By analysing and modifying business processes as a means of enhancing the customer experience, The Cambridge began reporting beneficial outcomes very quickly.
11th October 2013
When it comes to customer experience, the financial services industry faces bigger challenges than most. Tarnished by negative perceptions following the economic downturn, contending with tough revenue targets, constrained by ever tighter regulation and competing fiercely for market share, there is no shortage of pressure upon banks and building societies to build better relationships with their customers.
However, there is a growing realisation that this cannot be achieved with a narrow reliance on the superficial communications. Instead, institutions are turning inward for answers, creating customer-driven operations built upon smart business platforms that align people and process into a cohesive whole. In this way, the organisation intrinsically delivers a more authentic, indelible and sustainable service. These are values that cannot be underestimated in a connected world where scrutiny is constant and the instant sharing of praise or criticism across the web can make or break brand perceptions.
The Cambridge Building Society adopted this intrinsic approach when it began a review of the customer experience strategy governing its mortgage business.
In January 2012 there was a shift in mortgage lending as major banks tightened up their lending criteria and reduced their mortgage product ranges. More customers became aware of the added benefits that smaller lenders like The Cambridge provide. As a result, the Society experienced increased volumes of mortgage business, putting significant pressures on the processing and operations department and hindering the overall customer experience.
At that time, case management procedures and management information were manually logged, while communication was largely limited to reactively responding to incoming enquiries.
This put pressure on staff, inhibited the timely sharing of information and drew some critical feedback from brokers and customers, which together necessitated an urgent review.
Having established customer-centricity as a brand promise, the Society questioned whether this was true across all touchpoints and analysed the end-to-end customer journey. As a result, a plan was developed to address service delivery in line with a rebrand of the corporate identity and the launch of new products and facilties. A key component of this transformation programme was to introduce a solution that enabled live monitoring, tracking and analysis of business activity, not just to provide vital management information (MI) to support decision-making,but to empower staff with the tools needed to deliver a first class service across multiple touchpoints and channels.
The management team looked particularly at the various internal processes which influence the customer journey. A configurable web-based platform called MATS® was introduced to meet to improve all-round visibility of business processes.
Acknowledging that staff buy-in would be crucial to successful implementation, managers organised training for team members.
The introduction of MATS® allowed staff to log mortgage application cases on a single and consistent platform, helping guide the approval process, with immediate visibility and actionable alerts to improve decision-making.
MATS® improved the flow of information by allowing managers to generate bespoke, real-time reports on various aspects of the case handling process. Critically it also generated automated key-stage updates to brokers and customers via SMS, email and personalised web pages to keep them instantly and better informed of the progress of the application.
Peter Dockerill, Lending and Savings Manager at The Cambridge Building Society, said: “We have always been proud of putting the customer at the heart of everything we do. But with MATS we have been looking at the systems and processes, and improving them, to ensure the experience is consistent. We have taken an outside-in approach, to ensure everything we do is about making the customer experience as good as it can be.”
According to Forrester Research, there is an increasing move towards incorporating the discipline, consistency, tools and measurement techniques of business process management (BPM) into customer experience improvement.
In their 2013 report – Adapt Business Process Improvement for Customer Experience – analysts
Derek Miers and Paul Hagen wrote: “To deliver a great customer experience, firms must orchestrate a complex system of interdependent people, processes and technology that Forrester calls the customer experience ecosystem. But pushing change across that ecosystem is hard. That’s why many customer experience leaders turn to business process improvement teams for help.” Evidence of this can be found in another piece of research from Forrester, which highlighted not only an increase in the number of businesses appointing Chief Customer Officers (CCO), but that an increasing proportion came into these roles from a BPM background. In contrast with the trend of 2012, more CCOs in 2013 had past experience in operations, quality or process, than in division president or general manager positions.
By analysing and modifying business processes as a means of enhancing the customer experience, The Cambridge began reporting beneficial outcomes very quickly.
Feedback from brokers and customers was very positive since they felt better informed. The Cambridge conducted both a broker and a customer survey with some 75% of brokers reporting that they found MATS-driven progress updates useful or very useful, 84% felt that the information provided was relevant or very relevant.
Almost half said they no longer needed to contact The Cambridge to seek updates because they had been provided proactively.
Managers are able to access information about case loads and productivity in real time, while employee morale was improved as they were more engaged with the process and could feel the rewards of an improved service delivery.
There would seem to be an excellent impact of the customer’s surveyed with 87% of customers who had gone through the mortgage application process saying that it was ‘very easy or easy’ to get information about the progress of their application.
In the months since the deployment, The Cambridge Building Society has won major industry accolades, including ‘Best Mortgage Service Provider’ at the Moneyfacts® awards, which cited its relationship with and treatment of its brokers as one important factor.
Moneyfacts® Editor Sylvia Walcot said: “During a year in which it has made a real commitment to the mortgage sector, The Cambridge Building Society has worked hard to build relationships with Intermediaries and to add value to them whenever possible…. Add further quote from film
Jon Foster, Head of Operations at The Cambridge Building Society, said: “We now process a higher volume of mortgage applications and have a much more consistent approach to the way we communicate with brokers and customers. This significantly raises the bar when it comes to the overall customer experience.
Source: MatsSoft