Ageas UK has made understanding insurance and simplifying insurance its mission. The clarity of purpose has helped focus on customer experience and driving business results. CXM caught up with Caroline King, chief customer officer, to find out what is next for the personal line insurer.

CXM: Not many companies have a chief customer officer. How are you influencing the firm’s business decisions?

Caroline King: It’s important the voices of these customers are heard from the phone lines all the way to the boardroom and part of my role as a member of the executive team is to ensure they are always front and centre as we shape and execute our business strategy. One example of that in action is our customer immersion programme, which sees our entire UK executive team immersed into real customer journeys, listening to calls, and experiencing claims through our customers’ eyes. It enables us to truly understand the impact our products and processes have on a customer’s life and therefore influence the decisions we make.

CXM: How do you go about building passion for customers across Ageas?

Caroline King: Having a very clear purpose as an organisation, which is to understand people [and] simplify insurance, has been instrumental in nurturing a team that is passionate about customers.

When we recruit, we look for people who share our values so it’s already an ingrained mindset. We spend time in our training and onboarding really getting under the skin of who our customers are, and particularly understanding vulnerability and what that looks like.Empowering our people is also really important. We all know that when we’re given autonomy to carry out a task the way we feel best, we feel a much greater sense of achievement and ownership. So we’ve given our teams freedom to have conversations with customers and deliver for them in the way they see fit.

CXM: A lot of firms struggle to balance the needs of customers, shareholders and employees -— how do you maintain that balance between the three?

Caroline King: The three are intrinsically linked and it’s our core belief that if we can make our customers and our people happy, we’ll achieve our ambitions for the business, which in turn makes our shareholders happy.

As part of our latest strategy for the UK business we’ve reaffirmed the importance of these stakeholders to our enduring success, looking at our people, customers, shareholders and sustainability as the ‘heartbeat’ of our business which guides everything we do.  

CXM: What was the business driver behind the firm’s decision to remap its customer journeys?

Caroline King: Delivering a great customer experience is a continual process and we’re always looking at what we can do to simplify insurance for our customers. We’re not ones to rest on our laurels. Making sure our customer journeys are the best they can be helps us deliver on our purpose, which makes our business a success.

CXM: Ageas has automated some of its customer journeys with chat bots, voice bots and even robot process automation. How have you kept the customer experience at the centre of the whole process?

Caroline King: We took a customer-led, insight-based approach. That meant really getting under the skin of those journeys using tools like speech analytics software and analysing the feedback in our voice of the customer surveys. That allowed us to not just identify but truly understand any existing pain points and focus our efforts on where we could make the biggest difference for our customers.

We protect the cars and homes of more than four million customers in the UK and that’s a job we take very seriously. It’s important the voices of these customers are heard from the phone lines all the way to the boardroom.” Caroline King, chief customer officer, Ageas UK

CXM: How does this process continue to evolve?

Caroline King: We’re continuing to invest significantly in our data and technology capabilities, embracing the opportunities of AI and how it can complement what we do as humans so that we can focus on the tasks where we can really add value. We’re also prioritising further enhancements to our digital and self-serve tools for our customers to keep pace with how people expect to interact with their insurer.

CXM: How have you got employees onboard with the customer experience strategy?

Caroline King: Bringing our people on the journey with us was really important, and having a clear message that linked back to our purpose was key to our success. We took the time to help people understand how their objectives align with the strategy and that the technology is designed to make their lives easier.

We also focused on how we’re embracing technology to complete the simple, straightforward tasks, so they can focus their time and effort where they can add most value – with customers who need more support or who have more complex needs.

We’re continuing to invest significantly in our data and technology capabilities, embracing the opportunities of AI and how it can complement what we do as humans so that we can focus on the tasks where we can really add value.” Caroline King, chief customer officer, Ageas UK

CXM: Are you finding employees now more invested in customer journeys?

Caroline King: I’ve seen first-hand how our teams are embracing the technologies and, moreover, the opportunity to learn new skills. We’ve always had strong levels of employee engagement but this now sits at 9.1/10 within the customer operations part of our business.

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