Friendly research deal between online research tool and insurer

TCF is the key retail regulatory agenda for the FSA, the UK’s financial watchdog. The surveys enabled by the online Confirmit platform prove that Friends Provident are meeting customers expectations, and the Conformit platform is now being used as a wider valuable market research tool.

Pauline Willcock, business architect, Friends Provident, explains: “In July 2008 we started to research suppliers of the software that we needed to build the surveys and do the reporting for TCF. Confirmit was selected for its track record and ability to provide Friends Provident with a high level of support and move quickly to meet our deadlines. The Confirmit team was well aligned with Friends Provident’s thinking and objectives. “By December we went live with our first TCF surveys – and they were across all of our different channels: online, IVR, phone and paper. Our team is now achieving a good rate of response – on one process alone over 1,100 items of customer feedback have been generated in less than 3 months. Initially the focus was entirely on achieving the TCF outcomes but, as our TCF initiatives are so successful, we can now expand the user base so that the senior customer service managers can see all the results, including the verbatim comments from customers, and can start to take action as necessary.”

Brian Dingsdale, senior programme director at Friends Provident, further explains the rationale behind by the move, by saying: “The scalability of the Confirmit platform in terms of size and language was very important to Friends Provident, particularly our international businesses. Confirmit has now expanded beyond TCF and has become a valuable business tool for Friends Provident enabling our market research team to build future surveys using the platform.” The hope is that it will eventually become an effective cross-selling aid and assist in market research for any new launches.