Improving customer loyalty is a strategic imperative for many insurance company executives. Intense competition, commodity-driven product offerings and rising acquisition costs are driving new ways of thinking about—and executing against—a customer-centric business strategy. This case study profiles one of our clients, 21st Century Insurance, and their approach to building a culture that is relentlessly focused on one thing: the customer experience.
Business Situation
With a strong base of operations on the West Coast, 21st Century Insurance Group is focused on growth through geographic expansion. The company entered the Midwest in 2004, Texas in 2005 and three Eastern states during 2006. With a core philosophy built around customer service, they have carved out a market niche by offering insurance directly to consumers, providing a wide array of insurance products and 24-hour telephone access to licensed insurance professionals.
As the company began to enter new areas of the country, they were quick to realize the game had changed. Accustomed to having strong name recognition and a good reputation, they were now faced with being the “new kid on the block” in the highly competitive services industry. Also, their research showed that consumers were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with insurance providers in general. It was in these market conditions that they saw opportunity. By leveraging their customer service operational strengths, they could win over customers and build market share.
Strategic Approach
21st Century’s vision was to build something unique. They set out to build a truly superior customer experience—one that was good enough to differentiate themselves from the competition, drive company growth, and create a loyal base of customers.
Their approach was a delicate blend of art and science. The management team knew that, to achieve the results they were looking for, a customer-focused mindset needed to be built into the cultural fabric of the company. This could not—and would not—be a one-time event. They were in this business for the long haul and needed to build the cultural foundation and customer service best practices that could support and sustain a focus on delighting customers.
We asked Suzanne Agrios, Customer Care Manager at 21st Century, to speak with us about what made their customer service training and coaching initiative successful. What emerged were six critical success factors and a number of lessons learned, which are shared below.
Six Critical Success Factors from Suzanne Agrios, Customer Care Manager, 21st Century
#1 Create a crystal clear vision.
To build a performance culture focused on customer care, your people first have to “see it.” Everyone must share the same vision and buy in to what success looks like for your company. 21st Century’s philosophy was to treat every customer interaction as an opportunity to beat out the competition. “We set out to make the customer experience not good, but great,” explains Ms. Agrios.
Call center agents get this message from the moment they enter the 21st Century organization. Even the new hire onboarding program, which is aligned with aspects of their customer service training program, is customer-centric. Immediately after they become licensed agents, call center representatives are introduced to the company’s customer-driven business model. This is done early on so that they see how every aspect of their job ties back to the customer. Even as they learn company policies and procedures, they see it from the customers’ viewpoint. New hires come to understand that the quality of their interactions with customers is what drives the company’s success.
#2 Adopt a measurement system everyone can embrace.
It’s an old adage, but you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Further, people need to understand that the customer’s view is the central focus that drives your business priorities and investment decisions. The importance of the customer service measurement system can’t be underestimated. It becomes the rallying point for your efforts and helps you understand if you are “moving the needle” on improving customer experience.
While there are many approaches, 21st Century chose the Net Promoter® score as the metric to gauge their overall customer effectiveness. The score is calculated by taking the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who are highly likely to recommend your company or products) and subtracting the percentage who are detractors (those who are less likely to recommend your company or products).
“For 21st Century, the measurement approach felt right, since it got to the heart of our overall philosophy of what drives customer loyalty—the interaction of the customer and the call center agent,” Agrios says. This measurement approach was incorporated into the company’s management routines, customer service leadership development programs and people were held accountable for the results. Over time, it became clear to managers and agents that focusing on the customer experience was non-negotiable.
#3 Align your processes to succeed.
Process alignment is the backbone of any strategic initiative. The 21st Century management team took a hard look at their processes to be sure they aligned with their vision for an exceptional customer experience. They adopted our Learning’s Call Strategy™, which is part of the ServiceMentor® training system, and reinforced key tenets through targeted executive coaching sessions. The service model applies behavioral psychology to help representatives develop the skills to effectively navigate through customer conversations. The discrete steps in The Call Strategy are based on meeting the customer’s emotional needs throughout the interaction, thereby getting predictable responses that enable the agent to lead the conversation to a successful conclusion.
“The Call Strategy aligned beautifully with our goals and our measurement approach,” explains Ms. Agrios. “When we review the Net Promoter scores each month, we dig into what drove the score by listening to recordings of the actual customer call. We consistently see that calls with high Net Promoter scores follow the steps of The Call Strategy we put in place.
