Join us for a lively discussion of what matters most to consumers in their banking relationship and the implications of shifting priorities for leaders driving transformational change.
Janet King, VP, Research at Arizent (Moderator)
Aarthi Murali, Chief Customer Experience Officer at M&T Bank
Kristin Streett, Head of Banking Industry at ServiceNow
Transcription:
Janet King (00:06):
Thank you for coming and joining us this morning over breakfast. We're so excited to be here. I'm Janet King and I'm thrilled to be joined today in today's discussion with Aarthi, who is the Chief Customer Experience Officer at M and T and Kristen, who's head of banking industry at ServiceNow. So welcome ladies.
Aarthi Murali (00:26):
Thank you for having us.
Janet King (00:27):
So we've got a jam packed agenda today. We're going to try to leave some time for questions at the end, so we'll have some people running around with Mike, so don't be shy. We want to really have a conversation with you instead of talking at you. So we'll talk at you for a little while and then we want to be able to have a conversation with you. So please come forward with those questions. I want to start by just congratulating Aarthi as an honoree of the most powerful women in banking, women to watch lists, not just this year, but for the second year in a row. So congratulations.
Aarthi Murali (01:00):
Thank you. Yes.
Janet King (01:01):
Exciting. I noticed in your profile in American Banker that you were pointed to be the first ever Chief Customer Experience officer, what? In 2020, which is great. And in your profile last year you were quoted as saying that your job largely revolves around emphasizing empathy based human to human engagement and stressing that every human is different. And that is in fact, very much at the heart of the humanizing customer experience research that we're going to be discussing today that we've been doing in partnership with ServiceNow for a couple of years. So I'm super excited to have your perspective on this topic. So to get things started, can you just tell us a little bit about your journey at M and T?
Aarthi Murali (01:41):
Yeah, definitely. And huge thank you, Janet, for hosting this very precious topic for me and hopefully valuable for everyone in the room. Kudos to American Banker for bringing together such an awesome group of female leaders and recognizing that this is important to do in banking. So hi everyone. Good morning. Before I talk about myself, I want to talk about this morning and what we all woke up to. So I turned on the news, I was up at three 30 ungodly hour this morning as I am on my first day of travel all the time and took note of three things in our environment, no longer have a speaker of the house. And I watched that for some reason for a few minutes as I was drinking my coffee on all the reasons. Then heard about the largest human employee retaliation and strike going on with Kaiser Permanente, which is one of the largest healthcare institutions in the country.
(02:45)
And then the third one was more of a global perspective, of course around geopolitical dynamics between Ukraine, Russia, China, and everything that's going on. And what I reflected in that moment is this conversation this morning could not be more important than that because everything happening around us in the world is why we do what we do and how we show up for our customers and our community. So yes, I was thrilled to join M & T Bank as the first chief experience officer and a lot of it was rooted in how I can come in and make an impact. And you hear a lot about that. You heard it in the panel yesterday talking about how do we make impact as female executives in banking in a way that really fulfills our purpose, but also really supports the communities that we serve in. So when I came in to talk about customer experience, it was about, hey, how do we create a differentiated, seamless friction-free experience for our customers?
(03:43)
And over time that has evolved into how do we just really make an impact to our customers and communities and do it in a way that's fueled by empathy. And empathy in this case means putting yourself in the shoes of your customers and think about designing the right products, offering the right omnichannel experiences, traversing the needs, and really being able to predict the needs of our customers and clients in a way that matters to them maybe, maybe not to the organization that we're a part of, but how do you find that best match to be able to do that. So those were kind of my morning reflections.
Janet King (04:22):
Musings at three 30 in the morning.
Aarthi Murali (04:23):
2: 30 in the morning. Yes.
Janet King (04:25):
Well, thank you for that. So before we dive into the results, I thought it would be helpful just to orient everybody here in the room a little bit to the scope of the research that we conducted. So I think I mentioned that this is an annual initiative. American Banker has been conducting this research for the past three years, and it's a large scale consumer survey that we conduct among 5,500 banking consumers every spring. And that composition of that sample is pretty representative of the US population based on age and gender and race and region. At the center of this research is really a framework which is rooted in the social sciences, which evaluates the customer experience in banking on four key dimensions, which you guys can see here, behavioral, intellectual, sensorial, emotional. And the idea is that it provides insight into the levers that banks can pull to drive better outcomes.
