A flood. A burglary. A systems failure. Any of these incidents can have a catastrophic impact on a small business. AXA Business Insurance, based in Glasgow, Scotland, protects small to medium-sized companies, sole traders, and self-employed people against such events with a range of insurance products that safeguard their livelihoods.

Although business insurance has traditionally been dominated by brokers, the direct market is growing rapidly and AXA Business Insurance wants to be at the forefront of this evolution. The company is already a major player in the insurance industry, with 220 employees and  annual sales of nearly $160 million. “More people are choosing to go direct than ever before, and our ambition is to be the number one in the market by 2021,” said Darrell Sansom, Chief Customer & Innovation Officer.

To achieve this goal, the insurer needs to ensure its customer feedback ratings are impeccable. “Digital referrals will be key to future growth — people value the opinions of existing customers far more than any marketing materials we can produce,” explained Sansom. “To achieve a good rating, we need to deliver a personalized, omni-channel service. Small business owners are pushed for time; we need to make things as fast and easy for them as possible.” And that means making things as fast and easy as possible for customer-facing teams.

With four internal systems capturing information on different types of policies, AXA Business Insurance’s customer service advisors lacked a unified view of customers. “There was a gap in customer intimacy,” said Jacqueline Cowden, Head of Business Delivery. “People felt we didn’t always know and understand their business. We needed to stop having product-based conversations and start having more customer-focused conversations.”

To support this shift in culture, AXA Business Insurance needed a single CRM system that could provide a 360-degree view of its customers. “Salesforce was ahead by miles,” said Cowden. “Not only is the platform extremely flexible, but it also maps to our customer-centric goals.”

Around 150 people in service and sales roles at AXA Business Insurance now use Service Cloud on a daily basis to provide a joined-up, personal experience to thousands of customers. By integrating Salesforce with the company’s communications systems and digital policy management platform, advisors can see at a glance who is calling, every policy they own, recent interactions, and feedback scores.

They can also see customers’ online activity and help them complete any outstanding transactions without having to start the process from scratch. “The more you know about a customer, the easier it is to have a productive conversation,” said Sansom. “Our customers no longer have to repeat themselves, and if they’ve had a negative experience in the past, advisors can understand that and try to change their perception.” If a team member is off sick or on holiday, a colleague can pick up the conversation where they left off, ensuring customers still receive a rapid and informed response.

With a 360-degree view of the customer, advisors can not only provide a more prompt and personalized response to queries and policy updates, they can also cross-sell and upsell more effectively. “We were spending a lot of time trying to win new business, yet there were opportunities going untapped with existing customers,” said Cowden. “The cost and effort involved in attracting a new customer is much higher than selling to an existing one.”

To simplify cross-selling, AXA Business Insurance has developed a “may need” dashboard in Salesforce. This enables advisors to highlight any additional products that customers might be interested in based on their business type and associated risks. This dashboard also helps shape the content of marketing campaigns. “Salesforce has addressed many of the issues that prevented advisors from hitting their sales targets; they think it’s brilliant,” said Cowden.