Here they tell us.

In terms of training, Consulting C3 works in 3 areas in the Healthcare sector:

– Training

– Coaching of agents

– Agent mentoring

What problems do we usually encounter?

At first sight, we do not detect specific problems different from other sectors, since we are talking about services that are technically very similar. But we can speak of very specific characteristics inherent to the sector, such as:

Medium-high level clients: both in terms of academic, educational or educational preparation, as well as in terms of economic level or purchasing power.

Criticality: the healthcare sector, in general, is critical, so that customers’ perception of their problems or incidents is that they are a priority.

Specific technical preparation: the agents who deal with incidents from a helpdesk in the healthcare sector must be specialists in the specific subject; that is, they require a higher technical-academic preparation and have this differentiation with respect to the usual Customer Service agents. In other words, they are technical specialists who serve customers.

Most common weaknesses of agents in the Healthcare sector

The most particular weaknesses of these agent profiles are:

a.            Category mindset: they do not see themselves as Customer Service agents, but rather as senior technicians in a specific medical or health-related specialty, which makes it difficult for them, on occasion, to adopt the different communicative styles classically proposed by a Customer Service, for example, making a corporate greeting and closing the call.

b.                           Purely technical mindset: as the people of science that they are, it is very common for their profiles to stand out for their ability and focus on resolving the issue, giving little importance to the need to develop communication skills.

c.            Generation gap: most helpdesk agents are Millenials and there is a certain natural resistance to using politeness formulas that they consider outdated.

How does Consulting C3 manage all this?

– By helping them, first of all, to internalize the need to acquire, develop and improve communication skills in the telephone environment, since this is the means by which they will be able to technically resolve incidents.

– Enhance the necessary communication skills. In order to approach high-level clients, it is important that they always take into account to offer a professional image, through a polite, formal and professional language, which will help them to be more credible and to be at the same technical level. To address criticality, it is important that agents show confidence at all times, even when they are unsure of the resolution, so it is necessary that they consciously avoid any expression of doubt. Contrary to popular belief, consulting or handing over the call to another department is a sign of mastery, not weakness, similar to the referral a doctor may make of a patient to a specialist.

– Regarding the category mindset, it is a matter of orienting agents towards the vision of the value they bring from the telephone environment.

– The generation gap, although not present in all cases, is worked with training, with concrete practical cases, through, for example, the exercise of listening to their own calls, putting themselves in the customer’s place, trying to understand the impact that courtesy and formality, as well as a high level of language, generates in the level of customer satisfaction, and, obviously, with constant accompaniment and constructive feedback from ConsultingC3 Consultants.

People skills do not come naturally to everyone. Some people have high emotional intelligence and others less so. Therefore, training is critical to bridge this gap and provide all employees with the skills they need to deliver excellent customer service.

Customer experience is crucial to any business in the modern world, but this is particularly true in healthcare, where a good experience can mean a huge improvement in a person’s quality of life.When it comes to delivering an excellent customer experience to patients, these are the things that can make a significant difference.

If you would like to learn more about this topic you can contact us at marketing@mstholding.com or at www.mstholding.com.