USAA insures military members and their families. It does this really well: Its customer retention rate is 97.8%.

The company’s call centers are critical to serving customers located around the world. Its call center reps spend six months in training before answering customers’ calls. They eat MREs (meals ready to eat), find out what it feels like to wear Kevlar vests and flak helmets, and receive deployment letters to get them thinking about what such letters mean to the families they affect.

USAA understands its customers’ needs. It was founded by 25 Army officers in 1922; almost a quarter of its management and new hires have served in the military. It has ranked number 1 or 2 every year for the four years of the BusinessWeek and J.D. Powers Customer Service Champions list. No other company has come close to matching its performance. (“USAA’s Battle Plan,” Jena McGregor, BusinessWeek, February 18, 2010)

Mobile customers require mobile banking and insurance solutions. With USAA, a service member can use his iPhone to send a photo of his check to the USAA bank and it is deposited in his account. He can find out his balance with a text message. Later this year, he should be able to email or text-message money to family and friends for immediate deposit. He can use his phone to initiate a claim from the scene of an accident. If he’s looking at new cars, he can use his phone to photograph a vehicle’s VIN number and quickly receive insurance quotes, loan terms, and pre-negotiated rates at approved dealerships.

The Baldrige Criteria ask how you engage customers to serve their needs and build relationships. As USAA shows, you engage them through a commitment to service, a track record of putting customers first, and a profound understanding of what your customers require. It’s one thing to conduct customer surveys and listen to customer complaints and form customer focus groups to learn what your customers need and quite another to experience what your customers need by walking in their body armor. If you’ve been a soldier, you know what soldiers want from a financial company.

I know of a consulting company that recommends that its clients’ senior leaders spend at least one week a month with key customers. And the leaders don’t just hang out in a conference room: They find out where their products or services are actually being used and they go there. They watch and listen. They note what works and what doesn’t. They ask the people using their products or services what gets in the way of doing their jobs, what aggravates them, what would make their job easier and more effective.

That’s the Voice of the Customer. According to J.D. Powers, 87% of USAA’s customers say they will definitely buy from the company again. The average repurchase rate is 36%. You get 87% by walking in your customers’ body armor.

To read more about customer engagement and satisfaction, click on these articles:

• Leaders in Customer Service
• KEYSTONE: Customer Knowledge
• 9 Ways to Get Closer to Customers
• Ground Zero for Customer Service
• Dangerous Assumptions about Customers
• Bottom-Line Value of Customer Engagement

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