Service is about values rather than KPI's - IF Insurance

When an insurance customer in the future contacts Nordic insurance giant IF, they will meet an employee with only one thing in mind: “To give the best possible customer experience.” This article serves as a short description of IF’s new purpose-driven culture, which, through the launch and application of the recruitment tool BRIGHT, replacing KPI controlled management.

The use of KPIs has, throughout the years, become a popular tool, not only in the insurance business but in almost all customer-focused businesses. The challenge is that traditional ‘bonus’ thinking combined with a classic focus on KPIs far too often is in the way of the excellent and positive customer experience of the professional service.

• Our purpose in being here is to deliver the best insurance at the right price, our motto being “relax, we’ll help you.” This signifies that we will help the customers in the best possible way, no matter their situation, and we want our customer service to reflect just that, explains HR partner in IF, Betina Maibom.

EFFECTIVE RECRUITING

IF has removed bonuses for making sales in its customer service, because the insurance company wants the customer to be at the center of attention. Besides, IF has incorporated several initiatives ensuring that the employees have the best possible prerequisites to meet the customer’s high demands.

• This applies very much to the recruitment of new employees, says Betina Maibom.

IF has joined forces with Master Denmark, implementing the new recruitment tool, BRIGHT. BRIGHT was developed to ensure overview, efficiency, and measurability in situations where “excellent service” is more difficult to measure. The difficulty of measuring “excellent service” is because the need to deliver the best possible service experience increases every time!

MORE HAPPY CUSTOMERS

• Measuring customer focus and the attitude of the employee when he or she meets or speaks with the customers is a challenge. In that respect, BRIGHT gives us a unique opportunity to do a tailor-made screening of candidates, says Betina Maibom.
  Measuring customer focus and the employee’s attitude, when meeting/speaking with a customer is a challenge. That’s where BRIGHT gives us a unique opportunity to do a tailor-made screening of candidates, says Betina Maibom.

Maibom explains that IF’s recruitment process has been reduced by 30 percent - by merely letting BRIGHT screen for and find suitable candidates. Additionally, the tool, with its focus on service attitude, has led to improvements in both the customers’ and the existing employees’ daily experiences, according to the customer manager at IF, Jane Husen.

Husen highlights that since IF started using BRIGHT and implementing several other different changes, customer satisfaction quickly increased by eight percent. IF is experiencing three percent sick leave among the relevant employees, and employee satisfaction as a whole has improved.

UNIQUE ADAPTION

Jane Husen explains that several employees have helped in adapting BRIGHT to IFs needs, and all employees have been given the opportunity to fill out the BRIGHT test to increase awareness in the organization about the strategy.

• Fortunately, it turned out that we had significant overlaps between our existing employees and the qualities and factors we wanted to measure, Jane Husen asserts.

She emphasizes that one of the main advantages of using BRIGHT in recruitment is the possibility to adapt to the tool.

• We live in a changeable world, and we are continuously adjusting our recruitment. At the same time, we are also looking at other things than service attitude. BRIGHT is an excellent supplement, which at the same time has a significant positive effect on both our use of resources and, in the end, on how we perform, says Jane Husen.