Key Takeaways:
1. Activate customers around intuitive digital experiences to deepen relationships
2. Use data and insights to create personalized banking experiences that reflect customer goals
3. Integrate a DIY and DIT – “do it together” – mentality to better serve all customers
Transcription:
Tom: (
Good morning.
Tom: (
We're thrilled to be here today with all of you in person. I can't tell you how great it is to be back here. And I really mean that. At Glance, we believe that personal connection in our increasingly digital and often disconnected world can make all the difference. That's why I'm so excited to introduce Tim and his important message today. Digital banking is no longer an option, and it's not about digital versus physical. It's about customer choice and convenience. We know customers want to engage how and when they want to. And today that's increasingly mobile, but this also means personal connection in creating meaningful connections as a differentiator for growth. We're proud to call US bank a customer, and I couldn't be more thrilled to support their efforts in building personal connections with customers it's near and dear to our hearts. At Glance, we're a human first organization with solutions that bring the human experience into digital banking. Please join me into welcoming Tim Welsh.
Timothy Welsh: (
Thank you so much. Really appreciate the introduction there Tom and great to be with all of you this morning. I just want to echo Tom's thoughts. Isn't it nice to be back in person? This is just astounding. Yes. Is it is great. Well, I wanna talk a little bit about what we describe as mobile and personalization. But let me just start with a little bit of overview of US bank. For those of you who might not be familiar. US bank is the fifth largest bank in the country. We have about 2200 branches across the nation and we offer mortgages and auto loans and things like that all across the country and what we've been on. And what I wanna talk a little bit about is our digital journey over the last couple of years, where we have been to really enhance digital capabilities.
Timothy Welsh: (
And as Tom highlighted, talk about that human connection. But I wanna start with the notion of why are we doing this? It can be incredibly excited to talk about new digital features and new capabilities and I love doing that stuff. But what we gotta step back and think about is why do we do this? Why are we building all of these new capabilities? And for us at US bank, it starts with the sense of purpose. Every morning, when I turn on my computer, it reminds me that we invest our hearts and minds to power human potential, right? So think about that for a second. This is a big reason that I came to the bank. We exist as a bank to try to help make the lives of families better. We're trying to help them live the life they wanna live, and we're trying to help businesses prosper.
Timothy Welsh: (
That's why we exist. And so everything that we do from a digital perspective and a human perspective is rooted in that sense of purpose. It's not just a new feature for the sake of a feature. It's how does this help improve someone's life? Right? And this is really critical because what we're gonna talk about is not just the fact that we're able to create amazing experiences for clients, but that we do that with the purpose of helping them achieve their dreams. And that really is what this comes back to. Now. I don't need to tell any of you that in the last several years, we have seen a massive move to digital, right? It is astounding at the pace at which digital activity has occurred. These are just our most recent statistics about the level of activity that is occurring digitally. Okay. And we all know this, a big portion of it was part of the pandemic. A big portion is the new capabilities that we and so many others have established. A lot of it is just consumers and small businesses getting comfortable with this, right? So massive move to digital.
Timothy Welsh: (
And, and I want to highlight, we don't believe that we can live up to our purpose of helping families achieve their dreams of helping businesses prosper without a human connection. Okay? Because what we're trying to be is, if we're gonna achieve this sense of purpose, we're trying to become what we call central to people's lives important. If all we are is a mortgage statement that you get once a month and your mortgage is automatically deducted from your checking account. We're not powering your potential. We're not making your life better. We're mostly in annoyance, right? So how do we create that amazing digital experience, but then also have that personal connection, digital plus human that allows you to really achieve what your family wants to achieve. And I think we saw this very vividly in the pandemic. I think many of you are familiar with basic capabilities in an app like mobile check deposit, right?
