[MUSIC] I'm here with Henk Viljoen, the group Head of Internal Communications at Old Mutual, and we're standing in front of, I can't even pronounce the name of the tree, I'm sure you will. But it really pulls everything together in a visual format. What does this all mean and how important was it to pull everything together in this kind of a format? >> Yeah if we think about our colleagues out there they've all got big jobs they need to focus on. And along come the strategy department, the HR department, the marketing department. And have all these different frameworks, and one of the best ways we actually remember things are through stories. And so what we've used, we've actually used the analogy of a baobab tree, a tree that lives for sometimes up to a 1,500 years, which seems to provide shelter for everything around it, it's food. It stays around for generations. And we sort of compared our company to a baobab tree. We are about 170 years old, so not quite 1,500 years. And we sort of spoke about the analogy of actually, above the ground, what people see out there is what the external world sees of us. And that's our brand promise, it's our vision, it's the customer experience we are trying to deliver. And because we are a service brand below the ground, we have a very strong culture that actually supports that. So what we're saying is our brand, our vision is all kind of rooted in our culture. And our culture you need to be very specific. In financial services there's a whole plethora of grey brands out there which all look the same. So we have to be really specific, just as we had to be with our brand, in terms of what we actually stand for in the eyes of our customers. We also had to explain to our employees what we actually stand for internally, how we work together. So we had the usual kind of corporate values around accountability, respect and those kind of things, but they're quite bland. So we came up with Act Now which is a really a very specific behavioral interpretation of values that we actually hold dear in the organization, so we call those the sort of roots of the baobab tree. Around the framework here we've also put down what we do which is save expenses in investments and what does that. But the difference in terms of how we are different it's kind of how we execute on those because of our brand values. Above what we do is our customer experience and all of this is kind of, sort of we are the true north of our business. Set to our vision which is about becoming our customer's most trusted partner. >> So in the center, the why we exist, is really about the purpose of the organization. And what's interesting to see here, if you think the roots, the nutrients are the behaviors, and the culture, I guess the way it's visualized, is the collections of those behaviors. Would that be fair to say? >> Absolutely yes. So this is really about our DNA, it is not something we go out on ad campaigns and say we now have positive futures. It is really kind of a way of being. Our values and our behaviors is really kind of a foundation to actually help anchor this essence of what we're about as an organization in the mind of our employees. >> Now some of these are a bit touchy feeling, and knowing the financial services world pretty well, you've got some pretty hard nosed financial experts, how do they react to this? And how would you deal with their reactions? >> Well, one of the first things we did when we actually launched the brand promise, is we decided to actually start right at the top, with our leaders. And there's nothing more sort of souling than to actually get real customer feedback, okay, we are very good at coming up with lots of financial measures, and things like that. We can do mainline cash flows, we can do asset management, until the cows come home. So, we actually sort of got these guys in front of customers, admittedly for the very, very first time. We use actors and we test some of these things with them. And it was quite an experience for these guys to actually hear what these guys had to say, although they were actors. The second time around we actually used our own colleagues, just give them a bit of a flavor for what customers think of us. And the third time we actually used real customers. And it's quite interesting how even hard nosed financial services people in front of customers, how these home truths come home to them, if you like. Where they actually realize the importance of actually having these measures, actually having a very specific brand and a very specific culture to actually support that brand. >> Probably both the successes, and when you make a positive difference in lives, and where you have room to improve your services. >> Correct. >> So one of the things we see here is the customer experience. And how does an experience differ from products and services, and does one design an experience? Well there's a lot of work obviously usually it's a very big organization. And the different kind of customers kind of experiences that you have out there could be quite different and they're very defined by the technology that we have, the environments that people find themselves in. We use our kind of whole concept of easy value and peace of mind as a sort of a true north almost, if you like, to help people go in a direction. So when they are interacting with customers, at least they have some sort of idea of what it is that they actually have to do. That framework does give people quite a bit of room for interpretation, so it's not something that gets pushed down at them. Within customer service teams and customer service groups, within our sales teams, they're actually able to sort of interpret that for them. The framework is flexible enough and it rolls off the tongue quite easily for them to actually make. So we talk about EVP which could also stand for value proposition, but we actually mean easy value and peace of mind. So people actually remember that, and that's actually gotten quite good traction in the business. >> So Henk, after doing all this work, reflecting on it, how does your job change, how has your role changed? What's your behavioral change as part of this process? >> Well to me it was really about customer viewpoint. One might argue that you're not actually customer-facing. But actually when you're hearing what customers have to say, on things like how they interact with our Web, with our Internet, how they interact with our call centers. You realize that no matter what your role, that line of sight in terms of how you can help colleagues deliver a better customer experience is actually quite profound. >> Henk looking at the top being, once he's on the outside and your people on the inside, they have to live and breathe the brand and advocate it to the outside world. How does that happen, practically speaking? Or how can you make it happen better? >> So, we're in quite a difficult position. We don't sell sexy iPhones which people can touch and which they can see. We're essentially a service brand. And, so the best thing that we could possibly do, is to actually turn our own staff into customers. So they can A, experience the benefits of our products, but also experience the service of our products and services. So in many of our different businesses, what the guys have done, is they've actually made our products and services available at great rates to our employees so they could also experience what it's like, okay? The second thing which we've done is we've actually started to track the extent to which our staff actually recommend our products and services. Think of it as an internal net promoter score, and the good news is that since we've started tracking this, our internal net promoter score has actually gone up. So I think it's a combination of our telling the story to people, what we actually stand for, then actually experiencing our products services that's actually made them stronger advocates of the products and services that we sell. >> So the real power of the customer is to bring them inside. >> Precisely, yes. >> And to basically merge your employee and your customers into one. >> There should be no difference in terms of the customer focus, in terms of external customer and internal customer. Our employees are customers too. If we don't treat them like customers, how can we expect them to sell our customers and be advocates of our customers and our brand. >> Thank you for sharing your story Henk. >> Pleasure. [MUSIC]
