investments in customer centricity are seeing dividends for financial services firms

Investments in Customer Centricity Are Seeing Dividends for Financial Services Firms

A look at how Retail Banks and Insurance Companies are evolving their product-focused missions into customer-centric strategies for financial gains

Exerpted Articles From:

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mediaa division of Peppers & Rogers Group

©2014 www.1to1media.com 2

Retail banking is undergoing a massive disruption. While banks have traditionally been the provid-ers of retail services, they’re now facing real competitive threats as new mobile technologies and emerging financial and non-financial intermediaries combine to provide trusted alternatives and less-expensive solutions for both the unbanked and for profitable customers.

Consumer banks are rapidly losing market share as a result. In fact, according to the 2013 Accenture study, Banking 2020, banks could lose about 35 percent of their market share by 2020, and up to 25 percent of U.S. banks could disappear completely.

The same study estimated that 15 percent of traditional banks’ revenues could shift to online-only players—including branchless banks and new technology entrants—in the next seven years as more consumers flock to technology driven services. Another 20 percent could go to “retail-driven players with a mass-market focus.”

Some of these non-traditional providers include Wal-Mart, which has partnered with American Express to offer Bluebird, an alternative to debit and checking accounts designed to enable con-sumers to deposit checks and pay bills via mobile devices, maintain a zero minimum balance, and avoid any overdraft fees; and 7-Eleven, which offers prepaid banking cards that enable customers with the ease of doing business by allowing ATM transactions, the purchase of money orders, fund transfers, check cashing, and bill pay.

In addition, online-only providers have made a splash on the scene. Top players include: Moven, an online debit account provider that promises to support its customers’ financial wellness through transparency, the ability to connect customers with their money 24/7, and the knowledge to make sound financial decisions; GoBank, which offers custom Visa and debit cards and mobile deposits; and Simple, which promises “no surprise fees,” offers budgeting tools, and boasts a branchless banking experience. [Note: Multinational bank BBVA acquired Simple in February 2014 for approximately $117 million, validating the importance of these new competitors.]

Traditional and non-traditional financial services institutions alike are seeing some of the big-gest advances happening in mobile banking. Accenture reported a 50 percent increase in mobile banking activity since 2012, with consumers saying online banking is the single most important investment banks can make.

By leveraging the wide range of mobile functionality available, including mobile POS such as Square and Paypal; near-field communication payments like Google Wallet; mobile banking, and in-app billing, traditional and non-traditional financial providers are offering a low-cost channel to acquire new customers and scale-up efficiently. In doing so, they’re hedging their bets for a share of the massive market currently dominated by the large consumer banking providers.

These mobile developments, as well as the introduction of mass market players, are posing a threat to financial institutions as profitable customers become less satisfied with their banks. According to the World Retail Banking Report 2013, from Capgemini and Efma, customers are mostly unsatisfied with their banks in five core areas: knowledge of customer’s needs and prefer-ences (37 percent satisfied); product-channel fit (43 percent satisfied); trust and confidence (51 percent satisfied); intimacy and relationship-building (43 percent satisfied); and providing a con-sistent multichannel experience (44 percent satisfied).

This research shows that today’s banks must understand their customers, repair their relation-ships, and focus on providing personalized cross-channel engagements to defend against new competitors, avoid commoditization, and ultimately lead to higher revenue growth.

These repairs will only work if they’re established upon a foundation of trust, which requires banks to deliver on the moments of truth for their customers, forming a trusted bond that trans-

forms the customer experience.

—Weston McDonald, Senior Vice President, Financial Services, TeleTech

Restoring Trust in Banking

Executive Overview:

Table of Contents

Executive Overview ............. 2

Banking ................................ 3

Insurance ........................... 33


Every business—and every bank—has a corporate culture. And cultures are made up of attitudes, behav-

iors, and company values. The question of culture is a key one for banks that are looking to become more

customer-centric.

Customer centricity is a hot topic of discussion among banks in the Middle East in particular. It is a

strategy that both global and local banks are taking very seriously in their quest to stay ahead of growing

competition in the region.

At a time when most banks are struggling to grow, many banks in the region are well-capitalized and have the

funds at their disposal to exploit new growth. They are engaged in pursuing new revenue opportunities and diver-

sifying their income streams. In this environment, customer centricity fits as a natural strategy for many reasons.

Many banks are seeing impressive growth in the number of new, young customers. These customers are

increasingly sophisticated and value customer centricity. They see how customer focus is being applied in

other industries and with new technologies. They expect the financial services industry to keep up.

There is rising intolerance for bank service that simply goes through the motions. Customers

are demanding more. Relationships are very important culturally when doing business in the

region, and customers are looking to build a trusting relationship with their bank. Most want

respect in the relationship to be reciprocal. They want to be treated as people rather than

as just account numbers. Competition is fierce as banks look to capitalize on the region’s

wealth, its growing young population, and pace of economic development.

Most importantly, however, becoming a customer-centric bank can have tangible ben-

efits for the bottom line. Turkey’s Isbank, for example, implemented an enterprisewide

customer-centric transformation within the past few years, with its stated mission to be the

“bank closest to customers.” Working with Peppers & Rogers Group, it implemented measures

such as installing customer relationship managers in every branch, overseeing specific “cus-

tomer portfolios” (i.e., groups of customers with similar needs) and centralizing reporting functions

previously performed by branch personnel in order to allow more time to interact with customers.

This approach achieved some impressive results:

• Total assets rose by 130 percent

• Loans rose by 160 percent

• Deposits rose by 137 percent

• Net interest income rose by 140 percent

Creating a Customer-Centric Culture for Middle East BanksThe banking environment is primed for leaders to step up and transform their business around the customer to create long-term strength and stability in an ever-changing region.

Adapted from Customer Strategist Journal

Banks: ArticlesCreating a Customer-Centric Culture for Middle East Banks ...................................................... 3

SunTrust Learn Why Customers Behave the Way They Do ... 6

Customer Focus Sits at the Forefront in Financial Services ......................................................... 8

NedBank Embarks on a Client-Centric Journey ............ 10

What’s Keeping Banks From Reaching Their Innovation Potential in Social Media? ................... 12

Social Media Energizes Traditional Banking Strategy ...... 15Study Shows Potential for Social Media in Emerging Markets ...................................................... 18

Five Steps to Big Data Dominance in Banking ............... 19

Associated Banc-Corp’s Customer Listening Makeover..22

Financial Firms Cash in on VoC ...................................... 23

Akbank’s Analytics Initiative Improves the Customer Experience ............................................... 25

AMP Financial Services Invests in Knowledgebase Optimization ......................................... 27

la Caxia Banks on Innovation ......................................... 29

Standard Bank’s 4 Steps Toward Becoming a Customer-Focused Organization .................................... 31

Retail Banks


Retail Banks

The end goal is for the new culture to be internalized rather than imposed from the outside. New ways of thinking and behavior should become automatic and the organization will use the new cultural principles to drive development and progress.

In addition, Isbank branches operating within the new business model increased their assets under

management by 25 percent compared to branches in which transformation initiatives were not carried out.

Egypt’s CIB is also very focused on customer service and customer-friendly banking channels. In a

2008 interview, CEO Hisham Ezz Al-Arab said that he believes the bank’s reputation for well-established

customer relationships is a distinct competitive advantage. He believes that each customer deserves to

enjoy a unique banking experience. The bank has invested heavily in training, for example, empowering a

knowledgeable workforce to provide an outstanding service.

The best examples of customer-centric transformation from anywhere in the world all share a common

thread—leadership that drives change in favor of customer focus.

What is the role of leadership in changing culture?

Strong leadership is integral for any bank that wants to develop a customer-centric corporate culture.

Leaders must be the driving force for cultural transformation and they must relentlessly promote values

such as openness, innovativeness, friendliness, and personalization that are key to a customer-centric

banking experience. A strong, consistent message from the top is a signal that customer service is no mere

window dressing and that employees need to take it seriously as a key priority.

The leader must articulate a vision for the future of the bank as an organization that focuses on custom-

ers’ needs through every process and on every level of doing business. For the truly customer-centric

bank, the customer IS king. The leader must help ever one in the bank understand this and lead them in

working together to make that vision a reality. The bank will first have to identify its strengths and weak-

nesses regarding customer centricity. Honest feedback from everyone in the company is desirable here

to get a true picture of the company culture as it really is, rather than what employees think management

would like it to be.

There are several tools banks can use for such assessments, ranging from in-house surveys to internal

working groups, that will best be determined according to the needs of the organization. In some cases,

bringing in outside consultants who specialize in change management can allow a bank to benefit from

others’ experiences and create a change plan based on proven methods.

The bank will also need to identify what customer centricity means for its organization and the expected

benefits of the change. These should be clearly outlined so that employees can see the reason for the

changes. Employees will be much more enthusiastic and much less resistant to positive change when they

can see that the desired changes will be good for the organization, as well as for them personally.

The end goal is for the new culture to be internalized rather than imposed from the outside. New ways

of thinking and behavior should become automatic and the organization will use the new cultural principles

to drive development and progress.

Going from the old culture to the new will not be accomplished instantly. Culture is deeply ingrained

and encompasses not only processes, but attitudes, assumptions, communication styles, goals and roles,

among other elements. True change will require carefully planned, step-by-step progress that is closely

monitored and guided by management.

A dedicated change management team, composed of representatives from all areas of the organization,

can oversee the change effort and help it stay on track. Leaders must clearly emphasize the importance of

the change management effort and give the team the status and authority needed to implement effective

initiatives.

Before the plan is rolled out, those spearheading the change initiatives must dig deep into the details

of how the organization can go from point A to point B. Part of this process must be anticipating how the

changes will affect people on a day-to-day basis, as well as thinking ahead to the questions and objections

that could be raised as every level of the organization.


Retail Banks

Reaping the rewards

Transforming a bank’s corporate culture to be truly customer-centric is not an easy task, but it is a must

in the atmosphere of growing competition and high customer expectations that banks in the Middle East

are experiencing today.

Once leaders decide on a customer-centric cultural change, communication and consistency are criti-

cal, starting with the highest levels of the organization and working down to every single employee.

Ideally, each person in the organization will become an agent for change who can influence those

around him or her. Think of it as a cascade of change that starts at the top and gathers strength as it pours

down through the organization.

Middle East banks that succeed in creating a customer-centric corporate culture will reap the competi-

tive advantages of an improved reputation for customer service, stronger relationships with customers, a

mindset that contributes to more successful products designed with the customer in mind and more selling

opportunities, among others. Focusing on the customer is another way to focus on success for the future.

Once leaders decide on a customer-centric cultural change, communication and consistency are critical, starting with the highest levels of the organization and working down to every single employee.


Retail Banks

“Grow consumer market and wallet share.” This is one of SunTrust Bank’s strategic priorities, formalized in

its 2011 annual report by Chairman and CEO William H. Rogers, Jr. Such a statement is easy to say, but can

be difficult to implement. There are many avenues a company can take to achieve such a goal. SunTrust

chose to shift its business from a product-focused orientation into one that is more customer-focused

and service-oriented. It’s a way to build relationships and stand out from competitors in the crowded and

volatile banking industry. “We believe that delivering industry-leading service quality will lead to improved

client loyalty and increased consumer wallet and market share,” Rogers wrote in a letter to shareholders

earlier this year.

Instead of giving in to the temptation of just customer acquisition, SunTrust is working to improve client

loyalty and share of wallet. In 2011, the company improved product penetration per relationship in eight of

its 10 largest markets, Rogers noted. What’s behind the company’s approach to customer relationships?

New actionable insight about customer behavior and the reasons behind their banking decisions.

“Customer centricity is the act of understanding, from the customer perspective, their needs and their

perception of the value proposition, then delivering it in the best possible way,” says Greg Holzwarth, man-

aging director of client information at SunTrust. To that end, his team is tasked with creating actionable

insight from both internal and external customer data. In the past, SunTrust studied customer behavior

and made strategic decisions based on how customers acted. But, that wasn’t enough. “We do just fine

in understanding client behavior,” he says. “We didn’t know the ‘why’ behind the behavior. We needed to

better understand customers’ attitudes and emotions around their behavior. Knowing why someone does

something is very useful.”

Deeper customer insight yields new opportunities

SunTrust, along with Peppers & Rogers Group’s iKnowtion analytics group and other partners, conducted a

survey of U.S. consumers to learn about how and why they make their banking decisions. With this insight,

the team created new multi-dimensional market segments that mixed behavioral and demographic infor-

mation with common attitudes and needs shared by members of each segment. SunTrust then mapped

the new segments to existing customers and prospects within its database to gain a clearer picture of

its customers. The new segments combine customer needs, value, behavior, and attitudes in a holistic

way. “We couldn’t influence positive behavior until we understood their attitudes, goals, and emotions,”

Holzwarth says.

SunTrust observed changing attitudes around borrowing money, for example. Since the financial crisis,

people still borrow money, but often it’s for something pragmatic like education, a new car, or healthcare.

They are less likely to borrow for extravagant or impractical reasons. And, they are looking for the bank to

help them manage not only the actual loan, but also the best way to pay it back.

“We’re now starting to marry our practices—how do we use that understanding to derive effective

interactions,” Holzwarth says. Internally, the new segments inform further market research, product devel-

opment, and value proposition development. Externally, the insight guides advertising, direct marketing,

and channel management decisions. This allows the company to optimize channels and interact appropri-

ately with the right types of customers. In the loan example, bank employees are also encouraged to have

SunTrust Learns Why Customers Behave the Way They DoThe bank uses customer data and predictive analytics to be more relevant to customers and prospects, leading to improved satisfaction, revenue, and loyalty.


“ We believe that delivering industry-leading service quality will lead to im-proved client loyalty and increased consumer wallet and market share.”

—William H. Rogers, Jr., Chairman and CEO, SunTrust Bank


Retail Banks

‘‘ ’’a- ‘‘ ’’ha

conversations about customer cash flow and offer advice on the best ways to pay back the loan.

An understanding of customer needs and attitudes also helped ease dissatisfaction when the company

recently transitioned away from its free checking program. The company looked at which customers would

be impacted and determined unique ways to communicate with different customer groups. SunTrust was

required to notify all customers, but those above the minimum deposit threshold received a different

message than those who would be charged the fee. The team overlaid attitudinal and other information

about those segments to create a strategy around how to help them make that journey. “We helped them

understand what’s happening, explained how it will affect them, and offered potential ways to avoid the

fee or cope with the issue,” Holzwarth says. In addition, employees were trained to acknowledge customer

anger and be patient with customers as they processed this information.

Holzwarth notes that the initiative exceeded its goals. Overall satisfaction and loyalty initially dipped when the

news was announced, as expected, but it’s now higher than it was before the free checking program ended.

