For years, empathy was treated as a business nice-to-have—important, but secondary to speed, scale, and efficiency. The data now tells a very different story.
In this conversation, Maria and Conny, the Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance Group, dive into Zurich’s new global study, Addressing the Empathy Gap, which surveyed more than 11,000 consumers across 11 markets. The findings are striking: 79% of consumers say empathy matters more than any other factor, and 43% have left a brand due to a lack of empathy. This isn’t theoretical; it’s revenue walking out the door.
Conny shares how Zurich is closing that gap by treating empathy as a learnable skill. She shares practical first steps organizations can take, starting right where they are. We also explore Zurich’s philosophy of AI with a human touch – using technology to augment human connection, not replace it.
This is a conversation about moving from transactional payer to trusted partner—and why, in an industry ripe for disruption, empathy is quickly becoming a competitive advantage.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- Why customers are leaving brands due to a lack of connection and empathy.
- How to make AI work for your organization, without trying to replace human connections.
- How to create trusted relationships and partnerships and maintain them for long-term success.
- The power of the NRR – Net Revenue Retention – metric.
“We started out with the starting point that empathy can be taught, and if people get the right tools, they will also do the right thing. So we can de-learn practices you’ve had over the years, and you can bring new aspects into them.” — Conny Kalcher
Episode References:
- Zurich’s 2025 Report: Addressing the Empathy Gap: https://www.zurich.com/sustainability/customers/empathy-report
- The Empathy Edge podcast: Anna Liotta: Understanding Generational Codes
About Conny Kalcher: Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance Group:
Conny Kalcher is Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance Group and a global leader in customer experience with a reputation for embedding empathy into business strategy to drive long-term business success. She is a founding partner of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Loyalty Forum with more than three decades of experience from senior roles at LEGO and consultancy work at Mindfolio.
Connect with Conny:
Zurich Insurance Group: zurich.com
LinkedIn: ch.linkedin.com/in/conny-kalcher-198ba5
Company LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/zurich-insurance-company-ltd
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:00
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. For years, empathy was treated as a nice to have, important but secondary to speed, scale and efficiency. The data now tell a very different story. My guest today, Connie Kalcher, is one of the leaders proving that empathy is not a soft skill. It’s a strategic business imperative. Connie is the Chief Customer Officer at Zurich Insurance Group and a globally recognized leader in customer experience, known for embedding empathy directly into business strategy to drive trust, loyalty and long term performance. She brings more than three decades of experience from senior leadership roles at Lego, strategic consultancy work at mindfolio, and as a founding partner of the Net Promoter Score and loyalty forum, making her one of the architects behind how organizations measure customer advocacy. Today, in this conversation, we dive into Zurich’s new global study addressing the empathy gap, which surveyed more than 11,000 consumers across 11 markets, the findings are striking. 79% of consumers say empathy matters more than any other factor, including online reviews. And 43% have left a brand due to a lack of empathy. This isn’t theoretical. It’s revenue walking out the door. The gap is even more pronounced in financial services and insurance, representing both significant risk and real opportunity. Connie shares how Zurich is closing that gap by treating empathy as a learnable skill investing in a global empathy training program that has already engaged more than a quarter of Zurich’s workforce, totaling nearly 46,000 hours of learning since 2023 she also shares practical first steps organizations can take, starting right where they are. We also explore Zurich’s philosophy of AI with a human touch, using technology to augment human connection, not replace it, especially as 31% of consumers believe AI cannot replicate genuine empathy. And the results speak for themselves. Zurich’s approach has driven impressive percentage increases in customer advocacy in just over a year, and led to the introduction of net revenue retention, a metric directly linking customer loyalty to long term financial performance. This is a conversation about moving from transactional payer to trusted partner, and why, in an industry ripe for disruption, empathy is quickly becoming a competitive advantage. Take a listen. Connie, Connie, welcome to the empathy edge podcast. I have been looking forward to this conversation for a long time, to really dig into the fantastic work that Zurich Insurance is doing around empathy empowerment and empathy training, and even more importantly, the extensive research you’ve done to show other companies the ROI of empathy, which is what I’m all about. Let’s make the business case for it, but also appreciate the human connection that it brings. So welcome to the show.
