CX Superheroes podcast - Series 15 Episode 3 - Building a CX Culture from the inside out - Paula Brazier

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Customer Experience Superheroes Podcast Series. My name is Christopher Brooks, and I am your host on this adventure into the world of customer experience, where we meet some inspiring characters along the way. Our ambition is to bring you the latest thought leadership, some disruptors, as well as showcasing incredible talent and individuals who are really demonstrating the value of customer centricity in their organizations. And that's where we're going to go today.

We're going to meet Paula Brazier, who is the client experience director for Foster's Denova, and she focused in specifically on the employee benefits programs to corporates. We caught up with Paula to find out just what it is, what it takes to actually provide customer experience to corporations when you're dealing with large B2B organizations, lawyers, other big practices, and understand how you embed culture of customer centricity in your organization so that it's delivered authentically through your business and all the endeavors they have with their clients.

It was a real treat to catch up with Paula. I discovered very quickly that we actually had worked together more than 30 years ago. So it was great to hear how she'd progressed her career and what sterling job she's doing currently. That's enough from me.

Let's go over, let's meet Paula and hear just why I got so excited about this particular interview. So we're here today with Paula Brazier. So Paula, lovely to see you. Lovely to meet you too.

And I will say to lovely to see you again, because you and I have discovered that we may have been in the same canteen, we could have been at the same Christmas party, we could have been at the same town hall, because we actually worked in the same, rather not small but not massive office, kind of nine on 30 years ago. I know I can't believe it. It's such a small world, but very interesting to go down memory lane. Yeah, so we've done all that.

So for the benefit of the listeners, you won't have to go through 20 minutes of Paula and I recalling people we do or don't remember, but they were happy times, and we both kind of concluded they've shaped who we are today. So we're very pleased for them. But we're gonna take a little bit of a step back before we get into the key topic. Obviously, I mean, Paula, you work for Foster Denovo, they're very well known for employee benefits programs or BM programs and the like, but you've been with them for a long time.

Give take us back there. Where did it start? I mean, were you part of the founding team? How did it originate?

Because it's been going for 20 plus years now, would that be right? 20 years a year in our yeah. So just take a few steps back and tell us your journey from there to your current role as head of customer experience. Okay, so so actually started as uh October 2000 with a small team.

We were actually second sight, which is part the corporate part of Foster De Novo. And we came from previous companies, so we'd all work together before. Just really just offering the best experience mainly on pensions. So really what we did was we we uh put pensions in for medium comp medium-sized companies, some smaller companies, and just worked with them.

And slowly over the years we built up the proposition. We're very flexible company. Fossil De Novo mainly covers the private wealth side of the business, and Second Site covers the corporate side. So myself focused on the corporate side, and just through the services that we offered and the feedback that we had and the recommendations, we built up a client base which now we've got quite a few hundred clients that we work with, and they just got bigger and better.

Some industries are a little incestuous where you know they start working with someone and therefore our name gets out, and that that that happened. So we grew the business bigger and bigger, and now there's about 250 of us just in the second site part of the business, just around 500 in the whole business. And it's really just has just grown through word of mouth, recommendation, going out. Obviously, there's marketing, the reputation that we've had and the feedback that we've got has just been phenomenal.

I mean, what's very interesting for me is some businesses probably don't realize because when you started, it kind of wasn't even coined, but obviously you're not the pension provider. No. So therefore, you'll provide the products being provided, you're doing the wrapping around it, the exp the experience, as you say. Yes.

So actually, you're an organization who's become famous because of its excellence in in experience. So you are the role model that many other companies are trying to become. Telecoms companies, they provide, they don't make the phones, they provide the phones, they don't make the land, the lines, they provide the service that and the experience that wraps around it. Well, that's kind of what you do.

You've got the core product, but you've built this experience around it because they're hugely complicated beasts. A corporate pension scheme is is something that I guess it's only many years later you find out, did it work? Because it's not at the time when you're putting it in place. It's only when it's people start drawing down off it.

So between the point of being appointed and actually that kind of employees using that pension, then that experience is critical because that company wants to have confidence that every decision you've made is the right one. I guess you're up to speed with all regulatory changes. As they grow, things are going to change. I mean, are these all realities of what you deal with?

