Chaos Conductors: Turning Market Disruption into Your Competitive Symphony

Welcome everybody. I'm Dave Edelman and I'm here with the third in our webinar series Inside the Mind of the Modern CMO and this is sponsored by Pega, who has been leading the way in personalization capabilities for decades, an area that I personally have been very close to. I am absolutely thrilled to be here with Polly Nicholas, the Chief Experience Officer of Unum and a real true leader in where customer experience, strategy, execution and leadership is going. Thanks, Dave. Great to be here today. What a wonderful opportunity. Yes, it is. And I think we're going to have a great discussion because there's a lot going on in the world around us, but very specifically in the world that you are leading at Unum. So Polly, you are the first Chief Experience Officer at Unum and you're leading a transformation of a company from a more product focus to a more solutions oriented approach to delivering value.

Could you share with us some more about the journey that Unum is on and why does that require the leadership of a new capability such as a CXO? Well, Dave, before we get started today, I just I want to mention what an incredible leader you are in this space. You know, love about your intersection of a couple of key things are one, how you bridge thought leadership, real world execution and shaping the way we think about how marketing and CX should come together. As we look to have this great conversation today. I just, I appreciate the opportunity to listen and learn from you as well as the chance to share. You know what we're up to at Unum. Well, thank you, Polly. That's very, very nice. And it certainly is mutual.

I learned a ton from our conversations as well. And I'm sure I will from this. As we, you know, you asked the question about what it feels like to be the first CXO at Unum in the journey that we're on. A lot of people don't know, you know, they don't know, you know, by name. We touch over 38 million lives and when you think about the peoples and families we interact with, we're really there. You know, sometimes in the toughest moments, we're there when somebody has a medical leave, a disability claim, often a moment of uncertainty. So I do think, you know, it's really interesting to lead and be a part of such an incredible organization that has such a big impact. And when you asked about, you know, the why, you know what, why are we transforming? That is why we're transforming.

So it's not just the offer of the benefits we provide to employees, it's how we deliver it. No, getting money into someone's account within 24 hours from a claims approval date with tools like Zell isn't just about innovation. It's about making sure that, you know, is the easiest part of someone's hardest moment. And so it's been really an opportunity for me and for the broader Unum organization is to really reimagine how we can continue to show up and be that, be that provider, you know, you know, we think about being the easiest part of what might be a difficult moment. And it isn't just about what we do. It's who we are as an organization and are there things in the external environment Poly that are shaping where you're going? Is there is this internally driven from Unum? Are you seeing it because it's a way that you've got to compete and raise the bar? Are there also things happening in the environment that are leading you to be even more CX solutions oriented?

Absolutely, Dave. You know one of the things that is especially moving fast in our involving market is leave laws and employee expectations. We're fortunate that we have increased our company understanding and acumen around both of these topics in both the topics of leave and technology. Fortunately, we've been in the lead business for over 25 years. So we have a lot of embedded expertise and we've invested quite a lot over the last few years in transforming this experience of taking time away from work. And so in an example, I just, you know, as you think about being a listener about how that turns into value, our government affairs team spends quite a bit of time out influencing both federal and state laws as it relates to leave. And then we bring that back to our existing employers, the people that are our customers. Interestingly enough, we recently had a lead webinar series where we talked about how we can help and enable employers navigate the lead landscape. We had over 22,000 of our current customers signed up for that.

Your theories and you know why that's important? Well, it means that we're answering the questions that are being asked by the customers we serve. And that's really where we see incredible value for us as an organization and more importantly, test our purpose. The complexity sounds staggering from an employer's point of view with all the different laws at a federal and state level that different kinds of leave that are available now that people are taking, probably also just the amount of leave taking, people taking advantage of, of benefits. So from an employer's perspective, juggling that all themselves, even if you were just the insurance provider still had put a lot of onus on them to manage it. So now you're saying we have to be able to provide a whole outsource solution for managing leave so that we can dramatically simplify what the employer has to deal with and also, in the end, make it easier for the covered employee. Is that the right way of thinking about it? That's exactly it. Yep.

