We put the customer at the heart of everything we do

We caught up with Lucia Farrance, our Senior Customer Experience Strategy Manager, to learn more about her role and the Voice of the Customer (VOC) programme. 

How long have you been with the charity?

I joined just over a year ago and the time has flown by! I can see why we have so many long-serving colleagues, it's an awesome organisation!

Why do you like working for Nuffield Health?

Nuffield Health is a really special charity and very much aligned to my values. In my role I review our customer feedback across all our service lines and it always makes me so proud reading the heartfelt messages from our customers who are so grateful for the help and care we've given them. I also feel lucky to work alongside amazing colleagues in my team and across the Charity – it really does feel like a family.

Tell us about your role

I lead our Customer Experience Strategy, ensuring we truly put the customer at the heart of everything we do at Nuffield Health. I'm responsible for bringing the customer voice to life, through feedback and data, and designing what we need to focus on to make every customer's journey with us brilliant.

What are you currently working on?

Our big strategic focus, as we head in to 2024, is the Voice of the Customer (VOC) programme. This key, cross-organisation programme will enable us to truly deliver our Nuffield Heath Strategy principle of being beneficiary first, by revolutionising the way we listen to customers' needs and feelings and then using that to guide immediate interventions and strategic improvements. It sits as a key component of our Charity plan and enables us to deliver three of our strategic aims in our five year plan; more connected beneficiary-led journeys, being seen as a trusted brand and helping empower our people.

We will be implementing a new market-leading solution for collecting, analysing and acting upon beneficiary feedback, understanding their concerns and changing what matters most to them. We will measure Customer Experience across relationship, journey and touchpoint levels, providing automated verbatim analysis, based on more actionable, detailed subject capture and providing more timely and useful insight. This will in turn empower our front-line beneficiary teams to act on feedback immediately and deliver better business results whilst improving NPS, which we know correlates to reduced churn and increased conversion.

How can our team members contribute to your work?

Since joining Nuffield Health a year ago I can honestly say that I've seen that all our people already lead with a customer-first mindset, which culturally sets us up for success. When we embed the new ways of working and processes for using the new strategic survey solution tool, our teams will be critical in ensuring we leverage the new detailed and real-time data and feedback, to not only act fast on responding to customers worries or concerns, but to also inform our local and central improvement plans.

Thinking about what you're working on, what will be the benefits for our beneficiaries?

We know that in 2022, 60% of people said they would leave a business after just one bad customer experience – which is a huge increase from the 38% of people who said the same in 2021. We are seeing the impact of the 'Amazon Effect' where our customers are transferring their expectations of service across all companies they have a relationship with, regardless of the sector. By listening to their wants and needs, in a way that we haven't been able to before, we will ensure that our service is keeping up with their changing expectations. Likewise, if something goes wrong – which it does from time to time – our new tool will enable our teams to contact the customer immediately to put things right. Sometimes our customers just want to know they're listened to and that we care, which in turn will make them feel an engaged part of our Nuffield Health Community.

What do you do in your spare time?

I love the outdoors and being active. I have a very cute little Frenchie called Luna who's also very active, so we're always at the beach or in a woods exploring. I also started learning Sign Language this year and have my first qualification exam coming up!

What does wellbeing mean to you?

Wellbeing is truly about feeling your best self and I think that's really personal to everyone. For me, an early gym session followed by a nutritious breakfast gets me going for the day. Whilst, on balance, a glass of wine with a book in the bath is my perfect way to end the day. My partner, family and friends are everything to me, so spending quality time with them is important, but I also appreciate my alone time and enjoy nothing more than a sunrise or sunset walk across the countryside where I live, with a good audiobook or podcast on.