Leading banks are understanding that the secret sauce that disruptors bring to financial services is their focus on the customer experience. What should banks do to compete?
Transcription:
Todd Purcell: (
Everyone. I guess I'm the intro to my own presentation. So Todd Brice, I work for EPA. Thank you so much for coming. This entire session today has been really talking about customer experience. So maybe we are the cherry on top of the Sunday in terms of really talking about CX in a very concerted fashion at E a M I lead experienced consulting for financial services, primarily focused in the north America market with a specific focus on us on wealth and the retail banking space. I'm sure some of you may have been wondering EPA M and be honest. It's okay. Let me give you a little description of EPA M so EPA M we have about 60,000 teammates across the globe in 45 countries. We work on every sector in terms of strategy consulting to building solutions.
Todd Purcell: (
We have 5,000 or so folks, specifically folks in digital and our sweet spot in the digital space and a financial services particularly is we help you imagine it, and we help you build it. That's really what we do in a very pragmatic fashion. So today we are gonna be talking about a customer experience focused on giving you a general sense of what CX is again, building upon today. And then after our session, two more sessions come up and they will be joining us at three 30 at I'm sorry, at four and the four 30. But joining me on this stage, I wanna introduce Alex Jimenez. He's a managing principal in our consulting practice at EPA. Welcome Alex. The rounding let's go and Lamont young Lamont is head of digital and customer experience for citizens bank. So thank you, Lamont.
Alex Jimenez: (
Yay. Lamont.
Todd Purcell: (
So we are gonna have just a very informal conversation. We have a set of questions that we want to discuss and get really perspectives from Lamont and Alex. And periodically we'll be highlighting some different stats about the importance of CX, what you guys are probably dealing with on a daily basis and see if it resonates with you as well. So again, thank you Lamont. Thank you, Alex. So let's get started. So from a personal example, and we named the presentation really CX isn't just a CSAT score. It's much deeper than that. So I will give you an example for, from my experience prior to joining EPA M I was head of digital for a regional bank in the Northeast, and we had a set of KPIs that I am sure all of you do as well, that we reported up to our CEO.
Todd Purcell: (
One of those KPIs was CSAT, and our CSAT was 70% top box. So really proud of that number. And we reported it monthly month. Over month, we were always green. We were 70% CSAT top box, but when I had a moment to really think about the KPIs and get beyond the operational challenges we were dealing with, we took a little deeper look at CSAT and what was driving that score. And I am not proud to admit, but as we got deeper into that, number, we realized that 70% top box CSAT was only measuring online banking, not mobile. It was only measuring customers, consumers, not small business customers. And it was only measuring based on two transactions, balancing transactions that triggered an email that captured a survey result. So was 70% really measuring true CSAT for our customer base far from it. Again, not proud of that but finding that information now, digging deeper and saying, how do you really measure customer satisfaction? How are you sharing that with your C-suite was critical? And it built the case for me at where I worked before to build a UX function, to really think harder about the importance of CX, get more momentum behind it. So when you think about maybe the challenges I had Lamont, did you have, how do you measure CSAT as citizens?
Lamont Young: (
Yeah, I think the first step is to differentiate between client satisfaction and customer experience, cuz in my opinion, those are still slightly two different things. CX for me is the way in which companies want to interact with their clients. Candidly, the experience that you deliver their customers is the way in which your company should think about doing business CSAT. In my opinion is a byproduct of that, right? My expectation is that if I wanna deliver an experience that is very human intense, I fully expect my people to be the drivers behind how customers receive that experience. I can deliver an experience that tends to be very digital or self-service intense. And I expect the functionality to deliver that experience. So to me, the difference between CX and and CSAT is one's a byproduct. One is the way in which you ultimately do business.
Alex Jimenez: (
That's right. One of the things though is we are sometimes measuring the wrong thing. Right? Right. So, but what I see a lot is this net promoter score, right? So we are measuring an intent that is not a real intent. In other words, we are asking someone, would you recommend to the company, to your friends but we are not asking them, have you recommended the company, your friends. So it, what you find in a lot of surveys you are asking their opinion of what they're going to do or what they would do, not necessarily what they've done or what they actually are going to do. So we're measuring the wrong thing. We're just measuring a fake world where they would do something. So that that's a big problem. And then when you talk to organizations and say, what is it that your customers need? What is it that your customers want nine times outta 10, they can't really tell you what it is because they're just measuring this intent right. To promote, right. As opposed to are you truly happy with your bank, right.