Timothy Welsh: (
You probably don't go into a branch to deposit a check. If you get a check, you just take a picture of it. Right? But for so many of our clients, they actually didn't know how to use those features. And so there, they were stuck at home spring of 2020 panicked, afraid to go to the bank. They called the branch and we say, you know what? You don't have to come in. And we walked them through how they could cash the check using their phone. I first heard that story about an older woman in Idaho. And I heard that story dozens of times throughout the pandemic. Almost always when I heard that story, the person that client on the other end of the phone was in tears after we showed the mobile track deposit, right? Because we had helped them do something they didn't know how to do.
Timothy Welsh: (
And they were petrified of going out to the bank for fear of getting sick, right? That is a very simple example of how powerful it can be to have amazing digital capabilities and a human connection. And if you can do that, you can really help achieve our purpose of powering potential, making a difference in the lives of those families. Now, it's also important to keep in mind that not only can you do things which seems small like that, but truly change people's lives, but you also help them do something which they're trying to do, which is live their life. Think about this for a second. How many consumers, how many of our US bank clients wake up every morning and the first thing they do is run to their phone, push the US bank app and say, what new cool features did us bank add to its phone yesterday?
Timothy Welsh: (
Do any of our clients do that? Absolutely not. Right? I joke with my digital teams that we have to keep that in perspective, right? Our clients think about the life they wanna live, the dreams they have for their family. Our small business owners get up in the morning to make more pasta or help a family with its plumbing or whatever they're doing in order to make their business grow. They don't get into their business. They don't work with their family because they love banking. We have to take care of all the banking pieces so that they can do what they want to do, right? That is critically important to have that mindset that the families wanna live their lives, businesses want to grow. They don't want to think about banking. The combination of digital plus human is a way for us to take the burden off of them to take the burden of managing their money off of them.
Timothy Welsh: (
And we do this in a variety of ways. One of the really powerful ways that we do this is through our partnership with Personetics, which provides personalized insights for them. And over time, we become incredibly knowledgeable and the Personetics capabilities help us to understand who that customer is, what their dreams are. That's an example of the digital capabilities, but we also have to have human capabilities that match that. So let's just stick on the digital for a second. If you're really gonna power human potential, if you're gonna make a difference in the lives of families and small businesses, you have to be great at digital. And I didn't say good at digital. I said great at digital. Four years ago, when we started this journey, our app in the app store had 2.8 stars that is not great at digital. Right? Today we have 4.8 stars.
Timothy Welsh: (
All of these accolades, the number one app in banking. And to be clear that doesn't say the number one super regional app in banking. It says the number one app in banking period. That's not the bar, right? The bar for digital client experience is the best digital experience any client can have in any industry. If I can go on my phone and I can get virtually any product in the world delivered to my house in two days or two hours, I don't understand why it takes me six weeks to get a mortgage, right. That's really important. We've got to keep up with the best digital experiences anywhere in the world. And so we've got to be constantly innovating, constantly pushing the envelope on what a great digital experience looks like in the mortgage business, in the small business arena, and certainly on our app for consumers.
Timothy Welsh: (
So if you're gonna power human potential, you've got to have a great digital experience, but then you also have to do it together. So think about this. If most consumers don't wake up in the morning, running to their app to find out our new features, most consumers are actually confused about the technology we offer. And they're often confused about their finances. And boy, did we see this in PPP? Right? So many small businesses didn't know how to think about applying through a process like that. So in those crucial moments, the moments when you need a loan, when you wanna open an account, when you're thinking about making the biggest financial decision of your life and buying a home, you want a human being there to help you achieve your dreams. That's crucial. And when we do that, when we have a human being there at those critical moments, and we combine it with the best digital tools out there, that client experience is extraordinary.
Timothy Welsh: (
You see the numbers on the screen, right? And to do this, we've been using a new technology that Tom's firm does. We use glance and it's a capability called Cobrowse. So think about this for a second. Think about the 80% of consumers that are out there, who are like me, and they're sort of confused by their technology and they wanna make that mobile check deposit, they call a branch. And we actually with the glance technology can go on their phone or on their computer and literally show them how to make a transaction, how to learn a new capability of the app. And guess what happens when we do that? First of all, they are overjoyed that they got the help and inevitably it leads to a broader conversation of other ways that we can be helpful to them because they've just had an amazing digital experience and an amazing human experience. But it's much easier to see this than for me to talk about it. So let me see if we can actually show a video where we describe a little bit about how this works.
