5. CRM & Finding Purpose with Premium Credit's Adam Morghem

PLEASE NOTE: This transcript has been created using fireflies.ai – a transcription service. It has not been edited by a human and therefore may contain mistakes.

[00:00:02] DOM HAWES: Unicorns. They're supposed to be rare, but they seem to be everywhere. Now, like you, I suspect, I devoured business and marketing books. If you've noticed, more and more of them use the same reference material, and they retrofit their strategies and tactics they're espousing to unicorns. Well, you know what? I'm bored of reading about unicorns. So what if Amazon thinks back to front? Why is it relevant to me that Steve Jobs started with why? Google, Facebook, Netflix, those guys, it's not where I live professionally, and it doesn't inform my future. I thought, why don't I do something about it? Why not create a body of reference material that ordinary marketers like me can contribute to and learn from? That is Unicorny. 

[00:00:56] DOM HAWES: Hello, unicorners. Wow, have we got a treat for you today. Whatever you're doing now, stop it. You cannot multitask and take in all of the learnings that you are about to get today. Please, whatever you're doing, stop it. Today, we have the amazing Adam Morghem. He is the Strategy Marketing and Communications Director at Premium Credit, the billion-pound company you didn't know you didn't know. It's highly likely that you've used them at some stage in your life, you just don't know it. 

Now, Adam is being joined by my co host today, Dave Rolfe from CRM agency, BURN, because we are going to talk about customer relationship management. We're going to talk about the journey that you go on to find your purpose. Now, this really is great content. Please, if you're in the marketing business, if you're trying to identify your why, if you want to understand how to optimise your sales funnels better, don't go away. 

Hello, Unicorny Podcast fan, thingamabobs. It's great to be with you again. Today. I'm joined by the fabulous Dave Rolfe from BURN as my co host. Hi, Dave. 

[00:02:06] DAVID ROLFE: Hi. How's everything going? 

[00:02:07] DOM HAWES: Yeah, very well, I think actually. We've got a really exciting day ahead. But before we get there, why don't you tell me a little bit about BURN and you, just so that everyone listening knows who you are. 

[00:02:17] DAVID ROLFE: Sure. I'm Dave. As Dom said, Managing Director of BURN, a multi-award winning, I would say that, results focus CRM agency. We're relationship marketing specialists. We've got years of experience across a multitude of sectors from charity, travel, finance, subscription. In my past life, lots of luxury experience, and many, many more. We like the fact that we're not specialists, because it allows for cross-fertilisation of ideas from the different segments. Rather than being pigeonholed in one, whether that's travel or charity.  

We really like to focus on using engagement to drive and build rewarding relationships between brands and their customers. The way we deliver that is through data and insight and using that to really enable us to get under the skin of customers and know what makes them tick, what motivates them, what their needs are. Build our strategies and creative at the back of that and using technology to deliver that and to enable us to get the right customers to raise their hand and acquire those customers. Where appropriate, nurture them through the sales journey, ensure that they do purchase. 

Then once we've got them on board, make sure that we are reducing turn, maintaining those customers and actually trying to maximise revenue from those customers. It's all through data insight, comms planning and creative all to really focus on building relevance, building relationships, really creating resonance with them so that we come a little bit more sticky in one of their brands. Which will lead to better engagement and better results. 

[00:03:42] DOM HAWES: That's particularly relevant today, because Adam is going to talk to us about the process that they went through a little bit, I think with their own customer journey mapping. They've got a particular challenge, of course, that their product is pretty much 100% intermediated. They're relying on other people, either technology or physical people to sell a product for them. Is that an environment in which you guys have got a lot of experience too? 

[00:04:06] DAVID ROLFE: Yeah. We're very definitely not pigeonholing to one sector as I said. Yes, we've got a lot of consumer experience with brands like Celebrity Cruises and building very big CRM programs for them. We've also done a lot of B2B with a number of FS companies, but also Pipedrive, who are a CRM organisation in their own right. It is basically about understanding what the objectives are, what you are trying to achieve, what you want, whether you're talking to consumers or talking to organisations. What you want them to do, what they want from the relationship and building an appropriate value exchange and a communication program out the back of it that really drives them through the stages. With one of our clients, the problem they had was the people were hand raising, starting a trial, and then we're just getting forgotten for a month. At the end of the month's trial, they were disappearing. What we had to do was build an automated trigger-based program, so that when they opted in to have a trial, they got a communication that said. "Okay, your logical next step is this. Try this." 

They try that step. If they did that, then get another communication either through the system as a pop up or via an email to say, "That's great. That worked really well. Have you tried this?" But then also, if they weren't doing it, there's positive journeys and negative journeys. We had to make sure that we covered all those through to make sure that during the month's trial, they experienced all of the different aspects of the product. Because without that, they just won't contain the product up. 

[00:05:20] DOM HAWES: Okay. Cool. Look, now you know why I needed to be joined by Dave, because this is way outside my area of expertise. Let's get Adam online, and let's hear what he's got to say about the initiatives that he's been running at Premium Credit. 

[INTERVIEW] 

[00:05:37] DOM HAWES: Okay. Today, we are very lucky to be joined on Unicorny by Adam Morghem from Premium Credit. Good morning to you, Adam. 

[00:05:47] ADAM MORGHEM: Good morning, Dom. Thanks for having me. 

[00:05:49] DOM HAWES: You're very welcome. Dave and I are very much looking forward to this. I'm going to ask you to tell us a little bit about the company in a minute, because it'd be great to get some context. But since we first spoke, I've discovered that I've been a customer of yours three times. 

[00:06:03] ADAM MORGHEM: Brilliant. 

[00:06:03] DOM HAWES: I didn't even know it. 

[00:06:04] ADAM MORGHEM: Glad to hear it. 

[00:06:05] DOM HAWES: So there you go. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Premium Credit, please, Adam? 

[00:06:08] ADAM MORGHEM: Sure. Okay, so premium credit, is a predominantly is a premium finance provider. We also have components of our business called specialist lending, which is a payment of sort of fees for schools, or golf clubs, tax fees and some other pieces as well. We started out just over 30 plus years ago and have pretty grown steadily over the last 30 years. We now have just over 2.1 million customers. We lend about 3.8 billion a year at last count. We work with about 3,000 partners across both the insurance business, which is about 90% of us, and the specialist lending parts of the golf clubs and the schools, which is about 10% of us.  

We're about 400 people based – well, we were based out of an office in Leatherhead, and in Dublin, in Ireland. But we have, obviously, with COVID, hitting two years ago, we sort of decamped to a sort of hybrid model. That, for us is meant, I suppose, within sort of seven days, we were all working from home using technology, as well as we sort of do almost every day. What we use the office for, we've sort of rebuilt the office to a collaborative space. As we start to talk about work that we want to go and build on, we want to bring people together, that's how we're really using that space, rather than making everybody get back into the office and drive to work again. It's been a journey. It's been a journey. 

