Valocity is an international FinTech company, providing a data platform that delivers a streamlined property valuation service to lenders, valuers, mortgage advisors and their customers. Since its inception in 2014 by Carmen Vicelich, the company has gone from strength to strength, expanding into the Australian market in 2018 and following up by launching into the enormous Indian market.
Launching in New Zealand and expanding into the global marketplace is an incredible achievement for any business, and scaling a new brand globally takes considerable marketing expertise and focus. “We met with Liz from Good CX during an extra massive growth phase – it has just been opportunity after opportunity,” says Sara Pesic, Valocity’s Head of Marketing. “We were no longer just a key player in the New Zealand market, we were also bringing choice and innovation to the Australian market and entirely transforming the market in India. That meant we needed a strong global brand position. So, we knew that having someone CX focused like Liz to provide a fresh perspective would be really helpful.”
How Valocity’s technology touches lives
Liz arrived at Valocity to run a workshop that would support a global approach to the company’s branding. Above all, she knew it was important to speak to staff from all aspects of the business in order to get a range of opinions and experiences. Gathered in the Auckland office were stakeholders from technical and customer-facing roles, as well as senior managers and marketers – some with more of a local focus, others providing an international perspective.
So, she asked them to think about how Valocity’s technology makes their customers feel – and how it makes their customers’ customers feel. Moreover, Liz asked the stakeholders to talk about all these connections in an emotive way. The idea was to connect with the feelings behind the functional benefits of the solutions, data and technology. Feelings like the satisfaction of helping someone into their first house; the anxiety of waiting to find out if a home loan will be approved, the sense of a job well done for a lender whose client has downsized to make their retirement more comfortable.
“Liz created a web of all these interconnections and emotions,” Pesic explains. “We realised that despite operating in very different markets, there are so many commonalities in how we are changing people’s lives for the better. For me personally, it was a whole shift to my marketing approach, because we now use Liz’s framework as a guide with what we are doing.”
A human-centred approach across the globe makes for great customer experience
Being human-centred has always been a part of Valocity’s core difference. Bringing this alive in the marketing function was the key to Valocity’s brand decisions, and Pesic was able to use that focus to shape the new brand guidelines she created.
“For the first time I wasn’t thinking, ‘that looks beautiful’, I was thinking, ‘What does that colour or font make us feel?’ The key insight was being human-centred – we knew we always were, we had just never articulated it quite as clearly. Liz discovered that by encouraging us to think emotively. It was amazing to hear the creativity coming out of our stakeholders, even those in the most technical jobs.”
The same principle has helped evolve the brand’s values, and these are able to be used across all markets with only a little adjustment for geo-targeted pages. The new approach has been wholeheartedly adopted by the Valocity team, because it came from them, rather than being handed down to them.
Founder and global CEO Carmen Vicelich stated, ‘We’ve always been passionate about our solution, Liz was able to bring us together and pull the emotive insights out from within us, rather than telling us about our brand, she facilitated having everyone involved because she didn’t arrive here trying to tell us about our own business. It’s your ideas she’s bringing to life, which brought a level of authenticity to us that was crucial.”