(05:22)
And specifically this model is linked to customer satisfaction and advocacy. So banks who perform better on all four aspects of these parts of the customer experience are generally likely to see an uptick, a positive reaction in satisfaction and loyalty. And the premise is really to Aarthi's point that the experience is multifaceted, right? Your experience with a bank or a brand is multifaceted. People sense brands all around them, they think about brand benefits, they feel an emotional connection to brands and they interact with banks and brands in any myriad number of ways. So that's what we're really trying to understand here, and it's become a very useful tool for understanding what matters most to customers in banking, but also understanding where banks lead and where they lag in delivering the best customer experiences. So Kristen, before we dive into this, I think it would be helpful to understand why ServiceNow has been so interested in partnering with us on this.
Kristen Campbell (06:24):
First of all, thank you for the partnership. You've been a great leader yourself with the team, and it's been a pleasure to work with you and it's an honor to be with you, AIE on this stage. I think what you'll get from this session is behind the intent of why we sponsored, which is caring about people, caring about research and caring about building great experiences. And that's really the intersection of everything that we're going to be discussing today. But in the interest of just sharing stories, why research is so important to me personally, but also to ServiceNow is going back to 25-year-old me in Silicon Valley working at a FinTech startup trying to build a managed account solution for everyday investors. And I was pretty bold and ambitious and thought that I had a lot of things figured out. And I remember distinctly the director of product asking me why I felt so certain about something, some element of the development that we were doing.
(07:22)
And I said, well, I just know, I just know. And he's like, no, you don't know. Not until you have some research and something to back it up. And so ever since then, it was a real game changing experience for me and it really impressed upon me the importance of grounding yourself in research. And when I was in banking trying to lead transformation, it was really hard to get my hands on research. I didn't have the budget, I couldn't afford it. It wasn't prioritized in certain areas that I was looking to do. So for me and for ServiceNow, it's a pleasure to bring this to everyone here. I hope that there's insights that you can take back to your institutions and use those insights to drive the business plans and the change that you want to affect in your organizations.
Janet King (08:07):
Absolutely. And in past years, we've really focused a lot on how well banks are delivering on this experience. Who's leading, who's lagging? Is it credit unions? Is it large retail banks? Is it online only banks? And this year we added a different layer. We dug into results also at the generational level, which is really interesting. So Kristen, why do you think it was so important for us to give space to that generational story this year?
Kristen Campbell (08:33):
Well, most importantly, I think we can't design a one size fits all solution for everyone. And I think that speaks to your point, Aarthi, which is really having empathy and understanding where particular demographics are coming from. And if we're not really looking at their emotional and functional needs, then we're sort of missing the point. And this was driven home, and I think it was dig banking in Austin. There was this amazing FinTech breakout session, and excuse me, I of course went because having come from that background was really interested in seeing their advice for cornerstone advisor's advice actually for banks. And they really distilled out what niche neobanks are doing, which is taking a very strong hook on a functional and emotional need, which we will be discussing here, and really investing and driving development around that and bringing it to market in environments where those demographics are in interacting and really putting the emphasis on the customer.
Janet King (09:35):
So important. And Aarthi, how are you thinking about all of that at m and t? How are you thinking about serving customers in different generational cohorts and maybe different life stages?
Aarthi Murali (09:46):
And it's so important, and obviously many of you, all of you in the room know it's even more nuanced, right? You have generational differences, you have life stage differences, you have geographic differences. I mean, we could go on and on about how to segment customers, what their needs and likes and wants are. And then as we look at that holistically, two things that stand out for me, which I loved in this research, which is the generational and life stage differences are becoming more prominent now than before the pandemic. So the pandemic was a little bit of a catalyst to that When you saw a variation in the need changed, the environment changed, we drove more digital experiences for our customers, but maybe some of the behaviors didn't change because there was more of a training requirement that didn't quite stick. And then there was this, I'll call it a hypothesis that was formed that it was going to be all digital.
