Royal London is the UK’s largest mutual life insurance, pension and investment company. As a business, it is committed to delivering real value to its six million customers and members, and the mutual’s vision is to become the most trusted and recommended provider in the UK life market by creating the best customer/member outcomes and experiences. Because Royal London is a member-owned business, its purpose is to improve the lives of both customers/members, and extend to the wider society. This purpose drives its values as a business and increasingly motivates its social impact agenda.
Its main strategic focus is to listen to the voice of the customer, and from extensive research over the last three years, the mutual has identified seven outcomes that matter most to customers: membership, communicate, be personal, resolution, investment, reputation and pay out. This customer value statement model was introduced in 2016, and to ensure that Royal London delivers a “customer first” service offering, a huge investment in data and processes, digital technology, and their staff has been made.
The first step was to improve data through their Golden Record programme: updating over 200 legacy IT platforms and ensuring a complete and accurate record of customers’ information. This allowed them to a develop a “Tell Royal London once” approach when interacting with customers.
The next step was to transform the business for the digital world: through increasing digital engagement with customers, such as a mobile app and intuitive digital interfaces which customers can use to engage with their products and also by improving the digital customer identity with progressive profiling and better personalisation to ensure the relevant interactions with customers delivered the best digital experience.
Finally, by empowering staff with the required skills and expertise to deliver a personalised, friendly and knowledgeable experience. This new approach of “be personal” was introduced within operations, so that customers feltlike they are actually been listened to rather than just going through a transactional process with a company.
Whilst the combination of improved data and processes and transformation of digital capabilities are enablers for the business, Royal London’s people are the key differentiator. Empowering people has created better interactions with customers and leads to a better customer experience, which has also resulted in improved efficiency across the organisation and a greater level of employee engagement. All of which, has helped to embed a “customer first” culture within the organisation.