Yeah, absolutely. The most important thing is when you go and meet a client for the first time, once they're appointed, is understanding exactly what they want delivered and listening to the smaller details, even the silly questions that you think you don't need to ask. So that when you actually know, we used to go on site years ago, we would actually go on site and meet with all individuals, do the presentations face to face, but we'd understand that the audience that we had, we were fully immersed in that company to understand the culture.

And so we delivered everything in the right way. So if you had blue-collar workers or people that maybe didn't, English wasn't their first language, how did we deliver that to where you get corporate lawyers and how we deliver to them? So ensuring that we position ourselves and we put the right people in front of them so that we communicate in a way to actually make pensions exciting. Yeah, sure.

People don't think that they are, but we have that ability, and to get people to buy into their future because it is so important that they do that. Yeah. Well, I and I can well well appreciate that. I mean, from my own perspective, I have a collection of pensions every time I work for an organization.

There was a similar kind of setup. And I do recall some of those engagements were like, this is your future you're investing into, and others were it's just a pension plan during tick care. And so there were different providers who made you feel like this was something you had to be a part of, and others felt they were kind of going through a formality. I mean, from your own perspective, as you've built up with the organization, have you created like your own playbook or a framework?

Do you know the things that need to be done? Are there some essentials? Or do you have to treat every client differently? Because as you said, they've got many different individuals, they've got different wants and needs.

How do you approach that kind of every client differently? Yeah, I mean, there are some fundamental, important parts that you have to take. So we have to teach legislation with regards to pensions and for some other benefits. But it's really, it's not what you say, it's how you say it.

So it's immersing your world into the client and how their culture is to understand how to communicate in a way that's going to come across, how would you say, in a way that people will absorb it and actually take it on board? I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Yeah.

So it's the it's the listening ability. It's really listening to the HR team, the finance team, on how their company works, you know, how we deliver it. Because otherwise, you it there they are words, they're the same words at the end of the day. You are telling someone about the amount they're going to pay and what they're going to get back, your default fund, that sort of thing.

They're just information. It's the delivery of the information that makes it so important. Technicals, I was going to ask that about the decision-making unit. So you've mentioned HR, you mentioned finance.

But who is it you're you're dealing with in order to get their confidence that you're the right provider for them? Both of those. So we generally work with HR teams because or the benefits teams, which generally include people within HR. So they're the people we need the relationship with, we're the people we need to get on with.

The finance team are the ones we have to convince that we're worthwhile paying. Because when our regulator took away commissions a few years ago, that we have to pay, we have to charge fees. And obviously, financial advice isn't cheap. But we have to prove that we are worth what they pay for.

And through constant surveying every year with our clients, we can tell that we are worth what we charge because we we have an ongoing relationship survey with all our clients. Obviously, that's a year on and two years on, etc. But it does. We ask them, are we delivering?

Are you getting value for money? And our net promoter scores show us our pensions, net a pensions team net promoter score is plus 80. Yes, it's just fabulous because we can see that from day one where we say, This is what we're going to do for you, this is what you want, and we'll do it. And we can prove that going forwards, we always do that.

Sometimes we don't get it right, but if we don't get it right, we put it right and we do listen. Yeah, I mean, and I think that's that's an honesty that's important, isn't it? That even 20 years later, there's still going to be things that you learn, and you can, you're happy to kind of have that continuous improvement mindset to say, look, we've discovered something new, something wasn't quite as we intended it to be, but actually what we do is address it. Because I would imagine that's something that from a client perspective just breeds confidence that actually they're approachable and if there's an issue, they will address it and they will resolve it rather than now they've got a pension plan in place, we can't get hold of them.

Yeah, and I think sometimes when you get something wrong, you actually get a better relationship than everything going right all the way along because the company and the team can see how much you care if it goes wrong. I have a client that I've worked with for a very long time, many years, who worked in a previous role in a previous company, and we got it very wrong. We tried really hard to get it right just through putting plus it, didn't work. And so eventually they said, you know what, we're going elsewhere.

So I realized that we'd made the mistake. So I said, okay, that's fine. We'll sit with you and we'll go through the process to hand over to the new brokers, to the new people. We don't want any breakdown in communication or anything to be seen by your employees.

So we'll sit with you through the whole handover process and that's fine. During the handover process, I think the client realized what had gone on and how we tried to make things right and we couldn't, but it wasn't our fault. We never put apportioned blame. But through that, at the end of it, the client said, actually, I'm gonna let you keep we let we kept the pension.

