Chris Adlard, former Consumer Duty Manager at Newbury Building Society – winners of the first ever Consumer Duty Leadership in Retail Banking Award – sits down to talk to us about his new appointment as Director of Customer Experience (CX) & Compliance at Elephants Don’t Forget.
Welcome Chris! We’re thrilled that you’re joining Elephants Don’t Forget. Please tell us a little about yourself and your background.
“Hi, nice to meet you all, my name is Chris Adlard, and I’m delighted to be joining Elephants Don’t Forget. I’ve been absolutely blown away by the Clever Nelly solution and how it’s really transforming the way in which businesses embed knowledge and drive that great employee experience.
I’ve been working in the industry for about 25 years now – the last 10 years in financial services. I have a passion for technology, customer led-growth, customer experience and, of course, compliance.”
Can you give us a brief insight into your new role, initial thoughts around Clever Nelly, and why you think it is so beneficial to organisations?
“My role has two main facets. On the compliance side of things, Elephants Don’t Forget has some incredible customers across multiple sectors, and part of the opportunity here is for our customers to use Clever Nelly to really signpost the actions that are necessary in order to achieve compliance – not just in terms of the questions that are asked through Clever Nelly, but from the views and unique data within the product.
In terms of Customer Experience, it’s about making sure that our customers receive the best possible experience from us as a business, so that all the different functions are increasingly working together in a joined-up way. It’s also about showing our customers the real proof points to gain greater advocacy.
A lot of the pressure on business leaders today is about where to focus and where to prioritise. And it’s absolutely key that any change programmes that are delivered are there to help transform culture and embed a new way of doing things to drive growth.
However, as Joe Strummer, the lead singer of the Clash, once said: “Without people, you are nothing.” And if you haven’t embedded the correct knowledge, competencies and behaviours required within the organisation, it just won’t work.
Many ideas come from the top and they just fall flat because people haven’t embraced them in the culture. And so, for me, Clever Nelly is a big part of that mix. It helps translate the “idea” the leadership have as a business and make it real for people.
And, of course, linked with the compliance imperatives – whether it’s Consumer Duty in the financial services sector, or it could be directives within utilities, for example – it’s incredibly important that you don’t just deliver an idea, it gets to stick; it gets to be used by people every day in the business, and I think there is huge scope with Clever Nelly for that reason.”
In your previous role as Consumer Duty Manager at Newbury Building Society, you used Clever Nelly to support the Society to win the first ever Consumer Duty Leadership Award in June 2024. Can you tell us a little more about that and the benefits you and the Society realised from Clever Nelly?
“Yes, so over the last 12 months or so, I was working at Newbury Building Society, leading the Consumer Duty response.
Newbury’s an absolutely fantastic organisation; it’s really focused on the customer. But the team really wanted to up its game when it came to delivering Consumer Duty. And, you know, it was a real ‘belt and braces’ approach there.
Newbury won awards for its Consumer Duty response and was recognised by other advocacy platforms like Smart Money People. But using state-of-the-art technology like Clever Nelly was really a game changer for Newbury, because it allowed us to not only train staff and get people really up to speed with the elements of Consumer Duty, but also to really embed that knowledge and to continually drive the right behaviours which – as with any change programme – need to be reminded, reinforced, and encouraged on a constant basis.
And the fact that it could be measured, quantified, and reported on so easily meant that we always had some really great information that could be included as part of the Consumer Duty Board Report – and, indeed, regular Board reviews on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.
So, having had my eyes open to Clever Nelly at Newbury was a real game changer and, frankly, that’s one of the main reasons I’ve joined this business because I can see huge potential with this technology moving forward.”
Chris, what excites you most about Clever Nelly and the potential of its functionality and use applications?
“It’s all about measuring – and being able to quantify – the progress of embedding a particular initiative within an organisation.
It could be a compliance initiative, or another transformation programme that a business is looking to do. With the advanced capability of Clever Nelly, you can really measure and test if knowledge and competence is landing – and if it isn’t.
But it’s also all about getting a sense of: ‘have we got proper buy in across the business in order to drive things forward across an organisation?’. So, I think it’s that powerful management view that’s really interesting with Clever Nelly, and there’s a lot more we’re going to develop over time as we go forward.”
In terms of the regulatory landscape, why do you think Clever Nelly is so critical to help firms meet certain requirements and expectations?
“There are some big thorny issues within all the regulatory frameworks that companies have, historically, really struggled with – one of which is vulnerable customers, for example.
Every single customer-facing person in any business – whether it’s a financial services organisation, utilities, or an insurance player – will always try and do the right thing by the customer.
But the challenge is knowing exactly how to behave in certain areas – especially around vulnerable customers, as it’s such a sensitive topic.
It needs proper training and testing of the knowledge and competence within the organisation in critical areas like: ‘How do you speak to vulnerable customers?’ How do you identify a vulnerable customer?’ How do you track that information?’ How do you update it?’ How do you try – in very sensitive situations – to tease out information from the customer which they often don’t feel comfortable even sharing?’
It all comes down to firms knowing objectively if their employees really possess the required competencies against these areas. And Clever Nelly is a best-in-class solution to authentically embed the knowledge and competence of how to handle those more sensitive topics and really improve the standards by which financial services, and other industries, operate.”
Can you tell us a little more about what your immediate priorities are in your new role?
“One of my first priorities is to really build out and accelerate those value propositions and solutions that will facilitate the embedding of things like Consumer Duty within a customer’s environment. But there’ll be other compliance initiatives across other sectors as well.
We’ve got some absolutely brilliant thought-leadership material out there around Consumer Duty and other compliance activities already. The next step is to translate that thought leadership into really bespoke guidance and products that links to the solution capability of Clever Nelly.
The aim in 2025 is to accelerate the great work that’s been done and make it really clear to our customers exactly how our technology can really help them in their business in terms of cultural transformation, growth, and adherence to regulatory requirements.”
Finally, you’ve wrote extensively about your passion for customer-led growth, Chris. Can you explain what this is and why you’re so enthusiastic about it?
“I’m a great believer that businesses grow on the back of really strong customer relationships. Fred Reichheld – who invented the Net Promoter system – describes it as ‘bought growth versus earned growth’.
Bought growth is a traditional route of investing very heavily in sales and marketing, which needs to happen. Earned growth is about working with customers to drive efficacy in the market, a great customer experience, co-creation of products, and a really strong customer-led culture.
Both forces are incredibly important for the growth of a business. And I see Elephants Don’t Forget as a business that has already embraced that customer mantra. I’m really looking forward to turning up the volume around the customer and everything we do, as it links really nicely with the whole customer experience and compliance imperative.
The customer-led growth mantra is really something I love; it’s a great passion of mine. I co-authored a book – The Customer Catalyst: How to Drive Sustainable Business Growth in the Customer Economy – five years ago with a great colleague of mine, Daniel Bausor. On the back of that book, I built the C-change Diagnostic tool that anyone can try out for free. It really helps businesses understand where to focus on in terms of customer-led growth. And then, very recently, I launched the Consumer Duty Diagnostic. Again, it’s a free tool for anyone to try out, so do check it out.