Todd Purcell: (
Have you measured effort score Lamont in.
Lamont Young: (
Yeah. We have, and I think the, I love Alex's comment cuz I think the biggest thing for us is trying to take a synthesis of all the data points that clients actually give us. So it's not just your standard listening post heck. I look at every negative and positive comment that customers have about us on social media. We sit typically with our chat team to understand what customers are saying from those venues. Any place where we can actually glean feedback. Our responsibility is to do just that and to try to augment that feedback as much as we can with what customers are doing at any given point in time. Cuz to me, it's not just to Alex's point what customers say, it's what they say and what they do and how do you simultaneously link those things together to really understand exactly what experience you're delivering to clients.
Todd Purcell: (
Great. So, shifting to as we know customers, or the challenge we have in terms of measuring satisfaction and that's only doubled down in terms of the massive shift in adoption of digital post pandemic. And I know all of you have experienced that now when we talk a lot about it. So when you think about that massive push and more of customers are using digital and their expectation are increasing, how has that changed your immediate and long term planning with that massive shift in digital adoption?
Lamont Young: (
I think the biggest thing for us is just trying to figure out how to take that same level of personalization and empathy that happens within our retail branches and over the phone and apply that to sort of self-service activities. And it's pretty dang difficult to try to sort of find that me, especially when we take a look at some of our clients, especially long-term folks that are used to doing business with us in one particular manner to sort of have that push or have that shift. And now all of a sudden say, you have gotta do things via self-service, it's, a challenge but it is our focus. It's one of the reasons why before we design most of our experiences we bring a good cross section of customers to our innovation lab. We let them feel it and touch it and tell us what feels right, what doesn't, we try to identify those points of emotion in any part of the process so that what we deliver is something that actually not only gets the job done, but makes them feel like we still care.
Todd Purcell: (
So how do you resist, I'm sure you deal with this. How do you resist when you have maybe a senior leader give you the customer of one perspective about CX versus really that innovation lab true, probably end user testing.
Lamont Young: (
So we've got a term internally that we've coined opinion. And we try to get all of our senior executives myself included to stay away from ultimately drive opinion. The example I often use is on our mobile app, some of the imagery, because we are a new England based organization, some of the imagery feels very new England is and I happen to be a southerner. And so I don't like a lot of the very new Englandish imagery on our app. And I realize, and we actually go out and we do surveys and we bring real clients into our lab that as smart as I think most of the time this southerner actually gets it wrong because those things really do resonate to our customer base. We actually brought or border directors and our CEO into our lab in Westwood, Massachusetts in November.
Lamont Young: (
So they could actually get a good sense of what our customers go through. And it was sort of funny watching board members go through the process and we do all the cool stuff, the Iris scans and all that good stuff to help folks or help our designers understand how to build experiences. Our board members felt the need to give us their opinions on that, and so we pointed to the sign that's in the corner of the lab just says, opinion is not allowed. So that's how we try to get those things done. Yeah, that's good.
Alex Jimenez: (
You guys are unique cuz what I have seen in the industry is organizations that really do make those decisions by who is the son daughter of the CEO, whatever. I had an organization where the had a retail made decisions on what her daughter wanted because her daughter was a millennial and millennials were all represented by this very privileged lady so it seems that a lot of organizations are still thinking that I don't need to talk to the customer because I'm a customer. I know, what doesn't work for me and that's the wrong way to think about it. And to me until I actually sat across the table with a real customer, I didn't really truly understand that yeah.
Alex Jimenez: (
Cause when an organization sits down with a customer without asking the questions of how do you like us, or how do you like our process or how do you like your branch and you just talk to them about how do you handle your money? How do you plan? How do you, lead your financial life? You don't get it cuz you, you think, well, you the they come to our branch, they love us. They are fantastic. They have all their business with us. And then when you actually start talking to them, turns out that you are the third bank you don't really have the relationship you think you have. Yeah. You have to do that and it's difficult work and it takes time. And one of the reasons why you're here is because we know that your team does that. And we think that should be something that we should do everywhere in the industry.
