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• OUR CUSTOMERS
• OUR CUSTOMERS' VIEWS
• PROGRESS IN 2005
• OVERSEAS OPERATIONS
• LOOKING FORWARD
• PRINT SECTION

Our Customers' Views

As well as becoming more demanding with regard to products and service, many consumers want to deal with companies who are good corporate citizens. We need to understand what this means to our customers and how we are perceived by them.

Research

During 2005 we carried out research to understand our customers' views on how Legal & General should be demonstrating good corporate citizenship, and how we are measuring up against their expectations. The research (1) showed that understanding of the term 'Corporate Social Responsibility' is limited, but it's still important to customers that there is a clear link between the company's core business and its CSR activities. They told us that, for financial services organisations, key requirements were that companies should:

• Conduct business ethically
  Conducting business in an ethical way is at the heart of our business and Legal & General's ethical policy is clearly communicated externally and internally. (see Our Ethical Values)
• Treat employees fairly
  We have comprehensive policies and practices which ensure that our employees are treated fairly. (see Our People )
• Treat customers fairly
  Our commitment to customer experience is one of the key ways in which we ensure that we meet customers' expectations about the way they want to be treated.

The research also showed that customers do not have a high awareness of our Community Involvement activities, but many said that they would be interested in knowing more. In response to this, during 2005, we included a leaflet giving information on some of our local community activities in a product mailing to around 180,000 customers. We received a generally positive response (2), and will continue to let our customers know more about our activities in 2006.

(1) Mori CSR Research and Quaestor CSR Research
(2) Research carried out following the customer mailings

Customer Experience

In 2005 we continued our commitment to our customers by building on the work of the Customer Experience Board. This Board, chaired by Kate Avery, Group Director (Retail Distribution) was established in 2004 to drive the integration of customers' needs into our business. Progress has been reported each month to Sir David Prosser and the Group Board. This will continue throughout 2006 under the leadership of Tim Breedon.

The aim of our Customer Experience programme is to help us meet the rising demands of customers, influence employees' attitudes to customers and enable us to deliver our vision: Employees, customers and advisers want to join us, stay with us and recommend us.Therefore it's vital for us to know how satisfied our customers are with our service, and we're focusing on four key service elements that customers tell us are important to them:

• Keeping our promises
• The accuracy of our documentation
• Making things clear first time
• Resolving problems/issues first time

Engaging and training employees is also a priority. During 2005, some 1,400 managers attended workshops to provide them with the tools they need to continue to embed a customer focused culture across our business. Over 250 service managers also took part in a Customer Experience Services Conference to look at how we can consistently deliver our vision. We will continue to focus on training our employees in the Customer Experience programme in 2006.