The very concept of customer service has evolved over time. But the value of good customer service that helps deliver a great customer experience is important for both the Customer and the business.
When the world has become so much more competitive, these are the key differentiating factors that can ‘make or break’ any brand.
This brings us to a key question – what is good customer service?
The central concept of good customer service concentrates on attending to and aligning to the changing needs and expectations of the customer through careful listening.
Long term customer loyalty is less about big ‘wow’ moments and more about being dependable and making things easy for customers. You need to ensure that the relationships blossoms with the integration of newer and innovative opportunities for every experience enhancement.
Simply put, it means you need to ‘exceed customer expectations’ over and over again.
For an insurance company like Bharti AXA Life, the core of our customer service efforts is focused on relationship building. To establish a successful relationship, we endeavour to follow:
• Service that is dependable & quick
• Services that are digitally available
• Service solutions that are simple & smart
• Service that is proactive through the use of AI to pre-empt customer needs
• Service that adds a touch of personalization
• Service that offers an integrated &omnichannel experience
That said, the road to delivering the best customer service and experiences is not bereft of challenges.
Our customers are interacting with us pretty much every day. It is understandable that at some point the customer service team will run into some key pressure points.
The success of the business will be determined by how competently we can address these pressure points that become critical to delivering consistent Integrated & omnichannel customer experiences.
The most important aspect for us as an insurance company is to be able to resolve these issues successfully and as per customer expectations and preferred mode. We know then that we have won a customer for their lifetime.
Therefore, the interesting question here is if we know the advantages of delivering an impactful customer experience, why is it so difficult to be consistent?
That’s because you can never 100% anticipate what’s in store for you next. Whether it is complaints, problems or queries, you are expected to solve it all.
However, ensuring we keep the customer at the forefront of every decision, focus on relationship building and end every customer experience on a high note.
Having a customer service strategy should be in the DNA of any business enterprise.
Instant, Intuitive & Omni channel communication is what customers expect from brands today. Therefore, we have put in place a set of processes that are smart, easy to access and enable our customers to stay connected with us through every touchpoint.
When you bridge the gap between the brand and the customer, you have always crossed your first hurdle successfully. Attitude is everything here. Most importantly remember to wow your customers as you solve their problems.
Meeting your customer needs creatively and intuitively inspires confidence in the brand and converts them into loyalists.
The goal or Purpose for Bharti AXA Life is to make insurance simple.
We aim to move away from the existing “Assess and Service” model to the “Predict, personalize, engage, & share value” model that is pivoted around deeper customer engagement in the advice-based model. Our focus is to deliver customer solutions that are simple, paperless, fast and available across platforms.
We have opted to focus on leveraging technology to simplify life insurance for our customers and partners – be it Login, issuance, claims, servicing, or any other engagement.
At the end of the day, people just want to feel special.
It will always be outstanding customer experiences that will make our customers come back for more.
Having a ‘customer first’ approach and a laser focus on customer service and experience are working as guiding forces for us.
A purpose-driven vision and a clear execution roadmap have certainly been the driving factors that have enabled us to walk the talk of a customer-centric organization.
Authored by
Nitin Mehta, Chief Customer Officer, Bharti AXA Life Insurance
