RSA boosts research outcomes

Insurance group Royal Sun Alliance (RSA) worked with research company Synovate to come up with a winning formula to boost research impact and get value for money. Lucy Davison, MD at marketing agency Keen as Mustard, looks at how the company has approached its customer research programme from the inside out, to great effect

The problem
In 2009, RSA embarked on a journey to embed customer experience at the heart of the organisation with the ultimate aim of improving customer engagement. This came about as the company acknowledged insurance buyers are all far more demanding and have more choice than ever before. Service is therefore high on the industry agenda and there is plenty of room for improvement in terms of performance.

Insurance isn't a particularly well-served sector. In the past, it hasn't been the bigger insurers who set the pace on service – smaller niche players were far more agile and didn't have the same weight of legacy, scale and complexity to deal with. But in recent years, the big international companies, including RSA, have started to pay serious attention to service as a means of positive differentiation in the market.