Right. She took everything else away from us, we kept the pension. And over the years, she gave us then back the other benefit. She went to another company, straight to us, wanted us to deliver it.

And now, if you met us, you think we were best friends, which is funny because it wasn't it was a managing relationship initially, but it just shows you that sometimes if you just if you're an adult, even at situations where the client is saying, I don't want to deal with you anymore, they can see how much you really care about what you do. Yeah. As an employee, I'm looking at an organization, I'm considering my choices I've got. And as I look ahead, there are things on the table in terms of what they bring to me.

And I'm looking to think, well, it's a good role. I like the role. I'm looking at thinking, it's a company that will allow me to work from home or I can work in the office. It's a company I've recognized.

And then they put onto the table the employee benefits that I can get whilst working there. And from your perspective, how important is it when employees are choosing companies that the company demonstrates we've got good employee benefits programs for you? Really important. And I think what's also important is they communicate it so it's an overall package because people generally, once they join a company, all they see is how much they're paid.

Yeah. Don't actually see the whole package of how much it would cost if you went out and got the life cover or income protection or private medical or whatever benefits your company offer. And there's often quite a lot of rivalry. So we have some industries where they'll say, Do you know what everyone else is offering in our industry?

So that they can try and ensure that they can make their benefits better than what the others have offered, so that they can go, because salaries are salaries, we can all go mad and offer really high salaries, and that gets people through the door. But what really shows is when things go wrong. When you're not well, if if you've got if you need an operation, if you need dental care, you need to pay a physio, and there's a cash plan, those sort of things suddenly make a difference if the company offers it.

And if they don't, they tend to go elsewhere. And I guess we're just hearing you talk there, there's actually kind of two parts of the experience that you need to manage. One is the client management, in terms of those you provide the employee benefits packages to. But behind the scenes, you and the team must be constantly sourcing, selecting, identifying the right providers.

And how important is the experience they provide to the employees as part of the package for them to be selected by you? Oh, really important because the thing is, if the providers that we recommend don't give a good service, it's a bad reflection on us. We do try to be the intermediary between everything. So we try to get involved.

We're not a company that says, Oh, your deal, your private medical provider is X, off you go, don't deal with them, we'll just have a look at the costs every year. We try and get involved, protection makes some of it quite difficult these days, but we true try. So if things go wrong and there's not, if the client is saying, Oh, we're struggling with this, we're struggling with that, we'll get them together, private medical providers, intercompanies, to answer for the issues that they've caused the employees.

So we'll liaise with the HR teams, but if the employees are not getting a great experience from that pen from that provider, no matter what benefit is, we will then look at it and see whether or not we can change the provider to give them a better experience. So, yeah, really important. That's what you just said, it just echoes what you said there previously, is actually what they're buying into is not just an experience that works well when everything goes well, it's when things go wrong, it's having someone they can lean into who will then say, Look, we'll take control of this for you and we'll get involved and we'll make sure we get this resolved.

Yes. And I guess those sort of things, they're not going, I mean, I don't know, let's take a massive organization, let's take someone like DHL Logistics Company, they're in the business of logistics, they're not in the business of understanding the intricacies of private medical insurance. They just want to make sure that when an employee needs it, and if something isn't as it should be, then someone's going to step in and take care of it rather than take their, they've got to learn this topic or they're out of their depths.

And I guess that's it, it feels as if, from what you're saying, not everyone in the sector does that. No, they'll just leave them to the providers, and the providers are making errors, not putting children onto plans on time, not updating changes. It's a massive because it'll happen when you need it the most. Yeah.

When an employee rings up a uh PMI, sorry, a private medical provider and says, I'd like my child, uh, oh, they're not on there, madam, you're not covered. It's that heart-wrenching moment that what am I going to do? Some of these are very well-paid individuals and haven't got time to run around. So then they go straight back to their HR team and go, what on earth are these people doing?

Blah, blah, blah. And it's bad on us. So it helps to get involved and to ensure the clients get an overall service that what they're expecting. I mean, and I was talking to someone the other day and they were referring me to a case from like an online hotel booking company.

I won't say who it was, but they were saying in that situation, they've kind of they've identified the way they could see it, it's kind of like your world. I've been on here, there's all these hotels that they've obviously selected because they're on their site. I've chosen one, and then something happened, and basically they weren't able to go. And the hotel had said, XYZ, we're not going to refund you.