(10:45)
And then we find out that retail has come back so strongly because there is a way to think about this, but generational life stage differences are important. There is a core. So the two things I would reflect on is there is a core underlying commonality that all customers, potential customers members have, and it is very important to meet that core basic minimum viable experience layer across channels. And then what we find at m and t is then how do you cater to the personalization depending on those differences and how do you really bring that to life? If we don't differentiate between the life stage and the differences, I'm literally in a different life stage than even two years ago, let alone generational differences. And we all are. We go through dramatic change. Back to my point about the three top news items that I watched this morning.
(11:38)
All of our customers are listening to the news. They were all going through different life stages every single day. And so how do brands stay nimble and continue to be in a position of sensing and responding to those changes as they go is really important. And then the last point I want to make on that is delivering on generational and life stage differences, which are usually very pivotal moments. There's a turn that's happening in people's lives when they go through these changes. It's really important. It's a moment that matters. It's a critical moment that matters. And whether the brand is there or not at that time will determine whether they're going to stay with the brand in the future as well. So I'm very obsessed with this part of the survey.
Janet King (12:25):
Absolutely, and I think as we begin to unpack those drivers, what we're going to see is that there are some really key differences. Apologies went one too far. There are really some key differences generationally and also some changes that we saw year over year, which I think are really impactful and provide some prescriptive insight into how banking leaders like yourselves can be thinking about better serving their customers. So I'm just going to take a moment to orient everybody to what you're seeing on this slide because this is going to repeat for every single one of the drivers. So the framework itself at every one of those 5,500 people that took this survey were asked to evaluate their primary financial institution on 63 different attributes or aspects of the customer experience. So these are customers evaluating their experience at their primary bank or financial institution. So each of these drivers has around 14 or 15 attributes.
(13:19)
Some have more, have less to keep it a little simple today. And to help us just talk about the high points and simplify the visuals, we're just going to show you a subset of some of those attributes here for each driver. And the ones we chose to highlight are the ones that we saw the bigger generational differences or some year over year trends. So those are the attributes that you see on the X axis. And then the vertical axis, the Y is basically the score which shows you the net proportion of people who feel that the bank is delivering on that particular aspect of the customer experience. That just kind of gives you a view of what you're looking at. So the behavioral driver is the one where banks generally perform best. This is where banks are pretty much delivering the various ways that people want to interact with their banks, either in person or through digital channels.
(14:11)
So this is a place where we can say, okay, we're all doing pretty well. But there were some interesting year over year changes, and specifically it was on the digital side. So best online banking best mobile banking carries more weight this year than it did in previous years, which simply means that it has a bigger impact on satisfaction and advocacy than it has in years past. So I think for banks, that means that the implication I think is that it's no longer like a set it and forget it, right? You need to continue to evolve those experiences to keep pace with expectations. And then the second thing I'll say before I turn this back to these guys for some questions is that if you look at the generational lens here, what we see is that, again, it's not a one size fits all, which we've been saying, but that most of the younger generations are generally more satisfied with the ways that they can interact with their banks than their older peers. And they really start to pull apart from each other on those two things around mobile and online banking. So Kristen, I'm going to start with you here. And I'm curious to get your opinion on how banks can find the balance between delivering digital experiences that are familiar enough to drive adoption and reduce friction, but differentiated enough to serve those different generational cohorts and create sort of a distinct advantage in the market.
Kristen Campbell (15:33):
Sure. So part of the overall just analysis is really looking at the generational differences. Who are the people that are interacting in those digital channels? And we know from the research that you released back at digital banking in Boca that most banks were interviewed, I think it was 53 to 55% were only somewhat happy with their current implementation of an online experience for many different types of products, but also their mobile experience. So we know from this research that it's increasing in importance. We know that banks don't feel like they've done a good enough job. So how do we go into that in-channel experience and begin to look at ways to uplevel it or to improve it? And I think that part of that experience is something that Dai you've said before in the past, and it's in my mind, is customer obsession. If you really put the customer at the center of that experience and say, from my own experience, how do we know that boomers are doing okay with our virtual assistant?
