Walking a mile in our customers’ shoes
Our destination is to improve our customers’ entire experiences, from first contact through the buying decision and beyond.
SAIF's regional operations directors and other key partners are walking a mile in our customers' shoes through "journey mapping," a hands-on exercise that places us in the role of our own customer to understand what it feels like to be a policyholder.
Our goal is to improve our customers' entire experiences, from first contact through the buying decision and beyond. Customer experience encompasses every element of our service—from how we answer our phones to website engagement to how we deliver policyholder trainings. Our appointed agents are key partners in knowing our customers, so your support, insight, and collaboration are critical to our collective success.
In a recent journey–mapping exercise, we systematically identified each step in the process of prospecting, writing, and servicing a policy from the perspective of the policyholder. We created personas to represent a diverse range of customers based on size and industry. We even went as far as naming the personas and rounding out their profiles to include life goals, aspirations, and challenges—both professional and personal.
The deeper we went into the exercise, the more we embraced the customer personas. We learned that one size does not fit every customer when it comes to what they need and want from SAIF. We need to cater our approach to communication and the delivery of services to suit the customer's needs.
For example, the frequency, timing, and channels through which we communicate with customers matter. Repetitive contacts from SAIF on the same topic, while well-intentioned, are sometimes unwelcome and demonstrate a need for us to better communicate internally. Steps are underway—which are a direct outcome from the journey-mapping work—to alleviate this problem.
Where do we go from here? This work is still in progress and there is much more to come. We'll begin our agency partner journey mapping in the first quarter of 2018 to better understand the experiences of agents interacting with SAIF. In the meantime, we'll apply the lessons learned so far, and, with your help, continue to fine-tune our communication and service. We welcome your suggestions on how we can better serve our policyholders.