Since 2019, CEOs across the United States have prioritized customer experience as a key strategic objective. The priority was informed by advancements in technology, evolving industry pressures, and emerging customer needs and preferences. And when 2020 introduced the pandemic, many objectives were fast-tracked due to heightened need for digital experiences. 

Nationwide was prepared for change because proactive work laid the foundation for a customer experience transformation. Things like the experience principles were researched and identified in advance of 2020 so we were ready. And the most important piece was a revised mission and vision that squarely placed focus on customers and the ways in which we protect them.  

Nationwide’s vision is an inspiring statement that illustrates our future reality. It states, “To become the most trusted, most caring and most customer-focused protection company.” To achieve this vision, it would mean that we’ve influenced our customers and the general public to perceive us as having these qualities. It’s also a dynamic vision because the goal illustrates the emotions we’d like to evoke (read more about the importance of emotion here). This shift would require us to enhance how we’re structured, what we work on, how we collaborate, identify opportunities, design solutions and measure success. That’s because we’d do all these things with the customer as a top priority. To achieve this, all associates would successfully identify and implement new ways to embed the customer in everything they do.  

We’re already on our way! It’s easy to find many examples in our culture that demonstrate how we care about the customer. But, becoming customer focused is a notable shift. It requires successive steps, taken over time, that get us on step closer to our vision. In Forrester’s best practices, they outline key competencies that need advanced so we can successfully realize Nationwide’s vision: 

Research: Understand our customers in depth and communicate those insights to associates and partners 

Prioritization: Focus on what’s most important for our customers’ experience and our business’ success 

Design: Define and refine experiences based on our vision and research-based customer understanding 

Enablement: Provide associates and partners with the resources they need to deliver the right experiences 

Measurement: Quantify the quality of experiences and their link to our organization’s overall metrics 

Culture: Create a system of shared values and behaviors that focus associates on delivering great customer experiences 

We’ve made a great deal of progress across these competencies with work like Mosaic (which communicates insights to associates), the experience principles (which help us prioritize, design and measure experiences), and journey mapping (which helps us enhance customer experiences). With more work, we’ll be well on our way to becoming the most customer-focused protection company! To do so, we’ll need to answer sample questions like these with customer-centric solutions: 

Research: How might we enhance our knowledge of our customers so we can identify opportunities to deliver effortless, personal and reassuring experiences? 

Prioritization: How might we select priorities that are most important to our customers’ experience? 

Design: How might we develop solutions that result in customers seeing us as the most trusted and most caring? 

Enablement: How might we galvanize efforts so we’re collaboratively working on customer experiences together? 

Measurement: How might we quantify when we’ve achieved becoming the most trusted, most caring, and most customer-focused protection company? 

Culture: How might we rally associates around ideal customer experiences and feeling connected to our customers’ success? 

Consider how your efforts contribute to our overall path to realize Nationwide’ vision. It’s an inspiring way to feel connected to our customers while supporting our business’ success. Together, we got this!