Conny Kalcher 03:51
Thank you very much, and thank you for having me. I also looked into what you have been preaching for many years and talking about and where it’s definitely a meeting of minds about empathy. So thank you very much for having me. Well, I
Maria Ross 04:04
love it, and I want to talk a little bit you know you are Chief Customer Officer of Zurich Insurance. Many of us have heard of that global brand. Tell us how you got there. What’s a little bit of your story and your passion for being a customer advocate?
Conny Kalcher 04:18
Well, it actually all started with with Lego. I was working for the LEGO Group for many, many years, and of course, it’s very easy to understand that a brand that kind of is for kids is more focused on empathy and connecting on an emotional level. And at Lego, we had a kind of a crisis at a certain point, and we had to really go back and reconnect with what was the brand all about, and what would we want to be for customers? And through that whole journey, I really, really learned many aspects of how you can improve the relationship with your customer and how you can connect with them, and especially with kids. You need to connect on that emotional level as well. It’s not. Just about selling to them or promoting something, it’s really tapping into their passion and what they’re really excited about. So having been quite a few years at Lego, I learned a lot about how you can put this into practice, not just talking about it, but really making it happen. And I saw the outcomes of how powerful it is. So when I joined Zurich, which is a totally different industry, so insurance is typically much more focused on kind of our expertise and how good we are at managing all the more technical things in our business, so I really saw a gap there as we transformed the Zurich brand to become more customer focused, to also tap into empathy as part of that journey. It’s not empathy alone, but empathy is a strong element of it, absolutely.
Maria Ross 05:53
And you know, I love the whole the so much of the through line of the report that you recently put out, which we’ll put a link folks in the show notes so you can access the report. Is really about understanding. What I’ve been trying to say for the last, you know, seven years, is that empathy is not a soft skill. It impacts everything from customer loyalty and revenue to employee engagement and retention. And there’s ways we can practice it that are not just for optics, to make it genuine and to make it something that actually we want to embrace as human beings, going to work every day. So I really appreciated that through line. Let’s talk a little bit about the report. You carried out research of more than 11,000 customers in 11 markets to understand what they need from brands, what they are expecting, you know, from the external point of view, not just internal team dynamics, but how we extend that empathy out to our customers as a large, intricate, you know, sometimes bureaucratic company, however big or small our company is, and so tell us about what you found That was blaring for you around the empathy gap.
Conny Kalcher 07:02
Yeah, first of all, we did it. We did this study because we wanted to move away from what you just said, that empathy is not a soft skill. It’s actually a smart skill, because it actually drives business at the same time. So by actually get getting some data behind what customers are expecting from companies. We felt we could make a stronger case, and we would also, we also became wiser in as part of the process, of course, and what we learned was that there is a clear empathy gap across industries, but especially also in financial industries, where customers are kind of expecting insurance companies to be empathetic. So 88% of them expect that, but actually it’s only 63% of them that feel that the industry delivers it. So expectations are high, and there’s still a gap that we can fill out by doing it better. So that was a very helpful insight, but also the insight that customers are actually leaving brands that are not delivering on that connection with them on an emotional level. So 43% of customers have actually left the brand because they didn’t feel that there was a real connection. So we think this is the this is a good space, as we are transforming Zurich into be much more customer focused, to kind of tap into that and deliver what they’re expecting, and maybe even more than they’re expecting, right? And what we learned is that it actually it works. It works in the sense that the customers don’t just say that they actually respond to it very positively, right?
