Coventry Member Community Builds On Award Winning Customer Experience

Coventry Building Society are owned by their customers. Their members are, in a very real sense, their stakeholders. This means that any community the building society created would be populated by individuals who are both stakeholders and members. Therefore any research and analysis conducted on the platform needed to not only benefit participants in both capacities, but also be fed back in the form of improvements to customer experience programs so members could see the impact their feedback is having.

Additionally, the building society is made up of two groups of members: savers and borrowers. Savers are critically underrepresented within the financial services industry, and The Coventry wanted to ensure that would not be the case in their community. To maintain and improve their high standard of customer satisfaction, it is important that the considerations of both groups are taken into account - even if one interacts with the building society on a much less frequent basis. 

The Coventry Building Society worked with FlexMR to set up an online research community on the InsightHub platform. With a range of qualitative and quantitative research tools, The Coventry chose to support this with a flexible research service that would adapt to their ongoing requirements.

Early on, The Coventry identified that panel health was key to the success of their platform. Crucially, the building society sought to build an engaged group of members who would contribute frequently and provide high quality data.

“Our online community allows us to listen closely to our customers, in order to gain continuous feedback on their happiness with the service they have experienced,” - Phillip Sawyer, Member Communications Manager

Because of this, The Coventry chose tools that encourage engagement, such as SmartboardMR. This particular tool enables members to comment on visual concepts and communications, helping the building society to identify financial knowledge gaps.

The addition of Live ChatMR focus groups into this member-led community offered The Coventry a way to put customers first in a creative way. Reversing the typical focus group setup, members were invited to ask questions to senior management at The Coventry. The direction and focus of these questions highlighted what matters most to the building society’s members.

‘‘The discussion forums and blogs allow us to listen to how members interact with each other and find out what they want to talk about most. This enables us to better tailor research tasks to their interests as well as ours,” - Emma Baxter, Head of Customer Research

To facilitate a regular, measurable benchmark of success, The Coventry ran Sentiment Surveys alongside these tasks. These provided a snapshot of customer satisfaction and key concerns. Ultimately, these tasks within a larger listening community have helped The Coventry understand how to even further improve satisfaction of both borrowers and savers. 

“Our customers are our stakeholders; their opinions and feelings are vital to the success of the society. As such, their engagement with our research is crucial,” - Jayne Whitehouse, Customer Research Specialist

Recently, based on customer feedback from the InsightHub platform, The Coventry have produced informational materials that help members better understand the financial products and services they are putting their money and trust into.

With InsightHub, The Coventry are able to make informed decisions based on the feedback of members - even those who have few interactions with The Coventry and are traditionally underrepresented in research. This member-led approach to decision making is setting the building society apart in a competitive market.