Medallia enabled PEXA to pivot from a product-focused business to a member-centric one
PEXA’s mission was a humble one: transform a 150-year-old legal process for property exchanges, enabling them to be completed securely and remotely. The company did this by taking a system entrenched in manual, paper transactions, digitising it, and putting it online.
Yet this wasn't enough, and PEXA realised it needed a customer feedback application to transform its member feedback systems, so it could become a member-first platform, rather than product focused.
PEXA, Property Exchange Australia, is a platform for conveyancers, lawyers, and financial representatives to lodge documents with land titles registries and complete financial settlements for buying and selling property, the largest asset group in the country. Created in 2010, by the end of 2018 more than two million transactions had been completed through the platform.
The platform, which has more than 8000 conveyancing and law firms as members, works by replacing the clunky paper process with an online digital process that is secure, reduces potential for errors, and reduces the processing time for processing funds and finalising settlement. The system allows documents to be submitted and checked online to identify errors that can hold up the settlement process, while buyers and sellers can track progress using the PEXA SettleMe app. Funds can also be processed online without the need for cheques, and settlement can be confirmed immediately.
The problem: Valuable Member Insights MIA
The company grew quickly in its mission to digitise conveyancing, helping to streamline the complex property settlement process, yet it also faced the challenge of capturing the valuable insights from its end-users, the member-lawyers using the system, which were critical to its ongoing success. Added to this is the increase in online conveyancing PEXA is anticipating as a result of the State government-mandated move to eConveyancing, expanding the demand for digital settlements.
Lisa Dowie, the chief customer officer at PEXA, who is charged with driving CX across the business, told CMO the journey was one from product to user.
“We were focused on designing, building and rolling out the platform. So we were very product-centric. And once we then had members using the platform, it became very obvious it was time to start focusing on those members and putting them at the very heart of everything we do.
“We realised we were removing the human interaction element - swapping bank cheques and paperwork - in moving to this online platform. We wanted to create something to fill this gap. First we created an online community for feedback and support, then we looked for direct feedback,” said Dowie.
It started with the tried and tested approach of manual surveys via email, using a marketing automation system (Marketo) to track the results. However, this process was time consuming to analyse and difficult to scale. But it was an important starting point.
The member feedback they got through this manual process proved the importance and value of insights and showed the need for further investment.
“It gave us the case we needed to put forward the proposition to invest in a technology platform like Medallia,” said Dowie.
PEXA realised a sophisticated, comprehensive solution was needed to drive the organisation’s commitment to member experience (MX), enable PEXA to develop new services, and evolve the platform by closing the loop on member feedback. It needed a platform that would provide accurate, real-time insights into what members were experiencing, with the ability for feedback to be shared with key stakeholders across the business.
PEXA chose Medallia after research on various different MX offerings, an RFP process, and after three of its staff attended the Medallia Experience event in Las Vegas in 2017. It would prove to be the right mix of technology and business style that sealed the deal.
“Many of the platforms do similar things. Medallia has a great reputation on all of the completed reports, but one of the most important factors was the culture fit between Medallia and PEXA, which we felt was the most closely aligned,” said Dowie.
The solution: Transform member focus through Medallia
The majority of property transactions using PEXA involve four parties – the incoming and outgoing banks, and representatives of buyers and sellers, either lawyers or conveyancers. PEXA implemented Medallia in September 2018 to overhaul its feedback systems from each of these parties to gain rich insights and drive improvements to its eConveyancing platform.
“It was leveraging the work we’d been doing with those manual surveys. We also wanted the frontline staff to be involved in how we rolled it out, to be consulted,” Dowie told CMO.
The deployment of Medallia’s solution, which took around three months, was relatively straightforward. The business has approximately 350 employees and prides itself on being agile, so it was able to put the operational practices in place in a timely manner.
Since then, Medallia has allowed PEXA to gain valuable member feedback in three key places: An Always On survey sitting within PEXA’s platform for anytime feedback; Targeted in-platform NPS surveys, which take place on 90-day cycles; and Member Effort Score (MES) and peer-to-peer rating, which is calculated from the responses of the parties at the end of a property transaction.
In turning to Medallia, PEXA would make a profound shift from being a product-centric service to a member-first platform from the inside out.
To continue on the path of improvement through continual feedback, PEXA has created a member experience champions group of 24 staff from across the business who are passionate about MX and are developing new initiatives and tools.
Dowie told CMO Medallia has become like a valuable team member.
“We think of Medallia as our partner, not just delivering a service. It’s very much a partnership.”
The result: MX focus lifts performance measures and offers further opportunities
In the short time it’s been in place, Medallia has proven its investment with improved metrics.
“It’s been in place for about six months now and it’s definitely had a positive result on our NPS and MES and this is because of the enhancements we’ve delivered into our platform based on the member’s feedback,” Dowie said.
PEXA has recorded a steady NPS increase of 15 points and its MES has also gone up 28 points. The Medallia platform provides transparency and accountability in a way that is focused on improving the service based on member experience feedback. All feedback, positive and negative, is available to the organisation and embraced as useful for improving the platform for members.
Dowie likened it to a feedback circuit. “It’s putting the app in the hands of every single employee and our frontline led the adoption as they’re able to see the feedback coming in, in real time. Frontline staff have accounts allocated to them and if they see results coming in that might not be that positive, that team member has the responsibility for closing the loop and reaching out to a customer to get more information or respond to them and let them know that we’ve heard from them.”
Adopting a member-centric approach has also meant communicating this to the external lawyer-members, outlined Dowie, to ask for their input on their experiences.
“The frontline staff are encouraging our lawyer-members to share their feedback when they’re out meeting with them or talking to them,” she said.
The ‘always on’ feedback feature on the platform has been an unexpected hit, particularly with a vocal member base who welcome a chance to share their experiences.
“We receive probably more feedback from that than we do from the surveys. Lawyers and conveyancers like to have their say so there’s no shortage of feedback. It’s so valuable for us,” Dowie said.
Dowie sees more opportunities with Medallia to continue to develop synergies between PEXA members and employees who interact with members on a daily basis, from support staff answering queries to member account managers, to continue improvements.
“I think there’s a lot more work to be done on how far we can take this in the future. One of these is ‘Voice of Frontline’ surveys that brings all of its feedback into one channel through a continuous survey of its support team and account managers who interact with members to share member feedback and establish and resolve any pain points or incidents across the platform.
“Your employee experience and your member experience are intertwined and heavily rely on one another so it’s important to us, while we’ve invested in listening to our members, that listening to our employees is equally as important.”
“Sometimes your members don’t know what they need because it hasn’t been created yet, but your employees, because of the PEXA knowledge they have, know new functionality PEXA members might need in the future. We really want them to be heard and to deliver changes that align with that they’re hearing from our members,” Dowie told CMO.
PEXA doesn’t just have lawyers and conveyancers as members, it also has the other important partner in property settlements -- some 150 banks and financial institutions -- on its books. It’s another opportunity for continuing development by collaborating with Medallia to build a dedicated dashboard for financial institutions. It will provide detailed and accessible data on individual performance and verbatim feedback to those institutions received during the transaction process.
“PEXA prides ourselves on being member-first and utilising Medallia enables us to deliver on this. By providing our members with multiple feedback channels and literally putting this feedback in the hands of all our staff with the Medallia app, we're able to identify pain-points at speed, and action them accordingly. Medallia is proving to be a pivotal tool for PEXA as we work to continuously enhance our member's user experience."
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