[00:07:30] DOM HAWES: I guess also of you, because your business is so intermediated, 100%, intermediated, right? 

[00:07:37] ADAM MORGHEM: Is 99 point. 

[00:07:38] DOM HAWES: Has that thrown up extra challenges? 

[00:07:40] ADAM MORGHEM: Definitely. I mean, the start of this for sure. Everybody was trying to figure out how the heck do we all operate in a new world, and that wasn't just us, that was – whether that was a school. I'm sure all those who have kids, homeschooling, what did that mean? Versus golf clubs having to shut down, versus brokers still trying to do business and insurance still doing business. Everybody's had to adapt, and it certainly is what we've had to do. It's thrown up different challenges for us. The technology challenge was obviously the immediate one, then I think, you start to move very quickly into the people component, because I think, as we all know, wellbeing is a massive issue. For those people who are lucky enough to have studies, or have spare rooms or family around them, I imagine it's a very different life for those people versus the people who are single living on their own and how they had to adapt. That applies not just to my colleagues that I work with every day, but also applies to the partners that we work with and applies to the customers that we serve. 

[00:08:36] DOM HAWES: Okay. I think we might come back to that kind of wellbeing thing maybe a little bit later. Now, I asked Dave to join, to co-hosts on this today, because when we were talking about the challenges you have, customer journey and the whole customer journey, mapping and planning thing was an essential part of what we discussed and that's kind of what he does. I'd like to bring Dave in at this stage to start looking, I think, probably at the specific challenges that you face in helping your product get sold. Can you maybe just sort of lead us in a little bit by talking about some of those challenges? 

[00:09:09] ADAM MORGHEM: Yeah. Typically, we've served two distinct types of customers. One type of customer, I would call commercial, so businesses. Then the other types of customers are personal customers, so you or I buying. I'll stick with the insurance example for the moment, I'll drop in some of the others from specialist lending. Specifically, if you're buying car insurance, your own personal car insurance, inevitably, you're probably going to aggregate a site, you're probably looking for a policy which fits for the type of car you have, the type of lifestyle that you lead to fit with what you've got. You're probably looking at the price too. 

Then from there, you're selecting who your broker is going to be, or who your provider of your insurance is going to be. Then you're sort of through that journey relatively quickly, and most people, time is a real challenge, right? We want to move through these things. We don't want to be drawn out. In a personal space, it's critical for us that we fit really smoothly into the journeys of our partners, because what you don't want – and the simple analogy for those who don't buy, let's say they don't buy insurance. If you're buying a flight or anything else, the way you're taking off journey to be sold an additional product, you want those things to be as smooth as possible and seamless as possible so that you get them back into the journey to complete the sale and move forward.  

Our challenge has been and it's something that we're focused on strategically we're focused on and have been for two, three, four years is about how do we invest in our technology to make sure that we're seamless as possible. What we talk about is frictionless journeys. Now, that applies on a personal level, as I've described, but also on a commercial level, that's true too. It's a little bit more complicated, the journey is a little bit different. It's much more personal. You can imagine the complexity of somebody who has a property – sorry, somebody who has a commercial business who might have fleet, might have multiple properties, directors and officers, all sorts of other types of insurance that would go along with it. Those specific insurance policies become a little bit more complex and bit more personal. It's not as easy as saying, "What's your postcode? If you're buying car insurance, are you parking off the road or in a garage or whatever?" It becomes a little bit more complicated.  

As those start to happen, what we need to try and do and what we've been doing investing in is making sure we're as seamless as we can be for the partner, when they're dealing with that end customer, again, trying to keep it as simple as possible. That's been our challenge. It continues to be our challenge, it continues to be something that our partners are rightly demanding of, because their customers are demanding of that. We want to keep this as simple and as seamless as possible, so the customer gets offered, which is the key for us 100% off. We want all customers to have the opportunity to use a finance option if that's what they desire, so they can spread the cost of the insurance. Because, in effect, if you are a small company, you're getting a bill for £10,000 on day one. Do you want to pay £10,000 on day one? What does that mean for your cash flow versus you may want to pay, happy to pay a little bit more, because it's a loan. But actually, it's a targeted product. It's a very specific and very niche product. It's not like going to your bank and saying, "Can I have a loan?" It makes it a bit more simple. We work with the partners to make sure that that happens.  

Again, back to the journey point, is trying to keep it as simple as possible and as streamlined as possible for the customer. If the customer chooses to pay in full, absolutely right. That's the point. Customers have choice and they need to be presented with those choices every time. 

[00:12:19] DAVID ROLFE: Just thinking of the times when there is actually the sales element to it, so the non-website where it's automatically part of the journey. What is the challenge you've faced with the brokers? Is it training them so that they've got all the training? I know with some of our B2B clients, they have a big issue with, well post-COVID or during COVID with the big resignations. They've lost a lot of their experienced brokers. They've got new brokers coming in, who maybe aren't as trained in the products, in sales, in the FCA and all these different things, so they've got a challenge there. But they've also had real challenges with stopping their brokers from being in the dark through the journey. When they've made a sale, there's usually anything that involves FCA and you know way more than me. There's lots of stages as you go through from sale in inverted commas all the way through to the sale beneficial, and them getting their commission. There's lots of keeping people involved. I'm just wondering where the challenge is for you. 

[00:13:11] ADAM MORGHEM: Yeah. Dave, I think it's in a couple of places and it has moved over time. I think if we go back a little bit in time, and not too far, but five, six, seven years ago. One of the things that we were doing, as an organisation, we've been offering premium finance for, as I said, 30 years, but it's always been a relationship-driven organisation. We've been working closely with these partners, trying to understand, trying to help, doing things like – this won't mean a lot to the people outside of the industry, but integrating with software house partners, for example. These are the technology people who help the brokers deliver the technology, offer the insurance, get the premium written and live. 

We've always been doing those things, but what I would say that's slightly different is that, probably around seven years ago or so, we started to look at it from both the customer but the partner perspective. But in terms of what are the things that we could really go and make some changes to. Dave, yourself, you mentioned training. A key point of this was, how do we make sure that we offer finance to everybody and how do we make sure that people who are offering the finance are comfortable doing it, they know what they need to do, they know what they need to provide, they know how the steps work. Again, they give the customer, the end customer confidence that this is something that's not just a bolt on. It's something that's intrinsic to any insurance policy. 

One of the things we did do, and I'm going to go back to 2017, 2016, was introduced the thing called capability team. Now that for us was a, it was a start but it came from some insights, having spoken with a number of lots actually of brokers who had said, "If you look at the performance of our individual brokers within the company, you can see that there's real varying performance of the sale of premium finance or the offer of premium finance in effect." That came down to knowledge. It came down to understanding. As I said, it's that comfort. How comfortable do you feel about offering this compliantly? That's critical. Again, you mentioned the FCA. Absolutely, that's given. A ticket to the game is, you must be compliant with what the regulator is asking you to do and you need to stay at the forefront of that because it does move. You've seen it moving in the last couple of years. It will continue to move. We've got to keep moving. 