Lamont Young: (
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Todd brought it up. So we went on a journey about five years ago where we made the decision that, UX and CX were so important. We wanted to quadruple down on the investment in people. So that we did more of what we do in house. More importantly, hiring folks that have level of expertise would not only benefit the projects and programs that we deliver, but more importantly, it would teach all of our business executives and all our functional folks, what we actually mean by, really good, strong UX, really good, strong CX. And I think the moment that it all sunk in for, for my team, we had been trying to get our CEO for probably two years to put in his remarks in investors conference, the notion of human-centered design, which is what we use internally to design our experiences.
Lamont Young: (
And last year at the Barclays conference, Bruce, our CEO, you guys can look it up, but he actually used the term in an investor's conference. And literally, showing my team the transcripts they're all high fiving, each other, cuz they couldn't actually believe our CEO who was a CFO for 30 plus years finally sort of got it. So for us it's more than just sort of the notion of having a senior executive, mention something. It really is a lifestyle that we're trying to get the entire company to lead. And so my team not only has KPIs on making sure that we see changes in terms of what we design and interfaces that sort of thing. But we run an academy inside the bank and we ask folks to come in and join our academy. We want to have folks who have had 20 plus years of product experience come and understand what it is that folks do. We took our C-suite through a design thinking session, not necessarily to show that we were cool, but we really wanted them to understand what we put customers through because those are the folks that actually have to serve as clients.
Alex Jimenez: (
I took to a organization where I used the word empathy and all I could see was eyes being rolled. Right, Empathy, geez. But that's really what we are driving at. Right, we're trying to understand what it is that our customers want. Right. And if you're rolling your eyes, then you know, we we have lost you there.
Todd Purcell: (
Yeah, I think it's key and I love opinion. I love that concept and to make CX as real as possible. A couple other examples is we again previous role we used user testing.com to really get inside of the user versus again, that customer of one. And that was powerful because you see scale, you see really what's happening. And also then we also deployed a tool called Tealeaf because we really wanted to then track the true customer behavior in real time. And that was also powerful because that also that overcame that opinion, cuz people said, I know why people are stopping at step three of a 10 step process. Well now with tea leaf, you actually have a recorded experience of what's really happening with that customer that then drives insight back to where you want to go and how you wanna change the CX.
Todd Purcell: (
So great. Let's shift to another question. So again, going on the concept of this massive shift in digital adoption, which we've all seen, but we do know that customer expectations continue to increase rapidly making our jobs, your job much more difficult. So how do you really think about that massive shift? In digital knowing that some customers have said or half customers in this research said, I'm going to pay more for a better CX. So you see massive shift to digital increasing customer expectations and some customers saying I am willing to pay more for good CX. How does that change your plan or influence your planning the month?
Lamont Young: (
I don't know if it necessarily changes the plan. I think it forces us to double down on two things. First one is get the basics right? Every single time. Like, as simple as it sounds, one of the things that clients oftentimes say is don't gimme bells and whistles when you have figured out ways to screw up the really simple things. And so our focus is always evaluating policies and procedures. You know, we have got an audit portion of my group whose responsibilities try to comb through every portion of our website comb through the mobile app, figure out ways from an experience standpoint to sort of break it, so that we know what we need to go after from the basic standpoint to fix it. I think the second thing clients at least are asking us for is, you know, how much then do you know me so fine?
Lamont Young: (
You've got the basics, right? When I log into your app it works. When I call your contact center who I am but beyond that like how do you really know me? And so, we are trying to drive personalized experiences in our space. I think we're probably at, if we are doing crawl walk run, we are probably getting out of the crawl phase and getting into the walking phase. We have got a partnership with a firm here called person attics. I think Jody was on stage a couple minutes ago talking about their space and we are doing some work internally with our data science folks to try to make the experience a lot more personalized for customers. But I think those two things are inherently the way in which most of us are gonna win. Right? Don't jump on the bells and whistles until you get basics. But most of you guys can walk and chew gum at the same time. So do them both Well.
Alex Jimenez: (
I have a story. I was talking to a customer who was banking with a small bank and we were working with a small bank and the small bank wanted to understand how well their customers were using their mobile app. And this customer said, I bank with two banks, this bank and one of the big nationals. And she said, I prefer the big national bank because they just don't have that much functionality inside the app, which made me very confused but really what she was getting at is the UX, the national bank had a much better UX. In fact, they have way more functionality than the smaller bank but it was just the way it was shown right. So the national bank had a better UX overall. It was easier to find things menus were not convoluted. And when you look at the smaller bank, it was confusing. For example, they had a menu on the left and a menu on top, which duplicated each other. I could see that making a being a problem, but the bank never realized that was an issue. And they said, Hey, we have all the functionality that the national banks have at least the ones that they use, but it was just the fact that the UX was not great.
