Human + Digital: The omnichannel customer experience

Tim Welsh, Vice Chair, Consumer and Business Banking, US Bank; Zur Yahalom, Senior Vice President, Head of Financial Services Americas, Amdocs

Transcription:

Zur Yahalom (00:06):

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for today's session about the customer experience track. We're happy to have you with us. My name is Zur Yahalom. I work at Amdocs and with me is Tim Welsh from US Bank. And we'll talk today mostly about US Bank's customer experience journey. And with that team I'll let you introduce yourself. I think you'll probably do a better job than me.

Tim Welsh (00:38):

Sure happy to do so and great to be here with all of you. Thank you so much for hosting this. So as you said, my name is Tim Welsh. I'm responsible at US Bank for what we call consumer and business banking. So this, this is a group of about 25,000 colleagues across the country who would do all the things that you think of for banking, branches, mortgages, auto loans, those kinds of things. We do all of that and similar things for small businesses and we do those all across the country. So that's a little bit of an overview. I've been at US Bank just about six years now. Prior to that, spent most of my career at McKinsey, the consulting firm.

Zur Yahalom (01:17):

Excellent. So just for context, my name is Zur. I am the SVP of Financial Services at Amdocs for the Americas. I've been with Amdocs for 15 years now. I know it's a long time. I joined and said I'm going to be here for a year and then it's been good. So it worked out. And Tim, I know you talk a lot, and this is not even your first session today, right? So many people know who you are. Maybe trying to maybe break the ice and make it more informal. Maybe you can tell a little bit about yourself. Is there something you can share that, I don't know, you can say most people don't know about you.

Tim Welsh (02:03):

Sure, So if you had known me in college, you would've thought that there was a very good chance that I was going to be a Catholic priest. It's true, I was the president of the Catholic Student Association. I was taking classes at the Divinity school. I was going to across the river to the seminary in Boston, and the food was better there on Friday night. So it was a great way to get to know the guys and get some good food. And I was going through this whole discernment process and I decided that after a long time that that was not the right path for me. So there I am, senior in college plan A for job, totally defunct, no obvious plan B, you don't really think about plan B when you're thinking about being a priest as plan A. So I'm walking across campus one day and I bump into my college roommate and he says to me, Tim, you got to come to this presentation tonight. It's on McKinsey. I said, what's McKinsey? He said, it's consulting. I said, what's consulting? And he said, just put on a tie and come to the freshman union and you'll hear this presentation. So to this day, he's a very dear friend of mine. I do what he says. And so I show up wearing my tie at this McKinsey presentation and I hear the head recruiter, a woman named Karen Kitter, stand up and say, all you have to do to succeed at McKinsey is like helping people. I said, well goodness, I don't know anything about this firm. I don't know anything about consulting, but I wanted to be a Catholic priest. I like helping people. So maybe this is a path for me. And I spent almost 27 years being able to have the privilege of having many clients who welcomed me into their lives and allowed me to help them in some manner. And then I got the privilege of joining one of those clients, a company called US Bank because as we'll talk more about Zur, it says, when you turn on your computer every morning, it says we invest our hearts and minds to power human potential. It's a fancy way of saying we help people and that's what we do every day. And so I think banking can be a real force for good in the world. And that's why that's the theme that most people don't know. Most people say, well why'd you leave McKinsey? Why'd you go to US Bank? It's actually, it's a much longer thread than that and it's all a series of what we can each do. What can I do to be of service to other people?

Zur Yahalom (04:48):

This is a great story and I really appreciate you sharing.

Tim Welsh (04:53):

Absolutely.

Zur Yahalom (04:55):

And so I was going to ask you what motivates you? But I think we now know it's about helping people. So how do you see that translating to day-to-day life and what you do at US Bank?