What we did, though, was recognise that sort of, I suppose, throw it around to how we could help these guys beyond the sort of standard of, "Hey! Here's some collateral which tells you what the product is. Here's a leaflet and here's a piece of information" or whatever it was. Capability was the answer. What we started to do was we hired – we've now got four trainers, who ship geographically across the UK, who go in to partners on a regular basis to train them. That's both personal and commercial. As we talked about before, there's slightly different components, different approaches and modules required. But we started by building some modules of – the obvious one would be, what is premium finance, how do you offer it, dealing with objections, making sure the customer understands they're getting honest, fair, value work and so forth. 

That was part of the capability piece at the beginning. It started to evolve a little bit, because we sort of found that, again, what we were inevitably talking to were people who were salespeople. Again, how do you sell premium finance? But actually, that's not that far away from how do you sell anything? How do you understand features and benefits, for example. We included some of those modules. One of the things I suppose we did relatively quickly was recognised that we needed to stand up with some credibility. We went through a process of becoming, the correct word is accredited for CPD. The partners, many brokers as with many professions, the CPD component is important. What we were then offering were courses that were CPD accredited, which meant that we've got some of your hours, your learning hours that you needed to do. 

We've evolved that through time. Again, the course has continued to evolve and they talk not just about the obvious of, as I say, offering finance and how do you use our system and how does that system work with somebody else's. But we started to extend it a little bit as well, not too far, because I don't think it's our place necessarily to overreach too much in the training space. But as long as it sorts of links to the offer of the finance component, then I think it's relevant. So that was just one example of how we sort of took this forward and we continue to do it now. It's a really core part of our proposition, is the training of the staff. Again, it could be contact centre staff, so we do big groups or it could be individual brokers. It's more ones, twos, threes, fours. What we tried to do, whether it's commercial or personal is make sure they've got the right information to offer to the customer. 

[00:17:18] DAVID ROLFE: How big are your brokers that you usually sell with? Are they large companies or can they be everything? 

[00:17:24] ADAM MORGHEM: Dave, it's a complete spectrum. Brands you would know as most people would so, Aon, one of the biggest in the world, Willis Towers Watson, again, one of the biggest. Obviously, there are companies like Holden, and Astonmark and so forth. They're the very, very big end for some business. But then equally, we deal with individual brokers who are on your high street, anywhere around the country. Again, the principles are exactly the same. They're doing their job, they are experts in what they offer, which is the insurance. What we are giving to those guys is another string to the bow, so to speak to say, your customers are choosing your insurance is one thing. But actually, how do you pay for is another.  

If I go back in my history, I used to work for RSA before I joined Premium Credit. When I was at RSA, and we were working on global specialty lines, or mid markets or the small business piece? Well, I'm not insurance through and through, I'm a marketeer through and through. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to how once the premium or the insurance policy was identified, and the proposition was given from the insurer to the brokers and those things were being offered. That's kind of where I saw the end of the journey. It's funny, because having joined Premium Credit, I've now seen the next stage of the chain in great detail. It is, it's making sure that the brokers, the individuals have got the right information to offer their customer to provide opportunity. That's ultimately how we think about it. Our purpose is about proudly supporting our community of customers and partners in creating those opportunities through payments. It's a really important part for us to make sure we bring that to life. 

[00:18:52] DOM HAWES: I want to talk about purpose a little bit later, because I know that's another big initiative that you've been involved with. I think there's a lot that our listeners can learn from with what you've been through. I just want to wind back a little bit because you guys are both experts at what you do, and we're assuming a lot of knowledge in our listeners, and they may not have it. I wonder whether we could just maybe start defining or explaining the process, how might our listeners go about doing what you've done, doing the customer journey mapping, identifying areas of friction or identifying different touch points. Maybe a good place to start would be defining what customer journey mapping is. 

[00:19:31] ADAM MORGHEM: Sure. I'm a simple guy, right? I try to keep things in simple language as possible because otherwise I get confused. The way I look at it is, we have interaction, we talk to brokers, we deal with brokers, we deal with customers. What we have done is, written that down, where are the points to where we touch a broker or broker calls upon us for something, some information. A customer does, a customer interacts with us, they sign up. What does that mean in terms of their welcome journey? Obviously, we talk in terms of, I think many people do sort of happy path and sad path. The happy path being, if everything works perfectly, it should go like this. We're the best one in the world, not everything works perfectly. We also have the map for, okay, but if that doesn't happen, what happens next? What do we do? How does that go? 

Simplistically, it's about writing it down, it's about starting at the point of which, for us, it's the A customer, whoever that is goes into the marketplace and says, "I want to buy some insurance." They will then start a process, which will be either, they could go direct to an insurer or they'll go straight to a broker, or they will go to an aggregator, compare the market for example. Depending on what sort of insurance they're buying. Again, if it's personal, it's slightly different. If it's commercial, it's slightly different. But broadly, that's the process they start ad that's when the journey starts.  

Once somebody gets a quote for, let's say, I'm trying to insure my car. I put in my details about my car. Then, what we start to then try and do is, where does that information go? A big part of journey, back when I was talking about training, which is only one little bit. When you start thinking about the technology, you then think about, "Well, how do we smoothly move information around to the relevant people?" Wouldn't it be nice as an example that when you put your information in as a customer into an aggregator that says, "I've got a car, it has four wheels, I'm going to park it on my drive, and all these good things." Very standard. That information is, you don't have to put that in twice, because that gets frustrating for all of us, I think. How does that information get moved between the various different brokers or insurers who quote? Then once they've done that, in effect, that's data being passed around in the right way, and securely and safely. There's not a risk to that, but it's just the – the information has to be passed across. 

When you then get to the point of saying, "Okay. Great. I found the policy I want. It's £500 and it's with broker X or insurer Y. You then go on to their site and that's usually what happens, it takes you to their site. Then you sort of get into the, "Okay, right." Are there any other things that you need? Do you need additional legal cover, for example, or whatever else it might be? Do you have a second car? Are you interested in home? There are other things that we'll start to get into that part of the journey. But one of them ultimately will be, the cost of your insurance now, Dave, is £500. It will say, "How do you want to pay?" That's when, for us, we really come into it. Because that's where you say to the customer, "You've got choices. You can pay all upfront." In which case, we're going to go on a credit card, or debit card or some sort of bank transfer route. Or you can go, "Actually, I don't want to pay my £500 on day one. I want to pay –I'm happy to pay, let me say a total of 520, 530 for the year, but I'll spread the cost of it." Obviously, it depends on things like the APIs and those sorts of things. 

