Philippe Danielski shared with us AIG's approach to Net Promoter in a very decentralized, multi-cultural setting, and how important it is for them to have an approach that convinces the different operating units of the value of new ideas and processes. I have to give Philippe credit for his very honest and straightforward introduction around the current situation at AIG, which has been in the press a lot lately because of the financial crisis. What Philippe helped me understand is the size and scope of AIG's underlying insurance business, which has served clients around the world well for years, and continues to do so despite the unfortunate realities of the current financial crisis.

AIG has created an office of the customer, and he deals with the B2C and B2B2C businesses in that capacity. What they are looking to accomplish is to move the business model from one focused primarily on new client acquisition to a more active relationship with existing clients, to create a promotional spiral based on additional contact and activation of loyal clients.

One of Philippe's points was the importance of getting started with making some quick changes based on your business judgment. Then he described their roadmap for taking this to a higher level. At the base is a set of good products and services, combined with some basic information about your customer base. To this, you start to add layers of details... starting with cross sell and retention, then adding a deeper understanding of the client via NPS... which drives a capability for creating new experiences. The end point is more loyal clients.

One of their big points of focus in terms of experience design is to really focus on the main moments of truth, and to make specific changes to reflect what they know about personal events happening in the customer's life. Such as special communications and offers that are linked to events like birthdays, family changes, moving house, or other things that are, actually, a pretty big deal in peoples' lives! And when they get personalized communications, it's a great way to make them know that your company cares about them personally. These types of programs and changes, have allowed them to double revenues in some cases.

Philippe also made the point that by making small changes in retention rates, you can have a huge impact on growth rates, as well as long-term customer profitability as studies by Bain & Company have shown. He also confirmed that AIG has looked at many markets around the world, and have found that clients who are "satisfied" sometimes still leave (again, consistent with Fred Reichheld's published work). In one study in Singapore, they looked at customers who had resigned, and over 50% of them said they would return as a customer if AIG could offer better service.

I thought he summarized all of this nicely by highlighting the fact that they have focused on moving from a "push" model, that is about marketing and selling to clients, to a "pull" model where excellent customer experience generates a natural positive image and word-of-mouth to bring in new customers. And ultimately, this all comes down to demonstrating every day to their clients that they are listening.

The act of listening, and responding to the client, is right at the center of developing deeper relationships.

What about "telling" the customer what you are doing for them? In their US auto business, they made 75 specific changes to improve benefits for customers. The problem was that they hadn't done anything to tell clients about it! They thought that clients would eventually notice... which they might. But I have to say that I agree totally with Philippe. It's so important to find a way to reinforce what you're doing in your communications. What it does is speed up the customer's realization of the actions you are taking... so they give you credit faster (that is, if their experience is in line with your communication of course!).

And Philippe pointed out strongly that if you spend your time doing long surveys, and are not prepared to respond to what the client has to say, it's better not to ask at all! So they want to ask about NPS in a way that is closely linked to key moments of truth, to ensure they can easily link it to actions. Whether that is following a win or loss, or a service or claims experience, they want to make sure the feedback is timely so they are able to recover quickly if there is a problem. They also want to link the feedback to the front-line employees who have touched the client directly, to use this for coaching and improvement... whether it is a sales person or a claims representative.

Philippe shared with us some interesting data about their auto customers in the US and Spain, and he made the point that as their NPS has increased, they have also been able to track the number of recommendations that are happening. And both trends are very positive. Another example was from AIG Direct (my auto insurer in fact!), and they found that just by calling back detractors, they got much lower lapse rate in their coverage, and a strong ROI on the investment of time and resources. And guess what, the changes they are making are helping them retain employees too. Thank you, Philippe, for sharing so much rich detail about your findings around NPS. The audience really appreciated it.

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