Helping our customers thrive
We support the unique needs of our customers and clients to enable them to thrive, whatever the market conditions.
Our purpose to help the people and businesses of Britain thrive over the long term is a fundamental commitment to our customers that we will be there for them in both the good times and the bad
Our focus on service and personal approach gives us a deep understanding of the needs of our customers, clients and partners. It allows us to offer high service levels and flexible solutions across all of our businesses.
We believe in putting our customers and clients first. Our cultural attributes bring out the very best of our people, skills and strong reputation that we have built with our stakeholders over many years. A combination of expertise, service and relationships with teamwork, integrity and prudence underpins our approach and gives us the tools to help our customers thrive over the long term. Our long-term strategic approach places exceptional service at the heart of everything we do. Each of our diverse, specialist businesses all have a deep industry knowledge, so they can understand the challenges and opportunities that our customers and clients face.
Understanding customer needs
We are dedicated to improving the experience and satisfaction of all our customers and partners, and we firmly believe that customer feedback and insight is essential to maintain the strong relationships across our businesses. We have a dedicated Customer Insight, Experience and Design team who work with our businesses to conduct in-depth qualitative research, define customer and partner journeys and identify opportunities for improvement.
Our maturing “Voice of the Customer and Partner” programme enables us to capture feedback at key moments of truth in the customer journey and use this to prioritise our strategic and continuous improvement programmes.
Measuring and monitoring customer experience
Our purpose is underpinned by our group-wide “customer principles”, which guide how we deliver experiences to our customers and partners, and the Close Brothers customer journey, which helps us measure how effectively we are performing across key touchpoints.
Our customer principles articulate the experience we strive to deliver for our customers and partners:
- We do the right thing for customers, clients and partners.
- We are flexible, responsive and execute with speed.
- We make decisions informed by our specialist expertise.
- We build relationships based on quality and trust.
Focus on customer satisfaction
We collect a broad range of customer satisfaction scores that help inform day-to-day changes as well as longer term strategic decisions to improve customer experience.
We continue to achieve strong net promoter scores across our businesses, and these evidence the strength of our relationships and the faith our customers place in us.
Looking to the future
Our purpose of helping the people and businesses of Britain thrive has guided us through the good times and the bad for over 140 years. We continue to ensure we support our customers through unprecedented challenges, and looking to the future, we are committed to helping them recover and adapt to a world that is uncertain but open to opportunities. We will continue to support our customers out of the pandemic and build an agile and adaptable organisation that is ready for whatever is on the horizon.
Treating customers fairly
We have policies and training in place to ensure our staff can identify vulnerable customers and that they are treated fairly in our interaction with them. This remains an area of focus for our customer forums and through regular thematic reviews of our conduct.
We recognise that our suppliers are a key part of the service we provide to our customers, and are committed to treating them fairly. We are therefore pleased to maintain our Corporate Certification for Ethical Procurement from the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (“CIPS”).
