Digital Banking 2023 Opening keynote address: Timeless tech strategies for best-in-class customer experience

Look around and you'll see that our collective expectations for premium customer experience today look very different from a decade ago. But just because those expectations are always increasing doesn't mean there aren't key guiding principles that will always be relevant. Michelle Moore, head of Digital for Consumer and Wealth & Investment Management at Wells Fargo, will show that even as companies across industries adopt emerging trends like virtual reality and open AI, they'll need to implement evergreen best practices—or risk losing out.

Transcript:

Michelle Moore (00:07):

Hi, good afternoon. So I'm excited to be here today to speak about client experience. So nothing profound should be the way that we live our lives every single day. And what I'm going to share and where I'm going to start is with this basic thought from Steve Jobs, you've got to start with customer experience and work backward toward the technology, not the other way around. So I'm here today to talk with you as if I'm a customer, not Michelle Moore, Head of Digital at Wells Fargo, but literally a day in the life of what a customer is thinking about and challenge all of us to think that way when we're building out our digital capabilities. I think too often, and in my experience over 10 years now in digital, in the banking industry, we're thinking about getting things out the door and responding to the next need or an emerging technology.

(01:07)

And we should literally just take a step back because unless we earn the trust of our customers and make sure we got the basics right with this device, doesn't matter what's coming next. And that is something that I've learned along the way. So there are three guiding principles that I'm going to share with you that are a thought process. We believe of customers and how we all should approach what we deliver. Again, nothing profound, but the way we think about it, I want you to think about it yourself as not a banker, but as a customer and creating fans for life. And when you hear those words, do you think about a bank? Do you even think about a digital bank? I'm pretty sure the first company that came to your mind was not a bank. When I said, think of a company or ask you to think of a company that created fans for life.

(02:02)

That's something. Think about those words for life. These companies are really in it with you for the long haul. The second principle to talk about make it easy and fast. Did you know that the average human has an intention span of 8.5 seconds? So pretty much everybody in this room has already stopped listening to me, and did you know that we all pick up this device over 1500 times a week? This device in our hands? I don't know about you all, but I didn't even have one of these things when I grew up and now it doesn't leave my side and it needs and everything that goes on this device is fast and easy, and we're going to talk about who delivers fast and easy. Again, the three companies, and I'm going to highlight are not going to shock you, but we're just going to talk about it from a different way.

(02:59)

The last one that I would talk about is beauty. These are hopefully not words that we're, we don't use these words every day, but we should, right? There's power in delivering something so spectacular in your app that I just can't help but look at it. It just looks soothing, appealing. Those are the kinds of things, those are the words that customers are saying to themselves. Does it bring out joy? Does it reduce stress and anxiety? Because that's a lot of what's going on in our industry. It's very stressful. Your money and what is happening, our job is to take that away and actually make it a better experience. So let's get in. Who's great first one? No surprise, apple right in my hand, creating fans for life. You don't want to leave this device. Everything that you have is here. The other day I left my house and I totally forgot my purse, which I didn't care, but I forgot my phone.

(04:01)

So I had to turn around and go back because everything that is here is everything that I need every day. But it's not a utility. It's not something that I require it. Is it something that Apple has created with an ecosystem of all the pieces they put together, whether it's payments, whether it's a credit card, whether it's a savings account or the other devices that everything is connected in this world that literally makes your life super easy. Imagine a day without this phone. It's actually probably a good day to imagine for a little while, but at some point you're going to want it back. And so Apple truly has created fans for life, and that's what we should think about. Again, in our industry and what we do every day. When we wake up and you log into your app, do you say, wow, this is, I know I've created some fans for life.

(05:00)

That's what we should think about. The second one, also not shocking. I know Amazon, Amazon makes your life incredibly easy. It also might add some stress because I don't know about you all, but there's usually a box that shows up at my house every day, and I don't know why and I don't know what's in it, but somewhere in their app, because it's so easy to do, I hit buy now and it just shows up. I didn't have to put in my address. I didn't have to put in payment, I didn't have to do anything. I mindlessly some many years ago, set up all that information and now my life just shows up at my front porch all the time. Thank you, Amazon. And if you think about it, again, one touch, it's not 15 fields of information to complete a credit card or a checking application or even longer if you're filling out a mortgage application to name a few of the things that we do.

(05:59)

Everything has been made super easy compliments of Amazon. So again, when we think about what customers are saying, that's what they're saying. I just want it to be easy. They're not asking for complicated. They're not asking for legal ease, they're not asking for the fine print. It just needs to be easy. So I have a fan for life who I've made their life easy, and now I literally would like to wow them with some beauty, and there's power in designs and being very, very thoughtful about what we put on the screen. Here is one hopefully you haven't thought about, but Zara, if you look at these images and you feel like immersed into them and you feel motivated by them, you feel joy related to these images. Again, I would ask you when you open up your banking app, do those words come to mind?

