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The SSE Business Energy team serves a broad range of clients from micro businesses to large national corporates supporting around 500,000 electricity and gas metering points. All customers are supported by UK-based service teams providing tailored advice to each business’s scale to manage their energy usage and spend.
In 2017 the business sought a consultancy partner to pilot a Customer Experience survey with their SME customers. SSE Airtricity in Northern Ireland were using Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) software to run a survey following calls to a contact centre. SSE decided to pilot this process in the UK but also sought advice from CXCo on how to supplement the process.
CXCo recommended an email invite to a web-based survey seeking feedback on transactions as well as the overall relationship with SSE Business Energy. These responses added depth to the IVR survey. The feedback enabled a better understanding of the factors influencing the customer experience. The result of the pilot was a roll out of comprehensive programme of online surveys for different customer and transaction types, implemented with the advice and support of CXCo.
Customer feedback was recognised as key in the coaching and performance management structure. The management team was able to develop a measured response to the daily voice of the customer rather than knee-jerk responses to isolated feedback. Team managers redefined their focus around managing the customer experience as a whole with a common view of what good looked like from a customer perspective.
A review of the pilot programme identified a number of benefits to the SME business teams:
Gallagher is one of the world’s largest insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting firms, operating in the UK through a national network of 61 locations. Their goal is to seek to form lifelong partnerships with clients and underwriters which, when combined with world-class data and analytics, helps customers grow. They were looking for a Customer Experience programme that would define feedback to improve renewal rates.
First engaging with CXCO in 2016, Gallagher used the IIC assessment to evaluate their client relationships against the16 themes in the IIC model.
The detailed feedback identified the key driver of client loyalty to be the strength of the business relationship between Gallagher staff and their clients. The feedback also identified areas for improvement and that a focus on continuous client feedback would enable the business to improve client relationships. These findings led to the establishment of a Net Promoter Programme in which clients are invited to answer a two question survey, six months after the renewal of their main insurance policy. This identifies clients who are happy with the relationship they have, and those who are not. All responses generate a notification to the relevant team in Gallagher’s who are encouraged to make a “closed loop” call to the client.
When Net Promoter was first introduced in a Harvard Business Review paper in 2003, it was headlined as the “One Number You Needed to Grow”; suggesting knowing your Net Promoter Score was all you needed to do. Gallagher has found that it is what you do with the feedback and the closed loop call that actually makes the difference to their clients and helps them to grow.
Having run the Net Promoter programme for over a year, analysis shows clients who receive a closed loop call are more likely to continue to insure with Gallagher. Where the client has identified problems with the service, these issues are addressed and solved. If there are no problems to solve, the call serves to reinforce and strengthen the relationship between Gallagher and their clients.
Euromoney is an international business-to-business information company focusing on the global financial community. Operating in more than 20 countries the business employs over 2000 staff across a number of brands providing critical data, price reporting and must-attend events to financial services, commodities, telecoms and legal markets.
In 2018 the company engaged CXCo to design and run a global employee initiative with a view to developing a better understanding of attitudes and behaviours that define the working environment and inform improvement and development activities.
The bespoke survey was designed in consultation with members of the senior leadership team and HR and focused on five key areas; strategy and direction, career development and pay, management, office environment and resources, and organisational values and culture.
CXCo used a web-based survey tool and the results were analysed and fed back through a series of presentations and reports. The results provided a benchmark across the global organisation with reports for each of the operating divisions and functions, to develop action plans across the company.
A number of global initiatives designed to address issues raised by the feedback were communicated via Town Hall meetings run by the CEO. These actions used the ‘you said… we did’ model to launch:
Additional actions were taken at a local level based on specific feedback.
AirPlus specialises in payment and billing services for business travel. They provide reliable end-to-end solutions to help more than 49,000 companies of every type and size to save time and money by managing travel expenses more efficiently.
In 2014 the company was looking for a customer feedback methodology that would improve on the centrally administered annual customer satisfaction survey. The existing survey was suffering from declining response rates, long processing delays and a lack of actionable outcomes.
CXCo advised on the introduction of a Net Promoter programme in which short daily surveys would be sent to customers on a rolling basis. The responses were fed into the business in real time and a closed loop calling process was trained to enable relationship managers to engage with customers about their feedback.
The key of all calls was to thank customers for responding and exercise ‘customer curiosity’ to build a deeper understanding. Alongside this the business reviewed feedback trends monthly to identify common themes, root causes and solutions.
AirPlus sent an update to customers to tell them how the programme had been running and three things that had been changed as a result of feedback from customers.
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