CHALLENGE
- The client, a large insurance provider, had received a record fine from the FCA for historical sales problems in the UK.
- They needed to undertake a comprehensive review of all their sales and service policies, processes and procedures to develop an approach that would ‘put customers at the heart of the business’.
- Significant changes had already been made: changes to the company’s key performance indicators (KPIs), a new set of customer promises and the introduction of independent customer-focused compliance committees.
- The board wanted to understand how these procedural changes could be ‘made real’, and lived by everyone in the business irrespective of where they worked or what they did.
ACTION
- We were invited to an away day with the firm’s board that focused on creating a customer-focused culture.
- In the board meeting we shared:
- Examples of best practice from organisations we’d recently worked with
- Our knowledge on how organisations have attempted to change their culture to benefit their customers
- The commercial impact of culture change; how to put customers at the heart of the business and still return sustainable profits
- Our Culture Characteristic Model©. This model helped to reach a common definition of culture, and showed how culture changes can be tracked and measured
- Examples of common issues that companies we worked with have experienced: ‘tone from the top’, management style, sales incentives, and lack of belief in company values
- Following our presentation, the board discussed what they had heard, and how it reflected on their organisation.
- Individuals were asked to consider what changes they would make when they returned to the workplace; in terms of what they’d do and say.
RESULT
- During the session, we captured the team’s outputs and reproduced them in a report that we sent back to the group.
- Actions from the session included:
- Non-executive directors would take responsibility with executive teams to embed customer culture
- Ensuring a budget would be allocated for attaining a true customer focus and the executives committed to financially sponsoring the customer agenda
- Ensuring correct and relevant customer information and measures would be captured and shared
- Stepping back from the business model to ensure the firm’s product suite would be fit for all customer segments
- We were also asked to help the senior team review its employee incentive scheme to move it from a programme based on sales volume to one that solely recognises customer experience.