Audience 1: (
Hello, thank you for calling US bank. This is Chantel at the Columbia center branch. How can I help you today?
Audience 2: (
Hi, what time does your branch close today? I need to stop by and deposit some checks.
Audience 1: (
Okay. Sounds great. We're actually open until five. However, I can help you deposit those checks through your phone using our mobile app, and you can save a trip to the branch. I have a tool that is called Cobrowse, where I can help you step by step deposit those checks. Would you like to do that?
Audience 2: (
Yeah, that sounds great. Saves me a trip in rush hour traffic.
Audience 1: (
Okay, awesome. So go ahead and log into the US bank, mobile app and scroll past your accounts to the bottom of the page. Once you're there, let me know.
Audience 2: (
Okay. I'm here.
Audience 1: (
All right, go ahead and click on that code browse link and a four digit code will pop up, read me that code and I'll be able to see your screen and then you can see me.
Audience 2: (
So 8218.
Audience 1: (
Okay. I can see your screen now.
Audience 2: (
Wow. I can see you too.
Audience 1: (
Awesome. Okay. Let's get started. So follow my arrow as I show you where to go to deposit those checks. So at the bottom of the screen, you'll see where it says deposit a check, click that button.
Audience 2: (
Okay. Clicked it.
Audience 1: (
Okay. Next you're gonna wanna select which account you'd like to deposit those into.
Audience 2: (
Checking. Okay.
Audience 1: (
Wonderful. And then go ahead and type in the amount of the check.
Audience 2: (
Okay. All right. And it's looking like I need to take a picture line this up.
Audience 1: (
Perfect.
Audience 2: (
Wow. That's so dope.
Audience 1: (
I agree. Cobrowse has been an incredible tool and I've helped so many customers that way make their banking easier. By the way, before I let you go, have you had a chance to enroll in Zelle?
Timothy Welsh: (
Thank you. That is an example of amazing digital technology coupled with a human connection that allows us to help our clients in different and profoundly important ways. And it allows us to power their potential, right? That's what we're trying to do. It then, and by the way, we're doing that thousands of times a day, right? Think about the client experience thousands of times a day because it's not just when you call a branch, it's when you call a call center, we have the ability to do that all across the bank. And when you do that, you've actually taken the transaction part of banking, which has been a huge part of banking, just cashing checks, et cetera. You've made that really simple. And you've delighted the customer who thought that cashing a check could be delightful. That then opens up the possibilities for you to talk about what families and small businesses really want to talk about, which is their dreams, their goals.
Timothy Welsh: (
And so we've created in our app, the ability, if you go into our app, it has the life moments section, and you can talk about gee, we're trying to plan for a wedding or buying a house. And every day thousands of people are typing those goals into our app and our bankers can see that information. So we've just made the experience of cashing a check so simple and delightful that now you say, oh my gosh, I have a real connection to this institution. I want to talk to them about my hopes and dreams. And I've entered that into the, the app and now I can go schedule an appointment with a banker and sit down and talk about that experience of how I can save for whatever it is I'm trying to save for. So we're migrating banking from being a place that was just about transactions to a place where we actually care where we're really are genuinely trying to make a difference in your life, trying to help that family achieve whatever it is it wants to achieve and to help that business prosper. And that is how we live out our purpose. That combination of human plus digital transforming the way clients engage with us so that we can really help them do what they want to do, live the lives that they want to lead. Thank you really grateful for the opportunity to be with you this morning. And now we're gonna have a few minutes of Q and A, and I think Penny, you were gonna start.