Maria Ross 08:43
And I should mention, because I mentioned this in your bio, that you’re a founding partner of the Net Promoter Score and loyalty forum. So you’re you have deep expertise in getting a beat on how customers feel about the companies they do business with. And so you know, that background, combined with this data to now support, you know, the work that you’ve been doing your whole career is amazing. And we should point out, you know, you actually even looked at the Delta within some other companies, like food and beverage, like hotel hospitality, and the expectations are, there’s really no one industry, even transportation, I think, where the expectation was lower than 70% or 60% I don’t have that graph in front of me right now, but that’s very telling for people that might be saying, Oh, my customers in my industry don’t care about it. They just want their stuff, right? They just want their service. So can you talk about that a little
Conny Kalcher 09:39
bit Absolutely, and also, we’ve also experienced over the last, I would say, maybe 1015, years, that where we used to perceive a company or a brand, it was more about their product. You know, is the product high quality? Is it packaged in a good way, etc, more the kind of functional values? Yeah. But of course, that has changed, and now customers are seeing the whole experience, so they see the product is key, but also the experience that we deliver. At the same time, big companies like Amazon and Netflix has changed that, and they have changed expectations of customers. So it’s not just they don’t look at us and say, Oh, they’re insurance, so I can’t really expect to be able to change my address. That’s not how customers are thinking. They’re thinking like, if I can get my parcel from Amazon from one day to the other, I should be get similar services for other companies. So we need to deliver also on the experiences, and that’s where the empathy really plays in is when they contact us. It’s when we deliver service to them, etc. That’s where they need to feel that we are there for them, and we are there to deliver what they expect, and we understand their needs and who they are. And that this is goes back, as you said, to the NPS forum, where we were together many practitioners around the world, from businesses who were all striving to be excellent, and by sharing these experiences, you learn how powerful it is to actually strive to be excellent and then also deliver it in a meaningful way. Absolutely.
Maria Ross 11:17
And it’s interesting, because I come from this at this work, from being a brand strategist and a marketing executive. So that’s how I got into the world of empathy, of understanding, the catalyst that it provides when you embrace genuine empathy for your customers as people, not as numbers, not as dollar signs, not as subscribers. And there’s a statistic and a study that I always love to talk about, which is that 97% of customers say that empathy is the most important element in the customer engagement, and that’s even for I believe, in that study that was done in 2020 and 2021 that that’s even if their problem wasn’t necessarily solved, they still felt good about doing business with that company because they felt seen, heard and valued. So sometimes I do talk to tech leaders, because I have come from a tech background before. They’re like, Oh, they don’t care. They just want our widget. They just want the infrastructure. They just want the plumbing. But anywhere where you’re dealing with interactions from human to human, the truth is that we do business with people and brands we like, ones that that see here and value us, yeah.
Conny Kalcher 12:24
And you know that is that seeing it’s not what people will remember, is not what you say, it’s how you make them feel exactly. And I think that’s very, very true. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re selling software or something very technical, even there, you need to understand the needs of the customers
Maria Ross 12:40
Exactly, exactly. So let’s talk about also some specifics in this data that you found is that, you know, you mentioned the 43% of customers that said they had left a brand due to a lack of empathy. There’s also this stat of 71% seven in 10 consumers surveyed believe AI cannot recreate human connections, because that’s what I’m seeing too, is some leaders who are not as skilled at EQ are saying, Oh, I can just outsource it to AI. And that’s been a lot of what I’ve been out talking about is that AI can do a lot, but it’s actually also going to expose the workers and the leaders that don’t have the human skills, because they’ll have nowhere to hide. They won’t have the tasks to hide behind. And really tell us a little bit about your perspective and the perspective within Zurich of how we’re going to use AI to complement and free up our time for human connection Exactly.
Conny Kalcher 13:35
We have to remember AI can’t feel, and so how can they be empathetic if they can’t feel with what your opposite is feeling. So the role of AI is much more to take away repetitive tasks or to make you more efficient in the contact but the high value communication with customers should still be done by humans. It’s more their role is more to reduce friction and make us humans better. In the contact and especially in insurance, it can be complicated. It can also be very emotional situation. Something has happened, you’d had an accident or whatever. You don’t really want to talk to a bot. You do want to talk to a human being, having said that we have to respect that customers have different needs. So you would have some customers that, in some situation, just want fast, efficient, 24/7 they don’t want to wait until your phones are opening in the morning. So overall, it’s about making AI work for this kind of way of working and thinking and then, but still allow the best service you can deliver for the consumers who are customers who want something else, absolutely so, but not fall into the trap of thinking, AI is going to solve problems, no, because that’s not going to happen. It still has to start with a use case. It still has to start with a need from a customer. More that we want to deliver to and not just being a lot of technology. I think we have done that before. We’ve been falling into that pitfall before, when we talked about digital transformation, it was all about getting the digital experts in and not really thinking about but what is it we’re trying to achieve? So our our vision is to build a meaningful relationship with customers, and that really demands that you are able to do both, that you are able to be supported by AI, but also able to be there for them, show up when they need you in a way that is helpful to them, absolutely.
