Adapting in uncertain times: changing CX in the wake of Covid-19

CX Network, one of the global leaders in premium content for customer experience professionals, recently announced the winners of the 2021 CX Elite Awards at InMoment’s Experience Forum.

The CX Elite Awards 2021 is a celebration of outstanding CX achievements over the past year.

In this exclusive interview, CX Network talks with Kerry Matheson, research manager at Virgin Money in reaction to the award win.

CX Network: As we all know, the pandemic has fundamentally changed customer experience. What would you say was the biggest challenge you faced in adapting to the pandemic?

Kerry Matheson: From an insights perspective, our biggest challenge was how to react quickly to feedback from our customers and external insight from respected CX experts in the first few weeks of the pandemic. 

Front line colleagues wanted to help but many were at home and our stores were operating at reduced hours. We launched our solution, Money on your Mind, within two weeks of the first lockdown thanks to huge efforts from our internal teams and our partner InMoment.

The Money on Your Mind initiative was launched in response to feedback showing consumers were becoming increasingly worried about money. As the pandemic began to take its toll on the UK, we were able to identify the main themes of customer concerns using InMoment’s Explore platform. We developed YouTube videos on the most common topics and equipped frontline colleagues with the information they needed to respond to new queries. The campaign generated over three million views within the first two weeks and has become a central part of our servicing proposition with over 10,000 queries submitted.

CX: The pandemic has forced many, if not all, companies to quickly adapt to survive. What do you think put Virgin Money in a better place than others to adapt?

KM: I am not sure if we are better placed, however we had two core elements in our favor that helped us react quickly; our innovative attitude and our customer focus especially our frontline Red Team colleagues. 

Virgin Money is on a mission to challenge the status quo in banking by doing things differently and making our customers happier about money. We have future-thinking dynamic colleagues that are always looking for creative solutions to challenges and ways to bring our purpose to life. 

Our business strategy is aimed at keeping customers at the heart of the organization, listening to customers and quickly actioning insight is within our DNA. We could see the need from our customers in the very early days of the pandemic and worked together in an agile way to develop our solution.

CX: Are there any aspects of your pandemic adaptation that you will continue to implement going forward even as the world opens up again?

KM: Money On Your Mind was born from the crisis of the pandemic, but it is here to stay and has become part of our service offering. 

It fits with our purpose of making our customers happier about money, it allows us to react quickly to customer enquiries and have positive emotive conversations.

CX: As part of your adaptation process, you relied on looking at customer data and feedback. Poor data hygiene and data siloes can cause real issues when collecting and analyzing customer data, how did you avoid these issues during this crucial time?

KM: We are confident in the robustness of our VOC real-time feedback program and our response rates increased when the pandemic took hold. 

We also use other listening posts such as complaints analysis, call reasons and external sources to ensure we have well informed view of the environment. 

The InMoment platform democratizes insight and avoids data siloes, over 800 colleagues across the organization have access to the results allowing real time understanding and action.

Read more about the CX Elite Awards at InMoment's Experience Forum here.