From our perspective, what we're looking at is where do all the pieces of information come in, and then where do they then touch us. If they do click on that box, it says, "Yes, actually. I'd like to pay in 10 easy instalments of – just pick a number of let's say, you know, £52 a month or whatever it's going to be. Once you've got to that space, then you get into the, "Right. Okay." That information that you gave at the beginning, which was your name, address, amongst other things, how do we share some of those pieces. I was getting too detailed. I guess what I'm going to is, those pieces of information that move around are really, really important, because they help us understand you as a customer. But also, we have to do assessment. If he is a personal customer, there are requirements for us to do what we call an assessment of affordability. We need to make sure because ultimately, we're lending you money. This is a loan. This is a credit product. We have to comply with that because it's not full payment. We have to make sure that we comply with regulations.  

By doing those checks, whether it's what we call, KYC, Know Your Customer. Those sorts of pieces of information that you do, as if you were applying for any loan, or any credit card. What we're doing is just making sure that there is no point us lending to somebody who with the best will in the world, they are going to struggle. It would be irresponsible of us to do that. I think that's why we do – again, we have these things in place to make sure that we don't do that. We make sure we have the right checks. That then means, once the customer – and all this happens in a split second. We're talking about what I'm taking two minutes to describe takes a fraction of a second to happen. The information comes back and says, "Yes, this customer, yeah, affordability, no problem at all. Pieces of information, yes, we know who they are, we know where they live." All the good stuff that you'd have on any other loan. At that point, it comes back, it has your offer. "Dave, there's your offer. You can pay for it like this. Do you want to proceed?" "Yes." "Great." Click. Once that's done, then we have in the background, from our perspective, we have sort of then, how does the insurance policy get paid? How does the commission work? All that sort of happens in the background. 

What we're thinking is, how do we make that as soon as possible so that if I describe it, it's slightly differently. You go on to an aggregator, you put in your details, you find the policy you want, you click it. It says, "How do you want to pay? Do you want to pay in instalments or you want to pay in full?" You pick instalment, and within a few seconds, it comes back with, "Great, no problem at all. Your first instalment is there." You'll be getting some information and you're away. What I described in five minutes can be done in a fraction of a second. 

[00:25:04] DOM HAWES: That's the friction of it. Dave, I'm interested here. Adam and Premium Credit are obviously extraordinarily experienced and sophisticated in how they're doing this. But what about other companies? I mean, you see, a lot of companies who you do this for, how sophisticated are businesses and is it different sector by sector?  

[00:25:24] DAVID ROLFE: It hugely varies. I think there's a number of key reasons why CRM programs can fail. One of them, the key ones is over complicating things. It only needs to be as complicated as you need it to be. At its heart, CRM is simple. It's about understanding what you and your customers want, what they need. Coming up with a fair value exchange so that your customers get what they need, you get what you need. Then you build journeys to communicate that to them effectively. We've worked with one of our travel clients, I think. Don't quote me, but I think there's about 24 different journeys in there with numerous comms and numerous channels. It's fairly hideously complicated.  

Then we've got some other B2B clients where there might only be two fairly simple journeys, but it's just maximising each individual touch point and not thinking about just your marketing touch points. Exactly as Adam said, you've got email, you've got DM, you've got all those channels, but you've got your call centre. You've got every single touch point where they are touching your brand, or your broker's brand, or any of those areas are a point where you can reinforce the relationship and get them to behave in a way that is beneficial to your company. At its heart, it's about getting the value exchange, particularly at the moment with the way everything's going. People have incredibly high expectations. 

Adam was talking about frictionless. A lot of that boils down to time and things like that. It has to be as near to instant as you can get. They can't submit something and then have to wait a day or even half a day for a response. They want that response back instantly. Customer's expectations have gone up. Everything has to be frictionless, whether that's, as I say, time. Whether we know enough about them to make sure that everything we're saying to them is relevant. That doesn't just mean the over hackneyed personalisation and naming clouds, and creative and things like that. But knowing enough about them to be relevant, so we're actually talking to them in a relevant way. 

Using your brokers as an example, Adam. The needs of – which I can't remember the name of your biggest broker now, apologies. But the biggest broker will have different needs to John in the high street or the small broker. They could well have different needs and they might need – and you talked about training. The small broker might have found useful some training on selling over Zoom calls when the lockdown kicked in. Whereas, the big guys have probably got that covered. It's just making sure that you are being as relevant as you can. You're being proactive. The whole thing is easy, frictionless. Tech is there for a reason. 

I think, again, back to the complicating thing, I think all too often, agencies like us are just as bad. But agencies and clients like to do things because they can, because the technology exists and the data exists that we can do all this. We can do a million different things and personalise in a million different ways. But actually, when you dive into the details, will it impact? Will it change their behaviour? Will it show a profit? Often, what you need to do is, it's good to throw things out, but then you need to boil it down to what is going to make the most change and change things the quickest. 

[00:28:26] ADAM MORGHEM: Dave, on the back of that, I think for us, there are probably two parts. When I think about Aon, Gallaghers, Towergate, they're all very, very big partners. You're right, there are very big differences between them. The one thing remains true, is that, I don't see that being a particularly strong-end destination. The reason being is because, all consumers' habits change, consumers change, businesses change. What we do is we think about it in terms of continuous improvement. It's, how do we make those changes? If you were starting out, you start with the big stuff, right? You've got to put some technology in place that interfaces with, that connects with our partners and connects with our funding system let's say.  

Once you've done those things, you get to a point where actually the improvements you're making are, they are tweaks. Some of them are very big tweaks, but they are – in effect, they are tweaks, they're making things smoother. How do you pass that information across faster? You stop measuring in terms of overnight, as you said, and it starts being – actually, it's in milliseconds, is how you're thinking about it. Downtime gets reduced from 12 hours, let's say, to do an upgrade to two hours and 10 minutes of interruption or something. That's what you start to think about.  

Then, I completely agree. When I think about the strategy, which is, I am the strategy marketing communications director. When I think about all these things connecting up, it's exactly how I see the world. Marketing is there to serve the organisation. It's the support function to the organisation. We have a clear strategy. We are targeting, trying to get that to 100% offer. From that, we then think about our new partners, we think about existing partners and we think about new propositions. That's how we then underpin those by the frictionless journeys and how we bring technology to play. They all serve a purpose and marketing has to do that. There isn't space, particularly in an organisation like ours. I'm sure it's different in different organisations. I've been in many of them. Where actually, a big accolade is to win an award for a great piece of marketing activity. That isn't what we're trying to do. 

What we're trying to do is, again, back to purpose, and sorry to keep bringing it back to that. But for me, it stems from that, and maybe a bit of a segue for you, Dom. It stems from all of that tied into strategy is that, we have to be clear about why we get up every day, why do we turn up. There are various different writers like Simon Sinek, and other people who talk about the why and all that. But we do need to understand that and everybody needs to align behind that. Once you've set your purpose, you think about also then the values that people are bringing in every day. That becomes the way that you operate as an organisation. Yeah, this is completely connected to the way that we operate through the business for sure. 