Tim Welsh (05:09):

I break it down Zur into these three ways. So we think about how do we power the potential, that's what we call it of our clients. So that's fairly obvious, but I'll come back to that in a second. But you can't power the potential of your clients, businesses, consumers, unless you're powering the potential of your colleagues. We all have to keep learning and growing. It's a rapidly changing world. We need our colleagues to be their best self every day. And we as an institution don't thrive unless communities thrive, right? Banks are pillars of their community. One of the things I have learned is the power of a bank branch. Many of you're sitting there thinking who goes to a bank branch? Well, first of all, a lot of people do. Secondly, they're a very powerful symbol in communities all across this country. They're symbols of hope because communities believe that if there's a bank branch there, they have the opportunity to prosper as a community. And I want to be a beacon of hope in those communities. And so the theme is how do we power the potential of our clients, our colleagues, and our communities all at the same time? And sometimes this works very clearly. Any person who works in a branch or helps a small business that's really obvious, they get the day-to-day feedback of Thanks you really made a difference in my life. And that's incredibly powerful. It can be a little harder sometimes to help our teams who don't see clients every day to help them appreciate that they're not actually doing something just so that Tim has some presentation to do or something like that. They're doing things so that we can help our colleagues, help our clients. And that's a very important part of the translation that we have to help people see. But I think one of my real joys there is going around the country and hearing stories from our clients, from our colleagues of how we've made a difference in their lives. And that's I think what keeps all of us motivated.

Zur Yahalom (07:05):

I like that story and I appreciate it. I can share a story, it's a little off topic, but you talked about the power of the branch and the branding of the branch. So me and my family, we moved to the US several years ago. My daughter was six years old and we came to the US one of the first things that we did was try all the different food chains that were in the US that we didn't know from our previous life. And so as we were driving and every time we tried a different restaurant, at some point my daughter points out and says, how come we've never eaten at Wells Fargo?

Tim Welsh (07:47):

That's great.

Zur Yahalom (07:48):

So that's the power of the branch for you. But I definitely get the power of the presence in the community being a staple of the community. I'm not comparing, but just like a McDonald's or something that you know, have a community. If you have today, it's a Starbucks, it's a McDonald's branch.

Tim Welsh (08:10):

That's exactly, thank you for sharing that wonderful story. Because what it is an example of is communities believe that if others are investing in them, they should be investing in themselves as well. And that's a very powerful symbol of hope.

Zur Yahalom (08:23):

So one may be shift gears and talk a little bit more about US Bank. And one of the things that you've done recently is you've integrated Union Bank, and I know the topic is about customer experience and you've done, I'm sure a lot of work in planning, designing this conversion of the two banks and the impact on the Union Bank customers. And maybe you can share a little bit about the process.

Tim Welsh (08:49):

Sure. Happy to do so. Let me provide a little bit of context for this. So first of all, within bank, our strategy to power, human potential has been around what we call digital plus human. Our view is you have to be excellent at digital, you have to be at the leading edge of digital. Our teams have built what independent parties have said as the best app in banking as an example. And you have to compliment with that, with a human being. Finances are very personal, they're emotional, they're complicated. You want a human being to connect. So that's the core essence of the strategy. We then as you said, acquired Union Bank, we closed in December and then did the conversion about two and a half weeks ago, so that's when you convert all of the systems over. So it was quite the Memorial Day weekend, but mostly we know mostly it went quite well, which we were very fortunate to have teams that had worked so hard on that. What we're trying to do with union is the same thing we're trying to do all across our footprint, which is to bring those digital tools to our clients. Union had some digital tools, but not the breadth that we do, and they also didn't have as broad a product set. They were just a narrower, smaller regional bank. So now our position in California as an example is material enhanced. And I'm slow, so it takes me a little while to figure these things out. But you think of California as a state, like I'm from Minnesota, we think of California as a state. It is of course technically a state, but it is, when you really think about it, it's actually a country. It's so huge depending on how you count, it's as big an economy as the UK or France. We now are the fifth biggest bank in that important country state. And also crucially, union Bank was really good at some things. Their depth of relationship in the Japanese-American community unparalleled really impressive. So we're trying to figure out how we take that. And they also did an amazing special purpose credit vehicle for small businesses, minority and women-owned businesses. We've already expanded that all across the country. So these are things like we improve position in California, we do digital plus human, same thing we've been doing everywhere. And then we take the great assets that Union Bank has and try to scale them all across the country. So that's what we're trying to do. These things are complicated. Many of you have been through them. There are always bumps in the road, but we are grateful to have a group of team members that has just jumped in and tried to help make things work. So that's a little bit of where we are. Does that help, sir?

