The Challenge
Constellation Mutual, an MPL insurance firm valued at $500M and headquartered in Edina, MN, was in major growth mode when its leadership team aspired to onboard a brand new leader to report directly into the Chief Customer Officer and drive a digitally transformed end-to-end customer experience journey, from the policy purchase process, to onboarding, through claims and renewals processing. The Digital Customer Experience Leader was needed to drive digital CX structure, ideation, and strategy that incorporated the firm’s established brand, while creating and executing on the enhanced customer journey and roadmap according to the firm’s aggressive 5-year plan. Aside from hiring the most impactful leader possible, one of the most critical challenges facing Constellation’s hiring team was the fact that this role was entirely new to the firm, resulting in questions around how to approach the candidate assessment and selection process, and ensuring full stakeholder alignment.
Our Approach
Our principals spent significant time with Constellation’s Chief Commercial Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Vice President of Corporate Development, SVP of Operations, and Head of Human Resources to better understand the business, their unique value proposition, and the specific role that the new Digital CX leader would play in this pivotal, company-wide digital transformation. We then spent seven days devoted to research and sourcing, building a targeted prospect chart of accomplished digital innovators within the Healthcare and Insurance industries who could navigate ambiguity and blaze a trail that would set Constellation apart in its category. It was imperative that we identified a leader who was capable of creating vision and driving tactical execution in a high-growth, fast-paced environment. In concert with our core search efforts, we also engaged in detailed discussions with notable, senior marketing and customer experience executives across several industry verticals to gain intel around effective approaches to assessing Digital Customer Experience leadership talent in today’s changing landscape. We compiled the insights garnered from these notable executives, formatted them into an easily consumable, custom “Candidate Assessment” document, and shared with Constellation’s executive leadership team to support their interview and selection process.
The Results
After six weeks of comprehensive outreach, engaging with 180 targeted prospects across the country, we met with the executive team at Constellation to formally present a shortlist of eight thoroughly assessed, highly impactful Digital CX leadership candidates. Seven candidates were selected to move forward to first round interviews with the CCO, and subsequently, four were selected to return for final meetings with the entire executive leadership team. Challenged by the decision to pick between two impactful finalists, the leadership team ultimately made an offer and their top local candidate was thrilled to accept, joining the Constellation Mutual team shortly thereafter.
