Our purpose was to conduct a customer satisfaction survey of verbal responses provided by a pharmaceutical company's third-party medical information (MI) call center. One survey for health care providers (HCPs) and one for consumers were designed to assess customer satisfaction following a verbal response to an MI question. Surveys were offered to all HCPs and consumers contacting the MI call center January-March 2007. Respectively, 27% and 18% of all HCPs and consumers (N = 318) receiving a verbal response agreed to participate. The completeness and understanding of medical responses were rated similarly, independent of caller type, 92% rating the answer received as complete and 98%> rating the quality as above average to excellent. Additionally, 53% of HCPs rated the response quality as better than that provided by other industry call centers. Lastly, 100% of both caller types stated they were treated in a courteous or professional manner. Based on the three-month customer satisfaction survey, the medical information and level of professionalism provided by the call center were average to above average, indicating a high level of customer satisfaction with verbal responses.

To enhance medical information (MI) support of the sales force, two online surveys were designed: an external survey to identify general avenues for improvement and an internal survey to identify specific opportunities for improvement. The external survey was disseminated to 86 MI departments to determine standard MI practices in support of sales representatives. The internal survey assessing sales representative satisfaction with existing MI services was disseminated to 778 Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc sales representatives. Both surveys were sent in December 2007 and remained open through January 2008. Eighteen MI departments (21%) responded to the external survey and 420 sales representatives (54%) responded to the internal survey. Results from these surveys suggested several considerations for the enhancement of MI support of the sales force.