This new information also helps to enable CEO Rogers’ vision of a service-based culture. “We’re moving

away from a traditional bank/client relationship,” Holzwarth says. “In the past we’ve put it on clients to figure

out what they need, then come to us. Now we build awareness and help them figure out what they need in

a way that’s best for them.”

The sales function is evolving into more of an advisory role, for example. The goal now is to better under-

stand client needs, then package a solution to meet those needs. “We’re striving to change the experience

so it doesn’t feel as much like a traditional sales process,” he says. Instead, “we’re solution processing.”

Salespeople create a dialogue with customers about their needs and circumstances before the sale is

introduced. “It becomes a completely different conversation when it’s not led by the product,” Holzwarth

says. The company hasn’t removed the notion of “sales,” but it’s now at the tail end of the process.

SunTrust’s analytics activities also revealed opportunity for improved customer communications. By

observing customer behavior together with their attitudes and needs, Holzwarth’s team quickly discovered

that customers did not think in product terms. “The big a-ha moment was that none [of what customers

talked about] was in the vocabulary of traditional banking products,” he says. No one ever mentioned the

word “account,” for example. SunTrust changed how it spoke to customers to consider the client point of

view. The word “client” is now a noun that is spoken in internal business discussions, something Holzwarth

says was missing before. “Conversations need to change so they are in the customers’ language,” he says.

For example, SunTrust is in the midst of creating a detailed customer experience process based on sav-

ings from a customer point of view. It is enhancing its automatic bill pay tools so clients can create savings

buckets with customizable nicknames. It will provide tools to help customers determine how much they

should save per pay period, and set up automatic transfers into this new bucketed account. Customers can

use the technology to pay themselves first and save for an upcoming event or purchase. It requires no new

deployments on the bank’s part. All that’s needed is the customer perspective.

“It’s not earth-shattering stuff, but it’s important and relevant to customers,” Holzwarth says. “We’re chang-

ing the way we talk about and represent our products,” which involves simply changing the conversation.

It’s not the initiative that’s important, he adds. It’s the strategy and philosophy behind it. “Think about

attitudes, not just behavior, and think about your strategy to influence positive attitudes and behavior for

clients and the business,” Holzwarth says.

A culture evolves

Like many executives, Holzwarth doesn’t like to use the word ‘culture’ when discussing SunTrust’s inter-

nal approach to doing business. For him, the term represents something that may not be perceived as

actionable. Instead, he’s proud of the fact that customer centricity is woven into the fabric of the company.

“It’s ingrained into what we do, rather than having to go through a checklist,” he says, adding that it’s not

just marketing’s job to think about the customer experience. “Everyone’s a part of it, rather than being

reminded that they have to think about the customer. We’re all redesigning the client journey

“ The big a-ha moment was that none [of what customers talked about] was in the vocabulary of traditional banking products.”

—William H. Rogers, Jr., Chairman and CEO, SunTrust Bank


Retail Banks

Success in the financial industry pivots around building strong and lasting relationships. When a client

charges an organization with taking care of his financial security, he is putting a high level of trust in assum-

ing that the business will act in his best interests and do its best to safeguard his finances.

The financial crisis has shone a spotlight on the need for organizations to be trustworthy and act in the

best interest of their customers. This event brought to the fore the vulnerability of the financial industry, the

need for regulations, and emphasized the importance of transparency.

This focus on relationships, trust, and doing what’s right for clients makes it imperative that financial

organizations adopt a customer-centric strategy. Yet, the industry has a transaction-based legacy. In

many cases, customers are thought of in terms of their account balances only. Financial institutions often

struggle to execute the philosophy of customer centricity and embed it in their day-to-day operations. It’s

too easy to fall back on the traditional ways of handling customers and accounts where products trump

individual customer value.

Three pillars of customer centricity

Transforming an organization into a truly customer-centric entity isn’t an easy task that happens over-

night. However, organizations that invest in the right people and processes are able to become more

client-focused, using this strategy as a differentiator in a cutthroat environment.

Customer data is of fundamental importance in this transformative endeavor. Often financial organiza-

tions believe they don’t have sufficient customer information. Although this may be true, often we observe

that many companies don’t use existing available customer information to the full extent and instead seek

to collect more. Similarly, we observe that customer data is rarely stored and shared, and what is shared

remains in product silos.

Such processes fail to bring together the different data points that allow the organization to have a

360-degree view of its clients on which to base future decisions. Forward-thinking businesses are bridging

their different data silos to get a holistic picture of customers. They use this information as the basis of their

decisions, leading to a companywide strategy that drives business results while doing what’s right for the

customer.

When it comes to an organization’s nature, customer focus needs to be ingrained in the makeup of an

organization. After organizing their data, financial institutions need to determine who owns customer rela-

tions, and then work toward setting up departments to manage this holistic view of customers. Although

organizations need to move from being product-focused to being customer-centric, it’s possible for an

organization to have a customer-centric strategy while retaining product expertise and working to make

them the best for its clients.

Finally, customer focus needs to be visible throughout the organization, from the C-suite right down to

frontline employees. Customer-centric organizations make decisions for the benefit of customers rather

than just for financial gains. The attitudes of all employees must reflect that. At Peppers & Rogers Group,

we help businesses implement this philosophy and ensure it’s practiced and not merely praised.

“ After organizing their data, financial institu-tions need to determine who owns customer relations, and then work toward setting up departments to manage this holistic view of customers.”

Customer Focus Sits at the Forefront in Financial ServicesFinancial organizations are challenged more than ever with becoming truly

customer centric and gaining the trust of their clients.



Retail Banks

Transforming into a client-focused company

In order to become customer centric, organizations need to steer away from the one-size-fits-all

approach and instead treat different customers differently. While there are a variety of ways to achieve

this with differing levels of complexity, we at Peppers & Rogers Group believe the strategy ultimately

comes down to four main steps:

1. Identify who customers are, use the information to get to know them and understand them, and start treating them as unique individuals.

2. Differentiate customers by segmenting them according to current and future value, allowing the organization to design and execute strategies that address the diverse needs of different customer groups.

3. Interact with customers to ensure comprehension of their goals and expectations, leading to more effective future interactions.

4. Customize both communications and offers according to customers’ expectations, needs, and

value to the organization.

Savvy financial services organizations have already begun ingraining customer centricity into their

DNA. Germany’s Fidor Bank uses Facebook to connect customers’ online, offline, and virtual worlds. And

Barclaycard recently launched its Ring MasterCard in the U.S., where interest rates, payment schedules,

and other features are crowdsourced by the community. These organizations, and others like them, are

guided by forward-thinking business leaders who are cognizant that a great customer experience is a

necessary differentiator without which the company’s success is jeopardized.

Progressive organizations are working on their data strategy and governance to enhance their capabili-

ties to identify and create a 360-degree view of their client-base. More advanced businesses are creating

segmentation models that don’t only focus on customer value, but also incorporate behavior and needs.

They are working on customized client value propositions and contact strategies to better interact with

their customers and get to know them.

Customer focus isn’t the future. The necessity for organizations to become customer centric is here

now. Those firms that haven’t embarked on a process to become truly customer centric should not waste

any more time. Otherwise, customers will pivot towards competitors that exude customer centricity and

trustability.

“ Progressive organizations are working on their data strategy and governance to enhance their capabili-ties to identify and create a 360-degree view of their client-base.”


Retail Banks

The banking industry has traditionally not been known to be client-centric. However, cutthroat competition

and more discerning customers have impelled a number of banks to start focusing on becoming just that.

Nedbank, one of South Africa’s largest banks, is one financial organization that’s aspiring to be totally

client-centric. In the words of Doug Hardie, executive general manager at Nedbank, “we want to get to the

stage where client centricity becomes part of our DNA.”

Cognizant that this is not an overnight endeavor, Nedbank embarked on a journey towards client cen-

tricity five years ago. Hardie says the team spearheading the change recognized that the only way to

succeed was if the transformation was embraced whole-heartedly by the company’s leadership. While this

took some time, Mike Brown, the bank’s chief executive, is passionate about being client sensitive and

has surrounded himself with like-minded people. “That passion is shining through very clearly in everything

the leadership team does,” Hardie says. “This has to be the single, most-important success factor.” The

commitment towards client centricity is deeply embedded in the bank’s strategy and three-year-plan’s

aspiration to “build many deep and enduring client relationships.”

The very first step was identifying areas within the organization that were not working as well as they

should. “We had to start working consistently on a strategic journey to get the basics right,” says Hardie.

After addressing the fundamentals, the bank started working upwards, methodically and consistently

bringing change to all tiers of the organization.

In order to deliver world-class service, Nedbank’s leadership was committed to creating brand ambas-

sadors, starting with its own employees. The organization embarked on a seven-pillar strategy to make

sure it had the right people in place:

• Getting its employees to be more client-focused

• Making the recruitment and selection process more client-centric

• Enhancing the induction process to expose new hires to the organization’s service-driven culture

• Developing the right skills through a robust learning and development curriculum

• Empowering staff members to deliver a magical client experience

• Measuring the day-to-day processes

• Rewarding and recognizing the right behavior, making it the focus of the organization

Underpinning all the pillars is a robust change management and communication strategy. To instill an

effective client engagement culture, Nedbank reviewed its client communications and created its Believe

to Achieve charter for customers:

• Know me and understand my aspirations

• Listen and care about my financial fitness

• Treat me with respect, value, and appreciate me and my business

• Give me great advice to make smart financial decisions

• Deliver with diligence—I only Ask Once

• Give me great value banking

An essential ingredient in this journey was to undertake an outside-in view from the clients’ eyes. Hardie

says this practice went from being an aspiration to increasingly manifesting itself in forums, decision-

making, and informed strategies.

“ We had to start working consistently on a strategic journey to get the basics right.”

— Doug Hardie Executive General manager, Nedbank

Nedbank Embarks on a Client-Centric Journey One of South Africa’s largest banks aspires to become more client-focused.



Retail Banks

Measurement drives momentum

“Any strategic change journey requires constantly measuring and tracking improvements. In order to

succeed Nedbank established a robust voice of the customer strategy,” Hardie explains. Although the

organization had been tracking its client focus and Net Promoter Score (NPS) through an annual industry

study, to maintain momentum the bank wanted to establish an in-house client management capability.

“We developed a 35-agent outbound contact center to reach out to clients within 48 hours of an interac-

tion with the bank while the experience was still top of mind. After analyzing the 150,000 surveys that are

completed annually, a team of statistical experts score the results and mine client insights allowing the

team/bank to make incremental improvements in service-delivery,” Hardie says.

Through this process, Nedbank found that up to 8 percent of clients still had an unresolved issue at the

time of contact, and established new processes to make sure the issue was resolved within that same tele-

phone call, either by the person conducting the survey or by special resolution experts, ensuring clients’

satisfaction when they get off the phone.

“You need to have a very robust measurement engine in place as a foundational step to start building

more aspirational initiatives,” Hardie says. The process allows for an extreme level of granularity to the

point where Nedbank is able to produce an NPS for its individual bankers, creating clear targets in staff

members’ scorecards that are directly linked to the client experience being delivered.

However, measuring on its own is not enough. Hardie underlines the need to bring an organization-

wide cultural revolution that encourages employees to change their behavior as they interact with clients,

while also promoting a more client-centric experience with internal clients. One of the ways Nedbank

began manifesting its commitment to clients was through its “Ask Once” promise, through which the bank

pledges to resolve client requests the first time around. In case the bank fails to keep this promise, it will

make a donation in the client’s name to the client’s choice from a list of charities.

“This was a very clear commitment to clients and non-clients alike that we were determined to start fix-

ing the basics and embark on a client-centered journey,” Hardie adds.

Results

This strategy demonstrates that Nedbank not only knows about its clients, but also knows them individu-

ally. Hardie says the company’s strategy has driven impressive results. In the first half of the year, NPS has

increased “drastically” across the board, reaching in excess of 80 percent in some channels. This lift after a

five-year journey is believed to be due to the different initiatives meshing together and starting to drive real

change. “We got to the critical stage where the cohesiveness of the initiatives started to drive real results.”

Customer acquisition rates also improved, which were below the bank’s expectations three years ago.

These have since increased and compare with those of international retail banks. With the help of Peppers

& Rogers Group, Nedbank now better understands the causes of attrition and has identified 16 initiatives

to address this problem.

Despite its achievements, Nedbank’s leadership recognizes that the bank still has more to do to achieve

its goals. “It has been a long journey with a lot of hard work and dedication—we are delighted that we are

half way there,” Hardie says.

Through these various but complementary initiatives, Nedbank continues in its efforts toward building

deeper relationships with clients. The bank’s most current initiative includes a coordinated review of its

client loyalty strategy with the goal of deepening relationships with clients in real time.

“ You need to have a very robust measurement engine in place as a foundational step to start building more aspirational initiatives.”

— Doug Hardie Executive General Manager, Nedbank

Retail Banks

On paper, financial institutions seem primed to excel with social customer interactions. They have large

amounts of customer data at their disposal to engage and advise them via social channels. At the same

time, money and finance are extremely important issues to most consumers. They use social media to

share insights and learn about new products, services, and make financial decisions.

Every day, consumers sign up for tools such as electronic transfers, mobile check deposits, online branch

and ATM locators, and other digital applications they find convenient and valuable. Younger, digital-native

consumers are approaching banking age, searching for banks that will meet their interaction preferences.

In addition, the banking industry has been working to break away from its less-than-stellar reputation

with consumers. Social media offers ways to make genuine connections with consumers in an effective

and cost-efficient way, all while strengthening individual relationships.

Advanced social media strategy therefore seems like a natural extension of a bank’s customer experi-

ence strategy.

But the fact is that banks aren’t doing much beyond just being present on social media sites. Sure, many

banks have Facebook or Twitter pages to broadcast PR or marketing messages and monitor customer

complaints. But you’d be hard pressed to find much more than that.

What’s holding banks back from advanced social media activities? The simple answer is that it’s chal-

lenging, and without a proven go-to strategy for social media in banking, the ROI is not always obvious.

Many banks choose to maintain the status quo rather than try to innovate with an unproven strategy. We

think that’s a lost opportunity to build revenue, trust, and long-term relationship strength with banking

consumers. It’s time for banks to dip more than a toe in the water if they want to reap the potential rewards

of social media strategy.

Social media obstacles

Many in the financial world offer excuses for why they don’t innovate through the

social media channel. All can be overcome. A few common challenges:

1. Compliance and regulations

The banking industry is a regulatory minefield. Banks must deal with laws pertaining

to the use of customer data, privacy requirements, records retention, and even inter-

actions that may be construed as investment advice. As such, they are very cautious

about doing much more than the basics regarding social media.

We think that challenge can be overcome with a strategic approach to social

media participation. It starts by establishing policies designed to manage internal

and external social media “rules of engagement.” Set expectations right from the

start about the types of conversations you will have in your different social media

accounts. Move to more appropriate channels if escalation is needed. Create

employee guidelines for participation and train the staff on social media compli-

ance, so they will feel comfortable knowing their boundaries. And recognize and

share great social media interactions to encourage others to participate.


