How REST revitalised its voice of customer program

Greater choice in the superannuation sector means customers are expecting more than just low management fees and high return, they’re expecting a superior experience.

To find the insights that matter and act on them across all departments from marketing, operations to customer service teams, the Retail Employees Superannuation Trust (REST), recently implemented the MaritzCX platform including advanced text analytics with Spotlight data mining and case management.

The initial problem was increasing visibility and awareness. As one of Australia’s largest investment and retirement funds with over 2 million members and managing a portfolio of over $45 billion in funds, REST needed to address a pressing challenge of a lack of visibility into critical touchpoints of the customer experience journey and gaining deeper insights into the voice of the customer.

This was particularly critical with the company facing new competition, opening up new choice for customers to invest their funds. This meant REST needed to find a new and innovative way to gain deeper customer insights in order to re-invent the experience and attract and retain members.

According to REST head of customer experience, Beth Parkin, this meant moving away from an old CX platform that wasn’t proactive enough and finding a new a more seamless way of understanding the voice of the customer across multiple touchpoints.

“We were with a different provider and we felt they weren’t very proactive in supporting us – it was very much a ‘set and forget’ scenario,” she told CMO. “We were billed every month, but gained little or no insight into how we could use their platform more widely across our business. So we decided to look for a a platform that was more expandable across multiple channels like our website, live chat, contact centre interactions, customer experience touchpoints and get our brand communications across more seamlessly.”

Parkin said MaritzCX's capability and breadth of experience as a multinational company working with like-minded organisations in the US including eight of the country's top banks, were key reasons for going with the vendor. MaritzCX's client base locally includes Australia Post and Qantas.

REST signed an agreement with the tech provider in June and immediately kicked off integration. MaritzCX set up a project team for the firm with a US project manager, Parkin said.

“We’re very proud we migrated off the old platform faster than we had anticipated,” she said.

The results have been deeper customer insights and new voice of customer and employer rollouts. Parkin said REST has gained the ability to measure, manage and engage members and employers in real time, where it can make the biggest impact. At the same time, the company can close the loop through multiple channels  such as email, SMS, social, live chat, contact centre and site intercept.

REST has now rolled out two customer experience programs: Voice of employer and voice of member, enabling them to continuously optimise the journey in order to better interact with members every step of the way from content relevancy to ease of doing business, Parkin said.

Over the past few months, REST has already turned on 10 different multi-channel survey programs across its member and employer base of over 2 million, received and analysed 50,000 responses and created more than 1000 cases to drive business outcomes across the organisation and are looking to scale and grow.

“The results surpassed out expectations,” Parkin said. “The surveys so far have given us incredible results and fast tracked the relevant insights that were meaningful for us. At the same time, MaritzCX has focused on building the right case management program for us and really supported us along the way. And we’re constantly tweaking our program now to ensure we’re recovering customers, engaging people and turning them from a passive into a promoter."

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