(16:41)
How do we know we have a solution that we put in place and we think it's going to work and it will be fine, but do we really know that they're engaging well with that? Can we use AI to be able to analyze their sentiment so that when they get to an agent, they already know they're frustrated, they couldn't work in specific with some specific problem, and that agent can come to the experience with empathy, right? And know that this is a challenging engagement channel for this demographic, whereas somebody who's Gen Z millennial has an immediate expectation for an exceptional self-service capability, and many banks are still getting that going and perfecting that. And so it's about looking where your customer base is and the type of products that you're offering them, and then really looking and knowing with research or data, how are they engaging in that channel and what are the things that we can do? What tools or digital options do we have to make that a better experience for them?
Janet King (17:41):
That's great, thank you for that. And Aarthi, the research this year also provided some really interesting insights on how banking ranks stacks against a bunch of other verticals on different aspects of the digital experience. And we saw things like retail banking's the clear leader, first of all in data privacy and security, but retail is really dominating for best in class in many aspects. Social media is leading on personalization, video on account sharing. So are you looking at other verticals outside of banking for lessons to apply here for your own digital experiences?
Aarthi Murali (18:18):
All the time. All the time. And if I could just build on what you described here and connected to this question as well, please. It is customer obsession really resonates with me. Of course we all talk about it, but at the end of the day, and at the end of the day, I mean the only question or the question that I always start with is what does your customer want? And what we have learned over time is there are features and capabilities online and digital and mobile that our customers do not want to use. So we might be building them because everyone else has them or other industries portray they require it. And we do have segments of customers who engage in that. So that was lesson number one that we kind of found because we're deeper in the conversations with our customers and communities.
(19:10)
What do they want to go online for? What do they want to go to retail for? And then when you look at other industries, it could be retail where the experiences somewhat fine tuned and seamless. If we look at big retail brands, your in-store experiences have been fine tuned over the years. Customers know what to expect and they're talking to someone in person and they're finishing completing their transaction within the retail space. When we look at our expectations for our customers, though, it's tripled and quadrupled in terms of being higher. So two different dynamics there in terms of looking at other industries are back to the generational difference. While there is a higher propensity to use more digital based applications in the younger generations, when we look at some of our older generations or maybe less engaged, they are more particular about not wasting their time.
(20:07)
Yes. So it's not just a channel preference, it's the value back to the customer. So yes, we look at healthcare from a complexity of regulations and how you bring that to life. We look at the consumer industry and how they serve customers with the true personalization and making them feel wanted. Thinking about global. When we think about the payments mechanism out in Asia, well more advanced than the payment mechanisms we have here, how do we bridge that gap when you have global customers who experience that there and have a different experience here, but expect the same level of engagement and service provided here? So those are kind of like to me, connecting the dots of start with your customer, figure out what they want, and then always look outside your industry to learn and bring some of the best practices to life. And it's hard.
Janet King (21:00):
It is hard, and the marks are always moving, right? The goalposts are constantly moving, which makes it really hard. So let's talk about the intellectual aspects of the experience because remember, these are those bread and butter benefits. The things people check off their list is they're thinking about which banks they want to work with. And after behavioral, this is the area of customer experience where banks are also performing pretty well. You'll notice here though, you're starting to see some negative scores. Why is it dropping below a hundred? That's because in that case, you've got more people who say that the bank is not delivering on that aspect of the experience than believe that they are. So that's kind of directionally where banks are really lagging, I suppose. So we saw a couple of year over year changes here, which are interesting. We saw an increase in importance around monetary incentives and rewards.
(21:54)
So those are carrying more importance this year than they were last year. And some of that may be the economy, the financial pressure, people are feeling some of the geopolitical uncertainties. It may be lots of reasons for that, high interest rates, but I think it's important to note that that is an area where banks are generally lagging. It's particularly an area of weakness for retail banks based on this customer feedback. So that's an interesting story and I'd love to get your thoughts on that. And then on the generational side, we see a few more dramatic differences on this driver than we did on the previous one, where we're seeing younger generations, again rating the performance of banks, their experience with the banks consistently higher than the older generations. And again, significant differences on some of those areas where we saw big changes this year, like monetary rewards, incentives and whatnot. So Aarthi, what's M and T doing specific to this issue and how, if at all, are you personalizing services to appeal to those different cohorts?
