Roundtable | Optimizing Growth: Customer Centricity as a Business Model | Bloomberg Growth Summit | Nov 3

Bloomberg Growth Summit
Roundtable
November 3, 2022 

The Bloomberg Growth Summit gathered top executives from some of the world’s most exciting companies to talk about how they’re achieving growth through customer-centric strategies. In this lunch roundtable, the panelists discussed topics including the personalization of customer service through automation, the growing demand for sustainability, and the ongoing labor shortage.

Speakers included: 

Mihir Shah, Head of Enterprise Data, Fidelity Investments
Nicole Rafferty, Senior Vice President, Customer Care, AT&T Services
Sokwoo Rhee, Corporate Senior Vice President for Innovation, LG Electronics, Head of LG NOVA
Siobhan Fitzpatrick, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer, Virgin Atlantic
Holly O’Neill, President, Retail Banking, Bank of America
Jonah Smith, Global Head of Environmental Social Governance & President of the Kraft Heinz Foundation, The Kraft Heinz Company
Anton Vincent, President, Mars Wrigley North America
Niki King, Head of Sustainability, Unilever, North America
Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist, Salesforce
Sriram Raghavan, Head of AI Research, IBM
Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Electronic Arts
Tom Rivers, Vice President of Global Marketing, Automotive, HARMAN
Manish Misra, Vice President, Strategy & Integration, New Energies, Chevron


Bloomberg participants:

Anurag Rana, Technology Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence 


Event Highlights:

Personalizing Customer Service

After introductions, Anurag Rana, Technology Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence began the discussion by asking the panelists “How do you differentiate your services through customer service?” The broad consensus was that intelligent application of automation is critical in achieving high quality customer service, with Mihir Shah, Head of Enterprise Data, Fidelity Investments saying that “Focusing on customer service through automation is the biggest differentiator.” 

Nicole Rafferty, Senior Vice President, Customer Care, AT&T Services summed up the task facing business leaders as “How do we use automation to make it easy for customers to interact with our organization?” Sokwoo Rhee, Corporate Senior Vice President for Innovation, LG Electronics, Head of LG NOVA answered with “We need to transition from customer service to customer journey,” explaining that “Customer journey is from the time that you buy something, we ask what is the customer going to go through, and at what point should we help them?”

Automation lets companies personalize their customer service for each individual by intelligently predicting what they need and when. Speaking from the perspective of the airline industry, Siobhan Fitzpatrick, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer, Virgin Atlantic discussed how automation can streamline the customer experience. “We will know, preselected, what meal you want to have, what your preferences are, and if you are traveling for leisure or business.”

This idea of automated personalization has been met with some hesitance amongst customers who fear the risks this could mean for their privacy. Holly O’Neill, President, Retail Banking, Bank of America pointed out the advantage that the financial industry has in this regard, saying that “Financial institutions are a little bit different. You already have the trust of the customer, as they’re entrusting their money with you.”

Company Values & Sustainability

The social values that a company aligns itself with, especially when it comes to sustainability, has become one of the measurements that customers use when choosing where to take their business. Jonah Smith, Global Head of Environmental Social Governance & President of the Kraft Heinz Foundation, The Kraft Heinz Company said that “You can be cannibalized by other brands. If you lose that consumer insight, especially with how they align their social values, you quickly will become irrelevant.”

This trend has only been growing as younger generations come of age. Anton Vincent, President, Mars Wrigley North America noted that “Gen Z is very differentiating. They want to know what is the value system, where was this sourced, what’s the sustainability? All these values have to be communicated.”

While younger generations do tend to care about sustainability considerably, they may not be willing to pay higher costs for it. Niki King, Head of Sustainability, Unilever, North America observed that “This generation expects brands and companies to build sustainability into products. They want to live sustainably, but they don’t want to pay more.”

Keeping the Human Touch

The proliferation of automation does not mean that real customer service agents are no longer needed. Anton Vincent remarked that “The tough part about customer service is you need to do everything efficiently, but you still have to have the human touch people crave.” 

The ongoing labor shortage has been heavily impacting businesses across all sectors, and customer service is no different. Holly O’Neill said that “Coming from the pandemic, it’s been difficult to hire and retain customer service agents.” She continued saying that, even once agents are hired, training them to work with all the fragmented applications necessary for the job can be challenging. “You can’t train people to navigate fifty systems. You need to train people for tenure, turning people over doesn’t work.” This is especially problematic since, as Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist, Salesforce pointed out, “One in five customer service agents leave every year.”

The high number of fragmented systems within companies doesn’t just make things more difficult for employees, it also hampers the customer experience. Sriram Raghavan, Head of AI Research, IBM described how consumers making customer service calls are “Often passed down from system to system, and if those systems are not integrated there is no knowledge transfer.” This results in a frustrating experience for the customer, who now has to repeat their problems to every operator they get passed around to. 

This roundtable at the Bloomberg Growth Summit is Proudly Sponsored By

Founding Sponsor
c
c
c

ss

ss

——————————

Join the Conversation: #BBGGrowthSummit | #BloombergGrowth
Instagram: @BloombergLive
LinkedIn: Bloomberg Live
Twitter: @BloombergLive

Interested in more Bloomberg Live virtual events? Sign up here to get alerts.

——————————