Penny: (
Yeah, Tim, that was great. It was really interesting. Tim is open to questions from the audience and we have somebody with a mic, I believe. So if you have a question, please raise your hand. I'm just gonna kick things off here. So Tim, the Cobrowsing seems like a fairly simple idea, a fairly intuitive idea. And yet it's not very common. How much effort was required to add that feature and how do you decide which new ideas or which new features to put your effort into and really commit to, and which to kind of leave for another day?
Timothy Welsh: (
It's a great question Penny, because as you all know, there are thousands of ideas every day that people have of, we could add a new feature et cetera. And the prioritization is really difficult. And what we have done is, for us it is simplified by that how are we going to create an extraordinary client experience that helps people achieve their dreams? Right? You notice what we have not talked about in this is how am I gonna sell more of product X or sell more of product Y. That's not the orientation. So it's all about how do we live up to that purpose? That's the overall framework. And then with something like this, our partners with Glance, this was a piece of cake, right? Because we saw in the pandemic, it was really quite astounding in the early stages of the pandemic Penny, we made over a million calls to our clients just to say, Hey, we're here.
Timothy Welsh: (
We know it's a very difficult time. And we saw how they loved that. Right? And we thought to ourselves, oh my goodness, imagine if we could talk to them about our technology. And then we found out that there were tools out there and I simply said, we're gonna go full speed on this, because it was so obvious that clients wanted that emotional connection, particularly at that moment in the crisis, because we all wanted to be connected to people. And this was just another way for us to do that. And so I saw, boy, this is powerful and we just charged right ahead with it.
Penny: (
Sure. Let me just do a quick scan. Okay. We do have a hand over here.
Penny: (
One sec. You've got a mic coming. Here we go. Thank you.
David Ritter: (
Hi. David Ritter, CIT. Tim, can you talk about the security of the Glance application? And do you ever get pushback from customers that, Hey, I don't want to open my phone or my computer to someone. I don't know?
Timothy Welsh: (
So a couple parts that on the security side, it's very secure. I'll leave that to the Glance folks to explain how that works. The biggest issue that we had and you hit it is, consumers were a little bit concerned about this and in some consumers were a lot concerned, right? Because Penny, as you pointed out, this is not that common in technology. What, for many consumers, when we first describe it, we simply say, have you ever been locked out of your computer at work? And somebody goes on it and so that's an experience. I don't know if you've had it, but I've had it like on a daily experience, right? For me that's an immediate mental model that many people have, but I will tell you the fact that they can call a local branch.
Timothy Welsh: (
So it's a local person. It helps a lot. And that helped when we didn't have the video. And now video is a game changer. When you can actually see the person when you've read them that four digit code, like we saw and you can see them, it's a piece of cake. Literally, we have no customers immediately get over it. And our bankers have become quite good at saying, I understand why you'd be concerned, but if you read me that code, you're gonna see my face and it's works out really, really well. Does that help answer your question? So there was another question over there?
Jonathan: (
Hello, Jonathan, FIS. Really liked the Cobrowse experience that you guys built. Could you talk a little bit about the staffing model? I thought one of the most interesting things was the fact that you used branch staff versus centralized team and kind of what were the thought process that went into that and some of the trade offs that you see there.
Timothy Welsh: (
Great question about staffing and the branches. So, to be clear, if you call into a centralized call center, you can use Cobrowse and you can do it for a branch. So it's in both places. A critical reason that we wanted to do it in branches is, we're trying to establish that ongoing human connection, right? And for many of our clients, and I realize that this is maybe uncommon for the folks in this room, but for many of our clients, the primary personal relationship is at a branch, right? And we can all talk about how digital world is becoming, there are tens of thousands of people every day coming into a US bank branch. And so we're trying to build that connection and it actually gets back to the security question. If you are calling your local branch or the person at the end of the phone says, I'm just down at the corner of Elman first, right?
Timothy Welsh: (
It's a huge difference. You end up talking about your local sports teams or anything that builds connection, right? And that's huge because what it does, first of all, it makes our clients feel safe and secure, which is hugely important. Secondly, it opens up the possibility for other dialogue. Mary was so helpful to me. I now have these concerns about my confusion, about my credit card. Can I come in and talk to Mary? Right? So that's why we're trying to build it with a local branch staff. Does that help? There was a question over here.
