Case study: “Our commitment to our customers is at the heart of everything we do”
13th September, 2024
West Bromwich Building Society is the eighth largest building society in the UK and offers mortgages and savings products both regionally and nationally. The West Brom is owned by, and run for, the benefit of its customers, who are members of the Society. They’ve been accredited with the Good Business Charter since March 2020, just after the launch of the Charter.
We spoke to colleagues at West Bromwich Building Society to explore their proactive efforts in meeting the GBC customer commitment component and communicating their commitment as part of their accreditation, to help inspire other organisations.
“I believe that as a mutual Building Society we put our customers’ interests centre stage every day, and our values play a central role in guiding what we do and how we work to achieve this.”
Jonathon Westhoff, Chief Executive of West Bromwich Building Society
How we engage and talk to our customers
In keeping with our evolving ways of working, we have adopted a hybrid approach to customer engagement, which mixes virtual and in-person activities on a regular basis. We keep our customers informed about our products and services, and how we can help them, through customer mailings, emails, and texts, as well as information in branches, and updates on our website. Customer engagement needs to be a two-way conversation so we can understand their concerns, aspirations, and needs for their future. This is why we regularly ask our customers how we can improve our products and services, and be an even better building society for them.
How we gather feedback and improve services
We collect feedback in different ways, which all feed in to our ‘Voice of the Customer’ programme. These methods allow us to track real-time feedback through all the touch points we have with our customers.
Whether a customer visits one of our branches, speaks with our Customer Service team, or has meeting with a Personal Mortgage Consultant, we’ll regularly invite them to rate the service they received and provide feedback about their experience. We value the relationships we have with our customers, and their feedback directly influences our products and services, our culture, and ensures we remain aligned with our purpose. Because without them we wouldn’t exist.
Our Member Council and Board Engagement
Over the past year, we’ve continued to experience the benefits of hybrid working, which has allowed us to engage more widely with our customers via our Member Council. During the past 12 months the Member Council has held three meetings to discuss a range of topics, including the future of digital channels at the West Brom, changes customers wanted on our savings platform, and Executive Director remuneration.
We organise regular feedback events throughout the year, as well as engaging over 2,000 members via our customer panel. Our Annual General Meeting also gives our customers the opportunity to meet and ask questions to our Board and Senior Management team.
Communicating Member Commitments
We have 6 commitments to our customers which we report on annually:
How we support and collect feedback from our customers is clearly laid out on our website:
Moneyfacts Consumer Awards 2024 – Best Customer Service Award
Our customers themselves have told us that they value our service, and how we engage with them. We recently won an incredibly special accolade from Moneyfacts, “The Best Customer Service” award. But this isn’t just any award, it’s special because it’s presented to the financial services business with the best overall customer service score from a consumer survey where over 250,000 people vote.
Jonathan Westhoff, Chief Executive comments…
“We’ve always been committed to providing people with the opportunity to buy their own homes and giving the best possible service to our customers to help them when they need it most. The award means a lot to us because they are voted for by customers and reflect their real experiences of household and personal finance providers.”
West Bromwich Building Society’s commitment to customers is a prime example of how organisations can put their customers first. Their communication to customers and feedback mechanisms demonstrates the high level of ‘Commitment to Customers’ that we expect of our GBC accredited organisations. For further inspiration on how you can demonstrate your commitment to your customers, please visit our component page.