Voice of the CCO: Claire M. Burns on a Key Learning from the CCO Council
Claire M. Burns, SVP, Customer Centricity for MetLife tells how she implemented a key learning from her participation in the CCO Council that directly improved her company's bottom line.
Transcript for Voice of the CCO: Claire M. Burns on a Key Learning from the CCO Council
One key learning I’ve had from the Chief Customer Officer Council is that when we started on this journey we had a very difficult time connecting customer experience improvements to the bottom line and really demonstrating the impact from a financial perspective, and the value that these initiatives bring to the business. Sitting with other Council members, having conversations, a one-on-one conversation on the phone with a colleague from Oracle who had been through the same experience, was extremely helpful in clarifying different metrics that one could use to really isolate the impact of these efforts.
So I brought that learning back, talked to our CFO, talked to some folks in our finance area, and was able to demonstrate a connection between improved customer experience and eliminating a lot of expense in the organization. So much so, that the CEO has put on his scorecard for his leadership team that they need to drive out $100 million in expense based on the waste that we identified through a bad customer experience.
So, for example, we identified six million phone calls – six million phone calls – tied to not having a dental ID card. And we were able to convince leadership that if they created a dental ID card, they could drive out six million calls, which is a much better savings than actually the cost that would be required to produce a card.
So demonstrating some of those trade-offs and doing that through the learning from some of my fellow Council members has been very helpful.