Customer Obsessed. Berridge Eric

Berkshire Hathaway's response to travel difficulties. Their story offers a compelling example of how to understand and engage with customers.

      Berkshire Hathaway Story

      Background

      Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection (BHTP) is a division of Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance, which provides commercial property, casualty, healthcare liability, and professional insurance for customers across the United States. BHTP has reinvented travel insurance for today's mobile consumer and the evolving airline industry with AirCare™, travel insurance designed specifically for airline flights that proactively monitors and pays claims when travel mishaps arise.

      The Problem

      While the insurance industry handles highly personal information, it has been slow to adopt personalized, customer-focused technology solutions. BHTP wanted to design a new, disruptive consumer travel-insurance product, but needed partners to build out a system that leveraged flight data, processed claims, and provided the customer-engagement platform. What BHTP was looking for was a one-stop-shop travel-insurance app that would facilitate communication between the service agent and the customer across all channels. To accomplish this BHTP engaged Bluewolf to help build the platform needed to launch AirCare.

      The Solution

      Bluewolf helped BHTP develop the back-end systems to build out their one-of-a-kind AirCare insurance. The result was an end-to-end policy administration system on the Salesforce1 platform. We integrated BHTP's policy data into Salesforce, which was then integrated with a quoting tool for generating policy quotes, Drawloop for document creation and automation, Amazon S3 for document storage, and a payment processor that connected to BHTP's backend general ledger. The app became a real-time system of record, allowing information to flow continuously from policy conception through claim administration.

      Bluewolf focused on building an insurance app that also acted as a cloud-based personal concierge service, with SMS and social media integrated into more traditional channels, like e-mail and phone. This allows BHTP to provide travelers with mobile updates and communications through various social channels. The integration paired AirCare with Salesforce Marketing Cloud as well as the Salesforce Service Console, and implemented a robust agent interface that allowed agents to interact with customers through their channel of choice.

      The Results

      Bluewolf helped BHTP build and launch AirCare in just six weeks. BHTP assists AirCare customers with travel itinerary repairs, helps locate lost luggage quickly, monitors flight status in real-time, and can even help travelers get access to airport club lounges – all via text, e-mail, web chat, and even Twitter. The platform serves a new generation of travelers and gives them simpler, smarter coverage that can be managed end-to-end on a mobile device. Its proactive claim processing pays claims in seconds using a myriad of electronic payment platforms, with funds transferred directly to the traveler's bank account.

      By providing the right information at the right time, BHTP can manage and report on the entire customer journey. Today, BHTP uses this system to process all its claims across multiple product lines, giving the company the power to personalize the customer experience and develop new ways to service travelers.

      I consider this kind of customer obsession and engagement the essential organizing principle of twenty-first-century enterprise success. It is the only viable response to the emergence of a customer-centric world that calls for implementing strategies that fall somewhere between a wrecking ball that demolishes all you have been doing and lip service where you say the right things but make no changes that reflect what you just said. Although the wrecking ball produces heroic customer-focused actions here and there, it is not enough. A better strategy is to embark on a steady process to change the corporate mind-set by incorporating a modest customer focus in almost everything you do, at every stage of customer interaction. Over time, this approach can embed a customer focus throughout the organization gradually and nondisruptively. Surprisingly, it is these subtle changes that become the real game changers as they are replicated throughout the DNA of the organization. Approached in this way, becoming customer focused and even customer obsessed is not difficult. Any organization could do it. Notice I said they could do it. Most won't. Again, since you're reading this book, you actually might.

      So, what are the real and lasting game changers? Here's a short list that will come up in more detail in subsequent chapters:

      • Social media – how well you know your customers and how fast you act on that insight can be a big game changer, and keeping that information updated in real time is essential. That means keep updating what you know every hour of every day.

      • Collaboration among staff, partners and associates, and customers is now essential; the closer and deeper the collaboration the better.

      • Culture takes on increasingly greater importance; you have to cultivate a customer-obsessed environment involving everyone, all the time.

      • Finding, nurturing, motivating, and keeping good talent is key to winning. Look for people with an aptitude for customer service.

      • Data is everything when it comes to engaging and satisfying customers. It's the best way to learn about the customer and keep learning throughout the (hopefully very long) relationship.

      • Insightful, integrated data analytics in absolute real time; without real-time analytics, data quickly becomes worthless.

      Ultimately, you want to establish a strategic framework and foundation that is obsessed with the customer and can withstand the pressures of a business world constantly in flux. This isn't easy. It requires you to shift your focus from the intangible goals that sound so good in sound bites, to measuring your success against business outcomes. You have to speak differently with the customer, hire different people and manage them differently, work with providers and partners in new ways, leverage your resources, and evaluate and deploy technology unlike how you have before. That's what this book will show you. Get ready for an exciting ride.

       2

      PEOPLE DRIVE CHANGE, TECHNOLOGY ENABLES

      I am a firm believer that people, not technology, are the driving force behind a company's success. Don't believe me? Let's take a look at one of the most people-focused organizations operating today: Change.org. Their entire purpose is to enable collective action to drive positive change; people connecting with other people, aided by technology. Completely user driven, their online petition platform enables people all over the world to create campaigns to accomplish incredible things: overturning the ban on gay Boy Scouts, defeating Thailand's blanket amnesty bill, saving Meriam Yehya Ibrahim Ishag in Sudan from execution on apostasy charges, and the list goes on. Over 100 million people have used Change.org since it launched in 2007, and it isn't because of the technology supporting it.6 The company tapped into an incredibly powerful force to help make a difference in the world: people.

      Now, I know that not every company can operate like Change.org, but there are a ton of other examples where companies put people, and their experiences first. Take a look at companies like USAA and Trader Joe's, two radically different businesses, but with the same goal in mind: serving the customer. While they use technology to improve the customer experience, they never allow new technology to dictate or alter that focus. That's what I mean when I say companies need to prioritize people over technology. Every company's success is dependent upon people, whether they're customers, partners, or employees. Getting in that mind-set is essential to providing a better experience across every aspect of your business.

      Technology Game Changers

      Not every advance in technology, no matter how innovative, is a game changer. Similarly, technology itself is often not the answer. Sometimes even the seemingly best technology doesn't deliver. Remember Google Glass, the wearable computer and video recorder? The early adopters who shelled out big bucks were the stars of the party among the digital cognoscenti. However, the press attention eventually died down, and today Google Glass is an anachronism before its time. Google's product development team is already working on a