[00:30:57] DAVID ROLFE: I think you made a really valid point at the start about not being done when you've created it, that it needs to be ongoing. I regularly get asked by clients, kind of what are the key reasons why this could fail when I'm talking to them about CRM. Probably, one of the highest over time is that clients see it as a one-off strategic development. We work with them, we build the CRM. That's done. Tick. We have CRM sorted. But exactly as you say, that's never the case. Time will, however, much of a genius I am, I say that with a smile, and however much genius the clients are, we will create something. 

[00:31:31] DOM HAWES: He's not smiling, listeners. He's not smiling. He's being very serious. 

[00:31:35] DAVID ROLFE: We could come up with something that is absolutely genius, but it will still only be at that point, 90% correct. It needs to be a program of testing, and iteration and constant improvement over time. But then to your point, the world is ever changing, so things will change the minute it has to be improved. 

DH: Adam, thank you very much for handing me a segue on a plate. Because obviously, it's important to understand why we're trying to do all of this and trying to get the organisation aligned so that everyone pulls in the same direction. Now I know that you guys have been on a purpose journey, and you had a particular approach you took. Could you explain a little bit of that to us, please? 

[00:32:19] ADAM MORGHEM: Sure. Let me rewind for a second. Back in June 2019, Tara Waite joined us our CEO. She became the CEO. Incredible individual, brings a lot of energy and a lot of clarity to us as an organisation and has certainly driven us forward along with the rest of the executive team. One of the things that we kind of landed on the very beginning, though, was trying to answer that question of, you start thinking about a strategy. You think, okay, strategy is about planning, and the plan and where you're going to go. But there's something deeper than that, which says, but actually, why do you really exist? Back to that question of what is the why, right? 

For us, we started the process back in 2020 in broadly, let's say, April, May, something like that in 2020. We did this remotely – to then crystallise our purpose. I say crystallise rather than to create, because I think, from the work that I did and I certainly wasn't an expert in this space at all, I'm not now, but I've learned a lot more as I've gone along. Is that you have so much creative purposes, you kind of uncover why you're there. It's a slightly different take on the world and I subscribe to entirely. We've always been there. If somebody had asked me on day one, "What do we do and why do we do it?" I'd have an answer for you, which will be very probably not technical, but very sort of matter of fact. We offer finance like this and we do it because it helps people buy their insurance or spread the cost of their insurance, which in effect is what we do.  

Actually, what we went through was a process where we brought the whole organisation together. We had a little bit of external help, where we created what we call home teams. We created this other group of people called pacesetters. Now, the pace setters were in effect the people who made sure that everybody's voice in every home team was heard through the organisation. The point was, the starting point was, we want everybody to be involved. This is our company as a team. We're colleagues, right? That's what we want to do. It didn't matter whether you were senior, junior, in this part of the business or in a different part of the business. No difference at all. What mattered was that you're part of the organisation and together, it's only the together bit that kind of makes us drive forward. 

Divided everybody up, again remotely, which was a little bit of a challenge, but we kind of went through it. The pacesetters then we're in effect the, let me call them the sort of trainers, the guidance people that help those teams convey, ask them questions, ask them about – the first question would be, "What's your individual purpose? "Why do you get out of bed in the morning? Why does that matter?" We went through that process. We over a period of time, we asked slightly different questions. We asked the home teams to think about where we were as an organisation, and what we were trying to do and why we were trying to do. It didn't matter that some people in the business work in insurance, the insurance premium and finance part. Other people worked in the schools element, or the tax element or whatever. It didn't matter. 

What mattered was, can we get to the bottom of why we're doing what we're doing, because ultimately, we're a lending company. Over a period of time, we went through this, I would call it a journey, definitely and almost a baton pass. Questions asked of our people, they provided feedback. That feedback was then sort of consolidated. That consolidation then meant that we had a better clarity of sort of, by volume, where we were going, what were the things. Because then people would use, some words were exactly the same, some words were different, but some had exactly the same meaning. Some words were completely different. What we were trying to do was trying to hone to a point of ultimately writing a purpose statement. 

When we got too far enough, we then started to get people to think about other companies they admired, think about themselves, think about us. But ultimately, got down to a set of words. We put those on a page, and then that became the baton pass between the pacesetters and the executive team. The idea was. no one team there had the right to say, "Scrap that. Ditch that. We don't like that." We said, "It wasn't set from above." I guess the message I'd give is, it was iterative and it was building. It was always the and rather than the but. When we started to get into those conversations, some of the words changed, so they would pass a statement over to the exco, the exco would review that, think about that from where they were looking at it. 

We already set out some principles that said, "Look, we're not going to say that we are global, because we're no, and we have to have some parameters to operate within." But it allowed us to sort of go back and forth and enhance each time. That was the ‘and’ component. Ultimately, that happened probably four or five times. We landed on a statement, which I sort of already said it earlier. But we proudly support our community of customers and partners, creating opportunities through convenient payments. That became our purpose statement. But every word in there is important and every component of it is important. The proudly part is about us. It's how we turn up in the organisation, how we turn up every day. Then the community of customers and partners, we have a variety of customers and partners. I've talked about schools. I've talked about insurers. But also, we have partners that we work – technology partners that we work with or software house partners that we work with. 

It's how do we turn up there. Then we think about creating opportunities, because that for us is at the space of why do we exist. Well, actually, it enables somebody. A simple example to say, "I don't want to pay £500, or £1000 or £5000 on day one. Actually, I can manage my budget, my costs my income better if I spread it." The analogy we always use as an example is one where you deal with, let's say, a company. The company wants to invest in a new sprinkler system, let's say. Well, that sprinkler system has a big cost to it, so does your insurance premium. But we get into the conversation coming, "But actually, what you could do is, if you finance it, you reduce the initial outlay of cost. You can still invest in the sprinkler piece. By the way, the sprinkler piece will reduce your property insurance as well." Because suddenly, you've de-risked part of your business as well. It's a small example. 

Those are the sorts of things that we – that sort of enablement is where we talk about the creating of opportunities. More simply, it's about, anybody – I don't know about you guys, but I pay my car insurance in January. I've completely badly timed that. Because it usually lands on the sixth of January, and Christmas has just happened, right? I'm sitting there going, "Oh, crikey! I've just spent a lot of money on Christmas and now what." Again, it's kind of going, "Gosh! I don't need to pay £500 on January the sixth or whatever it is. I can spread that." That's about helping the individuals with the opportunity. 

