Typically, building societies aren’t considered seething hotbeds of change. But Market Harborough Building Society (MHBS) has been shredding stereotypes as it overhauled its company culture and put customer experience at the centre of its business.
The catalyst for change was market data gathered in 2020. MHBS had noticed a drop-off in mortgage applications from its brokers and promptly went on the hunt for more detailed feedback.
Brokers told the building society they found MHBS’ processes both clunky and complex, and it hindered their ability to be “responsive” to customers. It was apparent that the building society had become process-focused, rather than customer-driven.
“We wanted to find what our unique selling point was,” Helen Smith, head of marketing, Market Harborough Building Society, told CXM.
“Many building societies have the same selling points, so we weren’t standing out… so we thought ‘how could we stand out better?’,” added Smith.
CX consulting firm Elev-8 arrived to design a learning & development (L&D) module that would simultaneously overhaul the building society’s processes and put its mortgage business online.
The result, a programme called Great Conversations, is credited with pushing mortgage lending up from £94 million in 2020 to £198 million in 2023 and improved NPS values facilitating promotion to Feefo Gold in 2023 and Platinum Trusted Service status this year.
The good news didn’t stop there — Great Conversations also enhanced employee experience. Between the end of 2021 and March 2023 there was an 8.4% uplift in people recommending MHBS as a good place to work.
There was also a 7.1% jump in people saying they enjoyed their job, and more significantly there was nearly a 40% drop in the staff attrition rate.
But improved numbers don’t tell the full story. What started as a plan to enhance its competitive position in the mortgage market snowballed to become a comprehensive training and cultural-change programme.
Great Conversations started with an in-depth analysis of hundreds of customer conversations. The implementation of a 72-point framework that outlined the ingredients of a great conversation then followed. The learnings from the pilot programme soon spilled out across the entire organisation, incorporating internal and external communications.
“It wasn’t just about broker conversations, it became about everyday colleague engagement and branch conversations,” explained Smith.
“It became very obvious that actually this was cultural — this was changing the culture of how we did things. It has grown from there,” she added.
The organic growth of Great Conversations was made possible because the entire leadership team of MHBS was brought into the programme. The initial two day training programme involved frontline staff, and “all leaders, at all levels”, Sean Spurgin, learning director, Elev-8, told CXM.
Team leaders also attended a further day’s training about how “they can create a climate for people to be at their best,” he added.
The initial project phase included work designed to embed the learnings into the company culture. As part of that process, consultants from Elev-8 and the senior management discussed what barriers could prevent new behaviours taking hold.The programme again focused on the leadership team and how they could become “great role models for the behaviours that were expected,” explained Spurgin.
“We did observations of the leads, and looked at where they were spending their time, how they could be more effective, and get more time with their people,” he added.
It was apparent the initial training phase had a major impact across both frontline staff and the leadership team, helping transform the language within the business. Staff were made more aware of not just their own communications style, but also those of other people, which helped facilitate ‘great conversations.’
“The engagement was so big,” said Smith.“We all talked about it a lot outside [the sessions].”
The organic growth of Great Conversations within the building society was helped by the relatively small size of the organisation — MHBS has just 150 staff across six branches and a head office — and its positive ‘family’ culture.Even so, it was still vital to ‘bottle behaviours’ the organisation wanted to celebrate.
“We identified the top performing mindsets and skills… that drove a great conversation, regardless of whether you’re talking to a customer or colleague,” said Spurgin.
Changing behaviours is only sustainable if the organisation alters its systems to support them.“There is no point changing behaviour if it doesn’t align all your KPIs and bonuses,” commented Spurgin.
“The team tweaked the environment around them to drive those behaviours,” he added.
Learning marketing also helped to champion positive behaviours among staff. Those ‘caught’ using best practice when talking to clients were celebrated and proof widely circulated on social media.
“We did that so people could see that behaviour and see how they should be operating, and then everyone aligns to that behaviour,” said Smith.
The rapid pace of change within MHBS doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some resistance to the idea of change. However, the forensic examination of calls helped shift frontline staff break from their ‘habitual’ approach to customer calls and embrace a more customer-centric approach.
From there, a rolling train of continuous improvement and re-evaluation has cemented behaviours.
“You’re going to meet barriers, and things change in organisations, so you need to keep working, and thinking how you can sustain it,” said Spurgin.
The last 18 months has seen MHBS hardwiring key behaviours into new joiners via a revamped induction process. There are currently ongoing discussions about how this will be incorporated into the organisation’s performance framework. “Hardwiring this into the day-to-day processes and management practices is a critical and ongoing thing,” commented Spurgin.