Insights from the Masters of Experience will feature video interviews with some of the brightest minds in CX and customer insights who will be sharing their insights, discussing trends, and addressing challenges within the industry.

What are you most excited about in the next 12 months?

Liz: I’m most excited about the growth in expectations of people for automation and AI capability more generally. The tech is here and, in a lot of ways, it’s that the tech focus businesses are holding back until those expectations catch up. The scale of the capabilities that could be rolled out aren’t necessarily being rolled out yet until people get more comfortable with the possibility. With Chat GPT setting the world on fire, even my 64 year-old dad asked me on the weekend whether I was doing anything with AI at work at the moment. It shows that those people who historically would have wanted retail center face-to-face interactions are now opening up to the idea that maybe AI is not just scary robots and that there is some real value there for them and that they could interact with these things that they’ve traditionally been a bit more scared of.

What would you say is the biggest priority in your role currently?

Liz: In my role currently, the biggest priority is probably reimagining the way we’ve always done things. Especially in the communication and insights space and bringing people on that change journey with us to realise the opportunities of AI. I think from a broader, out in the general population perspective, there is this conversation about Chat GPT and what not, but businesses like nib that have been around for more than 60 years – we’re always going to carry those legacy systems and processes that make structural change quite challenging. It’s in a lot of those changes that we can underpin the real opportunity of this technology. That being said, one of nib’s greatest strengths is that we have such a forward-thinking, experimental way of doing things and that’s led from the top. Everyone’s really excited about the opportunity to support those changes.

You’re joining a fantastic panel discussion at Customer Connect exploring whether the best customer experiences will be underpinned by what AI can do. How are you experimenting with AI at nib?

Liz: We’re experimenting with AI throughout the business but, in the conversational experience with space in particular, we’re working closely with our vendors – primarily Amazon – to enable enhancements across both the agent and the member experience. We look after what the agents are doing and are trying to make that as efficient and enjoyable as possible. From that member side, making sure that they’re able to have interactions with us when they need to. Our people can’t be available 24/7 and, while we’ve got a fantastic app and website with all the self-service capability, there’ll always be those complicated edge cases that can’t be serviced in that one-size-fits-all way, or it’s just someone like probably like my dad who would rather handle something verbally over the phone. With AI on our side, we can work on automating more of those transactions through our chat bots and voice bots, being able to step a member through a particular process helps us improve that standard of service. We can do that late at night after the contact centre traditionally would close, on the weekend, and we can engage with someone on the platform they want to speak to us on – not just always sending them into a self-service option that they traditionally wouldn’t necessarily feel as comfortable on. The other side of this, because of AI, we can also see so much more insight into those experiences and can isolate areas where there is opportunity for a deeper dive from a more qualitative perspective. Through our speech analytics program of work we’re automatically tagging up themes on interactions and then sharing that into the business, enabling automation of aspects about quality function, so then we can inform CX practitioners, marketing folks, operations, other people around the business of trends and then potential issues that we have on the horizon.

Customer expectations are continuing to evolve at a rapid rate. How are you keeping up with that pace of change at nib?

Liz: I’ve worked at NIB for a long time, so I realise I’m quite biased, but I honestly believe we’ve got some of the hardest working, most innovative, collaborative people around and we have a desire to swarm on things and solve problems that’s truly led from the top down. It really feels like this is our moment. This is the time where we can jump on all of this and really show how we can solve these problems and jump on the opportunity. That is enabled by investment in great partners and comfort with failure. Staying lean and being majority agile across the business has really helped us do as much as we can in the digital space and stay on top of ever-evolving change.

What does success look like for you and the team? How do you define that?

Liz: Success for us, of course, they’re all the KPIs that we hold ourselves to. So, things around our rates of automated authentication and how many lower value interactions we can defer from the contact center so that we can free our agents up to deal with literal life or death situations. It sounds like a cliche, but nothing shows more like success in our space than collaborating with an area of the business who are ready and willing to have an absolute automation makeover. It’s not to remove the humans from the loop, the humans are a very important part of that and inform that, but there’s so many legacy systems and processes in a lot of spaces where it’s down to the folks being willing. The technology exists, we just need to bring it all together. Seeing that come to life is a really great success story for us.

How would you describe yourself in three words?

Liz: My boss, our head of emerging technology and data platform recently referred to me as Switzerland, in that my role as a product manager means that I need to understand both a business perspective and the technical perspective, and then figure out the best path forward. So, I’ll add Switzerland into my list of descriptions for myself.

And another one is a bridge – essentially between technical and non-technicalpeople. I think it’s so easy for humans as we know to go into fear mode if there’s something we don’t understand. The other side of that is if you’re struggling to communicate something to someone and you’re not able to get the message across, and I see this happen a lot with technical folks trying to communicate back to non-technical folks from around the business, and both of them missing out. Technical people aren’t necessarily building what is needed and then business folk are being a bit scared of change. So, trying to bridge the gap between those two sides is a really important part of my time at nib over the years.

And the third one will be a cheerleader. I’m one of my team’s biggest fans and I’m just always so honoured to represent their skill and passion for everything we do.

What are you most looking forward to at Customer Connect?

Liz: I’m most looking forward to all the little nuggets of wisdom that pop up when you least expect it. In the talks you kind of just saw the end of but you didn’t necessarily think that was the main one that you were there for, and in conversations with people over coffees. I was lucky enough to head along last year when a colleague couldn’t make it and I got so much more out of the event than I thought I would. My team and I even had an information sharing session with a contact that I met there. So, yeah, I’d say there’s there’s always so much more to be found at events like Customer Connect than you kind of expect it to be.

Customer Connect, 9 November 2023, will bring together 150 of the region’s most influential CX and customer insights leaders to examine this new era of how we must understand and connect with our customers to deliver an experience that sets us apart from the competition. The two track programme, with dedicated CX and Customer Insights programmes, will feature inspiring international keynotes, insightful panel discussions, the best local case studies and lots of opportunity for peer-to-peer learning and conversation..