Forrester (Nasdaq: FORR) has announced that Nedbank Retail and Business Banking (RBB) is the winner of its Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) 2024 Customer-Obsessed Enterprise Award.

This award recognises organisations that place their customers at the centre of their business strategy to accelerate growth. Nedbank Retail and Business Banking was honoured at the CX Summit EMEA, which was held in person and virtually in London.

The bank has been selected as the winner for its investment, design and delivery of a robust customer-obsession programme that helps people across the organisation to collaborate and focus on what matters most to customers, enabling systematic enhancements to CX. In doing so, and despite tough competition, they demonstrate how their relentless focus on customers drives business growth in a market where consumers have extensive choice.

The category in which Nedbank has been recognised, Customer-Obsessed Enterprise, honours an organisation that exemplifies customer-obsession by placing customers at the centre of its leadership, strategy and operations. This achieves wins for customers, employees and the business. The winning organisation also encourages deep collaboration across its business − especially among marketing, CX and digital teams − to ensure that customer obsession aligns with the organisation’s brand promise.

Nedbank RBB’s chief client officer Anton de Wet says they are thrilled to be recognised for this award by Forrester, being one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world.

“We believe that placing our clients at the centre of all that we do, and focusing on delivering value for them, makes Nedbank a great place to bank. We unlock value for the organisation as well by implementing a structured CX programme across the business, which focuses on identifying and implementing regular improvements. And none of this would have been achieved without the support from our leadership who sets the tone from the top, super collaboration of business units across RBB. and the commitment and hard work from our employees. This award is an endorsement that we are on the right path to unlocking value through client obsession.”

Strategy and structural changes

The Nedbank Group Strategy has client experience front and centre. In 2020, the RBB division pivoted its operating model from being product-led to client-led and client-focused – a shift that saw the orientation of its products, offerings and services centred on the needs of existing and potential Nedbank clients.

This, together with the appointment of a chief client officer and the creation of a dedicated CX team, saw Nedbank benchmark itself against international best practice standards, as they worked hard to learn from the best.

People and technology

“Our client obsession is the result of a culmination of our efforts across multiple streams that have created an incredible intersection point, with the client placed firmly at the centre of it all.” “We have learnt from best practice, refined our processes and procedures, implemented service excellence programmes, and created a culture that is client-obsessed – which has become part of who we are as Nedbank. While this award is one that we are incredibly proud of, it is the people behind it, being our employees and stakeholders, who have bought into what we are trying to achieve and that makes this accolade so much more rewarding.”

“With banks under pressure to differentiate on client satisfaction and experience, we are delighted to have a recipe that is working. We look forward to continuing our efforts to improve our offerings and delight our clients through service excellence, as we obsess about them as well as their financial needs,” said de Wet.