successstories
Finding the culture levers for a breakthrough in customer loyalty
Our client, a global financial institution with over 70K employees, has a track record of delivering top financial results and is recognized as one of the ‘Best Places to Work’. Client loyalty scores, however, were not reaching the level needed for strategic breakthrough. A major investment in communicating strategic direction, training personnel, and improving tools and systems had been underway, yet client loyalty scores were disappointing. The retail bank was now impatient for a breakthrough in client loyalty and wanted to understand the causal factors for the perplexingly low loyalty scores. They wanted to find the culture levers for its client experience strategy.
Our starting point was to suggest the use of the Culture-Strategy Fit Profile for finding the aspects of its culture that were supporting and getting in the way of delivering the new client experience brand promise. As a means of getting a view of what was happening, we suggested a comparison of the culture as it played out in behaviors and practices in sets of retail branches with high client loyalty versus low loyalty ratings and with high and low profitability ratings. In this way, we would be able to gain quick insights into the way the culture was operating to deliver both high client loyalty and high profitability.
We started by building an analytical model for the culture assessment that would assess a broad range of culture patterns that supported the bank’s client experience strategy. We customized a Strategic Alignment Snapshot to assess top leader alignment to strategy and a Culture Snapshot as the survey tool. Observations and Story Gathering were additional methods that would bring sharper detail to the way specific practices were playing out in group and leader behaviors.
Our analysis revealed that the hard work of communicating the strategy was paying off with strong alignment on strategy across the senior level. Readiness to embrace the strategy was high in the branches, but some differences in interpretation of what the strategy meant in different roles were flagged.
Strong foundational culture pattern strengths were revealed which carried with them high potential to support strategy; however these same strengths had impacts on behavior that were negatively impacting the client experience. The inter-play of beliefs, behaviors and practices created complex, subtle responses to situations that needed to be more explicitly understood and addressed across boundaries. For example, the way empowerment, responsiveness, compliance and risk management played out in the high loyalty branches showed differences that could be replicited elsewhere and that needed the support of other departments.
Making explicit what was happening at the high loyalty branches opened the way for a focus on balancing culture strengths with other culture patterns to improve the client relationship. The executive sponsor continues to gain traction on initiatives to improve the client experience and thus customer loyalty.
Sponsors
Executive Sponsor, Client Experience
Services
Culture Snapshot
Observation
Story Gathering
Outcome
Culture factors key to high client loyalty and profitability identified
