HOME ABOUT US LIFE AT BGL JOIN US CONTACT US SearchContact The importance of inclusion in customer service BGL Voices #digital #customerservice JULIA WALKER-SMITH ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, UNDERWRITING SERVICES & CUSTOMER SUPPORT, BGL INSURANCE 23 Nov 2021 A core principle of customer experience (CX) is that businesses need to know their customers. Over the years, many a marketeer has used traditional segmentation models and more recently, we have seen the rise of customer personas. But, are these sophisticated enough for the increasingly complex world that we live in? Once upon a time, making sure you ticked the ‘accessibility’ box was enough; but not today! Customer expectations are increasing and rightly so, businesses that don’t personalise their approach will be left behind. Why? Our customers sit in multiple and diverse communities, who have differing needs and it’s therefore critical that brands understand this and evolve to meet ever-changing customer needs – end to end – not just during the sales process. Many focus on what they ‘see’ when it comes to diversity, but it goes much deeper than this – it’s also what you don’t see and how people think and behave. In our industry, I hear stories too often where we get it wrong. For example, a customer who has an accident and needs a hire car receives a class A car and they can’t fit their wheelchair in the boot. Then, because of what I call the ‘98/2’ – where customer processes are designed for the two per cent who might not have been as honest – customers then have to expend way too much time and effort to get a larger hire car approved and their needs met. Also, there are customers like myself (members of the LGBTQ+ community) who are repeatedly asked for my husband’s name (which is Sarah by the way) which understandably never gets the relationship with that brand off to a great start. Or, when completing online forms a couple of years ago for my son’s student finance, I had to provide income details for his ‘Mother and Father’ – so overnight, one of us had to change sex. And sadly, there must be contact centres out there which still focus on average handling time – which is often why my older friends have such a dislike of the experience they receive when having to contact one. They describe how they are rushed through a script, finding it incredibly difficult to keep up when their hearing isn’t what it used to be – leaving a bad taste in their mouth, not just for that brand but for the contact centre industry as a whole. So clearly, if our people don’t get CX right, or businesses don’t give colleagues the tools or the freedom to get it right, then it is our customers that feel it. But it’s not all doom and gloom. The investments that BGL Insurance has made in digital capabilities for sales and service aim to help customers who are suffering with their brain health and just can’t face talking to someone (I’ve moved away from the term mental health in recent times). It’s not a problem because customers can now service themselves online on any phone, tablet or PC, which is far less stressful for that customer at that moment in time. Or, for the customer who doesn’t read well, or English isn’t their first language, the use of simple and clear language is key. I have been passionate about plain English for over 30 years, since overseeing life insurance policy documentation many years ago. The average reading age of a scale customer base like ours is just 11 years old. And, when you add to this that c.7.7 per cent of the population in the UK that doesn’t have English as a first language, you realise that the need is even greater. BGL Insurance recognises this and a key part of our digital design process is ensuring our customer research incorporates comprehension testing, allowing us to ensure an understanding of new content we introduce to the sales and service journeys. We have also invested significantly in our customer communications capability. This investment embeds a new Customer Communications Management (CCM) platform and future operating model, improving change agility, allowing us to support differing needs and tailor our interactions. The challenge we face in this area though is that we don’t always have the data on customers to enable us to effectively tailor our proposition. For those of us in Motor, Home and Life insurance we do hold more insight than many brands that collect data when a customer joins a brand for the first time. The challenge is that customers don’t stand still and keeping up to date isn’t easy. And, whilst an advocate for artificial intelligence (with an integrated people element) I have yet to see many successful solutions. So, flexibility in proposition delivery will be key. That’s where our colleagues come in. If you genuinely have a diverse and inclusive workforce, then you are more likely to rise to this challenge and deliver personalised propositions that truly meet the customer need. However, which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Whilst on the journey to an inclusive culture, I am a great believer in, ‘actions speaking louder than words.’ For me, colleagues will only truly buy into an organisation’s commitment to diversity & inclusion if it’s evidenced in how it services customers. But many believe that you will only ever deliver personalised propositions if you have a truly diverse and inclusive workforce in the first place. And therein lies the challenge for us all in business today. We at BGL Insurance are committed to overcoming this challenge and know that it will need the commitment and support of all colleagues, partners and all those businesses in our supply chain to ensure we can deliver a truly personalised proposition that meets the many diverse needs of our customers. Importantly, the support of customers themselves to provide regular feedback is also key so that brands can continue to evolve their products and services. 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