In Switzerland, Baloise employs around 4,000 staff with a wide range of professional backgrounds in functions ranging from accounting, legal, IT and business development to human resources and marketing. Baloise’s Simply Safe strategy aims to make the daily lives of customers easier. This sparked the idea of enabling cross-pollination between employees and customers: “We want to make is as easy as possible for people who are starting a new business to benefit from valuable know-how that would otherwise be very difficult for them to access,” says Mathias Zingg, Head of Sales and Marketing and a member of the Executive Committee of Baloise Switzerland. At the same time, this dialogue is a great opportunity for employees to get to know customers better and to gain a deeper understanding of their needs and problems.

Topics can range from useful tips for a social media strategy or information on payroll accounting to advice on data protection or the optimisation of internal processes. Customers simply complete a form that is posted on the internal Baloise job board. On this form, they specify the subject on which they would like to receive some input and a suggestion for when they would like the contact to take place. If someone at Baloise has the necessary expertise to help the customer in this area, they will contact the customer directly and arrange to support them for one working day – completely free of charge and without obligation.

“It is a pleasure to help our customers as they start their own business and we are delighted to let them benefit from the helpfulness of our employees and our unique Baloise culture,” concludes Mathias Zingg.