What’s Keeping Banks From Reaching Their Innovation Potential in Social Media?Three recommendations for attainable opportunities using social media strategy.


Social Media Reaches Across the Business

Social media is not just for one department. Many areas of the business can see enhancements, such as:

“ Many banks choose to maintain the status quo rather than try to innovate with an unproven strategy.”


Retail Banks

2. Lack of proven ROI

As with all new and disruptive technologies, banks struggle to determine the value of their social media

activities and ultimately, their ROI. They are unsure how much likes, fans, and followers actually contribute

to the business fundamentals.

ROI is possible in social media, if measurable goals and objectives are defined. We recommend the fol-

lowing framework:

• Define SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) social media objectives and KPIs that

are aligned to corporate goals and target segments. For example, one bank’s corporate goal may be to

generate leads in its youth segment. The specific social media objective would be to generate 10 percent

of overall leads in the youth segment from social media over a six-month period by driving traffic to bank-

owned channels such as its website, call center, or branch. When new customers sign up, the bank can ask

customers if they used social media in their search and consideration process. Then it can measure leads

generated through social media as a core KPI.

• Collect accurate data using social analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to get a complete picture of

social media activity. It is important to collect data before and after the social media initiative to measure the

incremental impact. For those interested in brand awareness, measurements may include number of visits,

time on the site, number of followers or likes, and conversion rates for users taking specific action. If engage-

ment is more important, banks can focus on metrics such as number of community registrations, comments,

reviews, etc., or how influential customers are in terms of their own number of followers and interactions.

• Calculate the benefits associated with the social media initiative using collected data. The value of a

Facebook like can be determined by tracking the revenue generated via leads and traffic originating from

Facebook to a dedicated landing page on the company’s website (accessible only via Facebook). So the

benefit of a ‘Facebook engagement’ campaign is the total revenue generated from Facebook fans who

were encouraged to visit the website and enticed to purchase the promoted product or service. By sub-

sequently quantifying the cost of the social media initiative in terms of people, process, and technology

expenditures, the ROI calculation now becomes a trivial task.

Social media doesn’t have to be expensive. Tools and technology are readily available. The real invest-

ment comes from thinking and acting strategically about the best ways to engage with your customers via

social media.

Product-focused legacy

Banks are traditionally product-centric. They focus most of their energy on pushing products and services

to masses or specific segments. In the social media space, banks need to take on a different dimension

that encourages customers to create an emotional bond with the brand.

With so much happening in the social space, banks are unlikely to capture customers’ attention by just

pushing out messages about their products or services at random times across randomly selected chan-

nels. Instead, explore where the bank’s customers and prospects gather and offer something that the

audience wants, whether it be relevant content or quick responses to complaints. The discussions naturally

lead to sales opportunities, which banks can seize by creating compelling offers and delivering on the value

as promised.

Social media isn’t about products and services. It should reflect the experience and emotions of custom-

ers as they use products and services.

Social media opportunities

Banks that look at social media as a strategic channel will see many ways to engage with customers across

the lifecycle. In past issues of Customer Strategist we have wrriten that banks can mix offline and online

customer data to get, keep, and grow customers. We also see innovation potential through activities where

banks build customer trust, generate revenue, and achieve operational excellence.

“ In the social media space, banks need to take on a differ-ent dimension that encourages customers to create an emotional bond with the brand.”


Retail Banks

1. Build customer trust

Banks are a necessity, but many consumers feel like they have an adversarial relationship with them. The

industry’s reputation leaves a lot to be desired. Yet there is great opportunity to advance social media to

build relationships with individuals to counteract that reputation.

In their book, Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers,

Ph.D. write that trustable companies do the right things and do things right, proactively. They act in cus-

tomers’ best interests with proactive competence and intent. What better channel to demonstrate proactive

competence and intention than social media? Banks can preemptively contact someone before a fee is

incurred, or connect with target segments about financial issues that are important to them.

More than just Facebook and Twitter accounts, we see great potential in bank-sponsored social com-

munities, provided consumers are willing to participate. Banks that position themselves as helpful advisors

with useful content can overcome poor reputations to be considered trustable. Community success

requires honest, genuine discussion about issues, led by consumers and merely facilitated by the bank.

And research shows that consumers who see a firm as a trustable source are more likely to spend more

and make recommendations to friends.

2. Generate revenue

Social media is about building and nurturing genuine relationships. The way to extract financial value from

those relationships is, first and foremost, to listen to what customers and prospects are saying and then

offer something compelling based on identified needs. Banks can respond with tailored messages and rel-

evant communications on how to benefit from using a specific product or service to meet customers’ needs.

Active listening can also uncover opportunities to identify customer life events, such as buying a home,

getting married, etc., which banks can turn into sales. Monitoring customer complaints presents an addi-

tional means to retain revenues—by addressing the concerns of existing customers and preventing them

from ceasing their relationship with the bank.

3. Achieve operational excellence

Leading banks use social media to develop more innovative products, services, and processes that reflect

customer demand. As a channel, social media is positioned as a cost-effective and easy way to seek and

incorporate multiple levels of customer feedback. Some examples:

• Product innovation: Crowdsourcing through relevant social channels yields new banking products.

• Service innovation: The ability to address inquiries and complaints on customers’ choice of media

helps nurture communities of advocates.

• Process innovation: Internal collaboration improves productivity.

The benefits of the social media channel come from its constant evolution. It’s not enough for banks to

have a social presence. They need to innovate and evolve along with their customers and the channel itself.

Will you do what it takes to reach your customer innovation potential?

Note: Claus Friis, Peppers & Rogers Group financial services subject matter expert, contributed to this article.

“ Banks that position themselves as help-ful advisors with useful content can overcome poor reputations to be considered trustable.”


Retail Banks

Created in 2005, Boubyan Bank is one of the fastest growing banks in Kuwait, with a wide range of products

and services in consumer banking, corporate banking, and investments, including Islamic banking offerings.

As a Deputy CEO in charge of consumer banking and banking operations groups, Abdullah Al Najran for-

mulates business strategies and policies and is closely involved in the planning and execution of operational

activities. He is also a key advocate of learning and innovation culture, which continues to be the major

focus of the bank’s strategy. Here he shares his thoughts on the intersection of traditional and innovative

forms of customer strategy, specifically social media.

Customer Strategist: Why are customer strategy and innovation important to the company?

Abdullah Al Najran: The customer is at the center of everything we do and our customer strategy focuses on

providing differentiating products and the best quality service to our main target segment of affluent Kuwaitis.

We have also identified the potential of other strategic segments, such as youth and ladies, for which we devel-

oped compelling value propositions that would appeal to new customers, as well as retain the existing ones.

Innovation takes the bank’s signature customer experience to the next level as we strive to continu-

ously exceed our customers’ expectations. We have embarked on a transformation journey and are in

the process of implementing various customer-centric initiatives, such as upgrading the call center with

biometric features such as automatic customer voice recognition, revamping our website for superior digi-

tal experience with “chat” and enhanced Internet banking features, focusing on social media as a market

differentiator to engage with our customers on a more personalized level, amongst others.

Essentially, the customer strategy defines the “wow” experiences for our target customers, whereas

innovation ensures that we keep delivering on the Boubyan promise in line with our customers’ ever-

changing needs and preferences.

CS: What potential is there for banks to advance their customer strategy through social media activity?

AAN: Social media has become the primary channel of communication for young, digital, socially savvy

customers. Banks need to adapt to this trend in order to build credibility and trust with this segment. Social

networking sites are where youths of today gather to socialize, be entertained, share stories, seek advice,

and prefer to have their complaints and questions answered. Consumers view social media as the platform

for meaningful engagement through on-demand content customization, sharing and collaboration, all of

which banks can leverage to build trust and create opportunities to grow their customer portfolio.

If positioned correctly, social media can be a very effective customer acquisition and retention tool. First

and foremost, social media marketing is a far less expensive option relative to traditional media, such as

TV, radio, billboards, etc. Social media is also a well-positioned platform to build superior relationships

with customers, as banks have a direct path to interacting with the audience to gather immediate feedback

on the products and services. People can immediately “like” the product /service, comment on it, share it

with their friends. This “know-like-trust” cycle with customers and prospects will ultimately lead to revenue

growth through new acquisitions and repeat business.

CS: What type of social media activity do you think holds the most promise from a business perspective?

AAN: The key to social media success starts with “listening” across all social media platforms to what is

Social Media Energizes Traditional Banking StrategyKuwait’s Boubyan Bank undergoes a customer-focused transformation, using social media as the strategic lynchpin.


“ Essentially, the customer strategy defines the “wow” experiences for our target customers, whereas innovation ensures that we keep delivering on the Boubyan promise in line with our customers’ ever-changing needs and preferences.”

— Abdullah Al Najram, Deputy CEO, Boubyan Bank

http://www.peppersandrogersgroup.com/view.aspx?docid=34316

Banks

being said about the brand and products, competitors, and following industry trends. This gives insight on

customers’ and prospects’ needs and preferences, which guides communication and engagement efforts

in order to create high brand awareness and keep the brand top of mind for consumers.

With a social media monitoring tool in place searching for brand and product mentions, banks can

identify customer service issues as they come up, even on fast moving social networking sites like Twitter.

Furthermore, a good listening program can proactively manage the brand’s reputation and in the case of a

crisis, mitigate the potentially negative effects on the brand by responding quickly and properly according

to the corporate crisis response plan.

CS: What social lessons from other industries can help banks with their social initiatives?

AAN: Focus on business outcomes—most banks are using social media channels merely to push mes-

sages out. Social platforms offer a golden opportunity to engage with customers in a two-way dialogue

and to create an emotional bond with the brand. Customers can also become the most significant source

of innovation—banks need to embed social capabilities in the business processes to continuously collect

customer feedback.

Change starts from within—social media adoption requires transformational change, so dedicate a

social business team (comprising representatives from relevant business groups) to act as change agents

to build awareness and drive the adoption across the organization. [Boubyan is in the process of defining

an employee transformation program to start down this journey]. Furthermore, banks should empower

their employees to become brand ambassadors and leverage them to grow the network of followers and

external brand evangelists.

CS: What do you think are some of the biggest roadblocks to banks’ use of social media as a relation-

ship channel?

AAN: I believe the biggest challenge lies in maintaining customer data privacy in terms of the extent and

scope of customers’ information being shared over social media platforms. These platforms are typically

provided by external third parties, which means that data is stored on the provider’s servers. Naturally,

banks are very uncomfortable with such a set-up, since regulations dictate that customer information of a

sensitive or confidential nature cannot be stored outside of the bank’s systems.

So when a customer makes a complaint about a bank on Twitter, for example, the bank needs to shift

that conversation offline and typically asks the customer to contact the call center or a direct number to

the bank staff member. The challenge becomes when a customer does not necessarily want to call the

bank on the phone. Banks need to look for alternative online solutions to address this issue. One way is to

direct a customer to a click-to-chat tool with a live agent that resides on the bank’s servers and provides

a secure environment over which to share personal banking details. Live chat is something that Boubyan

will implement in the near future, not only to resolve customer complaints but also to engage in informative

discussions.

CS: How should a bank balance social media activity with the rules and guidelines of Islamic banking?

AAN: Social media and Islamic banking are not conflicting; indeed social media is a channel like any other

and the same rules and guidelines of Islamic banking apply across all customer touchpoints. Since custom-

ers and users interested in Islamic banking are generally more conservative, there are additional guidelines

that apply in the social media space with respect to moderation and stricter filtering of the language used

(tone / content) and photos shared. The flexibility in interaction should be there, but with clear redlines not

to cross.

CS: What is the biggest challenge you see to social media expansion?

AAN: Customer perception and experience of the bank’s brand can be relatively easily swayed by the


“ Banks should empower their employees to become brand ambas-sadors and leverage them to grow the network of followers and external brand evangelists.”


Banks

conversations taking place across social media channels, which we have very little control over. That’s

why we felt it was important to invest in establishing clear governance and social media policies to enable

us to respond quickly and communicate in a manner that is aligned with our brand values and consistent

across the channels.

Another area that we needed to address was how to manage employee communication through their

personal accounts. Since we encourage our employees to get involved in social media adoption and

innovation, we also invested in developing clear social media guidelines for staff to avoid any public embar-

rassment and liability with any potential miscommunication.

CS: What would you say to other banking executives looking to expand their customer initiatives into social channels?

AAN: Start with the solid governance to guide your decision making and oversee social media activities in

an efficient and effective way. Build internal policies for your employees to follow to ensure consistency in

branding, communication, and customer experience across all social media platforms. Furthermore, build-

ing engagement on your social media channels requires active listening so invest in a good social media

monitoring tool. Understand where your target customers are gathering, listen to what they are saying, and

finally provide them with content and propositions based on their needs.


“ Start with the solid governance to guide your decision making and oversee social media activities in an efficient and effective way.”


Retail Banks

With so many types of social media platforms out there, it can be hard to determine which one to focus on.

Peppers & Rogers Group conducted a study of nearly 3,000 social media users in Kuwait to determine how

they use social media and their potential for stronger banking relationships.

According to the study, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are the most popular social media channels,

attracting more than 60 percent of users.

While Facebook has the highest usage, Twitter

is accessed the most per day. And users are

diverse – a small but growing population also

uses emerging platforms such as Whatsapp,

Pinterest, Skype, and Orkut.

Consumers use social media for a variety

of reasons—to stay in touch with friends and

family, share common interests with others,

find information about products and ser-

vices, and share photos, videos, and music.

The common thread among them is that they

all connect people to others. And consum-

ers are receptive to the idea of connecting

to businesses as well, if the interaction is

valuable and relevant. Sixty-eight percent of

users are somewhat or most likely to click

on an ad within social media that is relevant

to them, and 66 percent are somewhat or

most likely to purchase a product or ser-

vice recommended on a social network.

When it comes to banking, there is opportunity to increase awareness and engagement. Only 40

percent of Facebook and Twitter users follow their banks on social media, and it’s even less on

other channels—17 percent for YouTube and less than 6 percent for all others. However, con-

sumers have a positive view of banks that do use social media: 78 percent agree that bank social

media presence “makes me feel that the bank is keeping its customers informed,” and 64 per-

cent agree that social media use by banks “makes me feel that it is open to people’s opinions.”

Social media has become a vital channel to the future of banking interactions. It must be considered a

strategic channel, not just a second thought or PR endeavor.


Study Shows Potential for Social Media in Emerging MarketsPeppers & Rogers Group conducted a study of nearly 3,000 social media users in Kuwait to determine how they use social media and their potential for stronger banking relationships.