And so as you do that, you've got brokers through whom you sell and get connected with employers. You've got the employers who we just talked about, you've got the covered employees. Just from Unum's perspective, that's a whole lot of complexity. And if you're in charge of customer experience, those are three completely different customers, stakeholders to manage. How do you think about your prioritization and managing the differences? Do you have different groups focused on different constituencies? Do you have certain priorities and sequencing? How do you manage in that complexity? It's a great question, Dave.

And you are right, we essentially have three key customers. We have our broker, we have employers and we have employee brokers want the competence that are offering is going to deliver client satisfaction to their constituents, their employers, the employers they help every day. So we think a lot about enabling brokers to understand our end and offering through the eyes of that employer. Let me describe then how we think about employers. You know you use the word simplification. The reality is that the HR function, the payroll function, the HR technology function inside organizations have a lot of things coming their way and a lot of demands. Simplification is everything for that employer. Making it easy to consume information and take that logical next step is critical. And so for employers, it's simplification.

But at the end of the day, if we treat employees well, if we help that claimant in their time of need, if we're there making that hard moment the easiest thing we possibly can, then we delivered for all the constituents that are part of our ecosystem. So we really do think about all three. For brokers, we again want the right experience for them and we want to keep their clients happy. Which are those employers? For employers, they need simplification. They need clear, direct action to understand what their very next step is. And then finally, employees need empathy, they need compassion. They need somebody on the other end of the phone and or on that chat to help them and or for information they can get 24/7 as they need it digitally. And as you're doing this, Polly, it, it feels like this is not just a natural extension.

This is a a transformation of how people have likely thought about the business, even thinking about brokers. Most of the way you were selling before was an insurance product, disability insurance, leave protection. And now you're creating a broader solution. So a heck of a lot more surface area in which you're interacting with people. So this is, I think one of the things that you're stepping into this breach to say we've got to change people's minds externally and even internally. We now have to take on the responsibility for doing so much more. Is that the way you've seen your role? And how do you think Then also in terms of the mindset shift externally and internally, how are you working that? Yeah, Dave, it's a great question.

And it is about transforming marketplaces, it's about transforming inside Unum and it's about transforming on behalf of our customers. And so that is both the challenge and the opportunity to deliver excellence, to deliver excellence proactively across key customer touch points. Let me make that concrete. As you think about that employer for our largest segment, we recognize that there isn't just one person on the other side of our experience who sits on the employer site. There's somebody from payroll or somebody from the HR technology team. There's a leave expert or a leave admin individual. There's that frontline manager who's just trying to ensure, let's say on a store that other people show up. So they you work every single day. And so one of the efforts that we really had underway that's been illuminating for our organization is to understand those different HR personas and to truly think about how are the data and insights we're providing them, helping them take what I would describe as their next best action.

So by way of an example, if you're a frontline manager at a pizza shop, what you want to do is have your people there to make pizza. You don't really care about anything else. What is the data that that individual needs versus maybe you work for a hospital system and you need to think about workforce management for your nursing staff and how your people are going to show up broadly, both at an individual location level as well as across your organization. Those are two very different sets of needs. And unlocking neck level value by understanding those HR personas means that we can truly help that employer simplify the things they need, understand how to take their next best action, and ensure that ultimately they're being able to deliver for their broader business objectives, which is really what we want to get after. How do we get that next person return to work in a way that they're excited to be back and ensure that the business understands how to manage Bob Airway? So wow, there's a lot there that you're starting to get into now in terms of data, technology, next best action, things that drive much more personalized experiences. Let's dig into that a bit more, Polly. I mean, after all, we're on a webinar from Pega, so we might as well just probe a bit on how you're thinking about technology.

So let me just ask you specifically. There's a fair amount of tech in what you've laid out there. So from a chicken and egg perspective, how do you guide the technology? Are you creating business use cases for different constituencies and then working with the technology team? Are you taking the technology you have and just trying to figure out how far can we push it? All of the above. How do you think about the interactions with your tech team? Because they have to be a crucial partner for you. But you're the Chief experience officer, Dave.