Maria Ross 15:37
And before we go into the work that Zurich has done internally, as we kind of look at this market perspective, I’d love your commentary on the opportunity for companies to differentiate, because that is a lot of what I talk about in terms of it being a competitive edge. I know you mentioned obviously the insurance and financial services industry, but what’s your take on the opportunity that companies are missing right now,
Conny Kalcher 16:03
I think there is a lot of opportunities that we miss if we don’t take this into consideration, no matter what industry we’re in, as the numbers were showing us in the survey that almost everywhere customers expectations are higher than what we are actually Delivering, especially when it comes to empathy. So I think it’s a need that we can tap into, and it is a differentiator, for sure. On the other hand, I would be happy if more brands did this. I know I would love it also in my industry. You know, it’s not like we need to keep this for ourselves. It’s more like the world will be a better and we will be happier also as customers ourselves, if we felt that bigger connection when we were needing help from even if it’s from the government or from a company or whatever it is, yeah.
Maria Ross 16:51
I mean, it’s kind of sad that the bar is so low, but with that comes an opportunity for companies to really differentiate and stand out. So I love it. Okay, let’s talk about what’s going on, the magic that’s going on internally at Zurich, because your philosophy is a company, which I applaud, is that empathy is a learnable skill. There’s the ability to strengthen that muscle, just like anyone starting a fitness routine and going to the gym, and it’s a strategic business imperative. So tell us a little bit about what Zurich has done to invest in this concept that seems a little squishy and scary. How have you defined empathy within your organization, and what have you rolled out to empower your people to deliver that empathetic experience to your customers?
Conny Kalcher 17:40
Yeah, first of all, we kind of started out with the starting point that it can be taught, that we believe it can be taught, and if people get the right tools, they will also do the right thing. So we can delearn what some practices you’ve had over years, and you can bring new aspects into them, especially if you feel that you get something back in that conversation as well, which is what our people definitely are experiencing. So what we did, we set out to create two types of training programs. One is a simpler it’s an online training program. You can do it in your own time. It talks about different types, different customer types, and what they’re looking for, so that you are able to recognize these customer types and treat them in a different if in a different way. I don’t mean that you now need to read the script and say, Oh, you’re this person, or you’re that person that’s talking about. It’s more soft kind of guidance. And then just by doing that and going through that training, we see a step up in how the connection is with the customer, and the satisfaction goes up. The more dramatically impactful Training Program is one that takes its starting point in an audit. So for example, if you are in a customer service team, we then go in and we audit the customer service team, we look at how they deal with calls, emails, how they write, how they talk, how they deal with cases, and this is done by a third party company. So we don’t do that. We don’t audit our colleagues, if you know what I mean, and then based based on that, we find okay. So these are the things we can train that can be different. And here are some systemic things we probably also should look at. And then after that, we invite the whole team in for two days where we have some actors who act out these situations. Yep. And then their group can evaluate it and give tips and tricks and talk about what the difference is. They’re not criticizing their colleagues, but they are kind of improving situations that they know of. They can recognize them from their daily work. And once we do that kind of training with the teams, we actually see that in some cases, the NPS score, so the satisfaction score, the loyalty score, jumps almost 20 points. Little. Little bit dependent, of course, their starting point, if they’re already world class, they won’t jump as much, but Right, right? But you know, for some teams, it does, and what’s more important is that not only do they connect better with our customers, they’re more empathetic, but they’re also working better together, because they now understand some of these mechanics and what they mean, which I think is a fantastic outcome as well. Yeah, what we also see is that that increase in the score or improved service level actually stays. So we have measured it, you know, more for more than a year, one and a half year, and the jump is there. So it’s a change that lasts. It’s not okay. Let’s do some training. Blip. It works for three weeks, and then we go back to what we did before, right?
Maria Ross 20:48
I just want to drill into that a little bit. What do you do in terms of ongoing so you do this big initiative within this one team, and then share with our listeners you know, your commitment and what it looks like to continue to, you know, if, for me, I always use the analogy of it’s, it’s, it is like going to the gym and working out and getting those six pack abs and getting your muscles. But then would you stop going to the gym after that? You wouldn’t. You need to keep maintaining it. So how do you do that within Zurich?
