CX Goalkeeper with Ana Maria Zumsteg is about NPS and building long-lasting relationships with customers

With more than 20 years of CX work at Zurich Insurance and experience in implementing CX measurement tools & understanding customers' needs across 30+ countries, Ana Maria shared some of her top learnings.

Ana Maria implemented the NPS framework at Zurich Insurance as the enabler to build a long-lasting relationship with customers and employees. From the beginning, the clear goal was not to measure a KPI but impacting people and their life. The core of her work focuses on "building relationships with customers" and not on creating a measurement framework. CX is really about understanding the customers.

The KPI is only the cherry on top of the cake. There are three relevant drivers, which need to be properly understood:

· The brand’s perception,

· The value proposition (e.g., price) and

· The customer servicing

In particular, the customers' feedbacks are really important to understand what is behind a relationship and how it is possible to build it in a positive way.

Ana Maria explains also how to leverage such a mindset: if you start working and implementing your vision, you should use some KPIs to measure ,where you are. By using KPIs such as NPS you can be faster at identify improvements. Gaining awareness and delivering on areas that really matter to the customer is key.

It could be possible that the NPS gets interpreted as a “control tool”. Therefore, it is important to ensure a proper understanding of it. For example by starting by sharing positive feedbacks, celebrating employees which are positively impacting people life helps making it understandable.

Also, the negative feedbacks could help to understand what customers think and quickly identify pain points. Additionally, not all changes with a strong positive impact on CX, require a financial investment. Sometimes, merely changing the messaging strategy or simple changes in the way processes took place had a tremendous and immediate impact on CX.

It is clear, that the NPS as a measurement shows some weaknesses. For example, the NPS values cannot be compared among different countries (American people rates differently than people from Germany).

The first discussion with Ana Maria ends with her interesting question.

· "Who are we really?"

· "Which roles are we taking in life?"

She states that everybody is covering different roles as in business as in the private life. Ana Maria is convinced that people should show their real personalities.

“Be who you are among these roles" and in front of challenges there are 2 choices: “start coping with the challenge or start crying". ... And it is clear which way people should take.

At the end, Ana Maria's shares her GOLD NUGGET: "Decide who you are, live by your values, treat customers and employees by those values. When you look at yourself at the mirror, you shuold look free and happy."

In relation to the NPS: "whatever you do, whatever framework you use, the real essence of a customer experience strategy is to build relationships. You build relationships with integrity, listening and accepting what you listen to."

Ana Maria's contact details are: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-maria-zumsteg/