Zurich Insurance earns top honors for customer relationship program

Praising a “customer-centered culture,” the nonprofit Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) has recognized Zurich Insurance with a 2024 Excellence Award for outstanding customer relationship management globally. This makes Zurich a two-time winner of the award from SAMA, a U.S.-based nonprofit with more than 11,000 members including companies such as Cisco, Michelin, Pfizer, Bayer and Honeywell.

Zurich won for its Strategic Relationship Customer model used throughout its global Commercial Insurance group, which insures over 90% of U.S. Fortune 500 companies and multinational companies based in and outside the United States.

“SAMA members include many of our customers and the awards are open to all industries globally, so this win is a powerful testament to Zurich providing customers with a differentiated, value-added experience,” said Valerie Butt, Head of Customer Strategy for Zurich North America, part of Zurich Insurance Group. “It also reflects the mutual investment our customers make in our relationship, one that is characterized by collaboration and co-creation rather than transactions. Some of these customers have been with Zurich for decades and have multiple coverages with us, and we want to keep earning their trust year after year.”

Distilling data, delivering insights

In the early 2000s, Zurich pioneered a customer relationship model that appoints a Global Relationship Leader to large, complex business customers. The GRL acts as a champion who helps these businesses navigate rapidly evolving risks and coordinates the breadth of support that Zurich can provide across borders and lines of business. A Team Charter, supported by the chief executives of Zurich’s global businesses, establishes the processes for supporting these businesses and their brokers globally, which are designed to deliver a consistently high level of service that goes beyond just providing insurance coverages and claims service. Many hallmarks of the model, which include distilling data and delivering insights that help customers address risk-related challenges, have been extended to Zurich’s broader customer and broker base.

“What’s so important to recognize is that our GRLs don’t do this work alone,” said Ron Davis, Global Head of Customer Management for Zurich Commercial Insurance and a former GRL. “The only way this works is if Zurich colleagues from many functions, including the GRL, Underwriters, Risk Engineers, Claims Professionals – sometimes colleagues from Captives, International Programs, Finance, IT, whoever is needed for that customer – come together and respect each other’s expertise and roles. Aligning all those talented people, which does not happen automatically in any company, is what our model does. We count on the GRL to orchestrate this in a cohesive way, so that team members can jointly create a tailored strategy and then execute.”

SAMA announced its annual awards in four categories, designed to recognize best practices for strategic customer management. Zurich won for 2024 Outstanding Mature Program of the Year. Zurich previously earned this honor in 2016.

“The strategic account management philosophy at Zurich mirrors our overall strategy to be customer centric, strive for simplification in a complex industry, and drive innovation in our practices,” said Vinicio Cellerini, UK-based Global Head of Customer and Distribution for Zurich Commercial Insurance. “Results on key metrics such as customer retention, product density, profitability and Net Promotor Scores validate this approach.”

2 examples of the model at work

Interactions between GRLs, their team members and customers often lead to innovation. Two examples:

• During a strategy meeting, a European customer voiced challenges with the amount of data required for their insurance program. The GRL and other team members listened and then engaged with broader Zurich resources, including IT, to discuss potential solutions. The result was the creation of an application programming interface (API) that helped automate two-way data exchange between the customer’s risk management system and Zurich’s platforms. What started as a frustration led to an award-winning innovation: The Zurich API Connector Solution won a 2023 Business Insurance Innovation Award and a Technology Innovation of the Year award from the European Risk Management Association.
• A Zurich GRL, Risk Engineer and other colleagues were performing a scheduled account review for a large manufacturing business that had experienced an upward trend in property losses. The discussion led to the discovery that solar panels on the customer’s buildings were being installed in a faulty manner. The customer and Zurich worked together to arrive at an installation process improvement that not only helped avert further business losses and disruption, but also became a best practice guide that Zurich shares with other customers.

Judges for SAMA indicated Zurich was selected for the award based on “the ability to build sustainable programs, measure and maintain profitability of strategic customers; drive meaningful decisions through data and insights; and expand the strategic account management philosophy beyond strategic customers.”

“It is apparent from the documentation provided [that] several important SAM elements are in play: Team engagement, performance metrics, a customer-centered culture, actionable feedback and executive involvement,” according to judges’ comments. “It is no surprise that the results shared are very positive. They are measuring and capturing the many positive outcomes for their clients as well as Zurich from their program. Their efforts are impressive.”

SAMA will celebrate the winners at its 60^th anniversary celebration and 2024 SAMA Annual Conference in Miami.