Zur Yahalom (11:29):

Yeah, definitely. And I think we talk about the conversion of the Union Bank customers, which happened just two weeks ago. That's the summary of a very long journey. Exactly. You talked about closing in December, but I know the planning started to happen.

Tim Welsh (11:46):

18 months before that. Exactly.

Zur Yahalom (11:49):

We were part of that and so we were very much aware and engaged. But so talk about maybe the evolution of customer experience at US Bank. What is it that you've done at US Bank to make the customer experience unique, special? The one you mentioned, your mobile app is one words and is recognized. So what other things have you done? What was the process?

Tim Welsh (12:16):

So what we're trying to get at this notion of digital plus human, but before we dive into how we do that, lemme just remind ourselves, put yourselves in the shoes of most consumers or most small businesses. How many consumers wake up in the morning rush to their app and say, what are the new features that US Bank added? Nobody does that. So we have to keep in mind that if that's the mentality that consumers are, they don't want to spend a lot of time on their finances. It's confusing, it's complicated, it's intimidating. That's just the math. And you throw in the technology, it really is complicated. So as an example of the ways we've tried to bridge this digital plus human to make that a personalized experience, one of the things we've done is something called co-browse, which we started about four years ago. So the way this works is imagine that this actual real life story, imagine that you're an 80 year old person. The first story I heard about this was in Montana in the spring of 2020. I've heard this story countless times across the country, but I'll share this one story. So spring of 2020, what were any of us doing? Pretty much nothing. We were sitting at home and we were scared and we were pounding on computers and doing Zoom calls and all that sort of stuff. Our 80 year old client gets a check, which he actually needs to pay his bills. And by the way, many other people in this similar situation, but he can't really go out scared as we all were. So he calls the branch and says, what can I do? And they used Co browse. They say, if you go on your screen or go on your phone, we'll click onto it and we will use our pointer to show you exactly how to do a mobile check deposit. And we did. Do you know what he said at the end of that session, after he had deposited his check, he didn't say anything. He cried, right? Because he felt like we had practically saved his life. So what we've now done is improve that over time. And so now when you do it, if you and I are doing this, I can actually see you. You can see me. It's a really high quality experience. It was a wonderful story recently of how one of our bankers was able to help a woman who only spoke Spanish at home. He could hear that she was talking to her son to get a translation. He said, stop with you. They co browsed. He flips our app to Spanish and she doesn't have to talk to her son anymore. And she gets treated with dignity and respect. So that's the kind of tool that we're using now to be able to bridge this human plus digital and to really help clients in ways that reflect where they are at that point in their journey.

Zur Yahalom (15:21):

This is a great story. I can't really comment so much or add to it. This is really touching.

Tim Welsh (15:28):

We tell these stories and I'm sure many of you do similar kinds of things, but we tell these stories a lot and I suspect you do at Amdocs as well of how we made a difference. Because one thing to say, well, we got 72 new checking accounts and loan balances are up, all that. And that's good and that's important, but that's not why we do what we do. That's a derivative of what we do. What we do is we help power the potential of people. And if we do those things, we have more balances and all those other things.

Zur Yahalom (16:01):

So you talked about Co browsing and investing in digital, but you also talked about the importance of the branch. How do you balance, do you try to drive people to the branch? What sort of experience do you give them in the branch that would match the type of experience that they are getting over digital or over the app?

