We are delighted to announce that partner Permanent TSB has won the financial services category at The Irish CX Impact Awards 2021. The bank took home the award for its commitment to the grassroots development and growth of its transformative Blackbelt CX programme.
The winner’s story showed how Permanent TSB, with the health and safety of colleagues the bank’s paramount priority, was able to continue with the national rollout of its programme, despite being interrupted three months in by Covid 19.
The programme incorporates a unique framework for training, coaching and education for branch colleagues to develop the skills required to deliver a consistently excellent customer experience across the branch network. “With an enduring focus on delivering better outcomes for customers, employees and the business, Permanent TSB is building a CX strategy through Blackbelt that evolves in line with the rapid changes in retail banking and continues to contribute to exceptional standards of customer experience,” said Mark Gould, Managing Director Ireland, cp2experience.
The training initiative, which was designed and delivered by cp2experience, was interrupted by the pandemic in March 2020. Permanent TSB wanted to continue so the cp2 team worked quickly and closely with the bank’s training and health and safety teams to adapt the approach to facilitate and continue the training in full compliance with national Covid guidelines at the time. The programme was redesigned as a blended learning solution. This incorporated multi-media e-learning modules, in branch activities, and briefing and coaching sessions delivered via video conference.
Corina McGuinness, Retail Transformation Programme Manager, Permanent TSB said “We couldn’t have done this programme without our partners cp2experience. We started the national rollout of the programme in January 2020, but this was interrupted by Covid-19 in March. To adapt to the change and ensure the safety of our colleagues, we worked quickly and closely with cp2experience, using the building blocks and the learning principles from the ‘live’ Blackbelt programme to create an online programme that accelerated the rollout of Blackbelt to the whole retail organisation. The programme has really helped us with our purpose, which is to maintain and build trust with our customers.”
CX impact – why Permanent TSB stood out
Hundreds of qualified submissions across 14 categories were submitted to the awards, which were organised by BusinessRiver, the largest B2B community platform in Ireland. The Permanent TSB initiative stood out on three judging criteria: customer impact, colleague impact and commercial impact. “Permanent TSB showed off a CX initiative that continued despite Covid, not in response to it. Their entry gave a great sense of the grassroots development and growth of CX principles right across the organisation. It demonstrated that Permanent TSB sees the direct link between commercial success, customer success and employee engagement,” said the award judges.
Customer impact – the bank’s transactional Net Promoter Score improved by 42% in just over 12 months.
Colleague impact – there was a significant improvement in two key employee engagement metrics:
- ‘I believe that I am a member of a High-Performance Team’ measurement improved from 77% (2018) to 85% in 2020
- ‘I have opportunities for personal development to help me serve my customers more effectively’ improved from 57% (2018) to 76% in 2020
Commercial impact – each stage of the programme had associated commercial benefits, which were linked to colleague behaviours and a related improvement in customer experience. For example, the volume of qualified mortgage customer leads increased by +64% year on year. From a customer viewpoint, the benefits of buying a home with Permanent TSB was more clearly understood, which resulted in the desire to progress with an application.
John Aves, Chief Executive, cp2experience said “Congratulations to our partners at Permanent TSB for their success in the Irish CX Impact Awards. The bank won the award with an innovative and creative initiative. It has been a pleasure to work with Corina and the team on something that has made such a difference for Permanent TSB’s colleagues, customers and overall business performance.”
Thank you to the award organisers for a fantastic night. See the full list of winners here.
