Expert Insights:
Improve the customer journey by offering customized solutions locally

If the customer journey is about delivering a high-quality experience, it must be continuously improved and reinvented. The goal is to meet customer expectations every time, which are always diverse and vary from one location to another.
The priority mission of Enrique Lamarca, Global Head of Customer Journeys at AXA Partners, is to ensure that the company delivers the most personalised, efficient and effective customer experience in every country.
Sergey Manero Franco, Quality & Customer Experience Manager, is responsible for customer journey quality at AXA Partners Spain.
They both stress the importance of constant adaptation to meet local characteristics and needs as the basis for providing optimal customer support.

Enrique Lamarca: The first and most important thing to say is that the customer is always our central focus for everything we do. That mindset is shared by all our teams and underpins all our projects.

In practical terms, we follow a 3-stage process:

• The customer journey for each AXA Partners service is co-built with our operations, transformation, product owner and IT experts. This experience is designed around a precise use case that is usually specific to a country and/or business sector.
• Once designed, we test the customer journey, and this test phase is very much a data-driven process. It is underpinned by the expertise of our customer journey specialists, who work collaboratively with our expert agents who interact directly with customers. This way, the process can then be validated or modified.
• Once a live test is launched, it is shared with our teams in several countries so that it can be transferred and translated for the local practices, technologies and operations in other national markets. 

In all cases, we offer a modular customer pathway indicating which modules can be implemented in which countries. That way, we allow for certain parts of the process to be adapted to local customers’ needs. The great strength of AXA Partners is that it is able to rely on a network of more than 200 local customer experience experts. Every day their work is focused on improving the user experience, reducing stress and resolving claims. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) used to measure customer satisfaction is a key indicator, but tests are conducted throughout the process. At every step of the journey, we collect and analyse customer feedback to identify areas for local or global improvement.

Sergey Manero Franco: In Spain, we also see collaborative work as essential to meet the ONE AXA commitment, which is one of our Group's four core values: “Being together and being different makes us better”. The central teams must address the specific expectations and features of each country, so our role is to flag up the local customer needs and optimise system deployment by adapting it to Spanish customers.

The design of every solution is conceived on the principal understanding that it must be adaptable to local needs. It benefits everyone, because meeting a demand or need that previously went unidentified may be very useful in another region. This level of detail facilitates continual improvement of the services we offer.

EL: Recently, we have produced a series of infographics to provide our customers with a clear visual guide to each step of their health assistance, travel insurance, car breakdown or claims journey. They’re specifically designed to help customers understand and follow the progress of their claim settlement with peace of mind. These infographics are now in place in 16 countries, having been translated into the local language and adapted to local conditions.  When a customer contacts us, they are directed to one of our agents, who opens an assistance file for them. Opening the file then triggers the forwarding of the relevant infographic to that customer.

Again with adaptation in mind, in China, we’ve integrated a travel assistance solution into the WeChat app as part of adapting to local preferences. Our strategy is all about focusing on the preferences and practices specific to customers in particular locations,

SMF: Our local Spanish teams regularly use customer feedback to adapt some of our solutions. So now, when customer’s car breaks down in Spain, they can opt to have the car repatriated before repair, so that their car is closer to their home.

The main digital tools we use in Spain are also applied globally by AXA Partners, including the Home Manager solution that allows customers to take photos of the problem and upload them directly for a faster analysis of their claim. The Home Manager service has now been adapted and tailored to the needs of the Spanish market by offering damage repair, rather than reimbursement. So the solution has evolved to enable coordination and supervision of all the work involved. Meeting customer expectations around repair lead times is crucial, so we’ve also added a claim overview feature to keep them clearly and fully informed at all times.

 More broadly, we are constantly working alongside the central teams to come up with new ways of optimising the experience of Spanish customers by using these tools and adapting certain modules.

EL: Paying close attention to customer opinion is crucial. So we use customer satisfaction surveys, data analyses and feedback to develop a detailed understanding of their needs. Our local teams also maintain close relationships with our Business Partners, and conduct annual surveys that yield very useful information. There’s a strong culture of co-construction throughout AXA Partners, and that culture is key to effective collaborations that benefit customers.

It's also crucial to keep up to date with the latest local customer experience trends and best practices. Our local support managers, Customer Experience and User Experience experts all play key roles in this process.

SMF: In Spain, we conducted a 3-month test to evaluate alternative ways of providing customers information about when their breakdown assistance service would arrive. The Test & Learn methodology helps us to check whether a chosen solution is really the right ones for local conditions, given the subtle differences that can exist between regions. It makes us more adaptable, and the impact analysis of initiatives is measured with scientific accuracy. It also helps to boost customer satisfaction.

EL: It’s essential that we adapt to suit the changing behaviours of customers. Digital access to services is becoming the norm in many sectors, and we need to keep pace with that trend and deliver a smooth user experience using efficient processes. Maintaining a smart approach to digitalisation will be crucial. Technology must meet the needs of customers without leaving anyone behind.

In practice, this means using effective tools in parallel with skilled agents who can dedicate their time and attention required to resolve the most complex or sensitive issues. Each customer may have different expectations, but the majority want to have seamless access to our services, more real-time information and professional support from customer agents when it matters.