(06:57)

Probably not. But that is our goal and what a great opportunity we have to learn from others who have delivered on these types of emotions and feelings and making things easier. I'm pretty sure you didn't think that the head of digital banking at Wells Fargo was going to come up here and talk to you about emotions, but that's what's going to bring our clients into the banking system. They want to trust us and everything that they do can happen right here. So let's talk a little bit about then what we have been doing at Wells Fargo for at least the last couple of years that I've been there. When we're thinking of creating fans and particularly fans for life, we all know that the number one thing that our clients do when they come to the mobile app is to check their balances. Well, I personally don't want to be a balance checker, and I would want our clients and our customers to log in to the Wells Fargo app because there's value, because there's a purpose in there that helps them every day.

(08:07)

So we just launched Lively at the end of April. That really is meant to be all of their customers, all of our customers and clients' goals, their key vitals or dashboard or snapshot into what it is that's going on every day. So goals are going to be a long time. Vitals are every day my rewards, my F I C O, my spending projections, all of that there. And then newsfeed, particularly for our wealth clients, this has a lot of information about stocks and other things to research. It has the Wells Fargo Investment Institute in terms of all of the knowledge base that we share with our clients there. So we started with our wealth base, but we are expanding to our entire consumer base by the end of the year. So next week it will go more broadly to our Wells trade and intuitive investor clients, and then we'll start to go out to the rest of consumer.

(09:09)

But we also did this in a way that you can have a relationship with your Wells Fargo banker. So when a client puts a goal into the mobile app, it will immediately, if you are an advice client, show up on your advisor's desktop so that you can now have a conversation about, Hey, I see that you're wanting to set up college for Caleb. The same thing will happen as we go more broadly to consumer. It will show up in the branch in the banker's desktop so that again, your clients become a relationship, not just someone that's coming in for deposits or withdrawal or balance checking when they're coming on the phone. So we've had great success so far. We're really excited about expanding this. Our customers who have used this have are setting up an average of four goals with retirement, saving for a big purchase, being the two top goals that our clients have set, and having this here and fan for life, all of the goal information that is being input into life sync will be there for forever, right?

(10:17)

Because have a place to go back. You always wonder like, I set this goal. How did I do? What was it for? Our role is to make sure that all of the information, all of their data is always there for them for life. So that's one example of what Wells Fargo has started to do in terms of creating fans for life. The next one, let's talk about simple, easy, human. So again, thinking about what I mentioned on Amazon and making it so easy, one click things just happen. That's the premise of Fargo. So Fargo is our 24 7 financial assistant that launched at the end of April. We had over a million interactions within the first week at a 40% launch. We have now rolled it out to our consumer population. We're almost at 3 million interactions within six weeks worth of launch. Here. Again, it was everything.

(11:16)

We studied mounds and mounds of data in terms of what are our customers calling about? What are they telling us in the app store? What are they searching for on wells fargo.com and FAQs? What are they calling about? I think I said all of this data, let's make it available to them 24 7. So this screen in particular just has send money, view your credit score, view your spending summary. Show me what Fargo can do in the first six weeks. The top things that they are doing are trying to look at their spending summary, look at their credit score. Happily, they're actually sending money with Zelle through Fargo. So as easy as we've made Zelle, why not have somebody else do it for you? So Fargo is sending money via Zelle and their credit score, and they're also looking at filing for claims. So at the end of the day, we do have basic services that we do deliver in the financial services industry, and of course that's what Fargo is meant set up to do.

(12:19)

But this is just a journey, a start to our journey with Fargo. We have visions that go on well into next year and beyond. By the end of September, we will launch Fargo in Spanish so that our customers that we know choose to interact with us in language can do that. Our partnership with Google has enabled a fast transition to be able to offer more than one language. So we're really excited about the partnership that we have with Google, who is the natural language processing for Fargo? We'll have multiple insights by the end of the year, and that's another word that I hate to use, but I haven't figured out any other word to describe it because I'm pretty sure if you go out to the hotel and ask a customer, do you know what insights are? They're going to say no. Those are our words.

(13:12)

What it really means is that we're going to let you know you have subscriptions due. We're going to let you know that your spending looks a little bit odd. We're going to let you know that your refunds have posted. This is all customers information and their data, and here you go. Let us help you mind that, understand it, and then live a little bit better. Not stressful, not anxious, but actually feeling at ease and happy with your banking app. The last one is around beauty and power. We've been extremely thoughtful to pull back from it. Feeling bank, that's how I would say it to these images are the sign-on and the sign-off screen, depending on morning, noon, and night on the Wells Fargo app. We wanted it again to the emotions that we're trying to invoke when you're using our app, because we know most of the time it's stressful and anxious, but we would like to alleviate that.

