Zurich Insurance by anyone’s standards is a hugely successful firm. It has nearly 60,000 employees, a presence in 200 countries and operating profit at the end of 2023 of $7.4 billion — a 21% upsurge on the previous year.
Unfortunately, success on that scale creates challenges when attempting to shift the mindset of an organisation. “It’s a challenge when you’re already hugely successful, to change,” Conny Kalcher, chief customer officer, Zurich Insurance, told CXM.
“You don’t have a burning platform, but this needs to be done because customers want it,” she added.
Zalcher has been with the insurance behemoth since 2019, and it’s her job to breathe life and intent into the firm’s CX strategy. To do that she needs to win “people’s hearts and minds and convince them to work in a different way”, said Kalcher.
“Customer expectations are changing because there are digital first insurers coming into the field, with much more data and servicing customers better.”
Conny Kalcher, chief customer officer, Zurich Insurance
The insurance sector hasn’t been at the forefront of the internet-inspired customer revolution. But “customer expectations are changing because there are digital first insurers coming into the field, with more data and servicing customers better”, explained Kalcher.
“But companies like Amazon or Netflix, really are defining what expect from any company, in terms of interaction, customer service and seamlessness in delivery,” she added.
With consumer expectations changing, how quickly an organisation the size of Zurich can adapt is a challenge. As is to be expected in a firm over 150-years old, Zurich Insurance has legacy systems throughout and its structure hasn’t evolved with CX in mind.
“The biggest challenge is speed — how to get speed into that [process],” commented Kalcher.
Barriers to change
“Some barriers were the structure, and how we collaborate with our systems. We have done a lot of capability building to understand why we need to change,” added the CCO.
Initial CX work revisited questions about the firm’s customer value proposition and visual identity. Rather than be solely transactional, the team wanted to build “meaningful relationships” with its customers.
Once the team had ‘mined’ its customer feedback, it developed 33 CX standards to “bring to life” across the multinational organisation. Some are straightforward like ‘customers should be able to find Zurich’s contact details easily’. Others are more complex, such as ‘every conversation needs to start, where the last one stopped’.
Zurich is “rolling them out across the organisation”, said Kalcher. “The eventual aim is to have integrated customer journeys, much more automation…[and] to make it seamless for customers.”
Developing and delivering a global CX strategy
Delivering a global CX strategy doesn’t happen overnight. Kalcher’s team based in the Zurich HQ, sets the CX vision and standards, and is responsible for measuring results. But implementation is largely left in the hands of regional offices.
The central CX team works closely with regional businesses to create projects that work at a local level.
It also runs constant comparisons within the local markets, and measures progress. “We communicate internally and externally how well we’re progressing,” explained Kalcher.
The constant measurement “is a strong motivator for everybody to do it,” she added.
The CX training programme is handled in a similar manner. The curriculum is set centrally, but local offices decide how to rollout training programmes. Training courses are constantly added, updated and, where appropriate, customised for regional markets.
“Every local unit [has] their own CX people that drive the local implementation, and help with expertise,” said Kalcher.
“For me, it is not about the number of calls per hour, but it’s about making sure we are tuned-in to the needs of our customers.”
Conny Kalcher, chief customer officer, Zurich Insurance
A ‘think global, act local’ approach is taken with its contact centres. In centres like the one in Scotland, agents have completed empathy training, and moved away from call targets resulting in a sizable increase in transaction net promoter scores (TNPS).
“When we started doing this training the TNPS was at 45 and then it jumped up to 70,” said Kalcher.
“For me, it is not about the number of calls per hour, but it’s about making sure we are tuned-in to the needs of our customers,” she explained.
The programme to instill an empathic culture in its chain of global contact centres is ongoing. Empathy training in frontline staff is due to finish in 2025, with additional training seeping into 2026.
Measuring outcomes
The Zurich-based CX team tracks TNPS values, brand consideration and the net new customers for each regional operation. However, the insurance giant plans to introduce a net revenue retention (NRR) measurement this year.
NRR will be measured locally and aggregated to provide a global score.
“On net revenue retention we measure the value that we are creating from the customer focused strategy,” said Kalcher.
NRR takes into account the value of lost customers and the value that the group has kept (including prices increases, and upsells, etc) over the course of a quarter, or a year. The data provides Zurich with a detailed understanding of the financial value of each customer.
NRR will tell Zurich “the value the strategy has created because we have loyal customers, we have reduced attrition, we have to cross-sold and up-sold more, and we have improved the value [of] each customer,” Kalcher explained.
The introduction of NRR is also important when talking to Zurich Insurance investors and showing the value of its CX journey. Investors “are aware” of the recent customer experience work. “They will be more aware of the impact once we start reporting NRR. We can say it’s not just soft values, this actually [has] business value,” commented Kalcher.
Read how Ageas UK has put customer experience at the centre of its business strategy here.