Aarthi Murali (22:53):
Yeah, I think it's in the spirit of what we're talking about in terms of knowing your customer. So one of the things we did institute over the past, and I'm looking at my colleague here at the table, we did this work again, just hard work that we all know needs to be done, is we have now instituted a way to get real-time customer feedback. And the reason that's so important is because our environment is changing. So that's number one. Number two, we wanted to get better in understanding the behavioral differences, the generational differences, exactly what the data here is showing, get better understanding about that for our customers. And we learned a ton of insights every single day from that. Our customers who go into the branch do want to transact online, but the value drivers, as I mentioned earlier, the system is different from a younger generation to an older generation.
(23:49)
The level of dissatisfaction was higher, and we actually saw that correlated to the study. So I think that's a great correlation to see there. And then as we start to take that and work backward from there, we realized we had opportunities to make return some of the value back to the customers. So it's not just about purchasing the product and the engagement that they have with the bank, but what are we doing for them beyond that transactional experience and fulfilling a richer value system for our customers? I don't want to miss out on mentioning our employee experience in this. We cannot do any of this without matching that same passion for our customers with our employees. And when I talk about the employee experience, I'm talking about how they work to serve those customers. Is their job easy? Are they logging into 10 different systems in order to deliver and address the feedback that Janet is talking about? And the answer is, yes, they are. So how do we simplify that for them? And if the job is really hard for employees, then how do they carry that brand forward? And then how do we expect our customers to carry that brand back in is a challenge that I will say we're grappling with. So open to conversations around that later in the day as well.
Janet King (25:01):
Yeah, and that's interesting. That just became a part of your job. Was that just this year that you took on additional responsibilities there?
Aarthi Murali (25:08):
That's right. We're finding incredible strength and correlation in bringing those two experience platforms together because we have seen in specific markets where we have challenges with our customer experience, arguably the employee experience is lower. Now you could say we already knew that, right? Of course it would be low. But the question is what do you do about it? And the action there is what matters the most is when you know exactly the levers of why the line at a particular branch in a particular market is longer than another. And it has nothing to do with staffing, by the way. That's the magic one. That's the excitement that you bring out with the data. And then how do you tell a story around that and build a brand is common across generations, those types of needs. And then you have your nuances of the brand that applies differently.
Janet King (26:00):
Yeah, it's great, really empowering individuals in the organization to take that next best action. I love that. That's been married in your role. I think that's so important. So let's talk about the sensorial aspect. This is the one that always kind of makes people scratch their head a little bit. They're like, what does this mean? And it is definitely an area of challenge for most banks, but it's really important to the totality of the experience. So let's just give you one example would be what you call sonic branding or audio branding. So that's something that's been used for many years. Think about all the different jingles that pop into your head when you think about that or sounds like Intel has that five note bong sound or the Microsoft's wave startup sound when you turn on your computer. So that's kind of one aspect, not the only one, but one aspect of sensorial to kind of just root you on what that means.
(26:53)
And we saw fewer shifts in attributes here year over year, but we did add a new attribute this year, which was really trying to understand the impact of having digital sites and websites and apps that appeal to customers. And what we saw is that that attribute was really important to people. It was actually number two on their list of importance and still something that you can see there's quite a few falling below in the negative range here. So banks have some ground to make up there. On the generational side, we see the biggest part of the customer journey are around that sonic branding piece and the ubiquitous, the ubiquity of a bank. The ubiquitous nature of a bank, I guess I should say, is that these younger generations want to see other people using the products. Like they're really relying on word of mouth and seeing the brand and the bank being really active in the community. It's really important. So I think it's an area of underperformance for most banks, but also a chance for banks who get it right to really differentiate the experience. So I'll start with Kristen here, but where do you see the biggest opportunities for banks on this driver?