Jason Moss: (
Good morning. Jason Moss, PacWest. So these examples looked like, they're on the retail side. Is US bank doing anything with personalization on the corporate or business banking side. And what are the similarities and differences, if so.
Timothy Welsh: (
Great question. So on the small business side where it's quite similar, a couple of elements to personalization and to the human plus digital. So if you're a small business, the key that you are looking for in banking is not a checking account, it's not a loan it's cash flow management, right? So if you're a small business, the critical thing is not to run outta money, right? And particularly not to run outta cash. And so we have been building a set of tools. We happen to already own a merchant processing system, so we can process your credit cards. A couple of years ago, we bought an amazing company called Tawk, which helps create a dashboard for you to manage cash flow. We bought Bento on expense management. So there are a whole series of FinTech players that we've been acquiring in integrating to create an integrated banking plus payments ecosystem we call it.
Timothy Welsh: (
So that we can have all of your cash flow needs, if you are a small business, they're on your desktop in one simple screen, okay? That's important. But other piece of this is, small businesses don't wanna spend any more time managing their money, then families do, right? So we've gotta have that human experience. In those cases, we use some different tools, something called Shuffler and Live Oak that creates a very similar, so we actually have a virtual meeting. We can sign documents with you virtually all of that in a safe and secure way. So we're trying to create exactly the same experience for consumers that we are for small businesses that we are with consumers, but it's obviously a different set of cash management needs and we're trying to be responsive to the bank in that regard. Does that help get it your question? At the moment, we're mostly doing it on businesses up to about 25 million, but you can imagine how the same capabilities could be built over time questions.
Penny: (
All right. So another thing you've talked about was goals. What are some of the kinds of goals that people are plugging into your app? What are some of the things they're telling you about what they're working toward?
Timothy Welsh: (
This is one of my favorite topics. So thank you for raising this Penny. If you go into our app in the life moments section, it's astounding. You think about the things that come to mind immediately, a wedding, a vacation, college. Those are very common things that people talk about, but also things that are really common are, I wanna stay out of debt. Like I just wanna manage my money day to day, right? We forget sometimes, that there are an awful lot of people who are just trying to do that and to be able to manage your cash flow, this is where we're really moving with our Personetics insights is to be able to say, how do we help you manage your personal cash flow so you can stay out of debt. Another is, help me consolidate my debt, right? Help me just think about how to reduce my interest rates, particularly in this environment. So it's a lot of aspirational things, buying home, weddings, et cetera and it's a lot of basic things. And the fact that the clients are telling us this stuff themselves, right? They're putting it into the app. If they tell us this, they expect us to do something with it. Right? And so that's why our bankers are prepared to go have a great conversation with our clients.
Penny: (
All right. We have one more minute. So, a lot of challenger banks look at what to offer in terms of what are people's pain points. Trying to think of a good example, but they're trying to make banking easier, simpler. Do you look at it that way too? And is that part of your thinking when you try to come up with a new new features to offer?
Timothy Welsh: (
It's a hugely important part of what we do? One of the things I'm struck by and I know many in this audience are involved in the FinTech world. I am astounded at what so many FinTechs can do to create amazing digital experiences often on a particular point, whatever it is. We have to keep up with that, it is not optional. You all are out there setting the bar for us and we have got to keep up with that. But what we're trying to do, is do in a more holistic system, right? Not just solve a particular pain point, but to create to the small business example, a whole payments plus banking ecosystem that allows us to be differentiated across all that. So I have enormous respect for what so many of you in this audience are doing in terms of setting the bar on client experience and know that we're working day and night to keep up with you and to help push that ahead and to add to it that human experience that we think is so important for really powering the potential of that family.
Penny: (
All right. Well, Tim Welsh, thank you so much. Great to be with you. Thank you.