Customers take control

With Antoine Lissowski and Philippe Van Haecke

Antoine Lissowski is Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Finance (CFO), and Phillippe Van Haecke is Head of Customer Experience and Information Systems. Together, they are leading the drive to delight and enchant customers by adopting a meticulous and agile approach.

 

Question : How is digital transforming the customer experience ?

Antoine Lissowski : With digital, customers take control. They gather information and progressively build the solution they want by looking at all the options the market has to offer.

Philippe Van Haecke : Another radical change is the criteria customers use to select companies. Of course, the products and services they offer are very important, but so is the quality of their experience, irrespective of the channel they use.

 

Question : So we can’t just leave CRM to our partners ?

Philippe Van Haecke : In today’s digital age, middlemen are being ousted, and our partnership model is being challenged.

Antoine Lissowski : CNP Assurances’ core expertise lies in building relationships with its partners. So that we can provide them with something distinctive, we need to be able to offer them a wide range of products and services. B-to-C, which makes for smooth interaction with customers, is an example of this. Enabling our partners to deliver an enchanting customer experience is now another of our tasks.

 

Question : Where do you start ?

Philippe Van Haecke : We need to make customers the focal point of everything we do with our partners, our employees and in our processes and systems.

Antoine Lissowski : Today we need to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes to match their expectations and see what our competitors are doing.

 

Question : So, to revitalise the customer experience, we also need to change the way we do things internally ?

Antoine Lissowski : In insurance, there is still a belief that technical expertise gives us the best possible customer insights. We need to eliminate that way of thinking and start from those who know customers, giving them the biggest say, rather than those involved in looking after the rules.

Philippe Van Haecke : First and foremost, we need to be able to provide customers with the quality and responsiveness they are looking for. That means we need to take a fresh look at all our systems and processes to eliminate bottlenecks at every stage in customer pathways.

 

Question : What gives you hope for the future ?

Antoine Lissowski : The organisation has really bought into this new approach. Our senior management team has drawn up a roadmap and allocated an additional €50 million budget.

Philippe Van Haecke : We have also set ambitious targets for 2020, such as enabling customers to perform 80% of operations directly and processing 90% of surrender requests within 72 hours.

 

Question : How would you sum up the new approach ?

Philippe Van Haecke : The whole decision-making process is what really matters – even more than the results. We need to give everyone a say, listen to all the views expressed, question our preconceptions, throw out what doesn’t work and start again from scratch if necessary.

Antoine Lissowski : Our customer experience needs to drive a repositioning of the CNP Assurances brand. All our employees have a part to play in this, as together we form a “community of insurers” dedicated to meeting customers’ needs.