Maritz Research Helps American Family Insurance Create a Customer Experience Action Plan

It’s a question that so many people in the customer experience measurement business are asking:  They are collecting feedback from their customers, but what’s next?

Action planning is part of the evolution of how American Family Insurance does business when it comes to customer experience. The insurer isn’t just there for their customers during accidents and catastrophes, they’re listening to the voice of their customer every day.

Maritz Research recently partnered with American Family to help them take their customer satisfaction data to the next level. Brian O’Connor of Maritz Research and Katie Churches of American Family Insurance shared their success story at the Total Customer Experience Leader’s (TCEL) Summit. The goal was to provide agents and other employees at American Family Insurance with information to help them proactively notify customers about rate changes to their premiums.

Check out the full video below to see highlights from the TCEL presentation and hear more about how action planning is making a difference.

Related articles

• Role of Social Media in efficient Customer Experience Management
• Infographic: The evolution of customer experience
• Customer Experience Is NOT Marketing

Got Happiness? NACCM Provides Solutions!

The North American Conference on Customer Management began with great speakers with informative and entertaining messages about Managing Customer Satisfaction. The attendees shared about their objective to return to their workplace with new ideas, renewed commitment, and inspiration to lead their teams. You could see heads nodding in the room as these managers agreed on principles, challenges, programs, dedication to the customer experience and most importantly a determination for new approaches to continue and improve processes to delight our customers.

We began the day with JoAnna Brandi, Customer Care Coach, that shared the science on how happiness can not only create endorphins and serotonin, along with a long list of other benefits, that improve our problem solving abilities, focus, creativity, and resilience to name a few. The formula for happy customers included the AAA Feedback - Acknowledge & Affirm, Amplify it, and Anchor it. Statistics was also a part of equation in understanding the 60% spread in performance when employees are praised, supported, and show strengths versus emphasizing weakness. An enthusiastic and well-documented presentation on the subject of positivity was enjoyed by all.

Kate Feather, People Metrics, gave a presentation on Brand Ambassadors and improving customer engagement. One of the most powerful measures for investment in customer service programs was that a 5 point increase in customer engagement could improve average stock price by as much as 26% while a 5 point decrease caused stock performance to be below the industry average. Julie Broderick of Signature Flight Support gave a case study of their Voice of the Customer Feedback Program. The program includes action alerts and accountability that maintains momentum.

The final morning speaker was Randall Brandt of Maritz. He shared about setting the bar for customer satisfaction by determining and evaluating the goal whether judgement, benchmarking, or linkage-based targets are used. The objective is to drive continuous improvement to realize desired results.

As a speaker, trainer, and writer, I feel validated, encouraged, and inspired by a room full of advocates that share my passion and unwavering commitment to outstanding customer service. I enjoyed my conversations with other attendees like David Fischer of John Deere, C.J. Muniz of Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Faith Williams, Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Yes, happiness rules here in Orlando and I haven't even enjoyed a lunch yet.

Connie Brubaker

Integrity Training Solutions

www.ConnieBrubaker.com

512 346 7270

Do You Have Customer Experience Assassins?

On October 12th, Dave Fish of Maritz Research presented our webinar "Do You Have Customer Experience Assassins?"

Customer Experience Angels and Assassins. They're out there ...lurking... but who are they and where are they? Organizations measuring customer satisfaction need to know who they are and where they are. Researchers need to understand them. This Web cast explains who they are, where they are and how to manage both when it comes to customer experience measurement.

Hard to please " Assassins" frequently take aim at your brand with unfavorable shots at your products and services while "Angels" consistently evaluate services across industries positively. This Web cast utilizes Maritz Research's CEBenchmarks study which helps identify Angels and Assassins and explores who they are, where they live, and how they can be managed.

In this webinar we learned:

• How Assassins and Angels differ demographically from the population as a whole
• What industries suffer from a higher and lower proportion of each
• What areas of the country are associated with higher or lower customer experience
• What you can do about Assassins and Angels from both a practitioners and metric strategy standpoint

If you missed the webinar, but are interested in learning more on this topic, visit http://maritzresearch.com/iirwebcast where you can download the recording or slide deck.

NACCM 2010: Maritz Research Explores the Next Generation of CEI/I Methods

Presenter: D. Randall Brandt, MARITZ RESEARCH

Maritz found that the voice of the customer is getting lost, because:
-All listen and no action
-Siloed and uninsightful
-Ad-hoc and unresponsive
-Costly and time consuming

Maritz has found:
-Customers want more flexibility, control, simplicity, reciprocity, and transparency
-Martiz customer service survey found that 68% of companies feel that their organizations are not doing very well at integrating customer feedback to how they are treating their customers
-VoC action – many companies feel that it is not a priority
-Front line managers want more information on their location and customers, not just an overall summary of the brand, they would like to be more involved

How can we fix all of these issues going forward?
-Look at report from Bruce Temkin, Voice of the Customer: The Next Generation
-Text and speech data are going to be filling in the blanks to the regular customer experience
-Integration between social media and traditional methods will become key

Changes for Voice of the Customer:
-Make it more friendly for customers to use
-VOC integration
-Connect VOC data to other data – linkage analysis
-Translate VOC into action

What does customer centricity look like?
-They tell their story, less “painful” than they typically have been in the past
-We’re going to have to go to where they provide their feedback freely: The Social Web (Twitter, YouTube, Yelp), as well as frontline employee feedback, inbound customer calls. Then integrate the data into one source and analyze it in one place.

VOC capturing that worked in the past will not work in the future. They need to be more agile, flexible and timely.

Free Webinar - Linking VOC to the Bottom Line: Strategies for Uncovering Researchers' Holy Grail

Date/Time: Thu, Aug 5, 2010 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT
Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/158148440
Mention priority code MWS0034BLOG

In Maritz Research's 2010 Voice of the Customer Challenges and Practices Study, client-side researchers indicated their biggest challenges were linking survey measures to financial/business results and linking VOC information to internal business processes and metrics. Our own clients have told us that the ability to link survey research information to other business information is the "Holy Grail" within their companies.

As a leader in Customer Experience Measurement, Maritz Research is proud to present Keith Chrzan, Vice President, Marketing Sciences, who will discuss our unique perspective regarding the formal, statistical process that enables us to connect various types of data sources to others. Keith will discuss the varying levels of linkage sophistication, the obstacles that face marketers wishing to perform linkage, and the experience we've gained with a large number of linkage engagements. Researchers, operations leaders and those charged with performance improvement in their company's channels will find this discussion an essential primer before attempting to connect the Voice of their Customers to other business data.

Keith is the DVP of Marketing Sciences at Maritz Research. He has over twenty-five years of experience on the client and supplier sides of the marketing research industry. His experience includes positions as Director of Marketing Research at Boehringer Mannheim Diagnostics and Managing Director of Marketing Sciences at IntelliQuest, Inc, an Austin, Texas-based marketing research consultancy serving the technology industry. Keith is well - respected in the marketing sciences industry and has the ability to make complex statistics not only understandable but fun.

We look forward to your attendance. Don't miss it!

Register: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/158148440