‘Don't make the customer do the heavy lifting’: NRMA CMO calls brands out for poor CX

In a world drowning in complexity, one Australian insurance giant is making a radical promise: simplicity. NRMA Insurance is doubling down on its core mission, rebranding as ‘A Help Company’ in partnership with Accenture Song. The rebranding is aimed to be more than just a catchy slogan; the ambition is woven into the very fabric of the company's almost 100-year heritage, setting the stage for its next century of service. This is a challenge to every brand that leaves customers lost in a sea of jargon and frustrating processes.

Michelle Klein, chief customer and marketing officer at IAG—NRMA’s parent company—told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the positioning, launched last month, is already working. The promise to be ‘A Help Company’ is framing the way the business thinks about and improves its customer experience (CX).

One key initiative is the launch of ‘Imagined Better’, a customer panel designed to give NRMA a direct line to the people it aims to serve. Klein believes this is the key to unlocking truly customer-centric experiences, which is at the heart of its recent brand repositioning.

“We've only been in-market with this for a couple of weeks, but it really has been motivating and very clear. Some of the best ideas are often the simplest ones, just explaining what you do, why you're here,” she said of the platform, created by Accenture Song.

She explained that the platform’s purpose is “to simplify, create utility, be helpful. Like, what would ‘A Help Company’ do? And therefore, that's become a real galvanising… rallying cry”.

“If you look at society today and the macro conditions that people are navigating, whether it's cost of living, affordability, post-pandemic … [people are] just finding the coping mechanisms to navigate what we're facing today,” she said. “And the role for businesses is to take the complexity out of it for them. Just say what you do, be clear, explain what they're paying for, explain the service that they're going to get, and don't make them do that heavy lifting.”

Klein thinks Imagined Better, the brand-new customer panel, will be key to bringing the promise of ‘A Help Company’ to life, allowing the brand to hear from customers directly about what they want.

“We're just getting started, so it'll be really interesting and really rich for a business that's trying to connect with customers personally in normal times, as well as in times of a crisis,” she said. 

“At the end of the day, you want to be meeting their expectations and the only way to meet their expectations is to know them first-hand. But then to exceed them is to partner with them to understand what motivates and drives them, and things we might not be thinking of.”  

Klein was appointed to the role in May 2023, taking over from Brent Smart. She said engaging with customers has been crucial to fine-tuning the CX, whether going to a repair hub to literally watch paint dry, observing front-line staff in a branch, or listening in on customer calls.

“That just enriches everything you're trying to do and also gives you insight into how you might adjust your strategy. It's first-hand, real-time feedback,” she added.

Klein uses the insights gleaned from this research to discover what customers are already doing and saying, and uses them to guide her focus. “If a customer is already doing something or having an experience with you, but you know that you can bring in a technology or a solution—it might be a human-to-human solution, it might be a physical solution—that makes the experience better, faster, more efficient, [that’s what] surprises and delights,” she said.

Klein’s comments followed her appearance on a panel called ‘Unlocking the superpower of customer experience’ at the Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA)’s Global Forum in Sydney. She was joined by the chief marketing officer at media company Nine, Liana Dubois, and chief customer officer at health insurance business Medibank, Milosh Milisavljevic.

Klein maintained that customer experience should be viewed as part of a wider “Venn diagram” that also captures brand experience and people experience. Milisavljevic joined Medibank almost nine years ago, when the business’ Venn diagram was barely connected at all.

“We had something like -20 NPS. We had more than 60% of industry complaints. We had a lot of our frontline teams who did not like engaging with customers and we couldn't do basic tax statements at the end of the financial year.

“There was this diligence building on the commercial and operational rigour running the business that was progressively disconnected from the customer,” says Milisavljevic. 

From that point onwards, Milisavljevic worked to refocus the team on customer obsession, which is to "start everything with a customer". 

“We really designed the turnaround program around the customer and the shifts we want to have in our relationship with the customer and then how that translates to the commercial results,” he said. “And to the CX team's credit, they've progressively gotten better and better at reinventing how to think about the economic case for investment in the customer.”

CX is high-stakes for Medibank. As Milisavljevic observed, “the more consumers feel in control and empowering their health, the better their outcomes are”. The CX team is responsible for building trust and an emotional connection with customers, he said, “challenging the category to a large extent, so we can figure out how we stand out.”

Meanwhile, Nine's CMO, Dubois noted that part of challenging Nine’s category is expanding its definition: “We compete for people's time and attention. That's ultimately who my competitive set is. You can choose to read a paper, listen to some radio, tune into Spotify, Netflix, but you can also choose to go and walk your dog, to go for a bush walk, to do something other than engage in my media.”

She is currently worrying about the people she’s not reaching. In Australia, Nine had the rights to the Paris Olympics, and its coverage of the Games reached around 19 million Australians.

“But the thing that keeps me awake at night is, okay, there's 27 million people in this country, so what were the other eight [million] doing? Some of them were babies and toddlers and so I can accept I might not be able to get access to them. But if another five or six [million] are lying around the place somewhere, how can I improve their perceptions of us through using CX as a superpower?” she said.

While Dubois hunts for those ‘missing’ viewers ahead of the Paralympic Games, which starts on August 29, and Klein looks for customer behaviours that already exist, Milisavljevic searches for gaps. “Where is the gap in the motivation, in the knowledge for where you go, in the ability to access it at the right time? We often have our CX team talking about falling in love with a gap,” he said.

“The gaps are gold.”