Tim Welsh (16:22):

This is such an important question and because I don't know about all of you, but wherever I go, people are asking me when are branches going to be done and how many more do we need and all that sort of thing. And my view of this is very simple. It's a digital plus human world and a lot of those humans work every day in branches helping our clients. But what they do is different than what you may think happens in a branch. Probably for most of you, the last time you went into a branch was a while ago and you went into cash and check and get some cashing back. That's not, generally speaking, the only thing that's happening in a branch. In fact, what's happening much more is that people are calling in for technology help. Like we talked about the co-browsing. The tools are advanced and people need help. And the second thing they're doing is if you can just cash your check, deposit your check online and do lots of other transactions, guess what? You actually have a little bit of time to sit down and have a conversation with somebody about, I've got these three credit cards and they all have balances on them. Can you help me figure out what to do? Or I'm trying to save for my trip to Disney World, how do I do that? And so what we're finding is the branch is evolving to a place where lots of transactions used to occur. And to be clear, transactions still do occur there. But now much more frequently what you're seeing is people saying, Hey, I need help with my technology either in the branch or via Cobrowse or I want to come in and sit down and talk about something. I did this weekend with my 15 year old, brought him into the branch, 15 year old, he's got to open a checking account. I suggested to him that a good place would be US Bank. And we went to the branch down the street and he sat there for an hour and he came out and he said, I thought I was going in to get a debit card. What I learned was about my credit score and I learned about the importance of checking my balances. He said, I didn't know all that stuff. That's the kind of thing that we do, not just for 15 year old, but for everybody.

Zur Yahalom (18:24):

That's great. And by the way, I can totally relate because the last time I've been to a branch was exactly for the same thing, taking my teenage daughter to open her bank account. And so I can really relate to that. I think the other question I had was you touched about the people going into the branch and talking about the fact that they, well, I have three different credit cards and I have this kind of debt and things like that. And to me it relates to something that I heard in different sessions throughout this conference is people talk about how do we learn from the journeys that customers have with us and the data that they have with us. And I think at least to me part of it is limited because the bank has a narrow view. Each bank has a narrow view because they can only see the accounts that you have with them. And when you only do the online piece, you only get to view the accounts that they have with you. But most people have multiple bank accounts with multiple financial institutions and it's very hard to get to the bottom of that without that human interaction.

Tim Welsh (19:29):

That's exactly right. Really well said, Zur. And this is a really important thing. So think about your own financial lives. It's highly distributed across lots of places. And so what we are essentially asking you the consumer to do in that case is to be your own general contractor, right? You've got to figure out, where's my savings, where's my investment? Goodness. And we're just talking about banking, but you throw insurance into this and we're saying you as a typical consumer, you get to manage all that. Does anybody really want to do that as a consumer?

Zur Yahalom (20:06):

Your 401 Ks,

Tim Welsh (20:08):

All that stuff.

Zur Yahalom (20:09):

Your car finance.

Tim Welsh (20:09):

Good luck keeping track of all that stuff. And by the way, if you change jobs a few times, I mean we all know what this is like, this is what we live. So two things I think are important in this. First of all, we, and I know others, but we certainly have in our app the ability to aggregate other accounts, which is crucial. Everybody wants it in one place. But very few consumers do that on their own. They do it when they come into a branch and they say, gosh, I'm kind of confused. I got all these things. And our banker can say to them, we have these features here. You can look at all your accounts. Now you're all of a sudden say, well, it's just a way for you to sell. I mean, obviously opportunities do come up like that, but we're trying to actually be helpful to our clients and they're much more open to us being helpful to them and buying a product from us if we've actually first been genuinely helpful to them.

Zur Yahalom (21:04):

One question about the customer journey and customer experience. We talked about things that you talked about co-browsing and other things, which you're very successful and you're very proud of. Anything that you, when looking back, you would do differently today?

Tim Welsh (21:20):

Yes. So that's a long list, but a few things that I would highlight. We started our agile journey about five years ago and you can't see them. I'm wearing my red shoes, my red tennis shoes, which became the symbols of the agile journeys. Red tennis shoes are bold, you run fast and you're on a team. So I wear them whenever I go out to branches or in public. It's became a symbol of what we were doing. I don't think we fully understood. It took me a while to fully understand how parts of the organization can quickly get digital plus human client orientation, all of that. But you need everybody to come along in the journey. And there are lots of people in a bank whose job is not client facing and their job is often to say, well, we have to follow all these rules and we have to make sure that we take the right credit risks and things like that. And don't get me wrong, those are extremely important jobs. I think one of the things I might've done earlier is tried to figure out how we bring everybody along at the same time so that everybody could see, oh, I understand why we're trying to do this and that sometimes it felt like we're just trying to get a loan done faster. Well, getting a loan done faster was not the entire objective, but sometimes that's what it can be perceived as. And so I think that was a lesson for me of how to make sure that everybody sees the same vision as moving in the same direction as opposed to those who are just at the client facing edge and see the need for it more quickly. So that would be one of the examples I'd highlight there of the kinds of things that you should think about. Okay. What have you seen in some of these journeys that people need to do differently?