Conny Kalcher 21:16
So we, in general, then have the local team continue the journey and keep it fresh. But from our side, we create what we call learning nuggets, little inspirational videos or insights or situations that can inspire them and just refresh them. So we don’t ask them to sit down and do two days of training again. But it’s more like we just keep it fresh and that that’s highly appreciated. And it’s often stories from within. We have a very good comms department that are good at creating these assets that’s amazing. So they are exciting and they have high production values. It’s not like a brochure on paper. It’s really interesting content.
Maria Ross 21:58
Yeah, well, you want people, you want to make sure people are consuming it, right? Yes. So, yeah. So I love that. And then I think you may have mentioned this if you already did, I apologize that your investment has led to a seven point rise in customer advocacy since January 2024 I mean, that’s a pretty that’s a pretty big jump. And so were there, I guess, if you can pull back the curtain a little bit, were there skeptics initially within the company, when you first started talking about this and trying to get these programs in place, because I know a lot of my listeners are fully bought into all of this, but they might be working in organizations where they’re fighting an uphill battle, and, you know, I’m trying To give them as much of the data and the business case as I can, but hearing it from you, what was that experience like of getting the internal buy in before you had the metrics in front of you?
Conny Kalcher 22:52
It was a good question. There’s always doubt, you know, when you try to introduce something new and it’s a bit unusual, and then also here, there was that perception, this is a soft issue, and we’re just going to whatever the customer wants. We’ll just give it to them. That’s not
Maria Ross 23:10
which you can’t always do in insurance. Yeah.
Conny Kalcher 23:12
No, exactly, exactly. So for me, and I think for you as well, when I read your things, you have written, empathy is not only when you deliver good messages, empathy is also when you have a difficult message to convey, or something that’s factual, that might not go down that well with the customer. But what we have learned is that it’s about being open and honest and not avoid it, not avoid the conversation or just say no or being abrupt with it, the more we lean into that difficult conversation, the better we get a reaction on the other side and and in our industry, we have difficult conversations. It can be emotionally difficult situation because something tragic has happened or it has had something to do with their policy or expectations. Maybe they thought they were getting something that they may maybe are not covered for. So there are many, many difficult situations to be able to master, and I think that’s what we keep on telling internally, not just the numbers, but also equipping our people to have difficult conversation is just as important. Absolutely, we know that that’s just not only consumers, but as people, right? The more you kind of actually have a difficult situation with your children or in a conflict, if you can kind of bring in the empathy into that dialog, it’s a different dialog.
Maria Ross 24:38
Yeah, it’s a different tenor of the conversation. And you know, because I know there’s listeners who are going, I wish we could invest in something like this at our company, but our CEO would never go for it. Did you feel like the culture was already primed at Zurich to say, Yeah, we get that. We understand that this is not just about fluffy skills, but about important conversations that could make or break our. Customer revenue.
Conny Kalcher 25:02
We had been on a journey to transform the brand from being what our customers was telling us was a bit we were a bit cold and distant, to be more connecting more emotionally with our customers, be warmer, have a nicer visual identity that people could recognize themselves in. And so we had been on that, on that journey, we had also run a big program, which was all about changing the tone and voice, because, as you know, the way that we are sometimes talking about things in letters and emails, it can be complicated, technical, not easy one. It’s like we’re speaking to ourselves right to the customer. So we had to totally transform that. So we transform how we look, what we stand for, how we speak in communication, and then also now how we speak in the direct contact with our customers. So it is rewiring a brand right to work on all of these elements. And I think because we took one step at a time, you kind of bring people on board slowly, and then they are more willing to take risk with something that is because they’ve seen the other things working right. I would say, though, what I would advise people to do is not go in and ask for 2 million budget and saying, this is these are the fantastic results we’re going to achieve, but simply just trying, start doing it, and kind of invent smaller programs that you can actually test and try and do pilots, and then learn from that and bring some results into the company. It’s very convincing. Yeah, absolutely doing it. Yeah.