Consumer Perceptions Related to bank Social Media Presence

Consumers have a positive perception of banks that participate in social media.

Source: Peppers & Rogers Group



Retail Banks

The use of digital channels is skyrocketing in financial services. New technologies serve customers in

unprecedented ways while driving internal efficiencies. And according to market research company Ovum,

U.S. banks will spend $41.5 billion on technology through 2013, with much of it on digital tools.

Customers now have access to accounts and can transact across mobile, social, and other self-serve

channels. The branch’s role is changing to focus on more complex issues while consumers use Facebook,

mobile apps, and virtual wallets to conduct financial business in a new ecosystem.

Today’s consumers share more information about their needs, risk tolerance, and personal profile

than ever before. Their expectations are higher, shaped by experiences outside banking. They are bet-

ter informed as they use internal and external channels to research products and services. They look

beyond banks to fulfill financial needs, engaging players such as Google Wallet, PayPal, Mint.com, and

even Costco and Wal-Mart. And consumers connect to brands and one another through social and mobile

channels, communicating their experiences broadly. They’re willing to take advantage of low cost channels

if they find them valuable and relevant to their daily lives. Many actually prefer them.

There is much potential to balance internal efficiencies with a superior customer experience in this new

reality. But achieving the balance requires banks to optimize the unprecedented amounts of customer data

now generated to make information actionable and relevant. New sources of customer Big Data consist of:

• Transactional data • Product usage data

• Web registration data • Customer value data

• Channel usage data • Web clickstream data

• Third-party data • Social media data

Banks are beginning to explore the opportunity to differentiate with insight. For example, the business

press reports that one of Capital One’s top priorities is to be a data-driven organization and use insight to

differentiate in customer service and product development, though specifics are hard to come by. And it

is not alone. Investment firm State Street Corp. is using semantic data models on the client side to opti-

mize investment strategies, while also improving regulatory reporting and risk calculation internally. Even

a smaller player like Midwest regional bank Great Western Bank is leveraging predictive analytics for its

marketing activities.

The industry is still in its nascent stage, however. According to a recent study by Celent, only 24 percent

of banks surveyed had implemented a Big Data solution, most commonly around risk and fraud monitoring

or product and service marketing. But of those who have had a Big Data initiative in place for more than a

year, 70 percent had met or exceeded business expectations. And to highlight data’s potential, 90 percent

of those surveyed said they think that successful Big Data initiatives will define the financial services win-

ners in the future.

So how can banks make the most of Big Data? By optimizing the collection and use of customer data,

banks and other financial institutions can simultaneously improve the customer experience while driving

efficiencies. Some examples include:

Provide consistent multichannel experiences. Consumers can now interact with a bank through multi-

ple channels for information and transactions. Banks must provide a seamless experience across whatever

Five Steps to Big Data Dominance in BankingSuperior customer experiences and improved internal efficiencies require smart use of newly available Big Data.


“ Achieving the balance requires banks to optimize the unprecedented amounts of customer data now generated to make information actionable and relevant.”



Retail Banks

channels are used. Employees in the branch must know if a customer has called the contact center or

visited the website; transactions started in one channel can be completed in another. This will create satis-

fied, engaged customers.

Acquire new, mobile-savvy customers. Young, digital native consumers are beginning to open accounts

and create lifelong relationships with financial services firms. They’re mobile and they expect the compa-

nies they do business with to be mobile, too. Banks will succeed reaching this new customer group if they

deliver insight-driven experiences through mobile devices.

Sense and respond with effective targeting. Reaching the right customer with the right offer at the right

time is the holy grail of sales and experience. And banks can generate new revenues through proactive

engagement and outreach to certain customers groups at the proper time.

Rightsize the customer experience. Use Big Data to find the most appropriate channels based on cus-

tomer needs, value, and behavior, and then go deeper to understand the best way to migrate customers to

serve them in the most efficient and effective channels.

Identify new sources of revenue and acquisition. Mine unstructured social data to activate advocates

and identify new customers. Optimize pricing based on customer segments, products, channels and geog-

raphies, and remove any revenue leaks such as ineffective lead generation, poor follow-up, low conversion

ratio, or high attrition to achieve sustainable revenue sources that are less sensitive to risk, sticky, and

recurring.

Build loyal relationships. Surprise and delight by knowing customers more intimately than ever before

and meeting their needs, whether they are verbalized or not. Show that your bank has its customers’ best

interests at heart, and they will reward you with their loyalty.

Improve service to sales. By mining customer service data and defining trends, banks can respond to

customer needs and make systemic changes to processes that can even result in up-sell success. For

example, rather than responding to and resolving complaints around monthly service fees, offer direct

deposit or other products and services as part of the care response that would eliminate these charges.

Invest smartly in the retail branch. Understand branch-level data and optimize investments in the net-

work. Learn what types of customers visit the branch and why. Focus branch initiatives on what matters

most to those customers.

With so many opportunities for revenue enhancement and relationship strength, why don’t more banks

take advantage of the Big Data potential? Because acting on these opportunities is a non-trivial matter.

Making sense of so much data is a challenge, as is where to prioritize efforts. Companies also want to

make sure to invest in the most effective initiatives while staying agile enough to meet changing customer

expectations. It can be a daunting undertaking.

Five Ways to Attack Big Data

We at Peppers & Rogers Group have outlined five steps to guide financial leaders as they craft smart

data strategies:

1. Elevate the importance of business-savvy data scientists. While there’s always a high demand for quan-

titative professionals to be part of the team, progressive banks are looking to complement that talent with

creative business professionals who see business opportunities in trends that produce bottom-line results.

2. Organize for one version of the truth. Too many banks are still organized in product- or channel-centric

silos. The bank can’t knit together a comprehensive picture of the customer. Silos need to be redefined

along with analytics practices. Online and offline data must be integrated into platforms across channels

that facilitate a comprehensive understanding to enable predictive analytics and inform real-time interac-

tion strategies.

Silos need to be redefined along with analytics prac-tices. Online and offline data must be integrated into platforms across channels that facilitate a comprehensive under-standing to enable predictive analytics and inform real-time interaction strategies.


Retail Banks

3. Don’t underestimate the integration challenge. Today banks need to extract insights from structured

and unstructured data, statistical data, social media streams, click stream data, smartphone data, videos,

etc. Small-scale experiments using Big Data are recommended to start, with slow rollout from there.

4. Integrate intelligence into customer-facing business practices. The biggest opportunity for Big Data

is the potential to identify and integrate insights into customer-facing applications in real time. Analytics

have come a long way, but many banks neglect to push the intelligence to front-line applications.

5. Use Big Data to accelerate the customer-centric transition. Customer centricity is no longer a nice

to have strategy for banks, it’s the only differentiator. And data is the backbone. It’s critical to think beyond

technology and analytics to what organization, process, and people-related changes are necessary to

really put the data and insights to work.

A successful Big Data strategy must be coordinated across the enterprise. It’s not the domain

of one department or business unit. The chart above illustrates a hypothetical use of Big Data to har-

ness and harvest customer data for an improved customer experience and greater efficiency.

Conclusion

Big Data shows so much promise for banks willing to consider it strategically. Those that do will be able

to understand customers more intimately and act in real time to meet their stated and perceived needs.

On the efficiency side, they will harmonize channels by defining multichannel journeys that make sense

to the user and eliminate redundancies. And overall, banks that create Big Data dominance will influence

customer behavior across channels to make interactions more effective and efficient, gaining loyalty and

financial strength in the process.

Harness and Harvest Big Data

Big Data can be harnessed and harvested at different points in the customer lifecycle to drive customer experience and internal improvements

Source: KBM Group


Round-the-clock customer service is becoming essential for most organizations. This is especially true in

the financial services industry since customers want to get help whenever they need it, even after normal

office hours.

Having recognized the importance of being there for customers whenever they need, irrespective of the

time of the day, Associated Banc-Corp decided to start operating its contact center around the clock. “We

wanted to improve the customer experience and felt there was adequate need for [24/7 service,]” explains

Wendy Kumm, vice president of customer service.

To make the extended hours work, the bank started hiring college students to fill the openings created

by the additional shifts. This new reality highlighted the need for a better scheduling system for the bank,

which manages about $23 billion in assets, employs close to 5,000 people, and serves more than one mil-

lion customers. Kumm explains that previously the company was preparing schedules manually. While the

spreadsheet-based scheduling system had worked in the past, the bank needed a better way to assign

shifts. “We had been doing a good job, but we needed to simplify the process,” Kumm notes. In order to

address this issue, Associated Banc-Corp implemented a workforce management tool to help with sched-

uling the additional shifts.

The company’s leadership quickly realized that technology could also help with the company’s quality

control and training efforts, Kumm says. In the past Associated Banc-Corp had relied extensively on live

monitoring for quality control and compliance, but it wanted to go a step further and analyze speech. In

2009 the company decided to implement Verint’s workforce optimization suite. “The secret sauce was

speech analytics,” Kumm says. “It’s every call center manager’s dream come true.”

Results

The deep insight into what customers are saying is giving Associated Banc-Corp actionable insights that

it’s able to use to improve the customer experience. For example, the company identified that its online

banking system wasn’t always as user-friendly as customers desired. After analyzing customers’ com-

ments, the bank made changes that improved the experience for customers using online banking.

Further, it allows the organization to resolve individual problems that customers are facing. “We want to

identify customers who have had issues and reach out to them and offer a resolution,” Kumm says. She

explains that the bank has a specific team which listens to calls and then reaches out to customers. This

system also allows the organization to identify repeat callers and address their needs.

An additional benefit has been using customer insights for training purposes. Kumm explains that the

bank developed an e-learning module and uses recordings from actual calls to highlight best practices.

Kumm says the organization surveys customers after a contact center interaction and has seen an

increase in positive comments since it adopted the new system. She says comments that are made dur-

ing interactions with agents have also been very positive, many times praising agents for their help. “Our

company is focused on improving customer experience and making it easier for customers to do business

with us. This fits right into that aim,” Kumm says.

By listening to calls to its contact center, the bank is able to identify problems and address them, improving the customer experience.

Associated Banc-Corp’s Customer Listening Makeover

Adapted from 1to1 Media

Retail Banks

“ Our company is focused on improving customer experience and making it easier for customers to do business with us. This fits right into that aim.”

— Wendy Kumm, Vice President, Customer Service, Banc-Corp

https://www.associatedbank.com/


Trust is easy to lose and difficult to gain back. Cutthroat competition in several industries is making it

essential for organizations to retain customer trust or, if they’ve lost it, work hard to earn it back.

The financial services industry has been going through a PR crisis in the past years, as bailouts, subprime

lending, and stock market declines have led to negative perceptions of the whole industry. As Jonathan

Levitt, CMO at OpinionLab, points out, when customers hear the name of a bank or a Wall Street company,

many times it’s related to major bailouts or massive bonuses being paid to executives. “The events of the

past five years have changed the mentality of customers with regards to financial services companies,”

Levitt notes.

This cloud of negativity has fueled the need to become more customer centric, bringing about a silver

lining to a dark period in the recent history of financial entities. “The financial industry was shaken from

its apathy and forced to listen to customers,” Levitt says. Stacey Haefele, CEO of HNW, agrees. “Trust is

deeply shaken,” she notes. “More than any other industry, financial services organizations have a big job

to earn back their customers’ loyalty,” notes Simon Angrove, senior vice president and general manager

for Verint’s retail financial services.

Further, the financial services landscape is changing, and traditional entities are having to compete not

only against their direct competitors but also non-traditional financial services companies, for example

peer-to-peer lending organizations. “Customers have several different options for borrowing money and

are no longer locked in to financial institutions like they used to be,” notes Levitt. This is pushing traditional

institutions to become more nimble and customer centric.

In order to recover the trust they have lost, change some customers’ negative perception of them, and

beat their competition, many financial services organizations are making an effort to listen to their custom-

ers and then take action on what they’re hearing.

Integrating cross-channel feedback

Because today’s customers are communicating with the brands they do business with across multiple

channels, different departments in an organization are gathering their own customer feedback. According

to experts, a major setback for companies is their inability to bridge departmental silos and bring this frag-

mented information together, allowing them to glean a more rounded view of their customers. “We’re living

in a multichannel retail world where customers complete their buying journeys across many different chan-

nels, making it imperative for organizations to get a cross-channel view of their customers across these

touchpoints,” Angrove notes. He adds that while there are a number of financial services entities moving

towards feedback integration, this is still an early trend.

Levitt agrees that cross-channel integration of feedback is the biggest challenge that financial orga-

nizations are facing. “We’ve seen companies that are making huge strides in collecting information, but

stitching it all together is still a problem,” he notes. Levitt says each interaction between a customer and an

organization is part of the overall brand experience, so business leaders need to make sure they’re gather-

ing data from every part of the company. Geico, Levitt notes, is one company that is managing to effectively

gather information from different channels and meshing it together to tell a comprehensive story.

Blue Shield of California addresses the potential problem of silos through a monthly meeting among

Financial Firms Cash in on VoCListening to customers and acting on these insights are essential for organizations. Recovering from negative perceptions and lack of trust, financial services entities are leveraging VOC to become more customer centric.


Retail Banks

“ The financial industry was shaken from its apathy and forced to listen to customers.”

— Jonathan Levitt, CMO, OpinionLab

http://www.hnw.com/

https://www.blueshieldca.com/

http://www.1to1media.com/View.aspx?docid=34240


managers of different channels. During the meeting, they share details on customer insights that they’ve

gleaned, notes Mallika Madakasira, insights consultant at the insurance provider. Further, a daily newsletter

that includes customer insights is sent to key decision-makers. Sharing insights across different depart-

ments helps reiterate the company’s determination to do what’s right for the customer.

According to Madakasira, Blue Shield of California’s efforts to listen to what its customers are say-

ing have also translated into a cultural shift within the company, turning it into a more customer-focused

organization. Madakasira notes that Blue Shield of California is currently working to drive a more cus-

tomer-centric culture where the conversation begins with the customer in mind, with employees looking at

everything from the customer’s viewpoint, allowing them to prioritize what’s important for their customers.

Employing novel VOC techniques

Listening to customers is not enough. Organizations not only need to hear what their customers are saying

and understand their pain points, but they also need to act on this insight in order to rectify any problems.

As Adele Sage, customer experience analyst at Forrester Research, told 1to1 Media last year, companies

that excel in their VOC initiatives are distinguished by their ability to connect the dots between listening,

analyzing the information, taking action, and looking at results. Levitt notes that organizations, including

financial entities, are still making the mistake of not acting on their voice of the customer insights. “We’re

great at gathering information, but not so much at acting on it,” he notes.

This is due in part to VOC techniques historically being very manual, for example reading comment

cards and employing mystery shoppers. Angrove notes today organizations can gather feedback from an

increasing number of sources. These include looking at what customers and prospects are saying in social

media, both about that particular organization and its competitors. Secondly, voice analytics technology is

making it much easier for businesses to understand what their customers expect from them.