I would tie back to even higher up our corporate strategy and then thinking about how that corporate strategy comes through and delivers for our customers. So let me start with one. Our purpose is what guides us helping to work in the world drives throughout life's moments. That truly is why we show up every day and that is a customer centric mindset. Definitely understand what your durable business strategy is. We have a really good framework we use at Unum that guides us as we think about our strategic. You can't be focused on everything. So defining what your strategic capabilities are and where you're going to be a difference maker in the marketplace and how that delivers competitive advantage is critical. And then finally, you know, if you think about sort of the three things that it takes to build a good durable organization, understand the financial objectives of your organization.

So understand how you deliver customer experience, but how you're going to measure that for your financial outcomes for the organization. And so when you ask the question a little bit about how do you work with your tech teams or is it tech LED or is it business LED, the answer is it must be purpose and strategy LED. We must start with customers at the center. And a couple of the ways we're doing this are one, we're bringing together the end to end functions across the organization to solve problems. A recent example of that within Unum was that we were launching a brand new capability 1125 and it was an important capability in the marketplace because it connected many of our products together in the eyes of the customer. It was bringing our supplemental health benefits which help support somebody when they often have a key accident or hospitalization whether other elite. So great to bring that together. But what we did was we brought together an end to end team. Think about the contact center folks, the folks that process claim, the individuals that built the technology, the sales team, the marketing team, really that end to end team.

And we interrogated a set of pilot customers. You understand was the experience we described actually and what we had, what we uncovered was there was a lot of things that were going really well and what we imagined to be true was in fact mostly true. But we also found some places where we could do it better. And by bringing that cross functional team together, by seeing marketing and CX as the description of the experience we were delivering and the actual experience we were delivering, we got to a better set of key priority. Some that happened in the room, some that happened 1125 or soon after and some that are even still happening about how we could improve that customer experience. And I don't think until you really bring that holistic organizational view together in the eyes of the customer, do you see where there is what you would describe as surface area to get after to solve for customer needs. And when you did that and brought everybody together, that could be a lot of people. How are you? Are you guiding the whole discussion through a vision of what you expect the customer experience to be?

That's the foundation of where you want it to go. And then you're starting to see what's actually happening, what's possible, where the breakpoints. Is that how you guide that conversation? Because it could be a lot of people in a room. You know, not only did we guide what we hoped and expect for the customer, we actually came forward with one. What is that customer going through? So we provided throughout the day that we were together, we provided a number of examples, verbatims, real life recordings of what it felt like to be a customer. You know, so as we were going through the experience and understanding and interrogating it, not only did we have voice to the customer all the way through our value stream up, we also had live experience, if you will, that people could touch and feel. So as you just define where you want to go and the vision for the future, you also need practical, tactical examples of how it's coming for life today.

And what was interesting about that is, you know, one of the wonderful things about Unum is that we have Hogs who have spent most of their career here and they have played roles across the organization. So they come with a wealth of knowledge of the different experiences we create, but there probably wasn't a person that walked out of that room that didn't learn something pretty significant about how we support our customers by spending that time. So it isn't just the moment that we're in, it's also creating a culture that we're going to continue to understand really what that end to end experience looks like and help carry that forward as a steward to future conversations across the organization. And as you do that, one of the things you talked about is having the data also to understand what's going on. Of course, you want the verbatims, you want the customer's point of view, but there's also operational data from your systems that you've got to surface. And it could be that you're asking questions of the data that haven't been asked before. Now when you're looking at it in across functional way, was that a challenge trying to get data to do things that you hadn't really asked it to do before? Data, data, data, right. The data, data, data, data.

It drives everything that I think about certainly and, and in the marketing and CF space, it can be the true unlock for an organization. And I'm not unique in that. But what I would say that's interesting about the insurance industry and we are unlike many industries who've been around for a little while is that we've established our experiences historically based on our products, our financial reporting and compliance and legal reasons. So we've created towers of expertise, but not towers of end to end knowledge. And so what's been really, really interesting as you begin to shift your mindset to a product you from a product you to a solution view, you begin to see insights you wouldn't otherwise capture. And what's been fascinating about that is that sparked the next layer of questions for our organization. Examples might be how do you shift from looking at product based satisfaction to end to end customer satisfaction. And when you do look at that, how do you begin to see customer as a whole through the bundle products and offerings we deliver as opposed to the product set? It's a big shift for an organization that grows to Wall Street every day and says we report on our offering based on our voluntary benefits product lines and group benefits lines or Colonial Lifeline.

