Crafting Customer Experiences

An interview with Luzanne Chong, Head of Customer Experience, Prudential Singapore

Q: Why is delivering great customer experiences so important for Prudential?

Customer centricity is an integral part of our culture at Prudential. By having our customers’ best interests at heart, we believe they will feel taken care of and choose us as their preferred insurer. This is why delivering great customer experiences is so important though not always easy.

Customer’s expectations are constantly changing due to the large number of brands they interact with today. To meet and exceed customers’ expectations requires constant effort, investment and empathy.

At Prudential, deriving customer insights and tracking market trends is an important business enabler, as they inform how we design our products and services. In addition, we also tap on the thousands of customers and financial consultants on our PRU for You online community to provide us with feedback on new initiatives we plan to launch.

Q: Do you have any noteworthy examples or incidents you can share to illustrate how you overcame obstacles and delivered a great customer experience?

In 2020, when the pandemic started, I had just joined Prudential. There was a lot of ambiguity in the external environment; people were worrying about jobs and businesses were worried about staying in business.

Prudential understood this was the time customers needed us most and we committed to a S$1.5m relief package for SMEs and individuals, as part of our PRUCare initiative. Under this initiative, all our customers and their families are covered for free and would receive a payout in the event they contracted COVID-19 or are placed on quarantine.

It wasn't easy for us to make such a bold commitment to stand by our customers, at a time when most businesses were tightening their wallets, but we did so because we believed this was the right thing to do for our customers.

Being tasked to implement this particular PRUCare initiative, I met obstacles as a new joiner, learning how to set up the legalities, the communications and a brand-new claims process within a very short span of time. I was very fortunate to receive strong support from many of my colleagues who shared the same empathy and care for our community.

We gave out a total of S$3.5 million as the pandemic pursued, with the initiative helping more than 3000 individuals and families who were affected by the pandemic. It was heartening to know the payout helped our customers to cover some of their income losses.

Q: What are some initiatives you have piloted to instill a Customer Centric mindset?

In 2021, we launched a Customer Experience Enablement (CXE) programme, focusing on how we can enable every employee in Prudential to deliver better experiences.

Our initiatives focus on helping our colleagues build customer centric skill sets, with learning modules in experience design (UX/UI), customer insights, journey mapping and communicating with empathy. Collaboration is also an important ingredient to delivering better experiences, therefore, we created a CX Community and a Hack-an-Experience (HaX) competition. These initiatives provide a platform for colleagues from different teams to come together and solve for customer needs.?

Q: Where do you see Prudential in five years’ time in terms of customer experience?

Prudential will continue to prioritise our customers’ needs and experience in years to come. The way we deliver better experiences will increasingly be done through the use of good design thinking and new technologies in the market. Therefore, equipping our colleagues with an innovative mindset as well as future skills will ensure we continue to be a market leader in customer experience.

Q: What has given you the most satisfaction in your role as Head of Customer Experience?

People and Results. In 2020, Prudential emerged as the #1 insurer in the nation-wide Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) Survey, from 4th place the year before. We defended our #1 position in 2021 as well. I see this result as customers' recognition of our hard work. Our customer centric culture is a dream for any customer experience professional, and I’m very privileged to be working with such an amazing team.?

Q: Is there a quote/mantra that you live by?

Whenever I’m faced with a daunting task, I would tell myself that

“Nothing is impossible to achieve. It’s just a matter of having the right people, resources and timing.”

Our way of life today which seems “normal” to us, would have seem impossible to achieve 50 years ago. This means that what we consider impossible today, may not be impossible in the future. The key is to keep pushing for progress.

Our vision at Prudential is to help everyone get the most out of life and we will certainly not stop working towards #ServingCustomersBetter.