AXA Mandiri's Edwin Sugianto: CX determines the direction of digital transformation

Customer experience is even more important in challenging times such as today, as brands need to innovate their business strategies and show that they still care for their consumers and are constantly maintaining contact with them. A McKinsey study in April this year said four actions that brands can take to address immediate customer needs and prepare for the future are focusing on care and concern, meeting customers where they are, reimagining the post-COVID-19 world, and building agile capabilities for fluid times.

For Indonesia's AXA Mandiri in particular, the insurance company has made customer-centric investments to strengthen its relationship with consumers. Edwin Sugianto (pictured), COO and CMO of AXA Mandiri, shares with Marketing Interactive in an interview what role customer experience plays in digital transformation and how the company is future-proofing its CX strategy.

Marketing Interactive: What are some current areas or capabilities that AXA-Mandiri Insurance has made customer-centric investments in? Why and what results has the company seen so far?

Sugianto: Under the vision of “payer to partner”, we have launched a number of initiatives to customers, such as tele-consultation, mobile doctor, and an eCommerce site for insurance. We see significant improvement in customer engagement as evidenced by a significantly improved customer experience tracking score, as well as the growth in digital and alternate business.

Marketing Interactive: What does digital transformation mean to you? Has that changed amidst the COVID-19 pandemic? If so, how?

Sugianto: Digital transformation means digitally both external engagement with customers, partners and distribution channels and also digitising the internal processes. Amidst the pandemic, our digital marketing focuses more on delivering emphatic messages in building awareness of the market towards our solutions. Internally, our digital transformation focuses on process simplification, automation, and quality improvement.

Marketing Interactive: What role does CX play in digital transformation?

Sugianto: In short, CX determines the direction of digital transformation. Any digital transformation initiatives of the company should focus on customers. The customer-centric mindset has to be shared by everyone in the organisation.

Marketing Interactive: How is AXA-Mandiri Insurance future proofing its CX strategy?

Sugianto: Being a customer-centric organisation, AXA Mandiri always stays close to our customers and partners, to be able to answer to their needs. At the same time, AXA Mandiri consistently strives for delivering innovative solutions.

Marketing Interactive: Tips on how marketers can get started on future proofing their digital transformation and CX strategy?

Sugianto: The first priority is to understand your customers. Once you do, create your solutions surrounding your customer needs. Never assume that your solution fits the customer needs before validating with them directly.

Marketing Interactive: What changes should marketers expect when it comes to consumer confidence and brand trust in the new normal?

Sugianto: Brands that will get customer trust are those who are being close to customers and present in a meaningful way. For that reason, AXA globally launched our new brand promise, namely "Act for human progress by protecting what matters".

Marketing Interactive:  Marketers and the management speak a different language. What can marketers do to get buy-in from the management?

Sugianto: Yes, they do. However, numbers speak across the organisation. A strong business case and evidenced by the ROI after each campaign will justify the investment. Apart from that, creating good visuals when presenting marketing ideas help the management to better visualise the implementation of the ideas.

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