Kristen Campbell (28:02):
I think when you dig into some of the research, and we may not have some of the data here on these slides, but when it's made available to everyone, there's a component here around referrals and where Gen Z and millennials that largely the largest demographic that's coming up and the ones that we're depending on for future revenue growth, look for validation from others or insight from others to give them advice and referral around what to do. And you'll see that in the data where they actually do look to maybe boomers, hopefully Gen X as an exter myself, but for that kind of advice. But I think that's an important implication in terms of referring repeat business and getting them through into other products and services that the bank's offering and then growing them through your organization. So I think the implication is huge.
Janet King (28:56):
You have an opportunity to be an influencer in this area. I could. You could be. I could. So Aarthi, what do you see as some of the biggest opportunities here?
Aarthi Murali (29:05):
I love the space and it's all about the brand. And I think over the course of years, the power of the brand in being able to attract customers beyond just brand marketing or brand advertising has become a whole larger science around it. Hence the data around it. Simple things matter. So when we think about referrals, obviously our younger generations, it's really important to them that the brand is showing up in the way that they portray themselves to be. So when we think about m and t Bank, we are very much about the communities and being a heartbeat in the communities. So we offer our employees 40 hours to go volunteer, it's paid and that's a significant investment we want to make. But when we show up in the communities doing the work, that's deeply impactful because our customers can see it, our communities can see it, and then that makes sense because we are fulfilling our branch promise.
(30:01)
But when I think about other hospitality industry brands, when you think about Westin, the Ritz Carlton, and when you walk into the hotel, there is a particular fragrance that you experience walking through the lobby of the hotel. It is scientifically designed by the way, it is no accident. They actually pick and choose and design that send to be one that makes you feel calm. Should you be standing in a line waiting to check in gives you this feeling like you're on vacation. Even though you're here at work, you're attending this conference, but you feel at bliss, you think you're going to that spa, you're not. But they've got that surround sound around you that makes you have this VIP luxurious experience in every hotel. That's part of it. Hilton Hope, I don't get the wrong hotel, but they have these amazing chocolate chip cookies that I no longer eat, but they are amazing and they serve that warm baked everyday. The lobby, those are part of the sensorial experience. So the brand can create a sensorial experience. Your actual day-to-day in-channel experiences can create that as well, that make you feel really warm and delighted. And now they've taken it beyond. You can actually purchase these scents, you can purchase the bed
Kristen Campbell (31:14):
I have at home, excuse me, I have it at home. Definitely.
Aarthi Murali (31:17):
It's really evolved and I'm very fascinated by the science of it and I was very glad to see it on the data here.
Janet King (31:26):
Those are great examples and I think really start to hopefully get you all thinking about the different ways that you could incorporate that into your own brand experiences at your banks. Alright, so let's talk about emotional. This is the last one, the last pillar, and then we'll open it up for questions. And this has definitely been the biggest area of challenge for banks in all three waves. This is where banks have been lagging. You can see these lines like the highest performance for behavior and intellectual. The scores are up around that green line, the lowest, they're down around the purple. This has been a real challenge year over year. What we saw here is that two things really started to matter a little bit more, that the bank demonstrates an understanding of my financial needs that started to matter more and that they give me confidence that my financial health will be better tomorrow than it is today.
(32:16)
And again, there's a lot of macro factors that are probably influencing some of that as well. But that's where we are today and that's what customers want. Generationally. Younger generations are giving banks higher grades on these things even among those generations where performance is lagging compared to other drivers. So again, the generational differences are also biggest around those things like show me that you understand my unique financial needs. Show me that you're giving me confidence that I will be better off tomorrow than I am today. So these are aspects of the customer experience that I think banks need to really try to pull through all parts of it. It's not just about your messaging or your advertising. It needs to be, these experiences need to be baked into your product development and everything else. So I guess how do you think about that at M and T?
Aarthi Murali (33:12):
I love this, this topic and I could geek out over it for hours all day if you would, but I know you won't let me. So it is probably the most important part, right? We always talk about empathy, which is incredibly important for in-channel experiences, but empathy extends all the way into the core of the brand, the core of any bank, all the way into the back office. So we call it front to back simplification, end-to-end experiences, but we have dedicated experience design teams embedded in product design. So the first thing that they do is they are looking at researching to your point, and learning exactly how our customers use our products today. And then we're looking for adjacencies. How are they not using the product? What are we leaving out on the table in terms of fulfilling the lives of our customers and how can we create that niche product design in there?
