Magandang Araw Insular! The Filipino brand of customer service

By: Mr. Vicente R. Ayllón, Chairman of the Board & CEO, Insular Life

One of the best treated individuals in the world is the Filipino guest. Whether in urban areas or in the provinces, you would see that the members of the Filipino family would really exert a great deal of effort to extend a warm welcome to their visitor. It doesn’t even matter if that visitor is a close family member or a classmate who they last saw 20 years ago.

When a guest enters a Filipino home, expect red carpet treatment. The best linen and tableware are used, special dishes are cooked, and only the choicest parts are served to the guest. If the visitor needs to stay the night and the home is just modestly-sized, the owner would graciously offer his room to his guest.

Many of us here have had the experience of having our balikbayan relatives or friends over. We usually take them to your favorite restaurants, and bring them to suburban retreats, like Tagaytay, and tourist favorites like Boracay. We accompany them to the best places to buy pasalubong, and even go as far as to haggle with the vendors for them. We are, in fact, so good at treating guests that they often find it difficult to leave us, because they have bonded so well with us.

It is this Filipino value of treating each client as an honored guest that is the principle behind Insular Life’s flagship customer service program. We call it the Magandang Araw, Insular!

Magandang Araw, Insular! is designed to be a full-circle of excellent customer experience, and includes programs that respond to identified areas of client needs. It begins at the touchpoints of customer interaction, from physically entering an Insular Life building to over-the-phone transactions. This experience also extends to policy servicing and loyalty programs.

As soon as a client calls or enters an Insular Life building, he is warmly welcome with greetings of “Magandang araw po!” by the security force, employees and even the maintenance personnel. Because he is a valued visitor, Insular Life people attend to him, from finding out what department he is headed to actually accompanying him to his destination. And when he concludes his business, he is sincerely thanked with a very Filipino greeting, “Maraming salamat po!”

The Magandang Araw experience continues beyond the doors of Insular Life’s offices. For example, we wanted to make it convenient and easy for policyholders to access company services at any time of the day. So we put in place an interactive voice response system or IVRS. With this system, our insureds only need to dial a particular number, to get information about their policy, such as payment due dates, convenient payment facilities, service centers, and other pertinent information.

To make bills payment as smooth and as painless as possible for the policyholder, Insular Life implemented a bar coding system in its premium notices. When you think about it, this is actually a very simple touch. The bar codes contain all the necessary information needed by the bank or other partner payment centers, whenever our client needs to pay his premiums. Thus, no more trying to remember policy numbers or amount to be paid. The client can pay his premiums in a breeze.

The best way, I believe, to make sure that a company’s philosophy of excellent customer service thoroughly permeates all levels of the organization is to actually talk about it and infuse it in the corporate culture. We tell newly-hired employees about this philosophy during their orientation; and we remind all employees and agents about this and exert effort to enhance their skills through training programs.

Excellent customer service actually emanates from one core value, which is Respect for the Individual. You respect your customers and this is why you do your utmost to guarantee that they have the best experience with you. You respect them and so you acknowledge them, hear them out and come up with solutions that would address their needs. And because you respect them, you show that you value them.

There is this American sales director, Bob Golomb, whose line of business is selling cars. Bob is a man in his 50’s, always professionally dressed; in fact, he looks like your average bank manager or stockbroker. Bob, though, is anything but average. In the car dealership industry, he is a legend.

When he was asked about the secret to his success, Bob simply said that he always assumed that every person who walked in his store has the same chance of buying a car. This means that unlike his other colleagues in the business, he didn’t dismiss people just because they had mud in their shoes, were not properly dressed, or because they looked too young to buy a car. Bob looked at customers and saw people with specific needs and the potential to own a car. He spends time talking with them, and eventually, he is able to offer them the solution to their problem.

The lesson of Bob Golomb’s story obviously is to not judge a book by its cover. This is why customer service is a very important skill. Clients come in all shapes, sizes, colors, linguistic accents and fashion sense. But beyond all that, they are people who have placed their trust in your Company. Thus, it is our responsibility to see them as human beings; treat them with respect; listen to their needs, or simply see things from their point of view; and most importantly, do our best for them.

Respect for the individual is the core value that we at Insular live by through our Magandang Araw, Insular! Program. The need for respect is universal. And so, by treating each individual that we encounter as a very important guest, we are saying, “I believe that you deserve respect. I value you.” After our almost 100 years of operations in the Philippines, we have found this philosophy to be true: Give value to your customer and thus, increase the value of your business.