Berjaya Sompo Insurance’s Mawarni Adam takes on expanded portfolio

Berjaya Sompo Insurance's Mawarni Adam (pictured) is adding customer experience to her list of responsibilities, taking on the expanded role of head of brand, marketing communications and customer experience. The expanded portfolio will see her team grow from eight to 21 employees.In a statement to A+M, Adam said customer experience activities without brand alignment represent a lack of integrated strategy, whereas branding without customer experience cannot truly exist as the brand comes alive through customer interaction."Together, when aligned and executed properly, brand customer experience or branded customer experience can be a unique, distinguishable and winning factor for the company, which is exactly why we have decided to combine the brand and customer experience team," Adam said.She added that in this new era of digital world and the increasing demands of customer experience, it is not just about building strong brands but rather, about consistently delivering customer experience through various touch-points wherever and whenever brands meet consumers."Customer experience defines the brand. Therefore, we have to stop looking at brand marketing and customer experience in silos and start approaching them holistically," Adam said. She told A+M that she looks forward to the new team being the "changemaker" and be one of the transformation drivers for the organisation. Adam also hopes to see the upward shift of Berjaya Sompo Insurance's service standards and provide customers with the best service experience.Adam said she plans to improve the company's customer experience in five major steps: Take a bird’s eye view and create a holistic omni-channel plan; Look at technology and system enhancement – must have, good to have, advantageous to have; Stakeholders alignment and buy-in to strengthen our mission and vision; Training of staff and front liners to elevate our service standards, learning new methods and re-learning old methods with new perspectives; Constant improvement through the use of data and innovation by working closely with our digital team.While some might be "quick wins" for the company, others will take longer depending on the complexity of the execution, she said. According to Adam, some companies in Malaysia have managed to close or minimise the gap between their brand and customer experience "really well". This can be seen through their brand messaging, brand personality, how they interact with customers in times of crisis or when business is as usual.This is an indication that their strategy and execution have been cascaded and immersed well across their channels and stakeholders, and it can be "refreshingly delightful" to see and experience when that happens, Adam said."On the other hand, the same cannot be said for some companies, which I believe may not even realise the importance of brand and customer experience intertwining together and you can definitely see the disconnect when their brand messaging that does not match what the brand actually do," she said. In those cases, Adam said the importance of brand and customer experience needs to be reiterated to top management and then prioritised."Improving customer experience is usually a daunting task, so I suggest to start small. Training and re-training the front liners is a good start, elevate the standards to match local or regional, if not global standards," she added.Read also:Tech in check: Berjaya Sompo Insurance’s brand lead Mawarni AdamM Consulting Asia founder Mawarni Adam takes marketing role in Berjaya SompoIf you aren’t ready to handle data internally, having an agency won’t get you far