(34:06)
And then it's all about testing and learning. There are much more cooler words than testing and learning nowadays. You could do prototyping, you could do tons of stuff in the market with customers and really get into that. But in channel experiences are great. Where brand experiences start to degrade is when their trust is let down. So Janet, you talked about knowing the financial needs of a customer and a bank might feel like they know them based on the data we have, but it's important to deliver on that in the channel experience so they don't feel the friction where they're like, we thought we knew you, we thought you cared for us. This doesn't feel like it. So they're both important. The product design is incredibly important. Investing in user experience, UI designed for digital testing with your customers before you launch the product is even more important so you're not fixing things on the backend. And then our customers are asking questions like, how are you using ai? How are you using more innovative techniques to make my life better? And then how does that reflect in the products as well?
Kristen Campbell (35:14):
If I could just add, I know we want to get to questions, but I think that the essence of this element or this attribute is really draws down to know me. And I think that is pervasive across all demographics, which is understand me, know me, and that is an emotional connection when somebody actually understands, when they connect with you in any channel that, hey, I understand your circumstance. I'm working with a lovely bank in the Midwest that is taking their operations teams, eight different call centers, eight different servicing teams and doing a human designed or human-centered approach to the way that they're looking at knowing that customer. And it was really wonderful to see the operations teams come together and say, we all talk to the same person and they don't know that we all know them in a slightly different way, and it was such a normal acknowledgement, but it was so profound at the same time.
(36:13)
And they've really decided to put that customer at the center and say, when X team talks to them, they need to know that they've been in the branch or they need to know that they're also a business owner or that they're a private wealth customer. They need to just even just at the surface level really understand that we care about this customer from so many different angles and it changes the way that they approach that customer and the empathy that they bring and the way that they service them. So creating new ways for the employees to interact around your customer, I love that a huge, huge advocate for employees who quite frankly span the digital gaps for our institutions and really do so in a very selfless way because they too care about the customer. So I love that that's the way that you're thinking about it, and I think many of you are also acknowledging that and thinking about ways that you can make some of those adjustments so that those customers do feel known in those moments.
Janet King (37:14):
So important. Should we open it up to questions? We have a few minutes left and we do have some folks running around with microphones. Does anyone have a question for Aarthi or Kristen about this topic? Shy group? Okay, we've got a question over here and one over there.
Audience Member 1 (37:41):
Thank you. My questions about the data itself and if you are seeing in your experience things that might drive the generational differences in the scores, not just kind of the surface items. For example, some banks might say, I have a strategy on targeting Gen Z and millennials, so I don't care that the boomers and the silent generation, I'm not saying that by the way, some banks might say that I don't care that their scores are lower because when I look at millennials and Gen Zs, that looks okay to me, but is it possible that Gen Z and those millennials are actually feeling that way? They may just be scoring different. So I'm wondering if there's any of that. It's a generation that grew up with Uber and a five star rating expectation. Anything there that might be coloring those differences?
Janet King (38:37):
So I mean I guess I can comment on that a little bit, but I think, and then we'll see if you ladies have any comments. I think that on the generational side, we are seeing a number of things that are driving that, right? So generally these younger generations are more satisfied across the board and is it because they just have a higher level of comfort with that? I don't know. But we did see a lot of consistency across those folks and we also see that the way that they choose their banks from the very entry point is different. So older generations are starting from a place of convenience and whatnot, and younger generations are looking to older generations to sort of help them figure that out and they're much more motivated by offers, offers for credit cards, lower rates, things like that. But I guess I'm curious if you guys have any thoughts on that.
Kristen Campbell (39:32):
I think that first of all, thank you. I think that's amazing because what it speaks to is we have to keep asking it isn't one and done and it isn't one size fits all and their needs are going to change and they may not be scoring it right, because they may just in the moment be thinking of it within the context of what they're experiencing at that moment. So I think that that's a really important point. But the other piece that I didn't get to say just so much to cover was that we really do have to nail the experience for the Boomer and the Xer because they are referring, they are telling them what to do or sharing, and likewise the sharing goes up, the sharing goes upstream. I'm using Snapchat now. I mean it goes the other direction. So I think that it's important to constantly assess and you certainly use live in the moment feedback, which I think is brilliant.