Then the last part of it, as I said before, it's about these convenient payments. Because ultimately, that's what it is. We're making things convenient for people. Every word in that purpose statement, every word that we debated was really, really critical from us, from an internal process perspective. We then did live events where we were telling people how far we've come and we were showing them the iterations. Then we did a big session, which was actually a joint presentation from Tara, our CEO with a couple of pacesetters. They talk through the journey. I think that was critical as well. Because from a communications perspective, you can get stuck with, it's from the top, the boss has said. That's absolutely not what this was. This came from the ground up, and then it came through the organisation, which also means that it has a stronger buy in. I just throw this in there. 

But at the end, we also then reviewed our values and put those into words and terms that worked for us. We talk in terms of – we've sort of come up with a bit of a connection in a second. But we talk in terms of standing together, standing true, standing up. Those are critical to us in standing out. They all link onto the stand part, but actually, it's about how we as individuals rock up everyday. So that back to the proudly part. It was an amazing journey. It was really, really incredible. It was great to see 400 people contribute. I think the 400 people felt engaged, which is kind of the key. You'll see it in any of the works that we do. We always keep harking back to, are we living this purpose? Our strategy naturally flows down through the purpose as well, so all connected. 

[00:40:06] DAVID ROLFE: How are you making sure that? Because, I mean, one of the common problems when you come up with a purpose is usually too. Agencies often are the worst. We'll come up with a purpose for ourselves as an agency. Say, I would come up with a purpose for BURN. I'll think, "That's genius." I will put it on the wall, not really tell anyone about it, and then it's just up on the wall as a purpose. You've done the first bit, which is make sure it's all communicated out to the business and it sounds like that was a really effective way of doing that. How are you making sure that it does become ingrained in the business and flows through everything that you do, whether that's through PR, HR teams. training, etc?  

[00:40:41] ADAM MORGHEM: Yeah, Sure, Dave. I'll start by saying it's a journey. Because again, it's not something you can – your example, and prompted, but sticking it on the wall is a great example of how not to do it. Not at least, because we don't have a wall that we all see today, for one. But actually, in an old building that we had, we had all these words dotted around on the walls. What ends up happening is, it classically becomes wallpaper. People just breezed past, and they never pay any attention to it. That's never the way that you're going to engage your people to see the opportunity, or to realise the opportunity or to behave in a particular way. We did some things, which are probably obvious and some things which are subtle. Obvious ones were things like, we had an award. We do a quarterly Town Hall. That quarterly Town Hall, it's a live event, but we do it remotely, because we're all obviously sitting where we are, but we changed the awards, right? 

The awards became about our values. We talk in terms of the values that we have here, rather than we talking in terms of things like, be collaborative, or sort of classic statements that most people have, which is absolutely fine. But for us, didn't really align with where we were trying to go with this. It does flow through. I think when we then think about the way that for example, we write press releases. We think about the language that we use, and we think about how are we representing the words, but also the deeds. I think that's kind of pretty critical too. As part of my remit, I've got product and proposition. Some of the things that we've done are sort of, again, less obvious, but really important. 

We have a new product proposition process that most organisations do. You come up with an idea, you sort of research the idea, the idea gets costed or opportunity gets spotted. Then you sort of move into a build, pilot test and rollout. It's kind of a bit of a broad standard. One of the things for us, is that part of our initial process of product idea is ‘how does this tie with our purpose?’. We actively ask ourselves that question, and this is an analogy from somebody else, which is not mine, but I'm just going to steal for a second, just to make the point. I was reading about a drinks company, and I've can't remember for the life of me who it was. But it was a drinks company who came up with a new great idea for a new product, which was a fizzy, whatever it was, I'd say fizzy orange juice, and I don't know exactly what it was. But loads of sugar in it, would have sold loads, kids would have bought it in their droves and off you go. Problem was, it got to the point where you then get to the approval process and the people step up and kind of go, "Right, okay. Well, great. How does this align with our purpose to be supportive of families to be reducing sugar content?" You suddenly have hard decisions to make. It's a very crude example, but it sort of shows you that you get to a point of saying, actually, that doesn't match with our purpose. That is important to us. 

When we think about it, we're asking ourselves the question about product propositions. It's ‘how does it align with what we're trying to do over here?’. As I said, all the words have important parts. It's things like, I always refer to colleagues as colleagues, not staff, not people. I refer to them as colleagues, because that's exactly what they are for me. That's how we think about the world here. I think about customers and I think about partners. Yes, there are different types of customers, there are different types of partners. But again, that becomes the language that we use through the organisation. Some of it is very subtle, in the words that we do. Some of it is probably a lot more active in what we do. But again, it is a journey.  

The one place I would say shows up probably, most obviously, on paper, is as soon as you try and win new business, one of the questions, which I would say, used to be the top of the list, which I don't necessarily think it is at the moment. But top of the list would have been, "How do your values align with ours if you're going in for a tender?" Having something written down, which is clearly explainable, and demonstrates what you're trying to achieve and again, links back into the frictionless journeys, because we're talking about creating opportunities. It feeds through everything that we're doing is critical. That's actually written down. The reason I say it is, probably not number one right now is because I think and rightly so, the sustainability and the impact of ESG is becoming incredibly important to all organisations and we're exactly the same. We're on a journey there as well. 

[00:44:46] DAVID ROLFE: There are two questions that come up to us in pitches quite a lot as well is, yeah, exactly that, "How do the values align?" It's important for businesses and people like people and like to work with people who have similar values, but definitely the ESG side of things is running through all new business that we're working on at the moment. 

[00:45:07] DOM HAWES: You know, you're now both teeing me up with perfect segues, because it was at this stage that I was going to say, "What is the future hold for us? But I guess the future is increasingly going to be about proving ESG credentials and thinking about sustainability. 

[00:45:21] ADAM MORGHEM: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. One of the things again, I'm one of these people who, I'm a bit of a sponge and I don't mind saying it. I'm learning every day. I get involved in different things, which are not necessarily my exact purview. But I get sort of pulled in, or I get asked to help out with something. I've always been passionate about CSR and I think lots of organisations and we did the same. Our CSR function was very much a philanthropic type approach. How do we raise some money for a local X, Y or Z?  

But then, we started to realise, probably a couple of years ago now, that it's moving into a very different direction and we need to sort of go there. I think important points I've made to the people listening is, sustainability sounds like and especially when you say, ESG, I think a lot of people kind of just hear the E a bit. They hear the environmental part and think, "Oh, it's about being green." Yeah, that's part of it, for sure. But it's not just that, there's a lot more to it than that. It's about how do you deal with your people? How do you work with your people? The social component of it is massive, as is the governance. Are you making sure that you're adhering to the things that you need to be doing? Which, for us, as a regulated business, it's probably more straightforward, because it's been long ingrained in us. 

One of the things I would say is, it's not just about your carbon. It is about that. Its carbon footprint, it's about emissions, it's about waste, of course. But it does think about – when you think about things like diversity, you think about things like gender? I mean, yesterday, I'm not sure when this goes out, but yesterday was International Women's Day? How do you as organisations, how do the people in your organisations stand in your organisation and feel that they are part of the organisation equally, just in the same way that everybody else is? That's critical? 

