A Customer Experience Success Story: Engagement & Client (Customer) Focus
Some Get it and Some Don’t. Why?
There has been a lot of recent news and write ups of success (and failures) on retail customer service/experience programmes.
A few success stories:
Tony Hsieh of Zappos (of course!).
Nordstrom’s department stores.
Wegman’s supermarkets.
Why are some retailers more successful than others and generally more successful than other industries at customer experience?
Because the successful ones focus on and reach out to the customer. The customer is King. The service culture is instilled in the business and comes from top down.
They engage and focus on the client and all aspects around the client.
To back this up, a recent retail survey by the Retail Council of Canada (along with Wharton and Verde) titled “Discovering WOW,” shows that, of the top five categories of great shopping experiences, the top priority for loyalty and customer experience is ENGAGEMENT.
Statistics and Gaps
The following statistics and information from a CMO Council study tells us something….
“38 percent said their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers.”
“Only 31 percent rate their company’s commitment to customer listening highly.”
“Many companies have are discovering that they have no idea what their clients’ real customer experiences are. ”
It tells us that there are a lot of gaps when it comes to customer experience.
Filling the Gaps: Success in the Insurance Business Through Engagement and Client Focus
One insurance company has filled the gaps and understands why it is important..
Aviva (Norwich Union) are the fifth largest insurance company in the world and the largest in the UK. They deal with “real moments of truth”- floods, fires, accidents, death- and need to get customer experience right.
Aviva’s worldwide mantra is ”Prosperity, peach of mind, health & wealth. ” They need to live up to this to survive. And during these tough times it is even more important, since the insurance industry’s reputation is jaded and there is lack of trust overall.
Darren Cornish, Director Customer Experience, Norwich Union, worked with Beyond Philosophy (a leading customer experience consulting firm in the UK) to help them fill the gaps.
Quoting Mr. Cornish on his work with Beyond Philosophy: ”The best thing to do before designing any form of startegy is to go out and talk directly to the customers (and to the staff)- the front line.”
He found out that there was a degree of disconnect and it all distilled into two principles- customers want to trust us and want Norwich Union to “do what we say we do. ”
He also discovered that Norwich Union (and the insurance industry in general ) did not seem to demonstrate that they cared- they were not interested in “me (the client) as a person”.
Customers were often seen as a number. Customers felt like THEY were the victim. This killed the trust factor.
So what were the first steps? Engage senior management- work it from the top.
He discovered that “Our processes have been designed from the inside for efficiency and not with the customer in mind. The measurement and the incentives in place were damaging the customer experience. The IT systems needed to be shifted towards the customers. Marketing and communications were all about acquisition and not customer connections.”
Norwich Union went on to build a successful customer experience program through engagement and client focus.
“I am a broken record when it comes to saying, ‘We have to focus on the consumer.’…I don’t think the answers are just in the numbers. You have to get out and look.” - A.G. Lafley, former CEO, Procter & Gamble
Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore
Tags: Banking, Customer Experience, Insurance
