Your customers and prospects are vastly different today thanthey were just 10 years ago. The Internet allows them to easilyresearch almost any topic, social media enables them to instantlyfind opinions about a product or service, and smart phones keepthem connected no matter where they are.

As technology brings changes to every aspect of your customers’lives, it also is changing expectations for customer service in thepharmacy benefits arena. And, an improved customer experiencecreates the opportunity for increased sales. For many customers,buying pharmacy benefits has traditionally been a challenging andconfusing process.

Trying to understand and compare offerings, costs, trade-offs,and the impact of various decisions has often driven even the mostknowledgeable benefits manager to despair. As a result, many landedby default in a one-size-fits-all pharmacy benefits plan, whichdidn’t necessarily match up with the specific needs of thecompany’s workforce.

And if that weren’t bad enough, a recently released study donefor Prudential by the Center for Strategy Research, “The Importanceof Employee Benefits Enrollment and Diversity CommunicationsStrategies,” indicated plan sponsors are now more focused on costreduction and containment, and put low priority on other importantgoals.

Just 28 percent of respondents felt that it was highly importantto “address the diverse needs of the employee population,” whileonly 35 percent felt that “helping employees make better benefitdecisions,” was highly important. Plan sponsors ranked these goalsamong the bottom three of a list of employee benefitobjectives.

Interestingly, the study also indicates that 44 percent of plansponsors rated “increasing employee satisfaction with the value ofthe overall benefits package” as highly important. Even in thiseconomic downturn, with the constant pressure to reduce health carerelated costs, companies know the value of offering a benefitspackage that meets employee needs.

But, until now, finding out exactly what those needs are – andthen relaying that information to brokers and consultants – wascomplicated, time consuming, and not necessarily accurate. Theintroduction of advanced preference technology, however, providesthe ability to cut through that confusion. This new applicationmakes it possible for brokers and consultants to discover exactlywhat clients and their employees want in a pharmacy benefit planand, just as valuable, for those clients to understand itthemselves.

Preference technology provides invaluable insight. Preferencemeasurement is the field dedicated to collecting, measuring, andanalyzing employee and company preferences on a wide range oftopics. As technology has evolved, data collection has gotteneasier. New technology has made it possible to gather informationvia interactive, online programs that use rating/ranking scales and“slider bars” to pinpoint respondents’ preferences.

Responses are then electronically compiled into usable data, andprovided to company management and sales professionals for avariety of uses. Many large corporations regularly use these typesof programs to create and strengthen client relationships, as wellas become more responsive to the needs of their market. Advancedpreference technology enables them to maintain a constant feedbackloop with customers, and use the information gathered to guidedecision making, pricing, marketing strategy, product planning andmuch more.

The introduction of preference technology for the pharmacybenefit management industry is a big step forward in helpingcustomers understand, and take control of, their pharmacy benefitneeds. Using an online program, respondents are guided through thedecision-making process, identifying preferences for variousoptions, such as benefit structure, formulary, co-pay tiers,provider network access, mail service, generic drug usage, clinicalprograms, increasing member compliance, reducing overall drugcosts, and many others.

Additionally, quantifying these tradeoffs to create the optimalsolution is pivotal. When such technology is utilized by acompany’s employees, it enables them to confidentially communicatetheir priorities to company management, thereby providing a truegauge of employee opinion. This information can then be used bybrokers, consultants, and company management during the developmentor revision of the company’s pharmacy benefit plan.

As a result, a plan that more closely aligns with workforcewants and needs. New tools create a better client experience andmember satisfaction. The positive impact of this new technology canbe felt by everyone involved in the benefits process. Imagine aclient or prospect who has identified – before beginning either thepharmacy contract renewal process or embarking on finding a newplan – exactly the benefits most desired by company employees.

Imagine that this client has already used an online program toweigh those wants and needs against costs. Now imagine howcollaborative and stress-free the subsequent discussions could be.For pharmacy consultants and brokers, these new, predictive onlinetools deliver the ability to provide an improved experience forthemselves and their constituents, more productive salesopportunities, a customer experience that has definitely changedfor the better and mostly, to create and execute on the bestpharmacy plan to serve member needs to enable healthier lives.

Patrick Stroh is senior vice president of Business andProduct Strategy within Prescription Solutions.