And the booking agent just went, not our problem. Whilst we are the name above the door, you've actually got a contract with them directly. And it just kind of made me realize there are different ways of doing this. It seems as if from what you're saying, the way you do it is saying, no, the name above the door matters, and that means that we will get involved to help achieve the original outcome we wanted to achieve.

Whereas others will say, look, I'm sorry, we've put you together. That's your problem. You need to fight it out. Absolutely.

We live and breathe service excellence in all areas of the business, and it's important to us that our clients get the services. We when we recommend a provider, whatever benefit it is, normally it's based on cost. We will look at initially their service levels, but you can read about service levels, you're not going to know about them until you experience them. I mean, the big ones, obviously, we already know because we work with most of them.

But we need to be confident. And year one, sometimes is you can be, you're unsure if you're using a provider you've not used much before, that's when it will tell. And that's when sometimes we have to get more involved than we should. But we will, we won't, it's not our problem.

It is our problem and we'll fix it. And I've seen over the years, obviously, I mean, your PMI, I guess you provide other things like income replacement benefits and all those sorts of things. The products are pretty much the product. The amounts, the sort of things may change a little bit, benefits included, not included change.

But actually, what seems to have changed massively is the experience that goes around it in terms of whether it's via an app, whether you can get helplines. How have you seen experience in that sector develop over the years? Oh, really fast because everyone has to keep up with each other. And it's funny, some providers are faster than others, and some providers fall back.

I mean, it's talking about private medical, but going back to pension, we've seen some of the pension providers that we've used a lot because they've had a really good proposition. Now they're far behind the others. They've completely fallen back, they've invested in other areas of the business. That's because of experience, their experience has dropped.

Yes. And so the experience and the re we build really strong relationships with a lot of the bigger providers. Yeah. For obvious reasons, because I mean, myself personally, I like to have I like to have a person to speak to.

I hate mailboxes. I want an individual. Yeah. And so a lot of them came away from that and they took away the relationship managers and gave you a mailbox or just a general team.

You can't get that buy-in without that relationship. It's it's just, I think, human nature. When it's someone that you know that you work with a lot, they will take more responsibility than someone that you've never met before and that you're just talking to on the end of a phone. So it's really interesting, mainly on the pension provider side, is watching providers that were really great fall away invest in other areas of the business and ones that we thought were sort of not dead in the water, but they weren't ones that we generally recommend go completely off the scale.

And now they're people that we champion because their offering both for the client and for the employer is just brilliant. Yeah. Well, this is, I mean, I think we've seen this across many of the sectors where your hardcore product-oriented businesses have lost ground because those who perhaps didn't have quite as good a product, but it was good enough, have in haven't been able to compete on the product or the pricing. So they've invested in the experience, and that's become significantly more important to both those people taking a pension out, but also to the employer.

So it's good to hear that actually from uh someone like yourself who kind of sits in the middle and selects and identifies the right combination, that is something you've recognized is valuable to, I guess, the employer, the employees, but also in terms of the relationship they have with you, I guess, all around. One of the things I wanted to ask you about, because we come across this in many sectors, is you have transactors and you have kind of relationships. In your space, I guess you're never build you're never building a one and done type solution either.

You're not going to say, here's something, it'll last two weeks and then we're off and we'll never see you again. You're investing in a relationship with a client because it's hopefully going to be many years. They take your pensions from you, take your PMIs and take more and more of the products. So do you always have a relationship mindset when you go into dealing with clients?

I personally do. I mean, although I do work in the corporate space most of the time, being head of client experience, I what I do is I review feedback from all areas of the business. So I do see a lot of the work that comes in through the private wealth side where we could do transactional business. I'm not involved in it personally.

My personal responsibility is the corporate side. And yes, it's always a relationship. There's nothing that we do which is one and done. Yeah.

And you must see, I mean, that you've got that organization, but you'll have individuals in there who, for whatever reason, may get promoted out of the role, they might move to other companies. How do you sustain that? Because that's always a in any sector, that's a challenge. As you get new people come in and they want to change things because they want to make a difference or they've got a they feel they've got a better version.

