Belron: A loyalty leader you've probably never heard of (but you might be a customer!)
Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 5:09AM 
Gary Lubner, CEO of Belron, gave a keynote address at the Net Promoter Conference this morning. He led off by saying that "I see my primary role as CEO as getting everyone in our organization to focus on customer service, putting the customer at the heart of everything we do." Belron operates under several brands, including Carglass, Safelight, Lebeau, O'Brien and Apple Auto Glass. They have a business that spans 32 countries on five continents.
About two years ago, Belron pulled their efforts together into a Customer Delight Acceleration Program (CDAT). It consists of four elements: NPS, Smile, Global Recognition, and Service Recovery.
The company adopted NPS globally in 2008 after acquiring a US operation, Safelight, that had been using it for a couple of years. Lubner said that
NPS offers us five things:
- Consistency - we can measure across all our businesses around the world in teh same way
- Simplicity - everyone can understand it
- Voice of customer - verbatims give us direct access to what the customers are really saying
- Deep insight - we now have two million pieces of data which we can use to improve our business
- Accuracy - it really does reflect the thing we most want to know
Belron uses GfK to place outbound phone calls to collect their Net Promoter data. They not only send the survey responses directly back to the local service teams, but they also send back audio recordings of the interviews so the technicians and office leaders can hear the customers in their own voices and words. Local leaders post their scores and feedback quotes on the walls of their offices. Individual technicians can tell you the most recent feedback they've gotten, what it means, and what they, individually are working on to improve. Lubner described the most important benefit of the verbatim feedback from their NPS approach as providing richer feedback to individuals.
Seeing a string of 9s and 10s is nothing like hearing the customer describe why they are so thrilled in their own words and their own voice. Similarly, getting a low score can be demoralizing if that's all it is. But getting the rich feedback directly from the customer allows the technician to learn what they need to do to improve.
Technicians and customer service agents feel they get specific feedback on individual jobs. "For the first time ever, I have the information I need as a technician to know exactly how the customer feels about me and the job I've done," says one field technician in Manchester, UK. The office supervisor loves being able to recognize employees for successful customer interactions, not just with the score, but also with detail about what they did well so he can reinforce those behaviors.
Bain's NPS emoticon (to download these, you must register on this site)The Smile program is meant to "take people who are used to doing a very technical job and turn them into people much more focused on serving our customer." It's a two hour facilitated program focused on emotional engagement. The purpose is to try to get them to take the customer's point of view. The program is built around three elements, which they call "ABC":
- Attitude
- Be attentive
- Create an unforgettable experience
The idea is to take these technicians out of their element and get them thinking about the human side of the service experience.
Belron's Global Recognition program provides an exceptional customer service award. Many companies do something similar, but Belron tries to make this their top prize in the whole company. Lubner has personally committed to handing over the prize every year. He travels to the local markets to recognize these employees, rather then having them gather at headquarters. This makes the award more impactful in the local markets. Rather than making it convenient for the leadership team, the leadership team brings the award out into the field for maximum local impact.
They also run a "best of Belron" competition to find the "best windscreen fitter in the world." This is meant to elevate the technicians who spend their careers traipsing around the countryside and cities replacing windscreens, often late at night or in the rain or snow, under crummy conditions. It's a huge fanfare, with a tournament set-up in which the technicians race each other in front of a crowd and cameras to replace windscreens with great precision and speed. The winner gets a year's salary. All the winners have moved up the organization, engaging in training, dealing with the most difficult customers, etc. These are front line employees who have often never really traveled, and who rarely have had the experience of being celebrated as winners.
Service Recovery at Belron is really important. Safelight also provided the model for the service recovery program at Belron. They developed their service recovery program after learning just how low their NPS was, and digging into how service recovery was handled for customers who had issues or problems. They learned that service recovery was treated as a cost, there was no process for doing it, no one had any accountability for executing service recovery, and there was a basic assumption that "the customer is always wrong." When they started, the NPS of people who had complained was 19%.
The essence of their new approach was built on trusting customers and empowering employees to handle their issues. This was achieved, in part by creating clear processes for follow up and resolution with customers who have a complaint. Now, customers who complain have an NPS of 67%, up by 48% over three years.
Belron has achieved impressive results. They have not only improved their Net Promoter Scores, but have used this to grow their business. By demonstrating to the insurance companies that customers who have a successful glass replacement experience are 10% more likely to renew their auto insurance policy with their current carrier, they have become the preferred glass replacement option for more carriers. Lubner's an impressive leader, and Belron is making great progress.
Reader Comments (1)
Great job for Belron. Having and maintaining good relationship with your customer is the best way to be successful in business.