Now, again, for us, we're 400 people, so we're not the biggest organisation in the world, for sure. In my past, I used to work for Barclays, where we had 63,000 people, I think it was at the time. And for Citigroup, which is a quarter of a million people. It's a huge place. But for us, we've found ways and we're looking at ways, and we're aligning with standards. People may know this may not, but TCFD or SASB. I'm sorry for the acronyms. I won't try and tell you what they mean, but I would suggest you go look them up. But in effect, what they're asking is that those are standards which they're saying, that you as organisations should uphold, right? There are obvious things like anti slavery. How do you make sure that people are not being taken advantage of in your supply chain?  

Now, again, for us, we look at it and kind of go, what does supply chain mean for us. Because we don't physically produce, let's say, a garment. We're not Nike. We don't have factories all around the world building stuff or creating stuff. We're slightly different. The financial services is a little bit more intangible. But yet, we still have paper in different places. We still have offices. We still have cleaners. We still have all the way through the organisation. For us, it was always about, let's make sure we understand first and then we work out how do we build a plan. 

We've built a roadmap, and funnily enough, just today, our annual report has just been released. If anybody genuinely would like to go and have a look at the sustainability and ESG component, it's a big part. I mean, if I compare it to prior years and previous examples, we're talking sort of eight plus pages, talking through our environmental, social and governance components to our business. It's absolutely where we need to be. You see this across any of those organisations I talked about with Aons, or the Willis or the Towergates. They're all recognising the importance of what they do. That will be a future for all of us and we've got to pay attention to it. 

[00:48:37] DAVID ROLFE: I agree. I think it was heading in that way very definitely anyway. I think COVID has actually impacted on us all as human beings. I think we've become a little bit less accepting of whether it's greenwashing, social washing, rainbow washing, whatever the right way of saying that is. Whereas in the past, it was a bit of a tick list that the anti-slavery one is a really good example. That always came up in any tender that we were doing. There was always an anti-slavery thing that we obviously don't. You tick, you tick, you tick. It was very much of a tick list. I think, clients, suppliers, colleagues that we work with are all very much more demanding of us as an agency and of our clients to actually be seen to leaving – I don't know if footprint is the right word, but have a positive footprint. 

[00:49:21] ADAM MORGHEM: Yeah. I think that's exactly right. As I say, I tend to comment. It comes up more and more and right that it should. I think people are more discerning. I think people are able to be more discerning. I think, also, I don't know if I'm making too much of a jump, but the speed at which technology was adopt – I always think about when we went into lockdown, that technology, one of the biggest boosts for the UK economy was the fact that – I know we were in a dark place. But one of the biggest boosts coming out of it would be technology, because we were forced so quickly to adopt the likes of companies like Team and Zoom. The people who run those things suddenly had millions more people coming through their platform. Suddenly, people started to use technology. My father, who's 76-year-old ex civil engineer, who's an incredibly smart guy, hates technology. It just absolutely abhors him. He's not a big fan. 

[00:50:14] DAVID ROLFE: You've probably had the same conversations as me have on the phone trying to explain with an elderly father going, "Click on the button at the top." 

[00:50:20] ADAM MORGHEM: Yeah, exactly that. "No, no, no. Not that one. Don't hang up." Yeah, exactly right. I think that's what's moved a lot for everybody. Because of that, also, the way we consume stuff. I mean, we talked about the various different parts of this conversation about journeys and the like. It's moving. We consume things differently. Do we use websites, or technology or social media more? Undoubtedly, we do. It means that as those things start to move, we've got to adapt as well. I think in people's consciousness, the whole concept of ‘what does it mean to be sustainable?’ is actually top of that list. It's no longer just this after thought of individuals or companies. It's absolutely top of the agenda. As you rightly say, Dave, people will not allow people to greenwash. There will be backlash all the time against those sorts of things and rightly so. 

[00:51:07] DOM HAWES: I think that's a pretty profound place for us to end today's conversation. I can't believe the time has passed so quickly. But look, thank you very much indeed, Adam, for your wise words. We've had a really free ranging and wide conversation today. But all those things are so important. Thank you very much for your time, we'd like to let you get back to your day job now. 

[00:51:30] DAVID ROLFE: Thanks, Adam. 

[00:51:30] ADAM MORGHEM: Thank you, guys. I really appreciate the time. 

[00:51:33] DOM HAWES: We'll see you again. 

[00:51:34] DAVID ROLFE: Thanks a lot. Take care. 

[00:51:35] ADAM MORGHEM: Bye, bye. 

[END OF INTERVIEW]  

[00:51:36] DOM HAWES: Wow, that was a very wide ranging and very detailed conversation today. 

[00:51:43] DAVID ROLFE: Yeah. One of the things I liked was, there was a buzzword bingo. I think all too often, and agencies are just as much to blame that it can become overly complex and trying to over complicate things for the sake of it. I really liked the way that Adam was boiling things down and trying to simplify at all different stages. 

[00:51:58] DOM HAWES: Well, I was particularly pleased about that. Because obviously, one of the purposes of Unicorny is to create a body of learning other people can take stuff away from. I am going to dig in a little bit of detail into some of the things we discussed, because I might need you to help me understand a little bit more. But just to say that, if you go to selbeyanderson.com, and you find this podcast on there, and you'll find that under insights podcasts, I'm going to put a link to Premium Credits annual report that he referenced just before the end of the interview so you can have a look at the ESG pages that he was referring to. That's going to be on selbeyanderson.com. Or if you get stuck, ping me on LinkedIn. 

Now, this is in no particular order. There was so much discussed. I was writing stuff as we went. But there's one thing I thought was really interesting, it was when he was talking about purpose and the process they went through. Language is so important, and language anchors culture. He spent a lot of time talking about the process he went through of really defining those words carefully so that they would help to find deeds. In your life in agency, do clients give you time to think about this or is this very much the preserve of somebody who is like a – he's a strategist, as well as marketing, right? He has a long outlook and he has to deliver in the short term. What's your experience in agency about the importance of language, I guess, is where I'm coming from? 

[00:53:22] DAVID ROLFE: Language is essential in everything. If you're pulling it back to CRM, again, what we're trying to do is change people's behaviour and you can't do that just with pretty visuals, etc. It needs to be really engaging and persuasive copy. It varies by client and by brand. If I'm honest, some companies really see the value in really well crafted strategic creative copy and they can see the way that you build the messaging hierarchy, the value exchange and they can see the, ultimately, whenever we're writing the copy, effectively, we're trying to tell a story. Whether it's a story in one communication. For example, a TV ad, or a press ad, or a DM pack or if it's a series of social. Then it's the series that's trying to tell the story. We're storytellers, effectively. 

