The Road to a Better Customer Experience

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s our industry becomes more fiercely competitive, it’s a pivotal time to assess if your customer is the focal point of your business. While product offering and price are still key, customer experience is the new battleground and the significant differentiator against your competitors.

For an intermediary led business in asset finance, there are not one but two customer groups to focus on, the introducer and their client.  Therefore, to develop a better customer experience, we must understand why and how both groups interact with us, a process known as mapping the customer journey. The goal of mapping is to remove the journey’s obstacles, making the process more efficient and the experience seamless.

At Haydock, the journey mapping process brought our internal teams together in a highly collaborative exercise. To create a map that reflects a customer’s journey, we asked the team to step outside of their usual roles to encourage them to think like our introducers and end-users. With a strong focus on delivering optimal customer experiences and evaluating the touchpoints, this exercise will avoid moving towards a process mapping evaluation, which focuses internally on operational efficiency.

Mapping the customer journey is also not complete with feedback from the customer. We commissioned a research company to conduct over thirty in-depth interviews with our introducer network. The feedback gathered gave us insight into where the customer journey needed to be optimized and identified early wins that would set the tone for further transformation.

When we looked deeper into our processes and procedures, we identified that to achieve a greater customer centricity, we needed to improve the training provided and empower our teams to work more freely.  We found that when the team were empowered, they were more likely to make real time decisions in favour of the customer and go above and beyond to deliver a great customer experience.

When we are approached by an intermediary, to potentially fund a HGV for his SME client, it is critical that we start the process immediately. This is so that a decision can be made quickly and the funds transferred within 24 hours.  Delays in processing a deal can have huge implications on the SME, including loss of revenue, reduced profits and added pressure on contract fulfillment.  Through training and empowerment, team members understand the impact of not taking ownership and feel encouraged to go the extra mile for both the intermediary and the SME.  

As funders, we need to take the time to listen to our intermediaries and move away from the one-size-fits-all approach.  

An intermediary can have a panel of 20 plus funders, so our processes need to adapt and be more flexible. If we are the only funder to request a certain piece of information for every transaction, then we must review our process.  

Challenging the process, irrelevant of role level, should always be encouraged by the leadership team.  Asking employees to share insight on how a process can be improved, encourages action without seeking permission, so ambition is never stifled and progression is always encouraged.  

A focus on customer experience cannot be successfully sustained if customer-centricity is not embedded into the culture. Improving customer touch points is a vital part of customer experience but it is employee behavior that is the real driver.

At Haydock, we had to create a culture of change and empowerment. This started with the leadership team as without their support, customer centric cultures would be short-lived.  Their role is to motivate the team and encourage their reports to make decisions without fear or reprisal. It is about having the courage to make decisions in the reporting chain, specifically at the lower levels, that is the predominant factor in this. However, telling a team member that they have responsibility one day, that will be reviewed tomorrow, just doesn’t work. You want your team to know that it is okay to try something and fail, if the right reasoning has supported it.

To help change employee behavior you also need a team of advocates that sit at various levels within the organisation. Advocates help to lead the transformation by encouraging others to take ownership.   At Haydock, we have recruited 34 new people to our business in H1 of 2022. This has been great for increasing the resource level but can be challenging in terms of maintaining the momentum of our transformation. This is where employee training and personal development plays a critical part, helping to identify that you have the right team in place to deliver the consistent, responsive service you rely on.