In order to get the best insights, some financial entities are experimenting with novel ways to analyze and

aggregate VOC from across the enterprise. According to Haefele, some companies are recruiting large format

focus groups and allowing customers to interact with each other and discuss the companies they do business

with. Haefele notes that while representatives of the company that commissioned the research are present,

they try to remain unobtrusive, making space for customers to be more vocal and truthful in their discussions.

Financial entities are also engaging in ethnographic research by interviewing customers in their own

homes. Haefele says brands are sending participants a video camera and sets of exercises and corre-

sponding questions and asking them to film themselves answering the questions, allowing businesses to

get insights and also observe customers in their own homes.

Experts highlight the importance of not forgetting frontline employees, who are always a great source

of information since they are in constant contact with customers. Further, including frontline employees in

VOC exercises allows organizations to be more agile in addressing problems and fixing potentially prob-

lematic relationships.

Finally, financial organizations need to close the loop and let customers know what they’re doing to

address their concerns. Angrove notes that savvy companies are identifying causes of dissatisfaction and

immediately reaching out to that particular customer to ask for more information and also explain what

steps the organization is planning to take to resolve the problem.

Customers who are not satisfied with the way a brand is treating them are likely to lose trust in that orga-

nization. As Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., write in their latest book Extreme Trust: Honesty as

a Competitive Advantage, “the penalties for untrustworthy behavior in a highly interactive and transparent

world will be severe and immediate.” Since lack of trust is not only a phenomenon present in the financial

services industry, with Forbes highlighting research indicating that almost a third of online consumers are

more likely to trust the opinion of a stranger above that of a brand just last month, all entities would do

well to listen to their customers’ voice to better understand what they can do to improve the relationship

with them.

Retail Banks

Finally, financial organizations need to close the loop and let customers know what they’re doing to address their concerns.

http://www.forrester.com/

http://www.1to1media.com/view.aspx?docid=33895

http://www.extremetrustbook.com/

http://www.extremetrustbook.com/


Business Boost: A €1.5 million investment resulted in approximately €3.6 million in profits in 2012, an ROI

of around 140 percent in the first year.

Data has become a very precious commodity for organizations, and business leaders are putting a lot of

focus into developing sound analytic strategies that will help their firms get an edge over the competition.

The ability to turn data into actionable insights is often a major differentiator among companies.

Akbank is committed to leveraging data to create a customer-centric organization. The Turkish bank was

collecting huge amounts of data from its customer database, which holds more than 19 million records of

customers and sees up to six billion transactions every year over eight channels, including the branches,

call center, ATM transactions, and Internet and mobile banking.

However, making sense of this huge amount of data was challenging. In order to compete in the tough

financial market, Akbank wanted to make the most out of its colossal amounts of data, allowing it to accu-

rately predict customer banking and transactional behavior and provide customized solutions for multiple

customer segments. The bank wanted to use the information to create more targeted and customized

actions for its customers through real-time rules, customer-based and portfolio-based targets, and lifetime

events, among others. Further, the bank wanted to leverage data to increase cross-sales, NPS, and profit-

ability, while decreasing attrition, notes Attila Bayrak, Akbank’s senior vice president for CRM.

The bank’s goals required extensive work in analytics that would allow Akbank’s decision-makers to

better understand their customers using data insights, including product and channel propensities, churn

and retention behaviors, and cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. These had to be calculated in an environ-

ment with multiple channels, segments, and products and the aim was to provide more optimized solutions

through the different channels.

In order to make the most out of its data strategy, Akbank set up a cross-functional team made up of

members from the CRM, strategy, marketing business, operations, and IT departments, which, under the

watchful eye of Bayrak, embarked on an initiative to make the most out of data. The company wanted to

use these insights to better know its customers.

The CEM initiative required the CRM department to undergo structural changes, almost doubling its staff

and extending its single analytics team to three, which worked in collaboration with two campaign manage-

ment teams. With more than one team, the analytics experts were able to carry out unbiased checkpoints.

The analytic initiative provided Akbank with additional information on which to make decisions. Both sales

and marketing as well as strategy and operations teams benefitted from continuous insights. The analytics

team ran various customer segmentation models every quarter, changing the services per any changes

in customer behavior. “The initiative is helping us segment and treat customers in a clearly defined way,”

Bayrak notes. He explains that the bank uses customer responses to learn about its clients’ needs and can

then send them relevant campaigns and offers in their preferred channels. Offers, campaigns, and com-

munications with individual customers are designed according to analytics insights.

Akbank put a lot of emphasis on customer feedback, gathering insights regularly both before and after

the initiative was launched. This showed that NPS went up by 43 percent between January and December

2012. Further, the number of customer complaints went down by 6 percent during that year.

Akbank’s Analytics Initiative Improves the Customer ExperienceThe Turkish bank is leveraging customer data to help it become a more customer-centric organization while also improving its bottom line.

Adapted from 1to1 Media, June 5, 2013

Retail Banks

“ The initiative is helping us segment and treat customers in a clearly defined way.”

— Attila Bayrak, Senior Vice President, CRM, Akbank

http://www.akbank.com/



The bank decided to implement geocoding technologies within its analytics initiative, including geo-

graphical coordinates for 42 million customer addresses, 300,000 merchants, 950 bank branches, and

approximately 3,750 ATMs. Further, Akbank’s analytics teams added 800,000 points of interests, including

hotels, restaurants, and other retailers, in its data mart. The insights allowed Akbank to optimize its net-

work, develop new mobile applications for customers, and helped in segmentation and analysis. Akbank

launched a pilot customer acquisition campaign in the last quarter of 2012, leading to 52,000 calls with a

response rate of 27 percent.

Akbank invested around €1.5 million in the initiative, which resulted in approximately €3.6 million in profits

in 2012, an ROI of around 140 percent in the first year based on a three-year period. Between January

2012 and January 2013 the initiative helped Akbank increase the cross-sell ratio of active customers by

3.4 percent, equivalent to 1.6 million new products for active customers. Cumulative customer profitability

went up by almost 18 percent, generating an extra €287 million in gross profits last year. Customer retention

ratio has also gone up from 17 to 18 percent.

The initiative has helped Akbank gain 19.5 percent of the credit card market in Turkey, becoming the

leader in the field. A total of 19 credit card sub-segments were created and used in the call center for 336

different retention offers.

Increased insights are allowing Akbank to provide customers with appropriate real-time offers, with

2.5 million created systematically every month for inbound channels. As a result of the analytics initiative

Akbank increased the products and services sold by 2.4 million through 2012.

Retail Banks

Cumulative customer profitability went up by almost 18 percent, gener-ating an extra €287 million in gross profits last year. Customer retention ratio has also gone up from 17 to 18 percent.


Business Boost: Page views increased by 97%, while homepage abandonment decreased 20%.

For many companies, aggregating and managing data has become quite the struggle. But, for AMP

Financial Services, the challenge posed by its eight separate knowledgebases made balancing consis-

tency and efficiency nearly impossible. While the company aimed to provide accurate information across

the organization, the siloed systems were difficult to update, creating compliance issues in the process.

The available files were frequently out of date, thus providing clients and customer service officers (CSOs)

with conflicting information depending upon the knowledge source. With such obstacles in mind, AMP set

forth to improve customer self-service, boost CSO efficiency, and eliminate compliance risk from business.

Industries across the board recognize that differentiation has become the key to success. In AMP’s

case, providing reliable information was the key. By ensuring that information can be easily accessible and

consistent across numerous platforms, AMP customers would be able to connect with the brand when

and where they want, thus driving customer loyalty and retention to an otherwise dormant customer base.

Stuart Magrath, director of AMP Direct and ipac marketing, notes that AMP’s primary goals not only aimed

to consolidate each individual knowledgebase into a single source, but also to reengage customers and

retain current business while up-selling and cross-selling to maximize potential. This initiative also aimed to

reduce contact center full time equivalents (FTE) as more customers adopt online self-service.

The organization-wide effort involved marketing, digital business, digital technology, customer service,

direct sales, and adviser distribution, fronted by a steering committee with senior executives and working

groups representing each of the key stakeholders. Representatives from digital business and customer

service run the program’s day-to-day management, working to ensure content is current, relevant, and

compliant, thus making existing content more accessible for all while incorporating feedback on an ongo-

ing basis. From the number of articles viewed by CSOs and time spent in the online knowledgebase, to

first-call resolution and average call handling time, AMP observes all pertinent success measures in order

to maintain and improve upon its existing knowledgebase at all times.

With its ‘customer thinking’ design in mind, AMP purposely gathered customer insights by recruiting a

group of customers and entrusting them with the task of finding content on the brand’s site, tracking each

throughout their entire interaction. The insights were then used to design a paper prototyping process

while a second group of customers were brought in to assist in solution design. According to Magrath, this

approach put customers at the center of the improvement process, while ongoing reviews, customers and

staff feedback, and an annual customer survey allow AMP to improve and enhance continuously.

Staff members now own the ability to automatically publish information to the Web and comment on

articles to improve accuracy, creating greater staff engagement with the information used each day. This

single source also delivers consistent information to frontline staff, financial advisers, and clients so internal

users are equipped with the tools necessary for providing an exceptional customer experience, and cus-

tomers can quickly and easily discover relevant product and service information on their own.

When AMP Financial Services replaced its eight knowledgebases with one source, the company also

moved users from the navigational model to the search model on their website. While users were previously

AMP Financial Services Invests in Knowledgebase OptimizationBy consolidating disparate data across the organization, AMP implemented an easily accessible knowledge source that offers clients and staff consistent product and service information.

Adapted from 1to1 Media, June 5, 2013

Retail Banks

AMP Financial Services marked great cost sav-ings, as the greater usage of self-service options allowed the company to reduce the number of call center representatives. While AMP predicted a 40 percent boost in self-service, the com-pany experienced a 100 percent increase in usage prior to launch.

— Stuart Magrath, Director of AMP Direct and ipac MarketingCRM, Akbank

https://www.amp.com.au/wps/portal/au

https://www.amp.com.au/wps/portal/au



able to bookmark their favorite pages for speedy access to relevant content, such tools often left them to

rely on outdated or non-compliant content that had yet to be removed from the system. Internally, AMP

ran competitions within the contact center, enforcing a clean desk policy whereby hard copies of content

were discarded, and bookmarks and shortcuts were deleted. Those that failed to comply would have to

pay fines for charities in the form of a gold coin donation. Even call scripts and conversation guides were

loaded into the knowledge base to encourage use of the tool to guarantee the entire organization would be

sharing the same information across the board. The new knowledgebase also provides the ability to email

links to various content so customers can read the information at their leisure instead of depending upon

the call center representative to convey the data to them.

Upon implementation, AMP Financial Services marked great cost savings, as the greater usage of self-

service options allowed the company to reduce the number of call center representatives. While AMP

predicted a 40 percent boost in self-service, the company experienced a 100 percent increase in usage

prior to launch. Page views increased by 97 percent, while homepage abandonment decreased from 66

percent to 46 percent. Average time spent on site also increased by 22 percent, while the usability of AMP’s

site increased from 57.6 percent to 65.7 percent, with particular improvements in the areas of effective-

ness, efficiency, and satisfaction

Retail Banks


Innovation is essential for organizations to remain successful amidst strong competition. The fast pace of

change in consumers’ use of communications and technology in recent years is putting more pressure on

companies to embrace customers’ expectations and weave innovation through the fibers of their organiza-

tions. Success stories have been written about business leaders who’ve led change to become pioneers in their

fields. Brands like Apple have succeeded and achieved business growth because they took calculated risks.

The savviest companies don’t see innovation as just a means to an end, and instead consider it as a phi-

losophy that has to be ingrained within the core of a company. That is the philosophy that Spanish bank la

Caixa lives by. For the bank, innovation is an attitude to work. At la Caixa, innovation lies at the heart of the

operating remit and is present within the whole organization. In fact, in 2011 la Caixa was named the “Most

Innovative Bank” during the global banking innovation awards, solidifying the bank’s philosophy that innova-

tion is the best tool for growing efficiently and responding both to a changing environment and to customers.

But becoming an innovative company cannot happen without a major effort that includes everyone

within the organization. Employees and even customers have an important role in driving the changes that

matter. la Caixa is a firm believer that innovation can only develop successfully if it’s based on feedback

and learnings from three important groups—customers, employees, and industry experts.

Leveraging customer insights

Listening to customers is a key to success for organizations. When customers have the opportunities to

pinpoint areas of improvement that the organization should address, companies can apply these shared

insights to strategies that help improve their experience. la Caixa is a firm believer in such collaborative

efforts. But the bank’s leadership understands that while many customers are eager to share opinions

that could improve their experience with the brands they do business with, it’s up to these organizations

to provide streamlined and straightforward ways for customers to share feedback and help improve the

company’s products and service.

This knowledge has prompted la Caixa to invest heavily in processes and mechanisms for gathering cus-

tomer feedback and to make it easy for clients to share their comments through the various touchpoints.

According to Benjamí Puigdevall, head of the bank’s electronic channels: “We focus our endeavors on

creating the framework and tools for customers to collaborate with their ideas, opinions, and suggestions

on what they need from our entity.” For example, after making a purchase, the bank gives customers the

option to answer a survey over multiple channels about the product and the process. This permanent valu-

ation tool allows users to share their feedback on 25 products and services.

These surveys are leading to an average of 5,000 customer opinions every month allowing the bank’s

leadership to keep its finger on the pulse of its clients. The bank also is agile by quickly making the sug-

gested changes or introducing new products that cater to customer needs.

The company also proactively reaches out to customers and involves them in brainstorming sessions.

Feedback was essential when the company decided to overhaul its Internet banking home page to make

it customer-focused. The organization called on its customers to help, involving hundreds in onsite focus

groups and interviews to discuss design ideas, browsing habits, and ways to customize the homepage and

make it user-friendly.

The company’s latest endeavor is a new tool called Inspíranos (inspire us) within its online home banking

channel. The tool was specifically built to provide customers with a destination to make suggestions about

la Caixa Banks on InnovationBy combining customer and employee feedback with learnings from industry experts, Spanish bank la Caixa is better able to map its new products.


Retail Banks

“ We focus our endeavors on creating the framework and tools for custom-ers to collaborate with their ideas, opinions, and suggestions on what they need from our entity.”

— Benjamin PuigdewallHead of Electronic Channels, la Caixa

http://www.apple.com/

http://www.lacaixa.com/

http://www.lacaixa.com/

http://press.lacaixa.es/caixabank/press-releases/la-caixa-wins-the-award-for-the-world-s-most-innovative-bank__1775-c-15025__.html



how to improve their banking experience. Puigdevall says this strategy allows customers to feel involved in

the process of creating new products and services. Further, the bank gives other customers the opportu-

nity to rate the ideas submitted by their peers, which are then analyzed by la Caixa executives to determine

which can be acted on. The bank is receiving about 200 distinct ideas every month about the home banking

channel, giving the boardroom insight into what customers want from the bank.

