For a wealth manager, we designed and facilitated a two day event with the top 25 executives to refocus their market strategy in order to meet bullish growth plans, prioritise several developments to their core service and build consensus over the client experience all functions needed to deliver.

Our client is a successful business in worksite and pre-retirement marketing and equity oriented asset management. Increasing competition and evolving markets called for a freshed approach. We started by developing a shared view of future markets and of future customer requirements in terms of proposition and experience. This provided a backdrop to an innovation process in which the group developed and agreed to progress 9 extensions to their customer proposition (with a ‘library’ of 100 other initiatives for later), overhaul their approach to delivering the customer experience across multiple functional teams and a renewed focus on workplace marketing.

 

For an SME bank, we helped, in a one day event, to develop a new approach to understanding attitudes and behaviors of 12 customer-facing teams and how these affect business performance and customer satisfaction, as a basis for achieving a step change.

The client wished to establish ‘clear blue water’ between themselves and close competitors. The usual instrumental approaches to improving customer satisfaction had been exhausted and they were looking for a new approach. In the workshop involving the top 25 executives, we placed the customer facing staff at the centre of our thinking to consider the range of factors which get in the way of them doing their jobs, and which inhibit the formal mechanisms from being effective. This led to a commitment by the whole management team to a new approach to seeking improved and more consistent performance.

 

For a life assurer, in a one day event, we helped to address a worsening customer retention problem and lay the foundations for a more customer-centric approach to the business.

This major firm had been suffering from the fallout from the endowment market, and from ‘A Day’ in the form of greatly increased customer defection. With a history of product focus and intermediary distribution, the firm was unused to taking a customer oriented approach. The top 15 executives from 4 lines of business, including distribution teams were invited. We started by facilitating a number of exercises designed to encourage fresh approaches to addressing customer needs and how these could be reflected in new strategies. The final sessions involved product teams developing near term plans for how each line of business could understand churn better and take near term actions to impact revenues and build towards a longer term vision for the business

 

For an insurer launching a new insurance product using telematics and an extensive service wrap, we facilitated two one-day previsioning workshops to involve retail and commercial brokers and potential customers in the proposition development process. 

Each day consisted of two parts: 

In the morning, we facilitated a discussion group consisting of 10 individuals to explore their views on key drivers, where the market was going and the future for motoring given developments in environmentalism and initiatives at local and national level on congestion charging, speeding and road pricing.

In the afternoon, we ran a series of ‘Destroy and Rebuild’ workshops for early stage ideas for new customer and broker propositions which produced much stronger ideas for further development. 

Both groups provided valuable insight into future needs and the role telematics could play in adding value to a rapidly commoditising market.  The individuals also thoroughly enjoyed the experience and have a very positive view of our client’s commitment to innovation.         

 

For an investment management company  working in the group and personal pensions market, we held a one day workshop with 15 sales and marketing executives to explore future service needs of intermediaries. The company was concerned that what they had thought was a revolutionary product was not seen as such by intermediaries and therefore sales had not developed as expected.

Based on our own market research, we discovered that intermediaries had been confused by a new product launch some while ago, and were unsure about how to use the product with their clients.  In the workshop, marketing and sales staff worked together to explore the needs of each segment of intermediary: EBC, National IFAs etc.  These needs covered not only the requirements of their own clients, but also their own needs for information, support, panel construction and ongoing client servicing. 

On the basis of the workshop, the marketing team were able to conduct further research to explore several new service and communications propositions with target IFA segments, and to revise significantly a year's programme of proposed developments to the product.