Maria Ross 26:36
And, you know, really encouraging folks to just do those pilots start small, maybe with your own team. You know, you can create a micro culture within your own team. And as your results start to go up, people will go, what’s going on over there, right? And also, you can bring that to light. You can showcase that and say, here’s what we’ve been doing the last three months we invested in, you know, spending 10 minutes before every meeting, checking in with people and finding out how they’re doing and how their weekend went, and how, you know, just those little it doesn’t have to be a huge, expensive transformation. Again, I know there’s probably listeners who are very jealous of what Zurich’s been able to do, but if you can recall what was the small step you all started with, do you remember?
Conny Kalcher 27:23
Yeah, it was more, as I said, looking at the other aspects. Because if we look at the how we write our letters, it’s clear to everybody that that’s outdated, and we need to change that. And if we look at how we were communicating, it was cold and distant. So we need to change that. So I think it’s the credibility you build up over time, yeah, but then there are lots of data, and there are also lots of example of examples of good brands that are connecting exactly feel something for and that power is you can’t buy it with advertising. You really need to connect with your customers in order to get Yeah, that connection going, yeah. I remember
Maria Ross 28:02
when I was doing my brand strategy work. Now I’m fully devoted to the empathy work, but I remember telling my customers, everybody wants to be apple, but nobody wants to do the work that Apple has done to be apple. And I think that’s the point. Is you can’t just it’s not necessarily like something you just copy. It’s something you have to build organically within your organization and have those champions who care enough about it. I love there was something you wrote to me of Zurich’s goal to move from a transactional payer to a trusted partner, and even if you have customers that are one time, it’s one engagement, one product, if you can treat them, if you can create a trusted relationship, and trusted partnership, that’s much, you know, from a dollars and cents standpoint, much less expensive to maintain those good relationships and continue to upsell, cross, sell, serve, then unearthing new customers, acquisition costs, right? So just from a pure CFO perspective, yes, this is an approach that’s really helpful. I want to talk about you introduced a new metric at Zurich, the net revenue retention. NRR, can you tell us about that?
Conny Kalcher 29:18
Yeah, so we were looking for. We had been measuring NPS for for years, and we really has grown that a lot over the years, more than, if I go back to 19, much more than the seven points. And we have been growing brand consideration. And insurance is really a financial industry. It’s not marketing driven. So these, these metrics, yeah, they are understandable by the my colleagues understand them, but they’re not the same thing about us saying, Well, this is the revenue we were driving, or this is the Bob we were driving. So we were trying to look for a metric that would tell us how much our loyalization strategy. G was creating value. And for that, we looked into many different things. But among other things, the work of Fred reicheld. Fred Reichelt is the inventor of NPS, and he was also getting a little bit annoyed with the fact that you couldn’t say, I grow NPS with one point that equals so much more revenue. It’s difficult to say, because there are many factors that impact that. So he came up with this new, new metric that actually goes a little bit further than NRR. But we took the first bit of it and said, Well, we can use this. And what we’re looking at here, we’re looking at we combine our customer data with our financial data, and then we look at how much revenue we we generate in any given year. And then the year after, we look at how much revenue we’re losing by losing customers. And then we look at how much revenue we’re losing by losing products from these customers, but keeping the customers. And then we look at renewals, and then cross an upsell, and then we come to a new number, and we look at that over the first number, and then that’s the net revenue retention. So that number needs to be above 100 then you are earning loyalty value. If it’s below, you’re losing value. You might then make it up by acquisition, as you mentioned before, but it’s not has nothing to do with loyalty. So by having this metric, which we developed together with our our CFO over a year, and getting all that data correct, we now have this data for all markets, and we have very good dialogs with them about not only how many new customers are they getting? Because new customer can be high value customer, low value customer, right? But actually understanding the value of what we’re creating, it’s a big leap forward. Is that easy? No, it’s not easy to implement a new KPI, right? Because it’s a muscle. You have to learn how to use that new muscle, but I think we’re getting there, and everything starts with good data, starts with good insights, and once you have that, it’s only the only way is up,
Maria Ross 32:10
absolutely, absolutely. And I know you are focused externally on the customer, but can you say more about what this initiative and what this training and empowerment for the employees has done for internal metrics. I think
Conny Kalcher 32:25