Aarthi Murali (40:27):
Yeah, I love that last piece that you mentioned because so we have a lot of third generation customers at M and T Bank and Wilmington Trust, and I can tell you the loyalty is there across three generations, but the expectations are wildly different. And so we see younger generations having very different experiences. They are perfectly fine with the mobile and online apps, and they will give us these high ratings if that's all that they want to do, but maybe the older generation is like, yes, that worked fine, but the banker I usually hang out with at my block party was in there when I went there. And so I came back, I wanted to say hi, and that person's son and this person's son, we hang up. These are stories, these are real community based deep stories that are there. So I think of using this data directionally to learn more, know where to ask more questions.
(41:21)
And so the more questions we ask, the more we learn, and then we start to really get into how can we make our lives better, and then what technology do we invest in? To me, it's very important figuring out what is the next feature capability to build in digital. It could be one of a million things that we all talk about, but there are only three things that matter to our customers and how do you narrow down to that? That's what these help me point me in the right direction for. That's good. That's great. Does that help? Okay.
Janet King (41:49):
I think we had a question somewhere in the middle of the room. Yes. Right here.
Audience Member 2 (42:00):
Thank you. Just from in the spirit of humanizing the customer experience, when we think about digital channels, right? We treat digital channels as very transactional and I think a lot of times we go to digital channels for convenience. So how do you think about the human aspect of it? How do you make that even more meaningful than it really is today?
Aarthi Murali (42:22):
Oh, can I take that please, Love the question. And that's what it's all about. It's about the human experience across channels. One of the things that we started to talk about at m and t was why do we care about digital? Is it because it's more efficient, it's more cost-effective? Let's be very practical about our organizations. Is it the right thing to do because every other bank is doing it and we're being compared against the SoFis of the world and you can fulfill your entire journey. Those are all the tactics that we take, but at the core of it, it's around what are your customer's jobs to be done? To think about it really simply, right? As a customer, people want to do a certain set of things that are actually very emotional. They're starting from a place of emotion, I want to buy a home. I want to add my child to a new student card.
(43:20)
I need to refinance, I need to buy a car. Those are very emotional human experiences that they're starting with. When you start there, it quickly, in banking in general, it moves into a very transactional state. And so to me, can you give your customers a choice? They can start online, they can call or they can go to the branch or do none of the above and just go have a conversation with someone who banks at your brand. If they can do all of that and feel a sense of association and feel a personal connection that, okay, that bank brand is someone I can associate with to fulfill my needs, then digital works. I think without all those layers of purpose and intent built on those, a purely digital solution works for it does work for some segments of customers as well. But without that human connection, that's where the brand I see starts to degrade. But there can be nothing more important than filling that human experience in the middle of middle those channels.
Kristen Campbell (44:21):
One practical application I think that I've seen just coming up through product development, but also working in a FinTech, also a technology SaaS provider. Many of you already do this, so this might not be an aha, but it's really building out personas, right? And understanding that if we're talking about a particular demographic, that we have a really robust personality behind that person. And everyone knows that name. Is it Eva? Is it Mark? And Mark May be a boomer and Mark May be a hipster and able to use his device, but maybe he can't actually leave his home. Maybe the online experience needs to be perfected so that he can transact and do what he needs to do and be independent and not have that challenge of saying, I have to find somebody to get me to a branch. I can't actually use the technology. So if you bring those people to life with your teams, it immediately ignites the human side of everyone and you rally behind the solutions and perfecting the experience for those people. Because everyone infinitely cares about the people that are transacting with us. We want them to have a good home buying experience. We want them to feel like they can buy their first car and be excited when they pay their loan off, those types of things. And so just really building out the persona and making sure everyone understands who those people are and then bringing them to life inside your organization is a very easy way to ignite the human side of what you're developing.
Janet King (45:57):
Well, thank you. I think we are out of time, but we are all here all day, so feel free to find any one of us to ask questions. And thank you very much for joining us this morning. Thank you both.