Paying lip service to customer experience and ignoring customer sentiment

The enactment of a raft of customer-friendly legislation, coupled with the growing influence and prevalence of social media, has shifted the goal posts in favour of consumers and has elevated customer experience as a key differentiator that determines consumer expenditure and companies’ share of wallet, says Antonia Oakes, Head Customer Experience at Old Mutual Insure.

Oakes says that more often than not, there is little alignment between claims of customer-centricity and the commercial conduct and ethos of many organisations.

“Customer-centricity has become a catch all phrase that is seldom matched by meaningful commitment to champion the customer cause. Claims of customer-centricity without complementary action is hollow. Consumers have become very discerning and can see through meaningless marketing strategies. Organisations that are serious about improving customer service make a deliberate and concerted effort to ensure that their products, processes and service offerings speak to their customers and reflects their evolving needs.

“The CEO needs to be the sponsor of customer experience in any organisation or else implementation becomes a challenge. To effectively improve customer experience, organisations need to have a happy workforce as unhappy employees cannot be good ambassadors of the brand – happy employees equate to happy customers,” says Oakes.

She says organisations cannot afford the luxury of ignoring brand perception on social media platforms, as consumer sentiments and word of mouth can make or destroy a brand. To that end, organisations that are committed to improved customer experience should implement a robust social media policy to proactively monitor consumer sentiment and manage brand perception.

“Social media allows customers to air their views in real-time and enables followers to air their views instantaneously. This creates a viral perception of a brand immediately, in both a negative or positive light. It is critical to allow the conversation to continue for about an hour after the citing and then respond. This allows the brand to capture most of the comments from all followers and respond in a non-emotional manner and do not rationalise their behavior,” Oakes advises.

In line with the insurer’s ongoing quest to improve customer experience, Old Mutual Insure has launched a service promise which commits its brokers and advisers to offer service standards that customers have become accustomed to. The insurer has introduced a solution which allows live tracking of tow trucks until they arrive on the accident scene, and, a self-help system that enables brokers to action quotes, renewals and mid-term adjustments at their pace.

In addition, Old Mutual Insure has also appointed an internal arbitrator tasked with reviewing claim rejection disputes independently and fairly.

“The arbitrator will manage Old Mutual Insure’s reputational risk by ensuring fairness, impartiality and ethical business conduct when resolving disputes between policyholders and Old Mutual Insure. We believe that the appointment of the arbitrator, coupled with the introduction of these customer-centric solutions, will enrich customer experience and improving our value proposition,” says Oakes.

Though brand loyalty remains a critical factor in influencing consumer purchasing decisions, Oakes points out that Millennials and the newer generation of consumers tend to be more fluid as they are prone to exhibit less brand affinity than the previous generations.

“Research reflects that loyalty in SA has decreased significantly, so yes there has been a shift in brand loyalty, specifically with the newer generation of customers. The ‘older’ customers remain loyal, however they too will switch products for a better customer experience irrespective of price,” Oakes concluded.

Oakes says the short term insurer is putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to customer experience. Testimony to this is the latest findings of the South Africa Customer Satisfaction Index (SAcsi) report, which rated Old Mutual Insure as the leading short-term insurer in treating customers fairly, and one of the country’s best short term insurers in customer satisfaction.