what we’re seeing on the internal side, they also, you know, internal metrics is also impacted by many different things, of course, of course, the customer. But we have very high satisfaction scores in the company, or engagement scores, as we call it, and they also have been growing over the last year, since 18, I would say, right. So this is part of that. But most of all, what I see is I see more pride in the brand. I see more pride in the way we’re doing things, and people are saying to me and to other that we kind of this is an exciting brand to work for. We also hear from our competition and from people in the marketplace, my God, you’ve changed. So we are, we are seeing the impact of that, and actually think most people like to be seen as a company that’s striving to be good for customers and trying to do the things that are modern Tiktok, or whatever it is. Yeah, it’s not we can. If we think we’re boring, we will be boring. So we think about the brand as this is relevant for young people. This is exciting, but how do we then speak to them in the media where they are in a way that’s interesting for them? So the journey has been quite, quite strong. That way. It’s a big team, you know, who’s done this transformation across also other departments in the group, but it’s definitely a different brand than the brand it was when I joined
Maria Ross 33:50
absolutely well. And you know, just to point out your point about culture is that is what the incoming talent generations want. They want more than a paycheck. They want a place where they’re seen, heard and valued, so they’re asking questions about culture, and they want to work for a company that’s doing right by their customers, that’s doing right in the world, and yes, I’m Gen X. Of course, I wanted that too, but it’s even more pronounced now, because younger people, younger generations, are more savvy. Everything’s more transparent. So, you know, when they’re going to go work for a company, they’re going to look under the hood and say, not just, is this a great job offer, is this great benefits, but how do you treat customers? How do you treat employees? And that matters, not from a you know, I get some, some executives, not many who kind of sniff at that and say, well, they’re just lucky. They’re going to get a job. Well, you’re going to be lucky if you get competition, if you get the right talent, otherwise your competition is going to get that talent. So if you want a sustainable company, you need to know that this is what your talent pool is looking for, and it sounds like you’re delivering on that. Because I didn’t mention this earlier, one of your data points in the report showed that these expectations of empathy cross generations, cross age groups. It’s not just one particular age group that cares about this kind of customer experience or cares about this culture. We are now all empowered and have the information to make choices, and to say, I want to put my money in a company where they’re doing right by people, and not just right by me as a customer, but right by their employees as well,
Conny Kalcher 35:33
absolutely, and they have choice, and we all have choice, and I think I’d rather work in a company where where the employees get up in the morning and they love to go to work then, then if they crawl to work and can’t wait to get home, right? So, so I think with a higher purpose, and we do a lot in in sustainability and other big, big projects as well. So so if you deliver on these, again, more emotional aspects of what we do then, then you get a more committed workforce, but also a happier workforce, and I think that’s important, at least. I know that for myself I need to believe, if I believe, I’m a steam engine, right, right?
Maria Ross 36:17
I mean, we spend the bulk of our time at work. We want it to be a place that matters. We want it to be a place we feel good about so. And I, for 1am, really happy that the younger generation is making these demands, because that, you know, it raises all ships, right? What’s the rising tide? Raises all boats. Because that’s good for everyone, not just their generation coming into the workforce, it’s everybody, so I’m like, good on them for saying, wait a minute, if I’m going to spend 4060, 80 hours a week at this organization, I want it to be a place that I feel good about and where I belong, and that will translate to how they serve customers, absolutely so.
Conny Kalcher 36:59
And we can learn from them as well. I think we can, because we can also easily be stuck in our own ways, but having new generation coming in with different expectation, wanting to do things differently, yeah, also pushes us, you know, so I think that we desperately need them to influence how
Maria Ross 37:15
for sure, for sure. I’m going to mention to listeners, I did a fantastic episode with a generational expert a few years ago, Ana Liotta, and she wrote one of the best books I’ve seen about generational differences and generational operating codes called unlocking. Oh my gosh, the name is escaping me, but I will link to her episode in the show notes, unlocking generational codes. That was the name of her book, and she really talked about things in a very non judgmental and very just like, it’s not good or bad, it’s just different. And the more that we understand, the more we have empathy for each other from a generational standpoint, the better our organizations can do, the more they can thrive. So I’m going to put a link to her in the in the show notes as we wrap up, I just want to kind of talk more motivationally for folks around the disruptors mindset, because that seems to be a mindset that Zurich has. Can you comment on disruption in this time of massive upheaval, and how to reframe it as opportunity.
