Late Thursday night, my phone rings. “We are facing a major crisis!” says the person on the other end of the line.
This is the last thing an executive wants to hear from his sales team or distributor when it comes to the unexpected failure of a sophisticated medical device that was recently placed at a major customer site.
Unfortunately, if you are a manufacturer of an innovative product that was recently launched to the market, these kinds of crises are inevitable.
This happens despite risk analysis that was performed during the design phase, the pilot run in local sites and a product marathon that was conducted prior to launch.
After putting the marketing and sales efforts into customer acquisition, going down the funnel from awareness, lead generation, and conversion, everything you built can be ruined in a very short period by bad customer retention — especially when the turnaround for failure recovery isn’t quick enough, or in cases of recurring failures.
In today’s digital era, customer reviews spread fast and reach a wider audience than ever before. Bad customer experience can end up damaging your new brand, and adversely impacting the company’s hard-earned reputation.
There are measures a MedTech company can take to minimize the risk of losing clients due to complaints handling:
· Invest heavily in your (or your distributor’s) Tech Support training. If you’re a startup company, hire an experienced expert to carry out this kind of job. Overloading your R&D personnel to deal with Field Support issues isn’t a good idea.
· Implement failure reporting, analysis, and corrective action software.
· If you sell direct and your Tech Support team isn’t available to take direct customer calls and texts, use a 24/7 hotline vendor. Make sure someone within your organization follows up in a matter of minutes.
· Define your Tech Support levels and processes. Who’s providing 1st line support, 2nd line support, backups and so on?
· Design easy access to retrieve the device log files. This allows a quick turnaround for failure analysis.
· Keep sufficient stock of exchangeable spare parts in a local depot.
· Set up the logistics around outbound and inbound shipping. Track everything you do in a database.
· When a device is small enough to fit into a courier box and service, train the customer “device champion” to perform a swap in case of failure. Otherwise, make sure there are enough reps that can be dispatched in case of on-site visits.
Remember, excellent tech support elevates customer satisfaction levels, “greases the wheels” to return sales, and contributes to building a strong brand. It compensates for the device’s low reliability, especially at the early stages of the product life cycle.
Getting the customer up and running again after failure should be your highest priority. Proper analysis of the failures, determining trends, and feedback sent to your R&D and Manufacturing facility under a CAPA process are essential for the success of the device’s long-term sustainability in the market.
