Nationwide Insurance and Mark Pizzi unleash new ideas for customers of today and tomorrow

 
Discovering what consumers want
The initial step to a customer-first approach is to know what they want and to get it to them in a timely manner. But your customers don’t always know themselves what they want because they don’t know what’s possible. To some degree, Pizzi says, a company needs to take bold moves forward and help show people.
As a small example, Nationwide has updated some of its insurance language. Inland marine became valuables plus, and brand new belongings (one of Nationwide’s new commercials) refers to full replacement cost on contents
“We didn’t have people saying, ‘We want valuables plus,’” Pizzi says. “But we do know when we talk to consumers about inland marine, their eyes glaze over and they say, ‘Well, I don’t have a boat.’”

Since its inception, Nationwide has hosted member connection meetings in the agricultural space, where it has its roots, but that’s been expanded into personal lines.
Pizzi says these meetings aren’t a focus group with people sitting behind a mirror. It’s more about being in the room with their members, asking questions and listening to what they can’t always articulate.
 
Freeing up the company culture
In order to be a solutions-oriented advocate for your customers, it starts with the right culture.
Pizzi says to remind employees that your customers are the end game. They aren’t a stop on the way to a stock valuation; instead employees need to get up in the morning thinking about the customer and how to solve their problems.
In addition, you need an innovative culture, which is more difficult to do in a larger company with more rules, regulations and things to lose, he says.
“We’re on a journey at Nationwide as a Fortune 100 company to use our size in our favor, meaning if we can become more entrepreneur-like, we have one advantage over entrepreneurs or startups. We have the backing of the capital of a big company,” Pizzi says.
One way to free up the company and its associates to innovate more is to have skip-level management that bypasses organizational layers. For instance, Nationwide has an advisory council of associates who meet once a quarter to share ideas.
“I call layers filters because what is said at one part of the organization — whether it’s the top or the bottom — gets filtered,” Pizzi says. “It’s not malicious, but it still gets filtered and what we try to do is to take filters out.”
Through member connection meetings, skip-level management and exchanges directly with associates, Nationwide’s management works to minimize these filters.
“Any leadership that begins to isolate itself on the executive floor is making a fundamental mistake that is not easily corrected,” he says.