Being a Fred is for sharing…

In our last blog we talked about how to be a Fred and we covered the four Fred principles: 1: Everyone Makes a Difference, 2: Success is built on Relationships, 3: You Must Create Value for Others, and it Does not have to Cost a Penny!!, 4: You Can Reinvent Yourself Regularly. And perhaps selfishly we made it all about us becoming great Freds. But how special would it be to not only be a Fred, but also build a great team of Fred’s around you?

As Stevie Wonder puts it… “Happy birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you!”

In the blink of an eye the Insurance Support Solutions blog has become one year old. We have delivered 16 blogs (all interesting and relevant, our opinion!), written just over 13,000 words (all well written, our opinion!) and been viewed, liked and/or shared on social media over 500 times (makes us quite popular? Our opinion!).

If you have the best product in the marketplace, it does not make you successful…it just means you have the best product. It is a great starting point and yet products and competitors that you may consider to be a lower standard can somehow secure customers and business that you would love to win.

So, what might it be that they be doing consistently well, that if you did, it would move your business to great and bigger success? It will very likely be how they associate their products and solutions to the dreams, needs or ambitions of the customer.

Motivational headlines from the FCA!

At first glance on the FCAs website the headlines around their three-year strategy don’t sound too promising:

Resources focused on outcomes to prevent serious harm and promote competition.

80 new roles created to shut down problem firms.

GULP!!

The next line then offers the comfort that this phase in the life of the FCA could be defining for everyone involved in delivering outstanding customer outcomes: ‘The FCA has launched a new strategy to improve outcomes for consumers…(Consumer Duty)’ Now entering the final year of that strategy we look at what is being planned for 2024-25 and what might this mean for you?

Letters – the ‘new way’ to communicate effectively?

I have recently attended three guest talks: the first delivered by one of Britain’s most famous business entrepreneurs, the other two delivered by marketing and communication professionals who are currently at the top of their game. All of them introduced the use of ‘printed’ letters and literature as a ‘new way’ to reach and communicate with your customer base. WHY? In their opinion it is the only medium that you can now guarantee will get opened!

Using the excitement generated by the ‘we’ve got a text!’ scream, heard as part of ‘Love Island’ (I have never watched it, honest!!), each claimed that communication that needs to be opened, then touched and read in a non-digital format raises shouts of ‘we’ve got a letter!’ amongst your customer base.

Consumer Duty - So far so good?

“I have bought a tin of soup, so far so good…but where is the tin opener?”

Live since July 2023 Consumer Duty feels a bit like this, it has been launched – everyone has bought the tin but how many have opened the tin and started to use the product to best effect? And how many still have the tin on the shelf waiting for the moment when they will need its contents to survive?

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

Tony Bellew, Professional Boxer

I recently read Tony Bellew’s autobiography which carries the above title. The book is shaped around things that boxing teaches you about life…and it struck me that the same applies to being ready for the worst in a business situation. Everyone has said or heard ‘that would not be good if that happened!’ or ‘hope that gets sorted quick or we are in real trouble!”…just like the first time a boxer gets punched in the face, they know it is likely to happen but when it does it hurts…the key is how quickly do you recover and be ready to avoid or evade the next punch. Or can you have a plan that ensures you rarely get punched at all?

There are numerous training solutions, methods and approaches to handling objections…so many 4 and 5 letter acronyms that the challenge can become remembering what the acronym stands for rather than how to use it!! So, we won’t be offering any LARQ, LARCR type comments. Instead, we are simply going to say that you must be ready for any objection because they are out there waiting for you!

It should not come as a surprise to anyone who works in sales or business development that your client will say ‘no’ to you at some stage in your relationship with them. And usually when decisions need to be made about new/additional solutions, investment, or improvements to current solutions...exactly the moments where you would love a simple YES!

If we know it will happen then it presents a proactive opportunity to expect that NO, to prepare for it, practice our response and accept it is very likely caused by something we have not done well or not done at all.

If you type ‘good sales questions’ into any internet search engine you will immediately be provided with any number of website opportunities all having available things like ‘100 sales questions to get to know your customer’, ‘50 best sales questions’, ‘20 open ended sales questions to get your customer talking’ etc… the list is endless. Importantly almost everything that you can read about sales questions on these websites, is good content. 

So why, with so much good content available, do salespeople, account managers, anyone tasked with understanding their customer base often fail to get the quality information that can make a genuine difference in the relationship they are trying to nurture?

Every 2 to 3 years the FCA carry out and then publish the results from their ‘financial lives survey’. In their words the survey ‘helps us identify harm and respond to it. We use it to help track and monitor consumer experiences, and we make the data available for others interested in helping drive improvements in consumer outcomes.’

The latest survey was undertaken in the period from May 2022 to early 2023 and established some startling findings about consumer vulnerability, that if you are focused on delivering outstanding consumer experience shouldn’t be ignored.

The opportunity to take part in the Financial Lives Survey is offered to, in the region of, 265,000 households across the UK. With the results from the most recent survey picked up in publications like The Financial Times, The Mirror, and The Sun, and discussed on BBC & Sky News and across social media.

In this blog we will highlight some key findings and offer food for thought to help you deliver outstanding customer experiences for every customer you interact with.

Consumer Duty is now live and months, possibly years of work that has been done by financial institutions across the UK should now be giving these businesses a certain sense of satisfaction that once again they have made their business ‘safe’ from FCA scrutiny. A headline in a recent Sunday Times read ‘Better Service, Fewer Rip-offs – new rules aiming to fix our financial woes’ which must make you wonder…’who has told the customers/consumers about how important they have become?’

With so much focus on great outcomes for customers, fair value for customers, improved customer understanding and access to the correct level of customer support it is vital that time, effort and expertise is provided to develop your staff to reach new levels of customer focus. Quality Assurance that focuses on assessing customer outcomes is an invaluable tool for identifying where staff need to develop to reach these previously unmeasured standards and principles.

In 2022 the Financial Conduct Authority issued fines in excess of £215 million to businesses large and small for breaches of their rules and regulations.

So why is this important? In recent times the regulator has been very active in supporting the introduction of a shift in data protection governance with GDPR and this month (July 2023) sees the introduction of ‘Consumer Duty’ which the regulator has launched.

The speed of change and update with which the regulator operates means that stopping on a regular basis and asking yourself ‘just how healthy is my business?’ must become a vital part of your long-term business strategy.