(14:10)

So we're trying to spread a little bit of joy, a little bit of relaxation, and we're being very thoughtful about not from the very first screen. So if you judge a book by its cover, the very first thing that we get in front of our clients is the sign on screen. So we've been very thoughtful, literally down to the very last detail of sign on screen or your account summary, your account details, when you go on and on until you have 400 some odd pages. This is about bringing those emotions to our customers. So let me bring it all back together. In terms of what we think about at Wells Fargo in terms of client experience, we think about creating fans for life. We really do. We're not trying to think about how to beat this person or that person. We have millions of millions of clients who are relying on us to make it easier for them and their banking lives.

(15:08)

So we want to make sure that we create fans for life when they're using our digital properties. We want to make sure that it's easy and fast. We all know I just mentioned there's no patience to be had. People are comparing our app to the last best app that they used, and whether that is Amazon or Apple or Facebook or Starbucks or even Marriott, Bonvoy, all these things in their mind are complicating. I move fast, I press buttons. Things happen, right? That's what's going on. When we're sitting around in the rooms, in conference rooms in Charlotte or San Francisco at Wells Fargo, we're really thinking about are we delivering what our clients and our customers are asking for? And then the last one around beauty has power. So we have been on a two year journey to continue to clean out the app, move out of web view pages, all into native, beautiful, beautiful pages designed by a number of in-house designers that are focused on outside in view, not inside out. So that's what I would say. In terms of client experience at Wells Fargo, we've been on a two year journey. We're super excited about what the future holds, not only at Wells Fargo, but for the industry and hope that these principles here, fans for life, making it easy and beauty has power from the eyes of the customer. This is how we need to build our digital experiences. So with that, any questions before I give you five minutes back?

(16:57)

No questions. I'll repeat it. Hi.

Audience Member 1 (17:05):

I am Spotify. I thought this was cool. I'm curious, who are your stakeholders within the bank and in this market? I'm curious specifically about your marketing.

Michelle Moore (17:14):

Okay, so the question was who are our internal stakeholders that we work with to bring our app to market? We have lots of friends that like to help us bring our app to market, and they have become our friends because we've brought everybody to the table. So it's a huge contingency of legal risk, compliance, marketing, data, product strategy, modelers, right? Fraud, like you name it, someone has something to say about the app, which is good, right? Because we are in a regulated industry, we do need to make sure we're getting things right. We do need to make sure we're protecting our customers. So we always make sure that the chief security office is involved marketing. So a lot of the things that I talked about, we haven't even started Marketing Fargo marketing is about to kick off. Life sync marketing will come after that. Yeah, so it's everyone, but it's more of how do we get to yes versus the opposite. You are welcome. There was a question. Hi.

Audience Member 2 (18:20):

So Hamilton practice, I'd love to hear a bit about how you guys are approaching user research.

Michelle Moore (18:25):

So the question was, how is Wells Fargo approaching user research? Everything that we do, we user test when it's of magnitude, obviously small changes here and there. We do usability testing, mostly quantitative or qualitative when it's small. But anything that's major, millions and millions is always tested multiple times. And then we usually do an internal employee pilot first. So when we just redid bill pay, we did mounds and mounds of quantitative research. Then we did an employee pilot for a few months, and then we launched. We did the same thing when we took our mobile native or took our map, our app for wealth clients and flipped it to native. Again, lots and lots of research. Employee pilot that ran from December to March, and then we launched it to customers. Same thing with Fargo. So it's like this continuous cycle of listen, learn, launch, right?

(19:27)

Repeat, do the same thing. Sometimes with Fargo, we were very thoughtful to start at a scaled up approach so that we wanted to make sure, number one, it was working as designed. Two, we didn't cause anything to go bump in the night. And when you're talking about 28 million plus mobile app users, we need to make sure we get it not only on the technology and it working, but the design too. Is it intuitive? Does it, can customers get to it quick and easy? When we first took our journey for our mobile app, our clients told us that it was very hard to navigate our app. It took 2, 3, 4 steps sometimes to get to very basic things, and we cleaned all of that up. Most of things in our app now are one, maybe two clicks away.

Audience Member 3 (20:14):

How do you think about.

Michelle Moore (20:18):

I heard Spanish speaking customers.

Audience Member 4 (20:20):

How do you think about those customers different angles?

