Rabobank invests in 9+ customer experience
Rabobank aims to be the most customer-focused financial services provider in the Netherlands by 2020. In order to achieve this strategic ambition, the bank started developing a new 9+ working method three years ago. Maarten Kolkman, Senior Manager Sales & Distribution Private Clients and Private Banking at the Rabobank Group, explains how this 9+ Way of Working (9+ WoW) was developed in collaboration with Altuïtion. “We slightly underestimated the not-invented-here syndrome.”After a period in which many banks seemed to have lost their focus on the client due to pressure on financial performances, international competition, and ambitions for growth that were not always realistic, the tide has now turned in the sector. This is certainly true of Rabobank, which has explicitly identified excellent customer service as one of its four strategic pillars.
The ambition is clear, says Maarten Kolkman, Senior Manager Sales & Distribution Private Clients and Private Banking at the Rabobank Group. “We aim to be the most customer-focused financial services provider in the Netherlands by 2020. We have worked this ambition out in concrete terms in a set of parameters, such as an NPS score of over 60 points."
Against this background, Kolkman searched for an effective way to build more positive emotional experiences into the usually rather business-like, functional customer service processes within the bank. "Every year, Rabobank invests millions in the digitization of processes, partly because customers demand it and partly for reasons of cost efficiency,” explains Kolkman. “And that's fine, as long as you realize that simply making processes 'faster' and 'more convenient' does not necessarily build deep and lasting customer relationships. For that, you will have to be there for the customer at times that matter. Because we are the only bank that still has a network of 100 local banks, each with dozens of advisors, we were able to achieve being close to our clients in theory. What was lacking, however, was a structured approach to embed that emotional customer experience structurally in all our processes."
Multidisciplinary teams
After having had a number of tentative talks with Altuïtion, Kolkman decided to join forces with the consultancy firm based in the province of Brabant. Together they selected a number of specific customer-service processes around key moments in an individual's life such as buying a house, a divorce, or starting a business. "These processes are also partly digital, but because of their special impact on the life of the customer, we saw opportunities to really add something," says Kolkman. "Key moments in the customer's life are in fact characterized by great financial uncertainty on the one hand, and great emotional uncertainty on the other. If you can score a 9+ at such a moment, that makes a huge impact."The next step was to select four pilot banks that wanted to be the first to start developing the 9+ WoW. "This was a relatively time-consuming process, because we had to talk to the entire board four times, organize a joint kick-off meeting, and hold a presentation for all employees at each bank,” explains Kolkman. “At the same time, it was crucial that the pilot banks really fully supported the new developments, understood why we wanted this, and understood what was expected of them."
In the following months, various multidisciplinary teams within the pilot banks started exploring the Customer Journey around the identified key moments and generating ideas for improvement. To help them along, they were able to use a toolkit developed by Rabobank Nederland containing insights that had emerged from previous Customer Journey projects. The teams were supervised during the sessions by consultants from Altuïtion.
The right balance
Looking back on this process, Kolkman says he has gained three important insights. “First of all, it turned out to be difficult to find the right balance between local ownership on the one hand and central involvement on the other. Because we wanted the pilot banks to consider the project as their own, we deliberately minimized central control. However, this led to relatively long turnaround times, and we noticed that the energy was in danger of draining out of the process. We also noticed that, despite the guidance from Altuïtion, the teams found it difficult to really make customer-experience thinking their own. Even though things always turned out well and we managed to generate a number of powerful guiding principles, in hindsight it would have been better if we had provided more support with central teams with expertise."A third lesson Kolkman learned was that the pilot banks did not blindly adopt each other's insights. "You would think if bank A figured out how to design the ideal Journey when buying a house, that it would immediately be picked up and implemented at bank B, C, and D. But it turned out that we slightly underestimated the not-invented-here syndrome. It's working now, but it took longer than we expected."
Nevertheless, Kolkman is very satisfied with the results of the 9+ WoW process. "We have gained much better insight into what are now typically recognizable Rabobank elements in our customer service and how we can keep applying them. We also notice that the pilot banks have learned to think based on the Customer Journey. Instead of checking off lists – do this, don't do this, think about this – customer-oriented behavior among the advisors in the pilot banks has become more or less a matter of course. And that is exactly what we had hoped would happen.
In terms of hard results, participation in the 9+ WoW program among the pilot banks led to above-average growth in the NPS (75% higher increase than among the banks that are not yet participating) and the E-NPS (23.6% higher increase than among the banks that are not yet participating). These figures support the experience of the pilot banks that helping clients to use the 9+ WoW methodology leads to higher client satisfaction and more enjoyment and energy at work. Especially in an environment where transition is the order of the day, the program helps to give balance and energy."
Scaling up for a Rabobank-wide 9+ Way of Working
Rabobank has now selected a new group of banks to join the Rabo 9+ WoW. Kolkman has set aside three months for this. "Scaling up such a new way of working in a national organization is quite complex. That's why we have developed the 9+ WoW into work packages for the various key moments. In the coming months, we will see how quickly the employees of this group of banks will be able to familiarize themselves with the way of working and how quickly things will fall into place. Once we know this, we will then be able to proceed nationwide.”Despite this challenge, Kolkman is confident that the new 9+ WoW will eventually be widely supported by his organization. "We started about a year ago with an internal customer experience award, the Rabobank 9+ Award. Employees can nominate a colleague, an independent jury then selects three cases, and all employees can then vote. The four pilot banks together won that Award six times last year, without it being known that they were participating in this pilot. It could be a coincidence, but I believe that it is a sign that they have really got the hang of it now."