Tapping into employees’ expertise

Winning ideas don’t only come from the people at the top echelons of an organization. Staff members

can have a revolutionary proposal that could give the organization a leading edge over its competitors.

That’s why it’s essential for business leaders to establish processes that enable, and even encourage, staff

members to share their thoughts. The company believes that employees, thanks to their experience and

ongoing contact with customers, have considerable know-how that enriches the institution. Tapping into

employee knowledge required la Caixa to develop in-house programs that encourage employees to share

their ideas and suggestions. The company developed a web portal, dubbed “Imagine,” where employees

can share ideas which are then evaluated by a team of la Caixa experts the best ones are implemented

every year. The Imagine platform has been developed as part of a group of collaborative tools to create a

community for the sharing of information and knowledge. Making ideas visible across the board opens the

discussion and creates additional suggestions.

Staff members at all levels and across different departments have proven to be a great resource, contrib-

uting upwards of 1,000 ideas and suggestions every month, allowing them to play an important role in the

continuous improvements of products and services. Internal contests have also been organized to generate

ideas around specific issues. In 2011, for example, la Caixa organized a contest to encourage innovative

ideas for CaixaMóvil Store, where customers can download smartphone apps for their financial needs.

While innovative ways to generate ideas work well for la Caixa, the bank believes that ideas are born

through work and experimentation and therefore strives to create the right environment for employees to

be creative. One example is the bank’s CaixaMóvil Laboratory that is used to test new services with the

aim of improving the customer experience. Further, la Caixa set up a usability laboratory where employees

can interact with customers, who are given a number of tests to determine the effectiveness of an idea.

Eye tracking technology, for example, is used to determine what a customer is looking at, what colors and

images grab their attention, and the direction their eyes follow as they carry out an action, like when their

eyes gravitate toward the left or right side of a web page when they land on a website.

Learning from the best

Pride has no place in progressive companies. Instead, savvy organizations are not only willing to learn from

industry experts, but they do so proactively. A guiding principle for la Caixa is to open the doors to external

experts to share ideas and suggestions that can help the organization retain its innovative edge. A case

in point is the FinApps Party, a 24-hour marathon for IT experts first organized in 2011 to develop mobile

applications for financial services. The first endeavor attracted more than 100 participants who presented

40 projects. The winning app was a financial tool aimed at helping parents teach their children to save.

Following the success of the first FinApps Party, la Caixa decided to make this an annual event and the

second party took place in Barcelona at the end of October. This time, the bank opened the opportunity

to developers from around the globe, attracting experts from the United Kingdom, Kenya, Mexico, and

Israel, among others. The winning application uses geo-location technology to locate retailers that use a

la Caixa POS device. The prototype also encourages customers to share information about the venue on

their social networks.

By gathering insights from these three resources, la Caixa is able to gain a wide view of what customers of

all types expect of the bank as an organization. Acting on feedback from customers, employees, and indus-

try experts allows the organization to remain agile in identifying new trends and stay ahead of the curve.

Retail Banks

The company developed a web portal, dubbed “Imagine,” where employ-ees can share ideas which are then evaluated by a team of la Caixa experts the best ones are implemented every year.


Business leaders like speaking about the importance of customer centricity. But when it comes to taking

action and turning their organizations into enterprisewide client-centric entities, some are still having prob-

lems translating the theoretical concepts that they’re familiar with into real, working strategies that become

the core of the way they do business.

Standard Bank which has a 150-year history in South Africa and started expanding to other countries on

the African continent in the 1990s is one company that has prioritized customer centricity by embedding

it into its core beliefs.

Tapping into his years of experience both in very advanced markets like Japan as well as developing

markets, Sandeep Deobhakta, executive head, Personal Markets, PBB Africa at Standard Bank, imparts

some of the company’s wisdom in becoming customer centric. Here, he shares four steps to successfully

create customer centricity in the financial services industry:

1. Customer centricity starts with listeningDeobhakta points out that it all starts with customers. “You need to understand the context of their life

stages and how financial products are a means to an end rather than an end in themselves.” Therefore, the

first step in the journey toward customer centricity is for business leaders to put their ears to the ground

and really listen to what their customers are saying. This is an integral element in what Standard Bank

hopes will be a winning strategy to becoming a client-centric bank.

Listening allows organizations to get a good understanding of their customers’ needs and these insights

can be used to ensure that all communications are tailored to individual customers. “The best sales people

are the ones who listen and won’t say anything until they really understand the customer, his history, and

what he’s looking for,” Deobhakta says. Just like the best physicians listen to patients before making a

diagnosis, financial professionals need to speak with their customers and understand their financial histo-

ries and their needs in order to provide the best recommendations.

2. Steer away from product centricity

Too often organizations focus on the profitability of their products. Instead, they should use insights gath-

ered from Voice of Customer (VOC) endeavors to move away from being product-centric and put their

customers at the core of their business. Rather than focus on products, business leaders need to change

their mindsets and think in terms of what customers require to be successful in different facets of their lives.

As Deobhakta explains, banks need to understand that when a client is borrowing money to buy a house

or a car, the financial product is an enabler of that dream. Banks which understand this core principle are

in a better position to ensure that their products fit well within the customer journey, helping them achieve

their dreams as quickly and effortlessly as possible.

Recognizing the need to focus on its customers, a leading bank in Japan implemented innovative ways

to be more customer focused, starting with proactively offering all the bank’s services to customers when

they open their first account. Any services that the customer didn’t require immediately remained inactive

until the client activated them online and began transacting. This Japanese bank also tapped into its cross-

channel infrastructure to track customers’ online investments and trading behaviors, allowing the bank to

Standard Bank’s 4 Steps Toward Becoming a Customer-Focused OrganizationFinancial institutions need to look beyond the cash and focus their investments in becoming customer-centric organizations. Standard Bank’s Sandeep Deobhakta shares four important steps in the journey toward customer centricity.


Retail Banks

“ The best sales people are the ones who listen and won’t say anything until they really understand the customer, his history, and what he’s looking for.”

— Sandeep Deobhakta, Executive head, Personal Markets, PBB Africa at Standard Bank

http://www.standardbank.com/



Retail Banks

send the appropriate alerts and triggers in real time over mobile.

Deobhakta acknowledges that overcoming the product-centric mindset is still a challenge for the finan-

cial industry and several organizations are struggling with this culture change. Standard Bank is well on its

journey from a product-focused to a customer-centric entity. Deobhakta notes that the key in this journey is

having the right data that delivers the necessary insights which can be used to develop the customer value

proposition.

3. Addressing the data conundrumData plays an extremely important role in helping organizations become more customer centric. Financial

institutions, like most other organizations, are collecting colossal amounts of customer data both from

transactions as well as from formal research and interactions with frontline staff.

However, many organizations are still facing challenges in turning this data into actionable insights. A

major stumbling block lies in information silos that need to be bridged in order to give decision-makers a

single view of the customer. One way to do this is to have a robust data platform that brings together data

from different repositories, and is instrumental in helping banks identify potential customer needs and then

engage with them on a very personalized basis.

4. Be culture sensitiveCustomers are different and organizations need to understand the varying nuances that make them tick.

Understanding culture is an important part of Standard Bank’s strategy and this reflects in the core bank-

ing platform that the bank has deployed across the African continent. The organization understands that

while customers’ foundational needs are similar, their actions are likely to be dictated by local market and

demographic influences, and the bank has adapted its system to reflect country specific regulations and

processes, as well as social nuances. “It’s necessary to look at these factors in each country and deliver the

core needs within the proposition,” Deobhakta explains. For example, a younger population – which chooses

alternative mobile banking channels – may also be more concerned about providing a better future for their

children and need help making savvy investments. Despite the subtle differences, organizations can leverage

the knowledge gleaned from one region or country to replicate successes across the entire market.

Standard Bank has deployed this philosophy with noticeable success within its African operations, espe-

cially in assisting the growing group of middle class business owners who have no documented financial

history and need access to financial help. Recognizing this trend, Standard Bank developed a special tool,

SME Quick Loans, which uses advanced behavioral scoring models to determine client repayment ability.

Another recently launched Standard Bank customer-centric example is “Heartland Banking - the Diaspora

offering from Stanbic.” Understanding the financial and social needs of a very targeted customer segment

led to the development of a range of products for non-resident Africans (NRAs) living outside of Africa. The

offering includes a comprehensive product set of both asset and liability offerings, designed to suit the

needs of both clients and their families.

Finally, financial services organizations need to understand that being seen as a customer-centric organiza-

tion is not solely a positive marketing strategy. This is a sound investment which affects products and services

offerings, sales process and distribution, infrastructure, as well as ongoing customer treatment which will lead

to more satisfied customers. Then they will be more likely to remain loyal to the brand. Furthermore, custom-

ers who engage with an organization which understands them and engages in relevant practices according to

their needs are more likely to become lifelong advocates or ambassadors of the brand.

Customers are different and organizations need to understand the varying nuances that make them tick. Understanding culture is an important part of Standard Bank’s strategy and this reflects in the core banking platform that the bank has deployed across the African continent.


Organizations striving for a competitive advantage know that they not only have to deliver what customers

want, but must also surpass their expectations. Doing so begins with understanding customers’ needs and

preferences, and then taking action based on that insight. This approach helps to develop a sense of con-

fidence among customers that the company puts its customers’ needs ahead of its own, which can build

trust that results in increased future business.

A comprehensive, closed-loop voice of the customer (VOC) strategy is how savvy businesses are captur-

ing the customer information they need to improve products and services in ways that matter to customers,

as well as building customer relationships by communicating those changes back to customers. Philadelphia

Insurance Companies is one organization doing just that, and its efforts allow it to be more agile in identify-

ing and rectifying problems, leading to considerable improvements in its Net Promoter Score (NPS).

While in the past, the 50-year-old organization was collecting customer feedback through annual trans-

action-based and web surveys, as well as mystery shopper exercises, the company felt it was not seeing

as many responses as it would have liked to. Although customers were filling out surveys, the information

was solely dedicated to providing feedback on the experience a customer had when calling Philadelphia

Insurance Companies’ contact center. The organization reviewed the results on a monthly basis primarily

to determine the performance of individual customer care representatives. However, no other action was

being taken based on what customers were saying. “The results were objectively captured, but there

wasn’t a lot of information as to how customers perceived the company, whether they were pleased

with the level of service, and whether they would recommend us to someone else,” says Seth Hall,

Philadelphia Insurance Companies’ vice president of operations.

Further, although the company was receiving up to 35,000 calls a month and some 700 emails daily,

multiple sources of customer feedback made it difficult to develop a holistic and enterprisewide analysis

of what customers were saying. The organization felt that a more streamlined analysis could potentially

recognize systemic problems that could be resolved, thus eliminating future calls on those issues.

Further, Philadelphia Insurance Companies was putting a lot of emphasis on its internal score-

cards, which indicated whether processes were going according to the established standards; for

example, how long it took the company to respond to a claim. The company was doing well in terms of

meeting internal process requirements, scorecard results were good, and customer feedback was gener-

ally positive, but the orgaization felt that valuable feedback was still missing.

“We were making the assumption that our customers were pleased when we had positive

resullts from our internally focused scorecards,” Hall says.

When Hall joined the company in 2009 he quickly realized that the focus on internal measures

over customer feedback wasn’t giving company executives the data they needed to inform their

decisions and determine the success of new projects. “If you want to move the needle, you

have to look at what customers are saying,” he stresses. Hall understood that the organization

needed to focus on what its customers were saying to ensure it was delivering on its promises and

Philadelphia Insurance Companies Lends Customers an Ear to Improve Customer CentricityThrough an ambitious voice of the customer initiative, the insurance provider uses feedback to improve its products, services, and customer relationships


Insurance CompaniesInsurance Companies: Articles

Philadelphis Insurance Companies Lends Customers an Ear to Improve Customer Centricity .....................33

MassMutual Embodies the Human Side of Financial Services .................................................35

Ronust Data Analytics Center Helps AAA Drive Relevance ...............................................37

Data Livens Up Financial Relationships at Old Mutual ...................................................... 39

Aflac Kepps Duck’s Promise to Customers, Gaining Their Trust in Return ....................................41


increase its customer-centric culture. Additionally, this information needs to be shared throughout the organiza-

tion to make sure that decisions are based on what customers say rather than perceptions of their experience.

At the end of 2010, Hall selected a cross-functional team of associates to launch a four-phase VOC strategy.

The first phase, in mid-2011, was to bring existing surveys into a newly implemented MarketTools platform,

which would allow Philadelphia Insurance Companies to capture data from customer feedback that would then

be aggregated and visible in real time. Phase two mapped the best ways to analyze and use the feedback, as

well as develop companywide communication and reporting tools. The third phase included identifying other

feedback loops that were occurring naturally through channels other than the contact center. Phase four was

to develop and implement surveys in the service areas where feedback was not previously being collected.

The company now receives thousands of responses to multiple surveys every month, equivalent to about

4 percent of its customer base. This allows the organization to notice trends quickly and be agile in taking

any necessary actions. Low NPS scores trigger automatic emails to the person responsible, who can then

contact the customer, get more information, and resolve the issue. (Overall NPS averaged at 55.1 between

August and December 2011, with a high of 60.45.)

Customer feedback makes company more agile Hall says that the new information allows Philadelphia Insurance Companies to know exactly how it’s doing

in the eyes of its most important critics: its customers. “I no longer tell the CEO that because our internal

scorecards are saying we’re doing good things, it means [we are]. We match our internal scorecards with

external feedback,” he says. So, although Philadelphia Insurance Companies is retaining its internal score-

cards, it no longer bases all of its decisions on these results. For example, the scorecards indicated no major

billing issues, while the VOC program uncovered that there were more negative comments surrounding

billing than anything else. Armed with this information, the company is modifying its billing system this year.

Scorecards also indicated the need to add more customer service reps, because the average speed of

answer (ASA) had slipped. However, after reviewing VOC data the company realized that ASA wasn’t a

good indicator of satisfaction; a better one was first call resolution. “This data was instrumental in us chang-

ing the metrics and goals, and thus not hiring the additional staff we thought we needed,” Hall says. “The

big win is being able to make the necessary changes.”

Voice of the customer feedback has also helped improve the organization’s ability to connect customers

with the right person and get them the right answer. “We are now putting together targeted and trans-

actional surveys to find out what exactly we can be doing differently, and obviously better,” Hall says.

Philadelphia Insurance Companies has also started compiling an Ease of Administration report, specifically

intended to tell employees how easy it is to do business with, from the customer’s perspective.

