Improving customer loyalty with 'Customer Journeys'
Keeping hold of customers is a challenge for most organisations in every industry. It is widely accepted that "acquiring a new customer costs 10 times as much as keeping an existing one". Research has shown that customer retention is more important than market share as a driver of profitability and return on capital. No wonder everyone is looking for the next tactical marketing idea or special insight into why customers are churning.
Customer Journeys aims to understand how customers buy and use company products and services in their day-to-day lives. It identifies the gaps between what your customers really desire from your service chain and what it is actually delivering. It identifies how these gaps can be addressed to give you quick wins, higher retention and a decent margin. With our focus on realising benefits, the emphasis is on implementing the new ideas, converting plans into improved sales and profit performance, driving through changes in the service chain, getting new offers to market on time and gaining more value from your IT systems and CRM data.
Hibernian is the insurance subsidiary of Aviva in Ireland. In 2005, their Life and Pensions products had become commoditised and brokers were churning policyholders into competitor's products. Metaskil was engaged with its "Customer Journeys" approach to determine what Hibernian's customers valued and develop a profitable product and service portfolio. Using one-to-one meetings and focus groups, they determined the attitudes and needs of brokers and customers. They identified services that would improve the brokers' profits and marketing approaches that would increase "pull" for Hibernian products.
Hibernian adopted the role of "manufacturer" and service provider to the broker. Brokers were segmented by value proposition, offering differing service levels. Operations were restructured to provide common "straight through" processing, strong workflow management and information capture at the point of sale. As a result, service costs have fallen, retention has increased and Hibernian is on track to become No1 Life and Pensions provider in Ireland.