So how do you bridge that? Because that must be a key part of your relationship management, your experience is to transcend from one group of people to another within the same company. Most of the time, it's not a one person that we're we have the relationship with that leaves. We tend to find that they're in within teams.

So we we have a relationship with someone within the team. But if I know someone's coming in and someone's leaving, then it's making sure that you get in contact with them as quickly as possible and start building that relationship and that trust immediately. Because yes, they will have views from other roles and maybe other people that they've worked with where they have had relationships. And we know that is a risk to us.

But it's down to us as relationship managers, as soon as we know a change has happened, we're in there and we're making sure that they're fully aware and fully informed and sort of getting their feet under the table before we're pushed away. We don't find that too difficult. So it's very proactive, a very because with customer experience, you can be reactive, active, or proactive. And it sounds as if in that relationship management, you're very proactive because you know the importance of doing that.

What I heard from you, Paula, as well, which is very healthy, is that you collect the feedback and you do something with it. I mean, I was shocked to find out that I think Gartner says 90% of companies collect feedback and only 10% act upon it. So give us an appreciation of how that process works. You you said you collect feedback through relationship surveys, but I guess also you've got relationship managers bringing feedback.

It comes to you. What happens next? Yeah, so we we have a system that we collate all the feedback. So it's an online system that we I create all the surveys and we collate all the feedback.

I read every single feedback that comes into the company, no matter where it comes from. So be that from the private wealth side or from the corporate side. And anything that I see that has feedback that needs following up on, I mean, the relationship managers will see it, but I'll bring it to their attention immediately. For all of the private wealth feedback that we had, because we've had quite a lot of acquisitions recently, and therefore some individuals that might feel a little bit anxious about the change of their company.

So they're working with the same people but under a different banner. So we're making sure that I personally follow up on every single piece of feedback that comes in from the private wealth side that has a net promoter score of between seven and 10. Yep. Anything that is either a passive or a promoter, I will email back personally and say thank you.

And it's lovely to get responses back to say it's great to know someone's listening. You know, that specific feedback recently from an individual said we're a bit worried about being swallowed up by a big company and went back, can you thank you? Or make sure that information gets to the top of the company. We don't want you to feel like that.

And he came straight back and said, I'm glad you don't just take a note of the scores because we got a 10-net promoter score. Yeah, but he's actually seen that we've not only noted the score, but we've come back and said we've read his comments and referred back to them, which I think makes such a difference because it is important. We get asked for feedback all the time. If you breathe in these days, someone wants to know if you've had a good experience.

And you're like, how much do you do you respond back? So for someone to actually fill out our online survey, they get an automatic thank you, but to then get a personal thank you back from the head of client experience, which is not a standard thing. I I do type all of them back, takes a while, but it's worth that time. So it's great.

Anything for a six or below gets a response back from our head of operations so that they then get followed up from there. So we don't get many of those, luckily, but it is important to follow up. This is brilliant to hear, Paul. I mean, I didn't finish the numbers, but oh, whilst 10% of companies act upon the feedback, only 5% go back to their customers to give them an appreciation, an acknowledgement, and an update on what they're actually doing.

And to hear you say that you do that. And also the other thing, I have a long-running debate with a number of people who talk about systemizing this stuff. And I've said to them, you don't want to be the person who knows how to hit the button to get the answers. You need to be the person who knows the answers.

And the only way you can do that is to read them all because you get the context, you get the what they expected versus what they got. You understand where they're coming from, and you can then get a really good impression of if someone's writing this, it means something to them. Why are they taking the time to write it? And it gives you so much more, rather than just letting a system aggregate it and saying the reason is a generic flex lack of flexibility.

You need to know everything that sits behind it. So I'm delighted to hear, Paula, that you still do that. And you've got two piles operations, and you've got the others that come to you, and you take the time to say thank you. Not only does it almost certainly increase the chance of them providing feedback next time, but you said something really important there.

Their anxiety that they've been swallowed up by a big company. The easy thing to kind of really make that fear come real is if they simply get either nothing or just an automated answer. If they get an individual response, that just takes that fear away because, oh, right, okay, it doesn't matter. They've got they've they've got a personal connection.

I don't feel like I've been swallowed up by a big company here. So well done to you. Because it's a real I mean it's an experience for customers, isn't it? You've got to understand, it's not just feedback, it's an experience.