Bringing the C-suite to the customers However, the company isn’t stopping there. An integral part of the company’s VOC program is to have

C-suite executives contact customers who give less-than-stellar feedback. This practice brings the board-

room closer to customers, enabling two-way communication between the two. It also shows that C-level

executives are privy to what customers are saying and are willing to hear more as part of the company’s

journey to iron out any problems and ensure a great customer experience.

Additionally, this practice gives customers the peace of mind that their comments aren’t falling on deaf

ears, but are reaching the highest levels of the organization. This direct connection with the executive level is

rare in the financial services industry. Customers are surprised to receive a call from a senior executive, and

many times are apologetic for giving a low score.

“They’re shocked that a senior person would contact them on a seemingly small issue,” Hall says.

According to Hall, this practice makes it clear that Philadelphia Insurance is not afraid to apologize when

it makes mistakes. “Although we do a lot of things well, we’re far from perfect, but we’re going to call you,

apologize, and fix the problem. And we’ll do it very quickly,” he says.

Not only does this initiative add a layer of humility to a company that manages $2.2 billion worth of pre-

miums, but it also removes the perception that senior executives are unreachable. “There is no ivory tower,”

says Hall. “This creates a level of trust and comfort as well as confidence in us.” These feelings, Hall con-

tinues, can make a real difference between whether a customer recommends a company or not. “The fact

that we’re hearing them and we are reaching out to them, makes us more trustable.”

InsuranceCompanies

“ Although we do a lot of things well, we’re far from perfect, but we’re going to call you, apologize, and fix the problem. And we’ll do it very quickly.”

— Seth Hall Vice President Operations, Philadelphia Insurance Companies


Insurance is a necessity in life that customers hope they’ll never need. So when the time comes for them

to collect on their policy’s promise, customers don’t only want a seamless transaction—they also want a

human interaction to help them during difficult times.

MassMutual Financial Group is a prime believer in being there for its customers during their time of need,

providing life insurance, retirement, and financial products and services. “We’re in the business of help-

ing customers protect their loved ones,” Vice President and Chief Customer Experience Officer Todd Lee

points out. In order to deliver on this promise, MassMutual’s frontline employees need to be more than well-

informed about the products and services. They must be able to show empathy to a customer who has lost

a spouse or is facing another life-altering situation. The organization prides itself on preparing its frontline

associates to handle these sensitive situations with training and mentoring.

Lee took over the job of Chief Customer Experience Officer at the 161-year-old company earlier this year

and his first order of business was to draw up a customer experience strategy, geared at ensuring that the

organization understands its customer feedback. As Lee puts it, for the organization to be truly customer-

centric, it needs to understand the voice of its customers, engage with customers, and follow through with

them at all levels of service.

Here, Lee talks about MassMutual’s efforts to be more customer-centric and the necessity for each orga-

nization to take a customer-first approach.

Customer Strategist: What are your goals as Chief Customer Experience Officer?

Todd Lee: My overall goal is to ensure that we consistently deliver an exceptional customer experience for

our policy holders, our clients, producers, and employees. I’m looking at doing this in a number of different

ways, the first of which is advocating on behalf of our customers and ensuring that their needs and expec-

tations are understood by all and are at the center of what we do internally. I promote a holistic viewpoint

that cuts across the organization and across boundaries to make sure that we’re not constrained internally.

We’ve identified four core issues [that need addressing]: The changing role of advice for the consumer and

how technology and the proliferation of information is beginning to change that; helping our customers man-

age the uncertainties throughout the years, depending upon their life stage; embracing the changing family

structure, which present different needs; and demystifying the buying process to address consumers’ need for

transparency and simplicity in products. I’m channeling the forward-looking strategy to determine what capabili-

ties we need to build to [address these four needs] to ensure that we’re ready to exceed customer expectations.

Key to doing this is making sure that I’m proactively keeping a current perspective of the voice and pulse

of our customers.

CS: Why is it imperative for your organization to provide an optimal customer experience and be customer-centric?

TL: Customer experience has always been [essential] but with today’s rapidly changing marketplace, we

believe it’s even more important. We operate in an environment that’s very competitive and it’s becoming

more and more difficult to [use price and product features as differentiators] since everybody’s fairly close

when it comes to price, and any new product feature can be duplicated fairly quickly. So, needless to say,

it’s our actions in customer service that are true differentiators. Connecting with, and strengthening, our ties

with our customers is critical.

MassMutual Embodies the Human Side of Financial ServicesUnder the watchful eye of Chief Customer Experience Officer Todd Lee, MassMutual strives to make sure its customers are supported and treated with empathy.


InsuranceCompanies

“ I’m channeling the forward-looking strategy to determine what capabilities we need to build to [address these four needs] to ensure that we’re ready to exceed customer expectations.”

— Todd Lee Chief Customer Officer, MassMutual


CS: What makes Mass Mutual customer-centric and how does the organization differ from its competitors in this regard?

TL: We strive to keep a balance in addressing the human element as we work in frontline interactions with

our customers. We want to be there at [our customers’] time of need when we have to deliver our ultimate

promise, which is them collecting on the benefits from the various products that we offer. Our frontline

associates need to be empathic and compassionate to the needs of those who are calling because they lost

a spouse and they don’t know what to do. We put a lot of effort in front-line associates because it’s not all

about technology and programs but about that human [connection.]

One thing that really enables that is our mutuality. We exist for the benefit of our policy owners who own

our company. They’re our customers and have been for 161 years. We operate with that structure and this

allows us to take a longer-term view and focus on the strategic investments in policies and protocols to

really deliver that value.

CS: Social media is putting increased pressure on organizations to be customer-centric. How is MassMutual using social media to be more customer-focused?

TL: Social media has really [sped up the way] we connect with people and build relationships. From our per-

spective this is really an exciting time. One of the panel survey studies found that 78 percent of consumers

under the age of 40 use social networks [to get information] when they’re shopping for consumer products.

We reach out to customers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and invite them to be part of the conversa-

tion with us. We’re continuing to build our social presence with the goal of connecting and engaging with a

variety of constituents, both clients and prospective clients, by using our corporate presence.

We also encourage [our network] of financial professionals to use their own pages within those respec-

tive communities to engage with their clients. This allows financial professionals to individually connect with

prospects and with clients they have. We’re in the process of [expanding] this program. Certainly, given

the regulatory environment, there are guidelines about what they can say in those public forums. But the

reality is that people are making connections through social channels and we feel we need to embrace it

as we move forward.

We’re working to engage brand advocates both across generations and different interest groups, interact

with them with a mix of interesting, relevant, and rewarding content to help drive brand referral, rediscovery

of the brand, and [for customers to] make the connection with us.

CS: What other developments are putting pressure on your organization to take a customer-first approach?

TL: Consumerization, which I would describe as technology advancement in the consumer space such as

tablets coming to consumers before [they were widely accessible] to businesses, is driving innovation and

rapidly changing consumer expectations and preferences. We’re finding that the business space is reacting

and trying to keep up with the innovation, the advancements, and changing preferences in the consumer

space. For industry as a whole, that’s a big challenge.

With the amount of information available online right now, consumers research companies and products

more than ever, certainly before they talk to an agent and a company. Consumers are [contacting compa-

nies] knowing about the products they want to talk about and that’s changing the conversation because

they’re more educated.

A second key trend is that technology is changing and shaping the purchase process as well as the solu-

tion space of what’s being provided. Brand image is being driven by ratings and recommendations. For

example, Yelp ratings have an impact on customer decisions and the way they [and other review sites] will

start rating financial services and products will impact our business.

Because of the number of individuals who have

InsuranceCompanies

“ We’re working to engage brand advocates both across generations and different interest groups, interact with them with a mix of interesting, relevant, and reward-ing content to help drive brand referral, rediscov-ery of the brand, and [for customers to] make the connection with us.”

— Todd Lee Chief Customer Officer, MassMutual


The American Automobile Association (AAA) built its business along U.S. roadways by being a trusted travel

partner to motorists. But it’s been able to grow its business model beyond roadside assistance and Trip-tiks

by tapping into its member data and using in-depth predictive analytics to adapt to changing traveler needs.

The AAA is not alone in its strategy. The amount of data that organizations have access to has increased

exponentially in the past years. McKinsey has estimated that in the vast majority of sectors in the United

States, companies that employ more than 1,000 employees store, on average, upwards of 235 terabytes of

data. To put it into perspective, McKinsey points out that’s more data than is contained in the U.S. Library

of Congress.

While the availability of data provides big opportunities for organizations, some are still struggling with

making sense of it, often grappling with information silos and the inability to extract actionable insights. This

was a problem for some of the 44 affiliated auto clubs that make up the AAA. Daniel Mathieux, director of

the AAA’s Member Relationship Management (MRM) action center, designed to help clubs with customer

analytics initiatives, notes that some of the clubs used simplistic customer analytics and relied on basic cus-

tomer profiling. Hiring expensive teams of consultants and contracting third-party predictive models wasn’t

enough. Clubs, especially the smaller ones, weren’t able to scale these initiatives, leaving them struggling

to optimize relationships with the AAA’s 53 million members.

Further, Mathieux notes that the capabilities of clubs vary greatly, and while some were very analytics-

driven, others weren’t as savvy. The latter were often working off a list of their members’ names and mailing

addresses, which didn’t give a holistic view of clients or allow clubs to know enough about these members

to deepen their relationship through relevant communications. “We were missing opportunities to grow our

business,” he says.

In order to help the different clubs make the most out of their data, senior leadership gave the MRM action

center four objectives:

• Leverage national buying power of hardware, software, and market data

• Socialize best practices for marketing and analytics

• Provide customer analytics to clubs

• Support clubs’ membership relationship management and customer analytics initiatives

The action center first created a 360-degree view of AAA members through the aggregation of more than

2,500 attributes, including membership information, transactions, and demographics, with the aim of help-

ing clubs predict member needs. In 2009, the action center implemented a predictive analytics solution,

allowing it to create and evolve analytics models. The center’s team of marketing analysts now works with

each individual club to create a plan and then use the automated system to deliver analytics to optimize club

cross-sell, acquisition, and retention campaigns.

Increased customer visibility means that clubs know the characteristics of customers who are likely to

respond to a given offer or can identify members at risk of churn. Mathieux says that while the AAA has a

renewal percentage in the upper 80s, new members are the most likely to churn. However, their propensity

to renew increases exponentially when they use one of the products offered. The action center’s job is to

help clubs find relevant products for individual customers to increase their likelihood of making a purchase

and reduce their churn risk.

Data is used to listen to members, helping different clubs tweak their communications throughout the

year, focusing on what different customer segments find most appealing. For example, Mathieux explains,

some customers are more money-conscious and the club can engage them in a conversation about the

Robust Data Analytics Center Helps AAA Drive RelevanceSales among AAA clubs have improved by up to 42 percent due to improved analytics capabilities.


InsuranceCompanies

“ Increased customer vis-ibility means that clubs know the characteris-tics of customers who are likely to respond to a given offer or can identify members at risk of churn.”

— Daniel Mathieux, Director of the AAA’s Member Relationship Management (MRM) Action Center

http://www.aaa.com


savings they can get on different products, like a cruise.

The federation was quick to see results. Individual clubs believe the campaigns have contributed to sub-

stantial incremental sales across the AAA’s network, with some individual clubs increasing their sales by

millions of dollars, which would otherwise have been lost. After applying customer analytics to travel cam-

paigns for one year, one particular club reported a 42 percent year-over-year increase in sales. Membership

renewal rates have also increased slightly, from 87.9 percent in 2009 to 88.2 percent in 2012.

Predicting customer needsFurther, a forecasting initiative uses customer road service history to predict call counts and the types

of vehicles needed at a facility, allowing the AAA to be more agile in responding to roadside assistance

requests. The federation has achieved a forecast accuracy of 89.5 percent, leading to cost savings, part-

ner loyalty, and increased member satisfaction. “Our goal is to maintain satisfaction levels in the 80s and

90s, and the biggest contributor is how quickly we can get there following a roadside assistance request,”

Mathieux says.

Seeing the strength of predictive analytics and the successes achieved, individual clubs have been

requesting more analytics insights from the action center, which has grown from five people when it first

started in 1998 to a 30-strong team. The different clubs recognize the benefits that the action center can

provide, and while they are not obliged to use the MRM action center for their analytics needs, the majority

of them do. The action center offers expertise that outside analytics firms can’t duplicate, because it can

share lessons learned among the clubs. And in cases where a particular club doesn’t have the critical mass

of data needed to derive the necessary insights, the MRM action center is able to integrate data from differ-

ent clubs to extract the needed intelligence, Mathieux explains.

Another advantage that clubs have seen is the action center’s ability to share best practices so that mis-

takes can be avoided and successes replicated. “We’re evangelists of best practices,” Mathieux says. In

fact, the center uses predictive models to help clubs serving 93 percent of the AAA’s membership optimize

marketing campaigns.

Predictive analytics are used in campaigns within clubs’ call centers, stores, and websites, as well as over

email, text messages, and direct mail, to determine the most relevant and timely offer for members. Further,

frontline staff are reminded of offers sent to individual members so that they can better interact with them.

The plan is to extend these successes to social channels, which are currently being developed, and will be

instrumental in helping clubs communicate with their members wherever they are.

The action center forms an integral part of the AAA’s data-driven business strategy, which is aimed

at helping members and connecting with them in the best possible way. “It’s all about the customers,”

Mathieux stresses. A century after the AAA first started operations, “we have the same desire to connect

with members at a very personal level,” he says, adding that the aim is to recreate the same highly personal-

ized relationship that was commonplace in the past, like knowing your local grocer. “We use data to make

that happen,” Mathieux says.

And the action center leads by example, understanding the needs of the individual clubs and making sure

that it’s relevant to them. “We drink our own Kool-Aid and understand the importance of relationships and

our members but we also [work on developing our] relationship with clubs,” Mathieux says.

Note: AAA is a winner of a 2013 Gartner and 1to1 Media CRM Excellence Award for analytics.

InsuranceCompanies

“ Predictive analytics are used in campaigns within clubs’ call centers, stores, and websites, as well as over email, text mes-sages, and direct mail, to determine the most relevant and timely offer for members.”

— Daniel Mathieux, Director of the AAA’s Member Relationship Management (MRM) Action Center

http://www.1to1media.com/crmexcellence/view.aspx?itemid=34255


Africa’s emerging financial maturity promises great opportunity for companies able to navigate the region’s

unique environment. Insurance analysts say the region has “blue sky” potential due to stabilizing govern-

ments and economies, a growing middle class, and lower levels of capital needed to enter the market than

elsewhere in the world. Old Mutual is at the forefront of the opportunity as one of the largest financial ser-

vices companies in the region. It provides retail and corporate banking and insurance to customers in South

Africa and other emerging markets in the region.

