"Since taking over as Standard Life's Chief Executive in January, I have made it clear that my priority is our customers. I am personally committed to making sure you get the market-leading products and service you deserve. And I know that it's only by tuning into your needs, and by listening to what you want from your financial relationships - and what you don't want - that we can keep doing better at meeting your needs.
So, more than ever, we are focusing on getting close to you, listening to what we call the 'voice of the customer'. That voice brings together what we learn from discussions and feedback from around our businesses. During 2009, we talked with over 10,000 customers of our UK long term savings and investment business in a wide variety of ways from regular group discussions, to external research like the Customer Impact Survey.
Combining all the feedback from these individual studies gives us a much clearer picture than we'd get from just one type of study. For example, while research with large numbers of customers is helpful in highlighting broad areas, it struggles to convey individual concerns. So we enrich it with the knowledge we gain from more detailed conversations, as well as with real-time feedback from customers who have just spoken to a member of our team.
We also hold regular customer closeness sessions, where our customers are invited to chat informally with our senior management. I have taken part in these valuable sessions over the past five months and plan to join in more in the future. The key messages that come across are remarkably consistent. You want the confidence of knowing that we are working hard on your behalf, you want us to make it easier for you to get in touch, and you rightly feel that you deserve recognition as a valuable customer. No less important are the many other messages that would get lost without these very individual face-to-face discussions.
We are using everything we hear to make important decisions about the future of our business and our customers. We share what we learn across our business, with regular reports that present insights and stories from our customers - both good and bad - to help all our people understand how their role relates to your experience. This helps us develop more solutions to suit you - solutions that will set Standard Life apart from our competitors, and help us to build strong, lasting relationships with more of our customers.
So, what's to come? Overall, the feedback shows that there are many areas where we have made good progress this year, but that there are still others where we need to work a lot harder. In particular, recent economic events have highlighted how important it is for us to help manage your expectations about the long-term nature of the investment markets. We are making changes to help us achieve this and more - and we hope that you will start seeing the results by the end of this year. I look forward to updating you next June."
David Nish,
Chief Executive