Zur Yahalom (23:18):

I would say the first or the most dominant thing that we have seen is people being used to how things are done and resisting change. I think resisting change is a very broad term, but people are used to do things a certain way and then if it changes, then it becomes a threat and you start dealing with objections. And so it's extremely important to go through the change management and educate everybody and communicate with everybody why is the change happening? Why are we doing what we're doing? What do we believe the implications are going to be? And prepare. Because some people might be impacted if you, there's a common theme around this conference about a lot of people are talking about AI and automation and this is going to impact a lot of jobs. Yes, it is. But if we're not going to be upfront and talk to people about it and see what we can do to help the people that are impacted, then they're going to push back and resist and find ways to sabotage it. And so if you want to be successful, you have to be upfront and just look at the reality and say, yes, this is what we expect to happen. These people will be impacted. Let's deal with it now upfront.

Tim Welsh (24:37):

That's such a great point. I remember early on in our journeys, 2017, 2018, I used a slide often that said, the world has never changed this rapidly before and it will never change this slowly again. That was 2017, 2018. Think about what the last three years have been, right? I mean, just constant change. And I think it is important for all of us to get our minds around. We got to keep adapting to that.

Zur Yahalom (25:03):

A few more questions. I know we don't have that much time, but so one of the things that we talked about was a lot of the interactions today are digital, majority of them, and we're going to be more and more digital. How do you build trust and confidence with customers where their main or even only interface with you is digital?

Tim Welsh (25:24):

It's a very important question about trust, and there's actually a book, the Trusted Advisor, which has an equation about trust, which I actually love. I'm kind of a geek. The equation is the trust is equal to essentially competence. Do you do the things that you're going to say that's in the numerator and in the denominator is self-orientation. So think about that for a second. If you do the things that you're supposed to do, if your app transacts properly, you can get your balances, deposit checks, all that. That is an important part of building trust. You just got to be competent digitally and human. But if the client, in spite of all that good, if they perceive you as being interested in yourself first, if everything that pops up is you just deposited a check, why don't you buy this thing from me? That's a high degree of self-orientation. If in contrast, what pops up are helpful suggestions. Did you know that you spent more money last month than you did the previous month and it was in these areas? That's personalization. If you come across as not that self-oriented, the trust goes up. So it's important to think about how your app and our teams do all the things that they need to do reliably, predictably, et cetera. We show up on time, stuff like that. We come across as genuinely interested in our clients if we are genuinely interested in our clients. And all of us can tell the difference between genuine interest and not genuine interest. Right? If you do those things reliable and not self-oriented, trust goes through the roof.

Zur Yahalom (27:18):

I like the answer. I'll ask one last question. Maybe we'll have some time for questions. Oh, sorry. I'll ask one last question and maybe we'll have time for more questions. So if you had a magic wand and you could wish anything to happen for US Bank or for you at US Bank, what would it be?

Tim Welsh (27:39):

Well, I start with our clients and what I really hope is that they get to spend as much of their time on things they love doing, running their pizza shop, going to Disney World, whatever it is. And they have to spend less time worrying about stuff that we can worry about really well for them. And so my hope is that they show up at Disney World or they open their second pizza location and they're ecstatic about that. And they know in their heart that US Bank was there to help make that happen, but they didn't have to spend a lot of time worrying about that.

Zur Yahalom (28:17):

That's good. Great. Thank you. I know we only have, I don't know if we have more time, but maybe quickly questions. Okay, great. Good. Any closing remarks?

Tim Welsh (28:35):

Just a big thank you to you and the group and thank you all for listening. Hope it was helpful. Appreciate it. Thank you.