Belron International: “NPS is an outcome, not a driver”

An interview with the winner of the Best Use of Voice of the Customer award

At the end of 2023, we held our annual Engage Awards ceremony, recognising organisations which have implemented outstanding customer engagement strategies. One such company was Belron International, who were awarded the ‘Best Use of Voice of the Customer’ award for adopting a new VoC platform and framework. In an interview, Belron International’s Voice of the Customer Manager Jamie Carter has now shared why and how they transformed their VoC strategy and what you can do to improve yours.

CONGRATULATIONS ON WINNING THE 2023 BEST USE OF VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER AWARD! COULD YOU PLEASE INTRODUCE BELRON INTERNATIONAL?

Of course, Belron International are the parent company of the world’s leading vehicle repair and replacement businesses, Autoglass in the UK, Safelite in the US, and Carglass across Europe. We operate in 40+ countries with Customer experience at our core through ‘Solving people’s problems with real care’.

BELRON INTERNATIONAL WAS RECOGNISED FOR ADOPTING A NEW VOC PLATFORM AND FRAMEWORK. WHAT CAN YOU TELL OUR READERS ABOUT IT?

NPS has always been at the heart of the business. Our NPS scores are consistently world-class (80+ globally) but this has meant that in recent history, NPS had become a little stale and, of course, only gives us insights at the end of our journey. 

Our new VOC platform and framework breathes new life into our insights, whilst maintaining the core KPI of NPS. We now listen to customers at more touchpoints to get more actionable, real-time insights.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO ANALYSE UNSOLICITED FEEDBACK, RATHER THAN FOCUSING SOLELY ON NPS?

It’s where the magic happens. For me, NPS is an outcome, not a driver. The best way for us to improve our CX is to truly start in the shoes of the customer, and we now have the mechanism to do this in our VOC framework and text analytics engine. This will enable us to not only improve our customer experience (which will naturally improve NPS) but also dive a lot deeper into why we lost a customer at any stage of the journey.

FINALLY, IS THERE ANY ADVICE YOU CAN GIVE TO OTHERS SEEKING TO TRANSFORM THEIR VOC STRATEGY?

Get out of your comfort zone. As I said, NPS has always been world-class for us, but accompanying this were certain insight dogmas and nervousness around introducing new surveys due to survey fatigue. By being bold and ‘going for it’, we have been able to see the benefits of the surveys very quickly without any impact on our more traditional NPS. We are now able to take the next steps into solving our customer problems.

Entries for the 2024 Engage Awards will open on the 1st of February.

Learn more about the Engage Awards here.