So you can imagine that there are some. Things within our organization that are foundational to how we worked in the past that will need to evolve for the future. One of those things be stayed up and in doing so, I'm assuming you're also talking about a shift in from product columns, let's say of data to actually having databases that can track the customer across products, across channels. I mean, it's a never ending journey. Of course, it's not something you just pull a switch and do, but I assume that's the direction you'd be headed. Not only is it the direction, I get back to being very clear about your stick alignment, where you're focused and how you're going to deliver for customers to drive distinguishable growth that is profitable for the organization is critical. I was recently at an event and they talked a little bit about, you know, as you examine and think about customer experience, one of the things you want to be able to do is prove out that the investments you've made are returning the right value to the customer and to the overall organization. So one of the things that's been critical as a sort of foundational piece as we've set up the CX organization at Unum more broadly is a key partner has been our finance team. Our finance team understands how and where our financials tie back to customers.

And so by making that one thing rather than two things, when we think about persistency and CSAT, when we think about the opportunity to understand customer value and lifetime value, the closer we can get that CX function and that finance function together, we get 2 outcomes out of that. One is you build durable models that can be used for a longer period of time for the organization. They really become the centerpiece of informing the organization on where to go both strategically as well as financially. Secondly, you begin to shape the finances to you of what value is to our organization and having them as a partner by your side, I call them friends of finance is never a bad idea when you think about creating a lasting impact to an organization. Yeah, I do have to just in the true confessions. I have to say when I had a similar role in my earlier days at at Aetna, I was very close with the CIO, took a bit too long to get tight with the CFO, had to really catch up on that. And I think that's really important that you have done that, Polly, because the whole perspective of understanding all the levers, whether it's things like reducing calls to the call center, persistence of the actual customer, being able to sell and expand relationships, there's a lot of different levers that come into play. So it's important to get finance in the game and maybe even also to help prioritize which levers you want to go after as you're improving customer experience. Well, that's it, Dave. As you think about that last statement, if we can begin to create a bright view of not only what excellence looks like in the eyes of the customer and again going back to our purpose, we are here to help the working world drive. And it is an incredible opportunity and we have an incredible culture at Unum that really is committed to making that experience come to light. It's wonderful to start at an organization where that's our beginning, but equally as important is being sure that we understand what will drive profitable growth for the organization.

And when you begin to pair those two things together, it's not going to happen overnight, but you begin to think about the customer life cycle truly end to end. And that's really what the CXO role has been about. So the moment you experience Unum's brand all the way through renewal, what are those key customer moments? Are we committed yes, to the things we say in our marketing and sales experience? Are they coming to life in the actual realities of our customers? And where we have improvement, how do we drive it to sustain and deliver profitable growth? And as you're thinking about those improvements, Polly, where is AI playing a role? Is that core to it?

Is it a key enabler? Is it something that helps in the background in terms of productivity? How are you thinking about that as part of your strategy? Anybody who's doing anything today must be thinking about AIAI is obviously an opportunity and we're focused on leveraging it in very specific ways inside our organization. But I do feel an interesting nugget. I would want a recent session with women and technology theaters that Mackenzie pulls together on an annual basis. That's who cover peers of mine across industry. And one of the key conversations that came out that I thought was illuminating was, you know, how often are your day-to-day people using AI for personal use?

Are they satisfied? Are they dissatisfied? Could we begin to understand what risk might be there to lose that customer and how might we take action based on those operational indicators in order to retain that client or what makes a great client and why are they satisfied and how do we get more book like them? So, you know, there's been a number of ways in thinking about AI, but I think it is both run how you help your employees go on that chimney and then two and maybe equally as important, how you build enterprise assets that help the organization more effectively deliver on their objectives. Yeah, there's so many opportunities to constantly learn. One of the things you just said, Polly, I, I want to just zero in on a couple of words you use. You talked about capabilities to solve a business problem that a customer has as opposed to just simply offering capabilities. I think one of the interesting things about moving from products to solutions is that solution solve.

Polly and I are both on LinkedIn, actively on there and I look forward to seeing you at our next webinar. Thanks again, Polly, Dave, thank you. It's always such a pleasure to spend time with you.