Conny Kalcher 38:23
Yeah, there’s AI drives a lot of disruption and in many ways and different expectations from people in the company. Some thinks, oh, this is it. They’re going to sort that all out. And other people are thinking, it’ll it has to be end to end. From day one, we have more the mindset that this, let’s embrace this disruption, because it’s actually cool, and then, and then start with use cases. What is it we want to do different? And then play with it, you know, find out what works and what doesn’t work, and then quickly it’s not, we’re not looking for a glorified Rolls Royce, but we are looking to move fast. You know, you can, you can move fast with little things as well. So we have a big transformation projects in the company, within the businesses in our world, because marketing, as you know, is being disrupted greatly. Search is being disrupted, and many other things in marketing, with with AI is changing, but it’s also energy, isn’t it? Is that what makes it exciting? Do we need another 10 years of what we’ve done the last 10 years? I don’t think so. We really need to embrace these and also we will never go back to things will be the same year after year after year. We just have to get used to that change is good, yeah, and we just need to put it to good use.
Maria Ross 39:49
It’s funny you say that I’m part of a larger Think Tank community of board members and C suite leaders and thought leaders and innovators. It’s called Samudra. And we have had talks about what is the future of strategic planning, right? And Gone is the 10 year plan really? I mean, if you report to the market, you do have to set benchmarks and expectations, but this mindset that if I plan today, I’m going to be able to foresee what’s happening three years from now, five years from now, they’re much more looking for companies and for leaders to create strategic plans that potentially have scenario planning included. Potentially have okay, if this happens, we’re going to do this. If that happens, we’re going to be do that, and we’re also going to leave the flexibility for we don’t know what will happen. And this is the infrastructure. Those are the kinds of strategic plans that successful companies are starting to put in place. And sprinkled across all of this is the human element of making sure that we are we are treating our people, we with respect. We’re seeing valuing them, and seeing our customers as people as well. So that I’m so excited that that mindset is finally coming to the forefront in terms of real strategic planning. What are we doing for our employees? What are we doing for our customers? Absolutely.
Conny Kalcher 41:10
And I also think we have a tendency even though, even though we’ve been looking at these big tech companies and how they’re revolutionizing business as more traditional companies, we’ve been looking more backwards. So what do we do last year? Let’s extend the planks for a couple of years, and then we will get to somewhere maybe we need to think of it more disruptively. Now, what do we need to do if we need to grow 30% in this area or totally transform that area? So strategic planning can be many things, and the scenario planning can be also helped by AI, so you can simulate, yeah, what happens if you go in this direction or that direction again? I think it offers many exciting opportunities. Well, it’s
Maria Ross 41:53
funny, because I started my career in change management for a management consulting firm, and so much of this is not it’s not a tech issue. It’s not even a geopolitical it’s a change management issue. And change management issues require us to figure out kind of coming full circle. How do we bring our people along in order to navigate this change effectively and come through it successfully? And I think that’s the piece that more and more leaders are waking up to and kind of following in Zurich’s footsteps of, oh, we actually have to start looking at people as people, and that has to factor in to to navigating this change. Where I think, you know, 10, even 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that was the afterthought. I remember. The Change Management team would be brought in as an afterthought to true
Conny Kalcher 42:42
and they would be specialist, whereas, in reality, we all need to be able to manage change 100% Yeah, 100%
Maria Ross 42:49
Well, I could talk to you for another hour, but I will not keep you. I know you’re on Zurich time right now. So thank you so much, Connie for all of these insights and for your golden nuggets that you’ve shared with us today, we will have all the links to Zurich’s report to connecting with you in the show notes. But for anyone who’s working out while they’re listening to us, where’s the best place they can connect with you or find out more about the work?
Conny Kalcher 43:12
Oh, they can. Everybody can connect to me. On LinkedIn, there’s lots of articles and posts about this topic if you’re interested in that otherwise on zurich.com There’s also information for people to reach out to me wonderful.
Maria Ross 43:27
And I’m going to just remind folks that if you reach out to Connie on LinkedIn, make sure you customize the note and say that you heard her on this podcast, so that she doesn’t think you’re trying to sell her something. Connie, thank you so much. I love that we’ve connected, and I really appreciate you Excellent.
Conny Kalcher 43:44
Thank you very much. I enjoyed the dialog,
Maria Ross 43:47 and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review and share it with a friend or a colleague, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