If you do it well, it speaks volumes about who you are. And if you do it badly or you do it efficient too efficiently, it undermines the importance of it. And as you say, they've given they've taken their time to fill it out. So you really need to feedback is a gift.

So congratulations for doing it so well. As you said, feedback is a gift and it's worth an extra proper thank you, especially thank you for their time because it has taken, as you said, they've filled that out and they've taken their time to do it and given us their opinion. And we need to listen to it. And we are as a company, we are listening.

Now, the one that I've been saving to the end to ask you, because it's a cheeky one, and I know you're gonna have a great answer for it, but do you know the expression cobbler's shoes? I think I do. Okay, sorry. I asked that because I ask it of lots of people, and you and I are of the same age, so I hope you'd know it.

So cobbler's shoes, you never trust a cobbler with like dirty shoes or bad shoes. And I've got a lot of my colleagues at Lexton are Spanish, and they say that the same saying is you never trust an ironmonger with a wooden spoon. So here's my question: if you wonder where it's going, is my question. What is it like as an employee in your organization with the employee benefits program that's offered to you?

Oh, great. They're always looking at new benefits because we're always bringing ideas to them. So we talk to our HR team all the time, and they're always thinking about what's best to offer us. So we certainly do offer a great benefits program.

We've got to have the best-looking shoes in town, haven't we? We have, yeah, and we have. It's it's really good. And fairly enough, fair play to our HR team, they're always looking at how to do it better.

Oh, yes. But it's uncomfortable. I mean, for them, it must be a really weird job to have in a good way. I'm ahead, I'm in HR in an employee benefits company.

So I have to be a role model for what we do for our customers, because otherwise, if if we're very bad, then these sort of things, just like Disney, you can't be kind of stand on stage and make them smile. You have to work behind the scenes like that as well. Otherwise, it just wouldn't quite work. And I guess for you, it's the same.

It has to be baked into your philosophy and how you do business if you're going to authentically and genuinely better provide that to your clients. So it's something do you get involved in that, or is it the HR team who lead that? It's the HR team that lead that. They they do work with our health and protection team for a lot of the benefits, but they will also look out some other lifestyle benefits that they can offer, cash plans, a dental, that sort of thing.

And another thing is they launched something today, Telly Doc, where we can bring up and get advice on on some areas of our personal life. So there's always something coming out. It's always really interesting to see what they're going to offer next. And in your sector, I mean, what would you say?

What matters most in terms of clients? What things can you not get wrong? Not product-wise, but in terms of the experience? What are the essentials that you've learned over the years?

Kind of what make you stand out? What we can't get wrong is we can't assume what they want. Right. We've always got to know our client and be fully immersed in what they want and actually say not assume, but we've got to.

I've always thought that in this role we should be the matre D of financial services. We know what our clients want before they know it because we've listened long enough to understand their world and what they need, and we know our world and what's out there. So therefore, they don't necessarily know that. So when they're talking to us and we're we're delivering each year, you know, what we could do, we can say, Oh, have you ever thought about this?

And they're like, Well, no. But we know that's something that they might want because we've listened to them throughout the time of our relationship, and we know that might be an offering to them. So there's no point to a little tiny company offering some great big massive benefit that's going to cost them a fortune because it's going to make them feel inadequate and they're going to feel bad saying no. So you need to offer companies what we know in our head they will need, they don't have, but they just don't know they know they need it yet.

So that taps into we were talking about these CX superpowers. So that taps into two for me. One is active listening. I guess you're listening all the time because it's not going to be overtly said to you.

You've got to pick up on the subtle clues, haven't you, in terms of what you think they really need and want based on, I guess, the look and feel of the place, the types of people they employ, the sorts of things that they say are important to them. And then the second one is you've got to have kind of like a corporate empathy. I mean, I really respect that point you've made there that you walk in and saying, you want to feel like a big company, have this great big, shiny, expensive employee benefits program, and then they look at it and go, this is gonna, we can't afford this.

You don't take that to them because it you empathize with where they are in their growth as well, rather than just trying to show off because you've clearly got the expertise. I think that's interesting. You bring, you recognize that the listening needs to be matched. It would be no good if you simply said, Well, we don't know, we'll go and have a look, see what we can find.

You've you've got to be able to reach back into the larder and go, hang on, I know exactly what we need here to bake this cake. We've got it all here and bring it out to them. So really interesting way you phrase it, but that's a perfect thing. Understanding and listening, and then having the expertise to bring it back in.