Todd Purcell: (
Right, so we have talked a lot about just in these last 15 minutes or so about the importance of CX, and I'm sure everyone here feels that they truly are competing with a differentiated experience. But how do you really compete in a C in many cases, CF sameness in the Fs space, but how do you really compete Lamont?
Lamont Young: (
Yeah I always think the first step is to not separate CX from your product and your business practices and all of those things. CX is a part of all of those things. And so if you are a P and L owner and you bring your client experience team in, after you have already designed something, then you actually already lost half battle. So, you know the experience and for the most part, if it's embedded in the product, then it'll actually come through in the way in which clients actually receive whatever it is that you are ultimately sort of trying to sell. So, to me, I don't as an executive, I would never differentiate those two because those two it's like saying digital is a different part of the business. No digital is the business. The same way customer experience is ultimately sort of the business. Your people will have to deliver those things in your technology and your experience as will have to deliver those things as well.
Todd Purcell: (
So in your role at citizens, from your digital and product or CXM product, what voice do you have in the product construct that then you bring to life digitally?
Lamont Young: (
So our journey design team which is a part of our CX group they are actually embedded. So, we do what we call federate they are federated inside the businesses. So, they are no less a part of our P and L owners responsibility than folks that actually report up through that vertical their responsibility as a part of this process is to advocate on behalf of both in use client and the end use colleague in some cases, because we're oftentimes delivering functionality to colleagues to then deliver an experience for clients.
Alex Jimenez: (
When I talk to executives at bank and ask them what makes you different? What's your bank? Different customer service is always what they say, right? Every single one, right? So how is it that we are all competing on customer service and that makes us different. And whether you ask B of a, or you ask a regional bank, or whether you ask a credit union, a small community bank, they all say the same thing. It we, as an industry are not great at thinking about what our strategy is and that it starts there on trying to figure out what makes you truly different from everybody else. And it can't be customer service because everybody else is doing that. So you need to figure out what do you wanna be?
Alex Jimenez: (
And particularly now a days with all the technology that we have, what is it that we wanna be? And we have to take that step back. And most organizations are not doing that in this industry. There is a whole bunch that are doing it, but when you look at the percentage of companies that can truly speak of what makes them different, it is minuscule compared to 5,000 banks and 5,006,000 credit unions out there. And so as an industry, our executives we should be thinking about how we act truly are different from the bank next door or the credit union next door. And I just don't see it, yeah.
Lamont Young: (
You See it yeah, not at all. I mean, I love the comment. Alec, I think we oftentimes try to be all things to all people. And I think one of the biggest benefit of those institutions that are laser focused on trying to figure out what their niche is and the scale that niche is because once you find it and you can scale it, you become truly differentiated. Without giving a shout out to a competitor, like, I love what first Republic actually does. It's, really laser focus on a specific segment. They do it and they just do it well. And it doesn't matter if it's one of the big six, it doesn't matter if it's us, we're the 11th largest span in the country. Like they just do what they do really well.
Lamont Young: (
And they started to sort of scale it. And I think, oftentimes those folks that fall outside the top 15 or top 20 are stuck in that rut as to what do I, what do I go after? But we just made a purchase of a small New Jersey based bank investors bank Corp. And they do small business really well. And one of the reasons why we made the acquisition is not only does it fill in the New York, New Jersey footprint for us, but it gives us functionality within small business candidly that a bank we're probably what 50 times their size we didn't have. So find your niche.
Alex Jimenez: (
Yeah, but however, don't use USA as your example, because it's cheating, right? Yeah, S a comes with a built in target. So don't say, hey, well USA can do it because they can figure out. And, but we can't because we are the bank of Peoria. And so we are gonna be the bank of Peoria. You, gotta be thinking about what makes you different. I love this. I have been thinking about this for a couple years. It used to be credit unions were very specific of who they served, right. Where the credit union of this employer, the credit union, etc, but all the majority of credit unions are now moving out. Right. And they're becoming able to serve other areas and big geographies.