Some clients love that, and really engage with it, and get very passionate about it and want us to take the time. Some clients, I haven't got one at the moment, but retail clients specifically are often very fast paced and often want, "We need the copy now. We need this. We've got a deadline. We need to get it done. We're professionals, we can do copy quickly." But the more strategic the copy, the more particularly purpose-led copy it is. That has so much room for semantics, and misunderstanding and even with obvious to me, anyway, words like CRM.  

One of the stages that we do within if we take on a new client, and they ask us, "Can you review our CRM program? Is it effective? Can we build a new one?" The first thing we'll do is try and get the senior C-suite clients in a room and actually go around the room and say, "What does CRM mean to you?" Because if I asked you, Dom, you would give a different answer to me than to even people that work at BURN will all give a slightly nuanced different answer. If as a company, you've misunderstood that, and your C-suite haven't all agreed to that, you're going to wind up with your ladder leaning against the wrong building, and you're climbing like crazy, and then you get to the top and it's not where you want it to go. Words, it's everything that we do. 

[00:55:15] DOM HAWES: That also connects very neatly to the seconds that I was struck by. As he said right at the beginning of the – again, [inaudible 00:55:23] talking about purpose, but it connects so well. Because if you don't create a purpose, you uncover why you're there. Presumably you don't create a customer journey, you have to identify it before you can then change it. Because you could set out presumably, to create as many steps as you like on a customer journey, but it's not relevant to the customer. It's just not going to do it. 

[00:55:42] DAVID ROLFE: Maybe again, this is semantics to be honest, but I think the customer journey will be there. If you are purchasing something with Adam, if you've gone through a broker, etc, etc, that journey exists. But then what BURN can do is we can help expand on that customer process, almost, the customer journey and turn it into a communications journey that actually you are making sure that each of those – within the journey, you've got to set them up, your 10 moments of truth between that. You've got the point of purchase, you've got the point when you could have clicked, "Yes, I want to take out additional insurance." You've got the stage where you get the paperwork. You've got all those different stages. That's the journey. But what we can do is make sure that each of those stages, it's telling the appropriate story, and we're pulling them through, and they're seeing value and what they're getting and they feel that they're being pulled through whether that's the consumer or B2B. 

[00:56:33] DOM HAWES: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Those annoying emails you get when you sign up for something that don't seem relevant at all, basically haven't been through a filter like you've just been describing. They haven't had the creative thought put into them.  

[00:56:44] DAVID ROLFE: Yeah. I think all too often, email definitely serves a purpose and is vitally important. I think there are instances where email can be neglected, because email is cheap. You can do email quite cheaply, and you can get it done quite quickly and there's lots of systems out there. It's often particularly the service-led emails can be neglected. I think even with a simple, you've submitted X, Y and Z, that can always include other messaging and just positive reinforcement. 

[00:57:12] DOM HAWES: Okay. One last thing, actually, to wind up today's podcast and this is a very simple question. Who should be doing this process of customer journey mapping, thinking about CRM? What kind of companies? 

[00:57:22] DAVID ROLFE: All companies. Every single company out there either is or should be doing it. I mentioned in the podcast that one of the things that companies get wrong, and it's one of the key reasons why I see CRM fails is that it's overly complicated and become too many variables. But if you are a company the size of a big one, Mercedes. I don't know why pick Mercedes. Then their journey is going to be hugely complicated, and they've got all those different stages from test drive, to purchase. They've probably got 50 different journeys easily within that stage. But you could also be, if you are a tiny, small tailor. I regularly get asked by clients, "Can you give me an example of who does the best CRM?" I would always describe it as being, "Forget companies, think of the old-school tailor on the high street." When his customer comes in, he's got mental black book, and he knows that that is John, whoever. "Hi, John. I've got this amazing suit, it would fit you perfectly with that tie and that shirt that you bought last week." That's a journey. That is a customer journey. 

[00:58:18] DOM HAWES: Everyone needs to do it. I guarantee you, half the people listening to this aren't doing it. Where should they start?  

[00:58:26] DAVID ROLFE: By calling me.  

[00:58:28] DOM HAWES: I thought you might say that. If journeys aren't invented, they're uncovered, how about the start with the big bits? 

[00:58:35] DAVID ROLFE: I think the first thing and whether you're working with an agency, or whether you're doing it internally, I think the first thing, the process would be to set yourself up for success and make sure that the right people in the company are behind it. I touched on it again in the podcast. You've defined CRM correctly, that everyone knows what it is. Then get the right people around the room and have a kickoff session, where you're discussing it, working out the objective. What do we all want to achieve? Objectives can dramatically change where you go. Then it's doing an audit of what you've got now. As you touched upon, everyone has a customer journey. It's just whether it's been made the most of. 

Audit your customer journeys. What have you got? What have you don't got? Do some gap analysis and work out how you can maximise that. Then it's going through the process of data, analysing your data, trying to understand what makes whether B2B or B2C. Understand what makes your customers tick, and not just the black and white data. Try and add a bit of colour to that data so that you actually know that, I'm Dave. I live here. I'm into running. I've got a weird obsession with Garmin watches. You know all of this information about me, so we can be more relevant in the way that we talk and know how clean or not clean your data is.  

You have a lot of brands out there who think their database is 10 million people. When you actually audit their database and you go in, they haven't cleansed it for however long so they're wasting a huge amount of money on gone aways and deceased They've also got a whole lot of people in there who haven't effectively GDPR opted in and they're just sitting there wasting. They think their database is this big, but it's just a massive wasted opportunity. Those process you can go down.  

Once you've done that, it's diving into proposition, messaging, segmentation, making sure you've got the right tech. Then it's into the journeys that we talked about. By journeys, it's those communication journeys to making sure that we're pulling the right levers and dials at the right time. 

[01:00:29] DOM HAWES: Wow! Thank you so much, Dave. That is really, really great advice to end this podcast on now. Listeners, I'm really sorry. But if you heard the banging going on, for some reason, the building site next door kicked off halfway through our podcast. Hope it didn't disturb your listening too much. Dave, thank you very much for co-hosting this with me and I will see you again soon. 

[01:00:47] DAVID ROLFE: Bye. Bye. 

[01:00:49] DOM HAWES: Thank you for listening. That is the end of today's show. If you would like to subscribe to us, please do go to your favourite podcast outlet and you will find us there. If you want to be on the show, my name is Dom Hawes. Look me up on LinkedIn, connect, and I would love to talk to you. This show is put together by Selbey Anderson. We find and unlock hidden value. The show is recorded at Terminal Studios, which you can find at terminalstudios.co.uk. See you next time. 

[01:01:13] DOM HAWES: I can't believe we are already at the end of season one. I mean five episodes, amazing guests, great co hosts. I'd like to say a massive thank you to Nicola Fairley, who is the series producer. And a very big thank you also to the co hosts David Rolfe, and of course to Samantha Losey. Now we will be back before too long with more equally awesome guests to tell you what marketing is about straight from the Unicorn’s mouth.