Brilliant. And how and is it you talk about client experience? Is there a team that works with you as well? Do you have others that work in the team, or is given the fact they're big corporates, is it a very small team?

Oh, there's 250 of us in second sight, all doing different roles from relationship management, the administration, we've got practice managers, so you know, we've got partners, that there's a lot of us, but we all have the same wants to deliver service excellence. Yeah to our clients that level of service to make our clients love us, really. We feel like a family, a lot of feedback that we get from our corporate clients is they feel we're part of their team. Yeah.

Because we work with them in a way that we're not those people over there. We are, they know that when they call us, we'll help no matter what. The silliest questions are great, but we'll always be there for them and support them in any way that we can. When people join, does this are they made aware of this from the onboarding and induction?

Kind of your philosophy and your client-centric approach. Do people get that from day one? They understand this is who you are? Oh, absolutely, because we have an induction program and I do a presentation, so I do a half-hour presentation, really talking about the same things that I'm talking about to you today.

Is that getting people to understand it's all about the experience, how we can deliver the best experience? I suppose what one concern that I do have is the relationship going forwards and how that will continue going into a more technical world because we as individuals, especially, I mean, at my age, is I've built everything on relationships and listening and working. But is that going to be the world going forwards? I think that's the biggest question I often ask myself is do we think that will continue into a more technical world?

Yeah. I mean, I've just started to depend an article which I've got on hold for the moment. It was the future of CX is automated, scratch that. The future of CX is human-oriented, scratch that.

It's just, I don't think we we quite know yet. And I did see recently Klarna had reversed their decision to automate everything, and they brought lots of individuals back because a drop in the experience was noted, and that had an impact on business. So I think we've got this transitionary period where we figure out how to use technology more effectively, but we still massively retain that important aspect, which is the relationship. And maybe with the next generation there'll be less need for it, and then the next one there'll be less need.

But I doubt it. I think you know that connection between individuals and that discussion that you have, that confidence that you gain, I don't think it can be supplemented or outsourced to a pure technology relationship. I mean, and regulators may push it that way, that's the only worrying thing. Regulators may say it's much easier to regulate if we can see the automated trial.

That's the only, I guess, reality. But like you, I hope it's worse, it's a blended approach, as opposed to just going down one particular route. I have an article that I'm going to read. It's a group of professors who have built an AI-only company.

And the headline is You won't believe what happened. So it's a bit sensational. I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm interested, like you, to understand just where it goes when you look back at your world and it's all about relationships. Yeah, and that's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

I absolutely love my job because I work with hundreds of friends. Yeah. I've built the relationships that we've created over the years, and everybody doing the same role is the same, is that quite often you'll listen to us on a client call and you're like, you think you're chatting to your friend. You know, and but it it really is people that work with for like 17, 18 years, that you're still working with the same company and you still have the great goals.

And it's well, I think you're the you are the poster girl for relationships are forever. I think people listen to this and can appreciate what you present is exactly what organizations need is a someone in client experience who really cares about their customers, takes the time to understand their customers, brings their considerations back into the business, balances it with the business's capabilities, and then acts upon it. And throughout all of that, I can imagine, you know, I can imagine you going home and going, oh, I've got to do this.

I've got the clients probably are still, their voices are still kind of in your heads. And I say that in a kind of a positive way, not in a weird way, because it's really important that you have that empathy and that care for your clients. Otherwise, what's it for? And I think you're a really good demonstration of that.

It's been a delightful catch-up. I know it's been 30 years since we've passed each other in a canteen, but it's been really good to hear you talk about how important that is in something as fundamental as employee benefit programs. So uh thank you. Thank you.

It's been a delight talking to you. And if Paul, if people want to get hold of you either, because actually I'd highly recommend people, if they're interested in understanding how do we do it properly, it's worth having a chat to you. But also, I guess if their corporate corporations are thinking we're needing a program or a product, if they contact you on your LinkedIn address, you'll be able to put them to the right person in your business. Absolutely.

I'd love to hear from anyone who would like some help on this. Brilliant. Okay, Paula. Well, uh, I wish you all the best in the forthcoming years.

I'd imagine it must be a delight to be a client of yours because you're such an easy person to talk to. So thank you again for joining us on the podcast. Absolute pleasure, Christopher.