The company has made “putting customers at the centre of everything we do” one of its top five strate-

gic priorities to help drive growth, according to its website. As general manager of customer engagement

for the Old Mutual life insurance brand, David O’Brien oversees the firm’s data warehouse, CRM, and

digital domains. For him, customer experience and data strategy are essential to meet this corporate

growth objective. He shares his insights about data successes and challenges with Customer Strategist.

Customer Strategist: Why is customer engagement so important to driving business value for Old Mutual, and what do you do to drive engagement?

David O’Brien: Customer engagement is crucial to creating value. Life insurance is a low-touch product—

at its worst, “buy and die” are the only two potential customer interactions. So our team proactively engages

with customers to generate an ongoing conversation. Once we have created a conversation, we believe that

we can then build and deepen relationships that ultimately transcend the default transactional relationship.

For example, we are able to segment customers according to loyalty and value, and we have a program

of appropriate engagement activities ranging from birthday text messages to personal calls from senior

executives. The greetings are segmented to match the cost to the customer lifetime value. We strive to

touch our customers in some format a minimum of four times per year.

CS: How does data play a role in the success of your department, and Old Mutual at large?DOB: Data is our currency. Missing or poor data means no contact, which means we don’t get past first

base with customers. Incorrect data means we can upset the very customer we are trying to engage.

Neither is desirable.

However, my team has to continually remind our organization of the value of data, and the cost of poor

data quality. Data quality is often the first casualty in operational efficiency, and we operate extended value

chains in some of our processes. We therefore have programs to acquire and improve data quality, opera-

tionally and centrally. Our service colleagues have responded well to specific processes to improve the

data, but it is an ongoing journey.

CS: Is Big Data an executive-level issue at Old Mutual?DOB: It is currently a C-suite issue due to internal inertia. The expansion of my role is intended to address

that. Big Data requires significant information technology investment, and the wider organization remains

skeptical about the business case for our market, at this stage. I am hoping that through engagement with

the CEO, colleagues, and internal stakeholders I can build a community of advocates.

CS: How does your team build internal buy-in for customer centricity and data strategy?DOB: My team and I work very hard to ensure that we are seen as a shared service to our customer-facing

units. We have a formal process of engaging internally as the relationship matures. We first attempt to

understand the key business levers of our internal business units. We then match our services to those

Data Livens Up Financial Relationships at Old MutualOld Mutual uses data strategy to break away from life insurance’s “buy and die” relationship reputation and deliver significant ROI.


InsuranceCompanies

“ Once we have created a conversation, we believe that we can then build and deepen relationships that ultimately transcend the default transactional relationship.”

— David O’Brien, Head of CRM, Old Mutual

http://www.oldmutual.com/


levers to get to the use case as quickly as possible. We formally contract with each client business unit, and

as we have no revenue targets, their success is our success—we are completely aligned. Unfortunately the

initial phase of landing the data sources, and then improving the data quality, takes time and is not immedi-

ately value adding. We need to maintain the engagement and focus on the case to maintain the momentum.

We originally grew from within one business unit, and we are now missionaries tasked with sharing the

customer joy wider in the group. Customer centricity is a key strategic goal of the Old Mutual group. And

data analytics is the only practical way to manage large-scale relationships.

CS: You have a background as an actuary, yet you are in charge of a “soft skills” department. How does your analytical background help you deliver value to customers and the company?

DOB: A computer can never create warmth in a human relationship. However, creating and managing 4 mil-

lion ongoing relationships is a human impossibility. You therefore need investment and C-suite support. My

actuarial training has assisted me in identifying the levers of value creation from the many activities that my

creative team generates. One of our initial activities was designed to influence persistency, for example. I

focused on this, given the significant financial impact it has on an insurance business’ reserves and revenue.

This value attribution has in turn allowed us to build investment cases that have helped us acquire the

resources to continue our journey. We are a continual rolling experiment. Once we prove the value of an

activity, we industrialize it. If there is no value, then we close it and move on to the next activity.

CS: What data-driven initiatives do you manage?DOB: We recently introduced Net Promoter Score to the group, with adaptations for our specific market

needs. That database has been instrumental in improving the customer experience and reducing cost to

serve. In addition, we are still investing and building our expanded warehouse. We have been able to

acquire external and internal data sets that assist us in gaining a better understanding of our customers and

our intermediaries. We then build analytical models to predict the value in a particular area. Everything we

do is a data-driven initiative.

CS: What results have you seen from your data-driven programs?DOB: We have been able to quintuple our rate of leads closure by improving the quality of the leads distrib-

uted, and also by analyzing the process value chain from a sale through the closed loop system. We have

also significantly improved our customer retention by understanding the drivers of attrition and responding

with focused interventions from my team and our customer-facing colleagues.

CS: How do you plan to expand data-driven programs that drive real value?DOB: We create the investment case for the initial platform, and then build from there through iterative

cycles of demonstrable value creation for my business unit partners. As per the point above, the current

important levers tend to be business-unit specific. Some examples include retention through term and at

maturity, retirement fund preservation, Net Promoter Score, leads closure, data quality, cross-sells, and up-

sells. The absence of any real progress is an opportunity to start building from scratch, subject to resources

and the business unit priorities. My area plays an important role sharing best practices within our South

African businesses, but also increasingly from our colleagues operating in other African territories.

CS: What advice do you have for other executives about infusing data strategy into the customer experience?

DOB: Test and learn. Keep an eye on the value. Your data will never be perfect. It is better to get value from

imperfect data than to strive for impossible perfection. Engaging with customers and the data is the best

way to establish data quality issues and prioritize what needs addressing.

InsuranceCompanies

“ Customer centricity is a key strategic goal of the Old Mutual group. And data analytics is the only practical way to manage large-scale relationships.”

— David O’Brien, Head of CRM, Old Mutual


Insurance is a necessity for individuals, but many don’t recognize its importance until they really need it.

While most insurance companies are challenged with interacting with their customers who are encounter-

ing a problem, this is even truer for insurance organizations that have to help their clients deal with health

issues and their aftermath.

This reality means that insurance companies must listen to their customers, empathize with them, and

help them address, and ultimately solve, the problems that they’re facing. Michael W. Zuna, executive vice

president and chief marketing and sales officer at Aflac, says the company is committed to keeping the

promise it made to its customers—to be there when they need supplemental insurance most and take their

concerns to heart. “We realize that stress is heightened during medical emergencies, and we strive to make

sure their experience with us puts them at ease,” Zuna says.

Especially in a changing health insurance landscape, customers are not always cognizant of the insur-

ance policies that work best for them or what they need to do when they’re faced with a health problem.

Zuna notes that Aflac prioritizes educating customers to prepare for the unexpected and helping them

through difficult times. “Medical bills can add up quickly, so we make sure to pay claims fairly, promptly,

and directly to our customers usually within four days so they can use those funds as they see fit,” he says.

In this interview with 1to1 Magazine, Zuna speaks about Aflac’s commitment to providing customers with

the products and services they need most, educating them about the changing health insurance landscape,

and the role of the Aflac duck in turning the company into a household name.

1to1 Magazine: What makes Aflac a customer-centric organization?

Michael Zuna: Our customers have always been, and will always be, our first priority. Despite uncertainty

in the economy and on the health insurance front, we have continued to grow over the past 20 years by

never straying from our core values and always putting customers first. This is our mantra—it’s the “Aflac

Way.” Since our company was founded in 1955, we’ve kept our promise to those who we insure that we

will protect them when they need it most. This is how we’ve gained the trust of more than 50 million people

worldwide.

At Aflac, we realize that unpredictable medical situations can affect every part of our customers’ lives.

Aflac’s success comes from offering voluntary insurance policies that help provide additional financial pro-

tection to employees and individuals faced with expenses resulting from an accident or illness. Instead

of checks being sent directly to the doctor or hospital, Aflac sends cash benefits directly to policyholders

so they can use those funds as they see fit. We also work hard to pay claims fairly and promptly. In fact,

our claims are processed faster than the competition’s — usually within four days, according to company

statistics. As Aflac continues to evolve, our commitment remains steadfast to providing customers with the

products and services they need most.

1to1: What were the main changes in Aflac’s sales and marketing strategies that you’ve enacted since becoming the company’s Chief Marketing and Sales Officer? Can you discuss your strate-gies for continueing to build the Aflac brand?

MZ: A few years ago, Paul S. Amos II, the COO of Aflac, decided to separate marketing and sales into two

entities to enable the marketing function to grow and develop into a more sophisticated operation. We’ve

since seen our marketing function develop into a world-class marketing department, and like many compa-

nies, decided it was the right time to bring the two back together to benefit the entire company. Combining

Aflac Keeps Duck’s Promise to Customers, Gaining Their Trust in ReturnMichael W. Zuna, executive vice president and chief marketing and sales officer at Aflac, is committed to keeping Aflac’s promise to customers—to offer the products and services they need most.


InsuranceCompanies

“ Our customers have always been, and will always be, our first priority.”

— Michael W. Zuna, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and Sales Officer, Aflac



our marketing and sales capabilities allows us to better link marketing efforts to securing, serving, and

retaining customers through our primary distribution channel—our field force of 70,000-plus Aflac agents.

We believe the two functions are inherently linked and, with both teams collaborating and working together

as a united front, we’ll drive even greater success and provide greater value to our policyholders, accounts,

and shareholders.

This move has already resulted in positive changes by enabling our product development and strategy

teams to work more closely together. As we move forward, we remain laser focused on what will maximize

the sales and profitability of our company. To make these two entities work under one roof, I spend a tre-

mendous amount of time with our sales people to understand their perspectives and to align our sales and

marketing efforts in a way that sets us up for short- and long-term success.

1to1: What are your priorities and challenges in leading the company’s marketing and sales?MZ: Right now is an exciting time to be part of marketing and sales at Aflac. The healthcare insurance

industry is undergoing unparalleled transformations in the face of legislative reform. One of our biggest

priorities is to thrive in the changing insurance landscape, and we have put the pieces in place to do that.

We believe healthcare reform has created an opportunity for us, especially since our business in Japan is

already thriving under national healthcare. We plan to focus our business, broker, agent, and policyholder

marketing efforts on educating both consumers and business decision-makers about the need for, and

value of, voluntary insurance.

1to1: A good reputation and trust are essential ingredients for organizations, especially in today’s competitive market. What are you doing to make sure that Aflac has a good reputation and also enjoys its customers’ trust?

MZ: Aflac has provided a strong and lasting safety net for families dealing with medical needs for nearly 60

years. Today, more than 50 million people worldwide are insured by Aflac, and we pride ourselves on the

continuous development of innovative, cross-generational solutions for our policyholders.

We listen to our customers and have added products to address their needs, like our enhanced individual

Vision Now and group accident plans, as well as our New York group accident and critical illness plans. At

the same time, our customers can always trust we will stay true to our core values and the “Aflac Way.” We

will always make it top priority to deliver the products and the financial peace of mind they’re looking for in

times of need.

1to1: It is at times difficult for customers to fully understand insurance policies and to what they’re entitled. How does Aflac make sure that it’s deliver the right message to its customers?

MZ: Delivering the right message to our customers starts internally. We make sure our sales force under-

stands our insurance policies and is able to simplify the information and clearly relay it to consumers

and business decision-makers so that they fully understand their options. It will help customers to make

informed benefits decisions that best suit them and their families’ needs.

Aflac is committed to providing customers with precisely what they need. This mission led to the develop-

ment of the Aflac WorkForces Report—an annual employee benefits study of both American workers and

business decision-makers that examines the forces impacting the trends, attitudes, and utilization of employee

benefits. We share the study’s top findings with our agents, brokers, and customers to help business decision-

makers reconcile the perceptions and realities of benefits in the workplace. By doing so, we help businesses

make better-informed decisions and offer enhanced benefits solutions that protect one of our greatest assets—

a healthy, engaged, and productive workforce—while also protecting businesses’ bottom line.

But we don’t stop there. We actively educate the public on all aspects of health insurance—making the

right decisions during open enrollment, taking full advantage of flexible spending accounts, and leveraging

employee wellness programs—through all channels, including personal interactions. Our goal is to arm not

only our customers, but everyone, with the knowledge they need to make the best possible benefits decisions.

1to1: In 2011, your first full year as the company’s CMO, Aflac U.S. saw a 6.8 percent increase in new annualized premium sales. To what do you attribute this success?

InsuranceCompanies

“ We continuously seek ways to enhance and improve our offer-ings to meet customer demand, and we make sure to listen to what our customers have to say so that we can always keep our finger on the pulse of their needs.”

— Michael W. Zuna, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and Sales Officer, Aflac


MZ: I give much credit to our sales force—our agents and brokers—who are taking the initiative to get out

there and personally educate consumers about our products. I also give credit to our marketing team, which

provides support to our sales force every step of the way through brand messaging, our famous “Duck”

commercials, and more. One of the great things about Aflac is that our team is made up of dedicated people

who are passionate about our brand and about helping those in financial need due to medical emergencies.

This passion is a major contributor to our success.

We are also proud to say that we offer a great mix of voluntary insurance plans on both sides of the

aisle—individual and group products—that support our customers during their times of need. We continu-

ously seek ways to enhance and improve our offerings to meet customer demand, and we make sure to

listen to what our customers have to say so that we can always keep our finger on the pulse of their needs.

1to1: The Aflac Duck is synonymous with the organization. What does it represent and how are you using it to market Aflac?

MZ: The Aflac Duck is a marketing icon and has definitely done great things for us as a face for this com-

pany. Thanks to the Duck, nine out of 10 people in the United States know the Aflac name. Now we are

beginning to see the shift of the Duck to representing more than just the Aflac name and helping people

understand what we do. Just know that the Duck is here to stay and will forever be the top dog—or should

we say top Duck—at Aflac.

About 1to1 Media1to1® Media is an online resource dedicated to helping organizations across the globe realize the greatest value from their customer base. We provide content and resources that help senior executives to drive change and make customer-based initiatives the centerpiece of their growth strategy. 1to1 Media’s Weekly Digest explores the best practices, trends, and developments from companies that are using customer initiatives to drive bottom-line impact. 1to1 Media combines thought leadership, field experience, and editorial expertise to deliver the content needed by our audience of more than 130,000 decision-makers.

For more information, visit www.1to1media.com

About Peppers & Rogers Group

Peppers & Rogers Group is dedicated to helping its clients improve business performance by acquiring, retaining, and growing profitable customers. As products become commodities and globalization picks up speed, customers have become the scarcest resource in business. They hold the keys to higher profit today and stronger enterprise value tomorrow. We help clients achieve these goals by building the right relationships with the right customers over the right channels. We remove the operational and organizational barriers that stand in the way of profitable customer relationships. We show clients where to focus customer-facing resources to improve the performance of their marketing, sales, and service initiatives.

For more information, visit www.peppersandrogersgroup.com

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