Michelle Moore (20:21):

So we have an entire group at Wells Fargo that helps us understand the needs and focus of Spanish speaking customers. We know today that roughly 4 million clients will take our app and flip it into Spanish, but I don't think that's good enough. And our partners who in that are part of our diversity and inclusion, they help us understand what are the needs, what should Fargo say? What is the language they're constantly reviewing, repeating, understanding is the language right? Is it not? But we felt that it wasn't good enough to just have, go to the menu and flip your language preferences like Fargo needs to be available also. And every capability that is used at scale, we're going to make available. We're starting in Spanish, but language comes after that. I'm not sure, but we're going to first get Spanish out the door.

Audience Member 5 (21:24):

Security. There's some level of conflict there. How do business security,

Michelle Moore (21:29):

So the, there's often conflicts between customer experience and security, right? I get that right? Yeah. Yes. Okay. That's why we have our technology partners at the table with me to help me understand what it is that I'm doing and making sure that it's right, obviously feasible. So I can't impress upon everyone enough the importance of all partners, all points of view and perspective. I might come up with these crazy, my team and I might come up with these crazy hair braid ideas of how things should work in the app, and then sometimes we have to be brought back down to, okay, but here's how we got to make sure that this is a fortress around it. So we're very thoughtful about making sure that we're, number one thing we have to do as an industry is protect our customers. And so we're very thoughtful about that. But of course, we want to have beauty in power and a great client experience. You're welcome. All right, we got one more. Oh, here comes the mic.

Audience Member 6 (22:33):

Thanks. You talked about your delivery process with a lot of research and then pilot and then to user testing. When you're talking about fast and easy, I feel like this may be a disconnect. How do you make it fast and easy if you have such a lengthy process?

Michelle Moore (22:56):

Because the processes move fast. So we are an agile environment. We do two week sprints. We're constantly moving things out to the door. If I think about the Wells Fargo app as an example, that one went from a completely web view app was not native to completely native within one year while we're, we know where we need to go in the beginning, couple of months, we studied all of the information that was available to us, and then we go and we start feeding it. So that's the beauty of Agile also. So when we see that we have to update things, we can do it as part of the next sprint or the next sprint, and that's really been help us to get things out the door fast.

Audience Member 7 (23:42):

Curious, oh, sorry. I'm curious how you're thinking about using the app to enhance the branch experience or uses for the app or other digital platforms in the branch.

Michelle Moore (23:52):

Yeah, so that's my favorite topic because it's an and, right? It's the branch is and digital together. Digital is not here to replace branch by no means whatsoever. A branch network is phenomenal. We have phenomenal capabilities in the branch. Digital capabilities are there to supplement, provide beyond opening up a checking account, a savings account. We have Fargo, we have life sync, right? Here are the things that we will have stock fractions with wells trade in a couple of weeks. There are many capabilities, but then what we're doing now is figuring out if it takes two minutes or less to open a checking account on the phone, why is it not that process in the branch? So we're completely digitizing and taking along the principles of what happens here into the branch because the checking account opening experience should not be a 45 minute hour conversation printing all kinds of materials and typing in 40 fields of information.

(24:50)

The application should be about five minutes at the time. The rest of the time let it be 45 minutes should be the conversation. Do I understand you? Do I know you? How can I help you? Let's get you set up on life sync. So that's one way that we're thinking about how do you use the phone to authenticate in a branch, right? So we've got to get beyond the driver's license and putting your debit card. We've got to start using the biometrics and all the capabilities that are also available on the phone. So it becomes an integrated ecosystem, even with call centers, using your phone as a way to authenticate yourself. For example, in Fargo, and I know I'm going way beyond what you asked me, but as you can tell, I get super excited about this. So if you are working in Fargo and you want to talk to an agent, we will send you to Fargo to an associate's desktop, fully authenticated, because we already know who you are and we have your credentials. So those are some of the kinds of principles that we're also thinking about in branch. So whether it's an application, whether it's identification of who you are, potentially it's like geolocation. We know that you're coming towards a branch. Think about what Starbucks and everybody else does. When you show up. It's like a party. Hey, you're here. Here's your coffee. It should be like the same. So that's how we would think about doing that.

Audience Member 8 (26:07):

We have one more question.

Michelle Moore (26:08):

one more way. In the back.

Audience Member 7 (26:12):

You mentioned data for understanding your customers, understanding customer needs. How are you capturing data for potential customers or future customers where CX might be something that draws them in?

Michelle Moore (26:23):

Yeah, so that's where we have to study mostly the industry in terms of, we know who's visiting Wells fargo.com somewhat, but what we have to do is study really what is the industry staying. We look at like Forester, JD Powers, we look at other industry of Barlow. If it's small business, we conduct research. So everything is right. We know our own customers, we know their data. But for prospects, we have to learn it externally and through experience in a team that has many years in banking, we hopefully come to the right conclusions. Right? That's it for me. Thank you all. Have a good day.