Chief Digital Officer
Melissa Stevens often talks about how no one wakes up thinking about banking or opening a savings account, but people do wake up worried about how they’re going to pay their rent or save for a visit to see family.
In her role as chief digital officer at Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati, Stevens tries to create solutions that make it easy for customers to accomplish these things. She is responsible for ensuring a digital-first approach to all areas of the bank, including consumer banking, commercial banking and wealth and asset management.
One technology that Stevens believes has made an impact on customers during the pandemic is fully scaled asynchronous chats, or the ability for any customer at any time to drop in and leave a message. This was important because “phone queues started to go up at most companies, especially at banks,” as people were inquiring about everything from student loan checks to Paycheck Protection Program loan applications, Stevens said.
Fifth Third had offered asynchronous chat on a limited basis in the past, but started to make it available to everyone and promote it more, “so people knew that they had an easy way to get in touch with us and get the information they needed without having to sit and wait on the phone,” Stevens said.
Fifth Third also has a chatbot that allows for quick access to a live agent; a mobile app called Momentum that includes features offered by some challenger banks, such as early access to direct deposit and the ability to borrow a little from a future paycheck (“our first truly digital-first product,” Stevens said); and new digital collections tools expected to reduce charge-offs by more than $25 million over the next five years.
