How Aegon Is Reaping the Benefits of Customer Centricity

At Forrester CX EMEA, we heard from Pearl-Plaza client Aegon, a Dutch public company for life insurance, pensions, and asset management. The key message throughout the conference was to be bold and ensure that organisations are aligned, focused, and ready for the future. Aegon are certainly delivering on this agenda and are continuing to succeed by connecting people and processes across the entire organisation to achieve shared goals and focus on growth.

Aegon’s ‘Connecting with Customers’ programme is an award winning programme which has delivered spectacular results for the business, colleagues and customers. Using a customer centric approach, Aegon has successfully enabled their teams to receive real-time feedback in order to drive change and as a result, are increasing customer satisfaction and accelerating growth.

Connecting With Customers

The experience programme ‘Connecting with Customers’, is successfully embedding a customer-focused culture throughout the business, underpinned by the strong CX & Insight framework run in partnership with Pearl-Plaza. The programme reaches all parts of the business through online learning, customer talks, animated games and cartoons, podcasts, skills workshops, topic masterclasses, and more. 

In their Forrester CX EMEA presentation, Aegon explained how their program has resulted in deeper customer understanding and colleague empowerment, which translates into measurably better outcomes for the customer and a healthier business. Keep reading for the top takeaways: 

3 Key Takeaways From the Presentation: 

Takeaway #1: Be BOLD

Set out to create a customer-obsessed culture, and get there! Aegon has taken the Connecting with Customers (CwC) roadshow to all locations and functions in the business. It is a very high profile campaign, an ‘all or nothing’ approach because the business knows the customer must come first. 

The Board Directors have shown their support and CwC manifests in many different forms from a regular podcast to learning and development resources, an audio library of customer calls and customer feedback videos. 

Making VoC a part of the entire business might seem like a bold move, but the effort is worth it. As a CX leader, you need to ensure the whole business is aware that every decision affects the customers’ experience.

Takeaway #2: Break Down Silos

Everybody has a role in serving the customer so be inclusive! Recently, a customer was invited into the Aegon offices where he met all those who had helped him on his retirement journey, both back office and customer facing. This event really brought it home how everyone at Aegon has a unifying purpose, to connect with customers. 

Creating a customer focused culture throughout the entire organisation breaks down barriers and allows for better communication and understanding, and as a result, better customer outcomes.

Takeaway #3: Have Fun

Customers can tell when employees enjoy their role and connect with their purpose. Aegon threw a CwC 2nd birthday party recently with music, discussions, and games. And for the New Year’s quiz, Jenny Ryan from ITV’s “The Chase” was the guest of honour! Connecting EX and CX is massively important and by understanding that employee experience can have a positive impact on customer experience is key to creating a customer centric culture. 

One final point that stands out from successes such as Aegon’s is how vital it is to have an inspirational CX leader with the charisma, vision and drive to elevate customer centricity to new levels. In Iain O’Connor, Head of Customer Experience & Insight, Aegon has one of the best, along with other great CX leaders such as Claire Tidey, CwC Programme Manager.

Want to hear from Iain as he speaks about understanding customers’ expectations? Check out this video!