“We want to create, not just manage.”
The cxomni Expert Talks are about practical insights and best practices. cxomni users and partners talk about their Customer Journey Management projects and their impact. In this issue, Thomas Schäffer spoke to Roberto Gago from Generali Switzerland, a cxomni client, on why the Swiss insurance company decided to implement a Journey Management Framework and about the initial impact of the cxomni platform so far.
Roberto Gago,
Customer Experience Manager
Generali, Switzerland
Thomas Schäffer
CSO & Co-Founder
cxomni
Roberto, great to host you in our Expert Talk. Could you briefly introduce yourself and describe your role at Generali?
As Customer Experience Manager at Generali, I am responsible for designing and optimizing the interactions with our customers. I work closely with different departments to ensure that our customers are at the center of all our activities. Last year, for example, we modelled our company’s personas and visualized the most important journeys from the customer’s perspective. Both approaches really helped us to derive our business requirements.
In addition, I am responsible for managing, monitoring, and developing our company-wide T-NPS program (Transactional Net Promoter Score program) with best-in-class KPIs. My goal is to provide the company with a comprehensive understanding of our customers’ needs and to continuously improve customer satisfaction. In my previous role as Head of Marketing Project Management, I was responsible for planning, organizing, and managing our innovation projects by leading interdisciplinary teams and I conducted requirements analysis together with our top management.
What challenges do insurance companies face today, and why play customer journeys such an important role?
The increasing level of digitalization forces us to adapt our processes, products and services. Because we only remain competitive when we meet the changing needs of our target groups. In a time where customers are digitally savvy and have lots of information and options at their fingertips, it’s important to understand what they really want. Especially, if we want to retain existing customers or attract new ones such as Generation Z.
Another reason is that customers do not only judge us by the quality of our insurance products. What they want is a solution tailored to their individual needs. Customer journeys as a tool help us to address these challenges. By mapping the entire interaction between company and customer, we know where we have to improve and deliver our customers a seamless and consistent experience. Besides personalized products and services, this can also include optimizing our distribution channels for a higher customer satisfaction.
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What was the reason for implementing Customer Journey Management at Generali?
The reasons were very different. First, we had a solid Transactional Net Promoter Score (T-NPS) program in place and we have regularly been benchmarking ourselves against our competitors within Switzerland. We have also used global Relationship Net Promoter Score (RNPS) measurements to further understand our positioning. Due to these activities, we knew our strengths and weaknesses. However, we realized that only collecting socio-demographic data was not sufficient and we still did not have enough insight into our customers’ behaviors.
We wanted to develop a deeper understanding of our customer’s needs, wishes, and values, and how they envisioned their future relationship with us. That’s why we felt the need to bring data and customer journeys together by implementing Customer Journey Management. We had hoped to gain more detailed insights by analyzing our customer’s behavior in the context of the journey, which we actually have achieved.
What challenges or pain points did you want to address with Customer Journey Management?
Our goal was to address both existing and potential new issues. We started by identifying our existing customer pain points which included e.g. the lack of status notifications or the inability to access personalized benefits in our customer portal. After that we had identified new, unknown pain points that we had not captured before. We therefore conducted an inventory analysis with our stakeholders to gain a broader understanding of our customer interactions.
When did you realize that Customer Journey Management requires enabling software?
We experimented with different tools for our workshops in 2020 during the pandemic restrictions. But the results weren’t satisfying. We wanted a tool that could not only visualize beautiful journeys, but also derive business requirements, store personas with graphics, analyze data and visualize heat maps for customer pain points.
Another important aspect was that the tool should help our teams collaborate by assigning tasks and facilitating communication and project management. And finally, we wanted software that could provide visibility to our management while meeting the specific needs of our stakeholders.
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Are there examples where Customer Journey Management is starting to pay off?
Absolutely. Firstly, we have captured our personas, touchpoints, and all actual journeys with the customer pain points from our studies. Afterwards, we have mapped the to-be journeys with the basic service and wow factors, as well as the derived business requirements in cxomni. We completed this project at the end of last year and have already implemented several business requirements.
At Generali Switzerland, we focus on all phases of the customer journey. This includes e.g. the comparability of offers, the appointment booking via interactive voice response (IVR), the creation of a 360-degree customer view and the calculation of customer lifetime value. This approach allows us to determine the next best experiences for our customers or offer them the next best product.
From my perspective Customer Journey Management is an ongoing process that we will continue to develop and improve over time. Since not all requirements can be implemented immediately, it is important to monitor the progress and adjust from time to time. This is how we ensure that all customer journeys are optimized on an ongoing basis. Overall, we want to design, not just manage.
Thank you very much for your answers and the exciting insights, Roberto.
About Generali Switzerland
Generali Switzerland has been a trusted companion for around one million customers since 1987, offering solutions for every situation in life. These include property, legal protection and life insurance as well as pension solutions. With the founding of the House of Insurtech Switzerland (HITS), Generali is embracing the concept of corp-ups to adopt innovative technology and ideas. To this end, the insurance company is developing innovative offerings with HITS, start-ups and companies.