Alex Jimenez: (
There are some that are national and they have lost all of that, but then you look at the fintechs what's happening. Right, there is a FinTech for Latinos. There is AFIN, there's a couple of fintechs for Latinos, a couple of fintechs for African Americans. There is a couple of at least one FinTech for LGBTQ consumers, so what used to be the niche that a credit union used to serve is now being served by a FinTech because our world's different now, our world's not just hay, we are everybody in this region is the same. They are really looking at communities that are more spread out or in different locations, right.
Todd Purcell: (
And I think what you said before is by maybe perhaps by having those niche allows you to know your customers and then really stay true to your value proposition and really deliver that customer experience to that customer base. That segment.
Alex Jimenez: (
Right, yeah. And try out some of these fintechs and you'll see it. Right, I mean I'm a Greenwood customer and I love what they do. So, you gotta check it out.
Todd Purcell: (
Good. Well, let's in the last few minutes, let's finish with again, another topic that I'm sure all of you deal with every day and coming outta the pandemic, we saw obviously that shift to digital, and you saw a just a continual decrease in terms of branch traffic. And that branch optimization is ongoing. Some of it targeted some of it organic. When you think about that and you look at digital as a channel but you see digital branch call center, those three channels together. And you see customers shifting behavior but one how does that make you think about that shift in behavior but also in research that we have recently done from an EPA perspective and global 2021 survey the younger demographics said, I'm still want to go to the branch, especially if it helps with my financial needs cuz I need guidance. I need help and I'm comfortable going to the branch. I would do that. But I think as an industry we may not be delivering that type of guidance face to face that we think we are. So I know it's a loaded question, Lamont and Alex, but just think about that changing dynamic of the three channels and the fact that customers want to go to branch, even though there's pressure for branch optimization.
Alex Jimenez: (
Our cheat Lamont already said it, digital banking is not separate. Digital banking is banking, everything is banking. And as long as we continue to keep thinking about silos and product lines and things separate, we are not going to serve customers cuz what if I'm near a branch, I might just go at a drag branch but I am more likely to use my mobile phone, but you know, I'm working and I have my computer in front of me. I'm just gonna go on on the browser. Right. So it customers don't say which gee, I really like Lamont's bank and he's mobile app. So I'm just going to use that. I am gonna use what's convenient for me. And I love when we talk about C CX, generally we get stuck in the digital thing. Right, right. But how many organizations actually do CX at the branch? I don't know many, right?
Lamont Young: (
Yeah. I think Alex just hit the nail in the head. I think being digital guy and also CX is it's weird, but I just think the branch network for most institutions is absolutely here to stay. I think the role of the branch and the branch colleague is the thing that's actually going through its evolution. And so you have gotta think about your people inside of your locations differently. Their roles and responsibilities are less revolved around the transactions cuz transactions, I think latest that I saw is banks are losing anywhere between eight and 10% of transactions that happen on a branch on a year, over year basis. So the transactions are going out. So when folks do come in the role of that branch colleague now remains different. Your branches are becoming more sort of advice hubs to Alex's point.
Lamont Young: (
And so you have gotta think about not just reskilling, upskilling your colleagues and your branches, but you also gotta think about the tools that enable them to be able to sort of do their jobs if they are going to be the center of your advice hubs and how are they trained, how are they getting information? How can they present those experiences in a very personalized manner so that you're making good use of the client's time when they actually do sit in the branches. And how does that branch technology work with your mobile app or how does that branch technology work with the same tech that happens in your contact center? So, if anybody thinks somehow that their journey through digitization is going to be, I'm gonna throw everything at mobile and ignore my contact center or ignore my branches. You've just missed the point of what customers are saying. Customers aren't saying, hey, when I come into a branch, you're this bank. And when I call you you're this bank and when I log into your app, you're this bank, they look at this as all sort of one in and the same they always have.
Alex Jimenez: (
Yeah, when you think about digital banking is not a mobile app or what's on the browser, it's everything because you need to be digitally enabled and you need to digitally enable the people of the branch. So, do the branch staff have access to digital technologies that can help them serve the customer, whether it's a CRM or a knowledge basis or whatever do can that technology actually help them? So a digital bank could easily be the branch.
Todd Purcell: (
Yeah, absolutely. Right. That's a great way to finish the conversation, perfect. Well, thank you so much, Alex. Thanks, Lamont. Thank you for joining us. You, I appreciate it. Miriam cross and the other speakers will be up in the momentarily. So thank you so much.